sgraceful in those days than bribing a voter in our own. The two
men were very unlike in one respect; Hortensius was a fop and an exquisite
(he is said to have brought an action against a colleague for disarranging
the folds of his gown), while Cicero's vanity was quite of another kind.
After Verres's trial, the two advocates were frequently engaged together
in the same cause and on the same side: but Hortensius seems quietly to
have abdicated his forensic sovereignty before the rising fame of his
younger rival. They became, ostensibly at least, personal friends. What
jealousy there was between them, strange to say, seems always to have been
on the side of Cicero, who could not be convinced of the friendly feeling
which, on Hortensius's part, there seems no reason to doubt. After his
rival's death, however, Cicero did full justice to his merits and his
eloquence, and even inscribed to his memory a treatise on 'Glory', which
has been lost.

CHAPTER III.

THE CONSULSHIP AND CATILINE.

There was no check as yet in Cicero's career. It had been a steady course
of fame and success, honestly earned and well deserved; and it was soon to
culminate in that great civil triumph which earned for him the proud title
of _Pater Patriae_--the Father of his Country. It was a phrase which
the orator himself had invented; and it is possible that, with all his
natural self-complacency, he might have felt a little uncomfortable under
the compliment, when he remembered on whom he had originally bestowed
it--upon that Caius Marius, whose death in his bed at a good old age,
after being seven times consul, he afterwards uses as an argument, in the
mouth of one of his imaginary disputants, against the existence of an
overruling Providence. In the prime of his manhood he reached the great
object of a Roman's ambition--he became virtually Prime Minister of the
republic: for he was elected, by acclamation rather than by vote, the
first of the two consuls for the year, and his colleague, Caius Antonius
(who had beaten the third candidate, the notorious Catiline, by a few
votes only) was a man who valued his office chiefly for its opportunities
of peculation, and whom Cicero knew how to manage. It is true that this
high dignity--so jealous were the old republican principles of individual
power--would last only for a year; but that year was to be a most eventful
one, both for Cicero and for Rome. The terrible days of Marius and Sylla
had pass