be my object to show that
he was altogether sincere in his purpose, that he never changed his
political idea, and that, in these deviations as to men and as to means,
whether, for instance, he was ready to serve Caesar or to oppose him, he
was guided, even in the insincerity of his utterances, by the sincerity
of his purpose. I think that I can remember, even in Great Britain, even
in the days of Queen Victoria, men sitting check by jowl on the same
Treasury bench who have been very bitter to each other with anything but
friendly words. With us fidelity in friendship is, happily, a virtue. In
Rome expediency governed everything. All I claim for Cicero is, that he
was more sincere than others around him.

CHAPTER IV.

_HIS EARLY PLEADINGS.--SEXTUS ROSCIUS AMERINUS.--HIS INCOME._

[Sidenote: B.C. 80, aetat. 27.]

We now come to the beginning of the work of Cicero's life. This at first
consisted in his employment as an advocate, from which he gradually rose
into public or political occupation, as so often happens with a
successful barrister in our time. We do not know with absolute certainty
even in what year Cicero began his pleadings, or in what cause. It may
probably have been in 81 B.C., when he was twenty-five, or in his
twenty-sixth year. Of the pleadings of which we know the particulars,
that in the defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, which took place
undoubtedly in the year 80 B.C., aetat twenty-seven, was probably the
earliest. As to that, we have his speech nearly entire, as we have also
one for Publius Quintius, which has generally been printed first among
the orator's works. It has, however, I think, been made clear that that
spoken for Sextus Roscius came before it. It is certain that there had
been others before either of them. In that for Sextus he says that he
had never spoken before in any public cause,[61] such as was the
accusation in which he was now engaged, from which the inference has to
be made that he had been engaged in private causes; and in that for
Quintius he declares that there was wanting to him in that matter an aid
which he had been accustomed to enjoy in others.[62] No doubt he had
tried his 'prentice hand in cases of less importance. That of these two
the defence of Sextus Roscius came first, is also to be found in his own
words. More than once, in pleading for Quintius, he speaks of the
proscriptions and confiscations of Sulla as evils then some time past.
These were brough