Before Cicero, then, could be a Senator, he must pass through those great public offices which were in the gift of the people.  The first step on the ladder of advancement was the office of quaestor, which entailed the duty of collecting revenues in one of the provinces.  This office he was sufficiently influential to secure, being sent to Sicily, where he distinguished himself for his activity and integrity.  At the end of a year he renewed his practice in the courts at Rome,—­being hardly anything more than a mere lawyer for five years, when he was elected an Aedile, to whom the care of the public buildings was intrusted.

It was while he was aedile-elect that Cicero appeared as the public prosecutor of Verres.  This was one of the great cases of antiquity, and the one from which the orator’s public career fairly dates.  His residence in Sicily had prepared him for this duty; and he secured the conviction of this great criminal, whose peculations and corruptions would amaze our modern New Yorkers and all the “rings” of our great cities combined.  But the Praetor of Sicily was a provincial governor,—­more like Warren Hastings than Tweed.  For this public service Cicero gained more eclat than Burke did for his prosecution of Hastings; since Hastings, though a corrupt man, laid, after Clive, the foundation of the English empire in India, and was a man of immense talents,—­greater than those of any who has since filled his place.  Hence the nation screened Hastings.  But Verres had no virtues and no great abilities; he was an outrageous public robber, and hoped, from his wealth and powerful connections, to purchase immunity for his crimes.  In the hands of such an orator as Cicero he could not escape the penalty of the law, powerful as he was, even at Rome.  This case placed Cicero above Hortensius, hitherto the leader of the Roman bar.

It was at this period that the extant correspondence of Cicero began, which is the best picture we have of the manners and habits of the Roman aristocracy at the time.  History could scarcely spare those famous letters, especially to Atticus, in which also the private life and character of Cicero shine to the most advantage, revealing no vices, no treacheries,—­only egotism, vanity, and vacillation, and a way that some have of speaking about people in private very differently from what they say in public, which looks like insincerity.  In these letters Cicero appears as a very frank man, genial, hospitable, domestic, witty, whose society and conversation must have been delightful.  In no modern correspondence do we see a higher perfection in the polished courtesies and urbanities of social life, with the alloy of vanity, irony, and discontent.  But in these letters he also evinces a friendship which is immortal; and what is nobler than the capacity of friendship?  In these he not only shines as a cultivated scholar, but as a great statesman and patriot, living for the good of his country, though