o the consulship, but we have little
trace of his public actions that year, only the fragments of one
speech remaining, in defence of Q. Gallius on a charge of
_ambitus_. The animus of the popular party, however, is shewn by
the prosecution of some surviving partisans of Sulla on charges of
homicide, among them Catiline, who by some means escaped conviction
(Dio, xxxvii. 10). In the year of the consulship (B.C. 63) some of
Cicero's most important speeches were delivered. The three on the
agrarian proposals of Rullus present him to us for the first time
as discussing an important question of home politics, the disposal
of the _ager publicus_, a question which had become again prominent
owing to the great additions made to it by the confiscations of
Sulla. He also defended C. Rabirius, prosecuted by Iulius Caesar for
the murder of Saturninus as long ago as B.C. 100, and later in the
year defended Murena on a charge of _ambitus_. Finally, the three
Catilinarian speeches illustrate the event which coloured the whole
of Cicero's life. In B.C. 62 his brother Quintus was praetor and
Cicero defended in his court P. Sulla, accused of complicity with
Catiline. On the 29th of December (B.C. 63) the tribune Q. Caecilius
Metellus Nepos prevented Cicero from making a speech when laying
down his consulship, and went on to propose summoning Pompey to
Rome, "to protect the lives of the citizens." This led to scenes of
violence, and Metellus fled to Pompey, who reached Italy late in
the year B.C. 62 from the East.

[Footnote 55: Asconius assigns this to the accusation of embezzlement in
Africa. But that seems to have been tried in the previous year, or
earlier in this year. The new impeachment threatened seems to have been
connected with his crimes in the proscriptions of Sulla (Dio, xxxvii,
10). Cicero may have thought of defending him on a charge relating to so
distant a period, just as he did Rabirius on the charge of murdering
Saturninus (B.C. 100), though he had regarded his guilt in the case of
extortion in Africa as glaring.]

[Footnote 56: The essay on the duties of a candidate attributed to
Quintus is hardly a letter, and there is some doubt as to its
authenticity. I have therefore relegated it to an appendix.]

XII (F V, 7)

TO CN. POMPEIUS MAGNUS

ROME

_M. Tullius Cicero, son of Marcus, greets Cn. Po