bounds of probability that the pleader and advocate, particularly,
ever since the great case of Verres had been so deeply immersed
in the engrossing labors of his profession, that such a memoran-
dum was of great utility to him at that time? You possess, says
the younger Cicero (1), fairly everything which one may achieve
by native endowment, by experience and by reflexion; you
really know this matter of the consular canvass, and still as your
impending candidacy has been engrossing my thoughts night
and day, I find there is a vast total of matters and items which I
desire to collect in a simple survey for your benefit. You are
indeed a new man. But (2) your oratory has given you great
distinction, and one who has had ex-consuls for clients, cannot
be deemed unworthy of consular honors. Therefore each case
that you plead now must exhibit you to the Roman world as sur-
passing yourself. Your professional career has provided you
with valuable connections and attachments: All the publicani,
the equestrian class almost entire, many municipia, a number
of guilds (collegia). There is really nothing in the entire tradi-
tion of Roman antiquity which permits so close a vision to the
student. Cicero indeed was no aristocrat, but (§ 7) his aristo-
cratic rivals were so impressively inferior to him, that his per-
sonal merits shone the more by contrast. The two whose candi-
dacy had to be taken more seriously were Catiline and Antonius.
But they were men whose youth and earlier manhood had been
one continuous defiance of morality and decency. They had been
slaves of lust, not shrinking from assassination, and now were
reduced to destitution. Catiline particularly had led a life in
which lust and crime had been curiously intermingled. The
Sergii were of the most ancient aristocracy, but so reduced were
they in Catiline's early youth, that his sister was the paid mistress
of men of wealth. All the living Ciceros and their kin could never
forget how, early in Sulla's proscriptions, young Catiline had
been that autocrat's most conspicuous executioner and torturer.
Marcus of course knew all this. But Quintus brought it all im-
pressively together, in a single survey, to rouse the lively emo-
tions of the elder brother and to fill him with moral courage and
confidence. To this should be added the record of Catiline's
government in the province of Africa (2); Cicero could refresh
his memory by reading it over (saepius, 10). Catiline's seduc-
tion of young boys was notorious. His acquittal in the provin-
cial case cost him all the fortune he had possessed himself of.

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