n later and more civilized ages, by reason
of the oratorical accomplishments to which it usually gives scope. The
date of Cicero's birth fell precisely during that intermediate state of
things, in which the glory of military exploits lost its pre-eminence
by means of the very opulence and luxury which were their natural issue;
and he was the first Roman who found his way to the highest dignities of
the State with no other recommendation than his powers of eloquence and
his merits as a civil magistrate.[100]

The first cause of importance he undertook was his defence of Sextus
Roscius; in which he distinguished himself by his spirited opposition to
Sylla, whose favourite Chrysogonus was prosecutor in the action. This
obliging him, according to Plutarch, to leave Rome on prudential
motives, he employed his time in travelling for two years under pretence
of his health, which, he tells us,[101] was as yet unequal to the
exertion of pleading. At Athens he met with T. Pomponius Atticus, whom
he had formerly known at school, and there renewed with him a friendship
which lasted through life, in spite of the change of interests and
estrangements of affection so common in turbulent times.[102] Here too
he attended the lectures of Antiochus, who, under the name of Academic,
taught the dogmatic doctrines of Plato and the Stoics. Though Cicero
felt at first considerable dislike of his philosophical views,[103] he
seems afterwards to have adopted the sentiments of the Old Academy,
which they much resembled; and not till late in life to have relapsed
into the sceptical tenets of his former instructor Philo.[104] After
visiting the principal philosophers and rhetoricians of Asia, in his
thirtieth year he returned to Rome, so strengthened and improved both
in bodily and mental powers, that he soon eclipsed in his oratorical
efforts all his competitors for public favour. So popular a talent
speedily gained him the suffrage of the Commons; and, being sent to
Sicily as Quaestor, at a time when the metropolis itself was visited with
a scarcity of corn, he acquitted himself in that delicate situation with
such address as to supply the clamorous wants of the people without
oppressing the province from which the provisions were raised.[105]
Returning thence with greater honours than had ever been before decreed
to a Roman Governor, he ingratiated himself still farther in the esteem
of the Sicilians by undertaking his celebrated prosecution of V