Cicero | Page 3

or
storing in their memories, his dicta upon legal questions.[1] In such
wise Cicero became the pupil of Mucius Scaevola, whose house was
called "the oracle of Rome"--scarcely ever leaving his side, as he

himself expresses it; and after that great lawyer's death, attaching
himself in much the same way to a younger cousin of the same name
and scarcely less reputation. Besides this, to arm himself at all points
for his proposed career, he read logic with Diodotus the Stoic, studied
the action of Esop and Roscius--then the stars of the Roman
stage--declaimed aloud like Demosthenes in private, made copious
notes, practised translation in order to form a written style, and read
hard day and night. He trained severely as an intellectual athlete; and if
none of his contemporaries attained such splendid success, perhaps
none worked so hard for it. He made use, too, of certain special
advantages which were open to him--little appreciated, or at least
seldom acknowledged, by the men of his day--the society and
conversation of elegant and accomplished women. In Scaevola's
domestic circle, where the mother, the daughters, and the
grand-daughters successively seem to have been such charming talkers
that language found new graces from their lips, the young advocate
learnt some of his not least valuable lessons. "It makes no little
difference", said he in his riper years, "what style of expression one
becomes familiar with in the associations of daily life". It was another
point of resemblance between the age of Cicero and the times in which
we live--the influence of the "queens of society", whether for good or
evil.
[Footnote 1: These dicta, or 'opinions', of the great jurists, acquired a
sort of legal validity in the Roman law-courts, like 'cases' with us.]
But no man could be completely educated for a public career at Rome
until he had been a soldier. By what must seem to us a mistake in the
Republican system--a mistake which we have seen made more than
once in the late American war--high political offices were necessarily
combined with military command. The highest minister of state, consul
or praetor, however hopelessly civilian in tastes and antecedents, might
be sent to conduct a campaign in Italy or abroad at a few hours' notice.
If a man was a heaven-born general, all went well; if not, he had
usually a chance of learning in the school of defeat. It was desirable, at
all events, that he should have seen what war was in his youth. Young
Cicero served his first campaign, at the age of eighteen, under the

father of a man whom he was to know only too well in after
life--Pompey the Great--and in the division of the army which was
commanded by Sylla as lieutenant-general. He bore arms only for a
year or two, and probably saw no very arduous service, or we should
certainly have beard of it from himself; and he never was in camp again
until he took the chief command, thirty-seven years afterwards, as
pro-consul in Cilicia. He was at Rome, leading a quiet
student-life--happily for himself, too young to be forced or tempted
into an active part--during the bloody feuds between Sylla and the
younger Marius.
He seems to have made his first appearance as an advocate when he
was about twenty-five, in some suit of which we know nothing. Two
years afterwards he undertook his first defence of a prisoner on a
capital charge, and secured by his eloquence the acquittal of Sextus
Roscius on an accusation of having murdered his father. The charge
appears to have been a mere conspiracy, wholly unsupported by
evidence; but the accuser was a favourite with Sylla, whose power was
all but absolute; and the innocence of the accused was a very
insufficient protection before a Roman jury of those days. What kind of
considerations, besides the merits of the case and the rhetoric of
counsel, did usually sway these tribunals, we shall see hereafter. In
consequence of this decided success, briefs came in upon the young
pleader almost too quickly. Like many other successful orators, he had
to combat some natural deficiencies; he had inherited from his father a
somewhat delicate constitution; his lungs were not powerful, and his
voice required careful management; and the loud declamation and
vehement action which he had adopted from his models--and which
were necessary conditions of success in the large arena in which a
Roman advocate had to plead--he found very hard work. He left Rome
for a while, and retired for rest and change to Athens.
The six months which he spent there, though busy and studious, must
have been very pleasant ones. To one like Cicero, Athens was at once
classic and holy ground. It combined all those associations and
attractions which we might now expect to