a matter of
conscience that, in serving their country, they would not dishonestly or
dishonorably enrich themselves. There was still a grain of salt left.
But even this could not make itself available for useful purpose without
having recourse to tricks such as these!

[Sidenote: B.C. 75, aetat. 32.]

In his proper year Cicero became Quaestor, and had assigned to him by lot
the duty of looking after the Western Division of Sicily. For Sicily,
though but one province as regarded general condition, being under one
governor with proconsular authority, retained separate modes of
government, or, rather, varied forms of subjection to Rome, especially
in matters of taxation, according as it had or had not been conquered
from the Carthaginians.[87] Cicero was quartered at Lilybaeum, on the
west, whereas the other Quaestor was placed at Syracuse, in the east.
There were at that time twenty Quaestors elected annually, some of whom
remained in Rome; but most of the number were stationed about the
Empire, there being always one as assistant to each Proconsul. When a
Consul took the field with an army, he always had a Quaestor with him.
This had become the case so generally that the Quaestor became, as it
were, something between a private secretary and a senior lieutenant to a
governor. The arrangement came to have a certain sanctity attached to
it, as though there was something in the connection warmer and closer
than that of mere official life; so that a Quaestor has been called a
Proconsul's son for the time, and was supposed to feel that reverence
and attachment that a son entertains for his father.

But to Cicero, and to young Quaestors in general, the great attraction of
the office consisted in the fact that the aspirant having once become a
Quaestor was a Senator for the rest of his life, unless he should be
degraded by misconduct. Gradually it had come to pass that the Senate
was replenished by the votes of the people, not directly, but by the
admission into the Senate of the popularly elected magistrates. There
were in the time of Cicero between 500 and 600 members of this body. The
numbers down to the time of Sulla had been increased or made up by
direct selection by the old Kings, or by the Censors, or by some
Dictator, such as was Sulla; and the same thing was done afterward by
Julius Caesar. The years between Sulla's Dictatorship and that of Caesar
were but thirty--from 79 to 49 B.C. These, however, were the years in