ture. He wound up the whole with a point of sensational rhetoric
which was common, as has been said, to the Roman bar as to our own--an
appeal to the jurymen as fathers. He pointed to the aged father of the
defendant, leaning in the most approved attitude upon the shoulder of
his son. Either this, or the want of evidence, or the eloquence of the
pleader, had its due effect. Caelius was triumphantly acquitted; and it
is a proof that the young man was not wholly graceless, that he rose
afterwards to high public office, and never forgot his obligations to his
eloquent counsel, to whom he continued a stanch friend. He must have had
good abilities, for he was honoured with frequent letters from Cicero when
the latter was governor of Cilicia. He kept up some of his extravagant
tastes; for when he was Aedile (which involved the taking upon him the
expense of certain gladiatorial and wild-beast exhibitions), he wrote to
beg his friend to send him out of his province some panthers for his
show. Cicero complied with the request, and took the opportunity, so
characteristic of him, of lauding his own administration of Cilicia, and
making a kind of pun at the same time. "I have given orders to the hunters
to see about the panthers; but panthers are very scarce, and the few there
are complain, people say, that in the whole province there are no traps
laid for anybody but for them". Catching and skinning the unfortunate
provincials, which had been a favourite sport with governors like Verres,
had been quite done away with in Cilicia, we are to understand, under
Cicero's rule.

His defence of Ligarius, who was impeached of treason against the state
in the person of Caesar, as having borne arms against him in his African
campaign, has also been deservedly admired. There was some courage in
Cicero's undertaking his defence; as a known partisan of Pompey, he was
treading on dangerous and delicate ground. Caesar was dictator at the
time; and the case seems to have been tried before him as the sole
judicial authority, without pretence of the intervention of anything like
a jury. The defence--if defence it may be called--is a remarkable instance
of the common appeal, not to the merits of the case, but to the feelings
of the court. After making out what case he could for his client, the
advocate as it were throws up his brief, and rests upon the clemency of
the judge. Caesar himself, it must be remembered, had begun public life,
like Cicero, a