sent out to govern.  Such opportunities lay as ready to his grasp as to other men’s, but he steadily eschewed them.  His declining the tempting prize of a provincial government, which was his right on the expiration of his praetorship, may fairly be attributed to his having in view the higher object of the consulship, to secure which, by an early and persistent canvass, he felt it necessary to remain in Rome.  But he again waived the right when his consulship was over; and when, some years afterwards, he went unwillingly as pro-consul to Cilicia, his administration there, as before in his lower office in Sicily, was marked by a probity and honesty quite exceptional in a Roman governor.  His emoluments, confined strictly within the legal bounds, would be only moderate, and, whatever they were, came too late in his life to be any explanation of his earlier expenditure.  He received many valuable legacies, at different times, from personal friends or grateful clients who died childless (be it remembered how the barrenness of the marriage union had become then, at Rome, as it is said to be in some countries now, the reproach of a sensual and effete aristocracy); he boasts himself, in one of his ‘Philippics’, that he had received from this source above L170,000.  Mr. Forsyth also notices the large presents that were made by foreign kings and states to conciliate the support and advocacy of the leading men at Rome—­“we can hardly call them bribes, for in many cases the relation of patron and client was avowedly established between a foreign state and some influential Roman:  and it became his duty, as of course it was his interest, to defend it in the Senate and before the people”.  In this way, he thinks, Cicero held “retainers” from Dyrrachium; and, he might have added, from Sicily.  The great orator’s own boast was, that he never took anything for his services as an advocate; and, indeed, such payments were forbidden by law.[1] But with all respect for Cicero’s material honesty, one learns from his letters, unfortunately, not to put implicit confidence in him when he is in a boasting vein; and he might not look upon voluntary gifts, after a cause was decided, in the light of payment.  Paetus, one of his clients, gave him a valuable library of books; and one cannot believe that this was a solitary instance of the quiet evasion of the Cincian law, or that there were not other transactions of the same nature which never found their way into any letter of Cicero’s that was likely to come down to us.

[Footnote 1:  The principle passed, like so many others, from the old Roman law into our own, so that to this very day, a barrister’s fees, being considered in the nature of an honorarium, or voluntary present made to him for his services, are not recoverable by law.]

CHAPTER IV.

HIS EXILE AND RETURN.