He was well-born, but not of noble ancestors.  The great peculiarity of his youth was his precocity.  He was an intellectual prodigy,—­like Pitt, Macaulay, and Mill.  Like them, he had a wonderful memory.  He early mastered the Greek language; he wrote poetry, studied under eminent professors, frequented the Forum, listened to the speeches of different orators, watched the posture and gestures of actors, and plunged into the mazes of literature and philosophy.  He was conscious of his marvellous gifts, and was, of course, ambitious of distinction.

There were only three ways at Rome in which a man could rise to eminence and power.  One was by making money, like army contractors and merchants, such as the Equites, to whose ranks he belonged; the second was by military service; and the third by the law,—­an honorable profession.  Like Caesar, a few years younger than he, Cicero selected the law.  But he was a new man,—­not a patrician, as Caesar was,—­and had few powerful friends.  Hence his progress was not rapid in the way of clients.  He was twenty-five years of age before he had a case.  He was twenty-seven when he defended Roscius, which seems to have brought him into notice,—­even as the fortune of Erskine was made in the Greenwich Hospital case and that of Daniel Webster in the case of Dartmouth College.  To have defended Roscius against all the influence of Sulla, then the most powerful man in Rome, was considered bold and audacious.  His fame for great logical power rests on his defence of Milo,—­the admiration of all lawyers.

Cicero was not naturally robust.  His figure was tall and spare, his neck long and slender, and his mouth anything but sensual.  He looked more like an elegant scholar than a popular public speaker.  Yet he was impetuous, ardent, and fiery, like Demosthenes, resorting to violent gesticulations.  The health of such a young man could not stand the strain on his nervous system, and he was obliged to leave Rome for recreation; he therefore made the tour of Greece and Asia Minor, which every fashionable and cultivated man was supposed to do.  Yet he did not abandon himself to the pleasures of cities more fascinating than Rome itself, but pursued his studies in rhetoric and philosophy under eminent masters, or “professors” as we should now call them.  He remained abroad two years, returning when he was thirty years of age and settling down in his profession, taking at first but little part in politics.  He married Terentia, with whom he lived happily for thirty years.

But the Roman lawyer was essentially a politician, looking ultimately to political office, since only through the great public offices could he enter the Senate,—­the object of ambition to all distinguished Romans, as a seat in Parliament is the goal of an Englishman.  The Roman lawyer did not receive fees, like modern lawyers, but derived his support from presents and legacies.  When he became a political leader, a man of influence with the great, his presents were enormous.  Cicero acknowledged, late in life, to have received what would now be equal to more than a million of dollars from legacies alone.  The great political leaders and orators were the stipendiaries of Eastern princes and nobles who wanted favors from the Senate, and who knew as well how to reward such services as do the railway kings in our times.