, two of whom were employed in the city, and the six others in
the provinces. The "Praetor Urbanus" was confined to the city, and was
regarded as the first in authority. This was the office filled by
Cicero. His duty was to preside among the judges, and to name a judge or
judges for special causes.

[Sidenote: B.C. 66, aetat. 41.]

Cicero at this time, when he and Pompey were forty or forty-one,
believed thoroughly in Pompey. When the great General was still away,
winding up the affairs of his maritime war against the pirates, there
came up the continually pressing question of the continuation of the
Mithridatic war. Lucullus had been absent on that business nearly seven
years, and, though he had been at first grandly victorious, had failed
at last. His own soldiers, tired of their protracted absence, mutinied
against him, and Glabrio, a later Consul, who had been sent to take the
command out of his hands, had feared to encounter the difficulty. It was
essential that something should be done, and one Manilius, a Tribune, a
man of no repute himself, but whose name has descended to all posterity
in the oration Pro Lege Manilia, proposed to the people that Pompey
should have the command. Then Cicero first entered, as we may say, on
political life. Though he had been Quaestor and AEdile, and was now
Praetor, he had taken a part only in executive administration. He had had
his political ideas, and had expressed them very strongly in that matter
of the judges, which, in the condition of Rome, was certainly a
political question of great moment. But this he had done as an advocate,
and had interfered only as a barrister of to-day might do, who, in
arguing a case before the judges, should make an attack on some alleged
misuse of patronage. Now, for the first time, he made a political
harangue, addressing the people in a public meeting from the rostra.
This speech is the oration Pro Lego Manilia. This he explains in his
first words. Hitherto his addresses had been to the judges--Judices; now
it is to the people--Quirites: "Although, Quirites, no sight has ever
been so pleasant to me as that of seeing you gathered in
crowds--although this spot has always seemed to me the fittest in the
world for action and the noblest for speech--nevertheless, not my own
will, indeed, but the duties of the profession which I have followed
from my earliest years have hitherto hindered me from entering upon this
the best path to glory which is open