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freely resorted to. And it must be remembered that the voters were not merely the populace of Rome. The Italian towns that possessed the franchise contributed large numbers, all of whom might be practised upon by his opponents.

Julius Cæsar and Crassus openly espoused the side of Catiline and Antonius, who had formed a coalition and fought a common battle for the consulship. Antonius was a man of bad character, and his name had been erased from the list of senators by the censors.1 So unscrupulous was the agency at work to influence the election that the Senate was called upon to interfere. A measure was proposed to give more stringent effect to the laws against bribery and corruption, but the tribune Orestinus interposed his veto. This gave occasion to Cicero to deliver a speech known as "the oration in the white robe," because as a candidate he wore, according to the usual custom, a white toga (intended. perhaps to be emblematical of purity of election). It is unhappily lost, and we possess only a few fragments preserved by. Asconius. In it he attacked his two principal competitors with unsparing severity, and thus laid the foundation of the bitter hatred which Catiline felt towards him, and which, as we shall see, culminated afterwards in an attempt upon his life. They had, he said, on the previous night, together with the agents they employed to bribe the electors, met at the house of a man of rank notorious for the part he took in that kind of corruption.2 And he alluded to Catiline's alleged criminal intercourse with Fabia, a vestal and the sister of Terentia, contriving at the same time to damage his opponent and save the honour of his sister-in-law, by saying that Catiline's conduct was such that his very presence raised a suspicion of guilt even where there was nothing

wrong.

This speech was delivered only a few days before the comitia centuriata, or meeting of the centuries, was held in

1 The censors had this power. P. Lentulus, after having been consul B.C. 71, was expelled from the senate by the censors on account of his dissolute course of life. There is an instance in English history of a peer being deprived of his dignity by Act of Parliament on the

ground of poverty. By a statute passed in 17 Edw. IV., George Nevil, Duke of Bedford, was for that reason deprived of his peerage.

2

According to Asconius it was either Cæsar or Crassus who was here pointed at.

the Campus Martius, to determine the election of consuls, which was conducted in the following manner :—

The people assembled in the Campus Martius were told off into their centuries, and it was then decided by lot which century should vote first. A narrow passage fenced off on each side, and called ponticulus, led into an enclosure called septum, "barrier," or ovile, from its likeness to a sheep-pen, and each of the voters passed along it. As he entered it he was furnished by officers, called diribitores, with tickets, on which were written the names of the candidates. At the other end were placed urns or boxes into which he deposited the name of the candidate or candidates for whom he wished to vote, and when all the members of the century had voted the tickets were taken out by scrutineers called custodes, and the numbers were pricked on a tablet most probably smeared with wax. The result was then announced, and the majority of the individual votes determined the vote of the century. That which came first was called the prærogativa centuria, and its vote generally determined the fate of the election. The vote of the first century chosen by lot was taken as an indication of the wish of the majority of the people,1 and the other centuries generally followed suit. The number of the centuries was ninety-seven, and the election depended upon the votes of the majority of the whole.

2

So great, however, was Cicero's popularity, that the electors, instead of resorting to ballot, proclaimed him consul by loud and unanimous shouts. Antonius had the next greater number of votes, beating Catiline by a small majority, and the rest of the competitors appear to have been nowhere. Cicero therefore, and Antonius, became the consuls-elect for the following year, although they did not actually assume office until the 1st of January. The triumph of Cicero was greatly to the credit of the people. His only claims to their suffrages were his splendid abilities and his unsullied character. He was opposed by men of rank, and wealth, and power, who were ready to buy votes as freely as they bought merchandise, and against such a temptation he could only

.

1 Pro signo voluntatis futuræ.-In Verr. i. 9.

2 Me cuncta Italia, me omnes ordines,

me universa civitas non prius tabellâ quam voce priorem consulem declaravit. In Pisonem.

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ELECTED CONSUL.

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rely upon popular gratitude for his services as an advocate and a statesman, and his fame as an orator. Bad as was the state of society at Rome, utterly bad as was the tone amongst the upper classes, demoralised by long years of civil strife, it is impossible not to believe that the heart of the people was in some degree sound which could thus respond to the call of genius and virtue, and reject the bribes that were freely offered.

Most probably Cicero had been too busily occupied with his canvass and the excitement of his election this year to find much time for the duties of an advocate. At all events we know of only one trial in which he was engaged, and that was when he defended Q. Gallius, the prætor of the preceding year, who was accused of having obtained his office by illegal means-in other words, by bribery and corruption. The speech is lost, but it was successful, and Gallius was acquitted.

CICERO had attained the summit of ambition.

He was Consul of Rome. As such he was entitled at the expiration of his year of office to the government of a province, an honourable and lucrative preferment which was naturally much coveted; and it was usual for the two consuls on the day of their inauguration to draw lots for the provinces which each was to obtain. Cicero, however, in the first speech that he made in a crowded Senate on the very day he assumed office the 1st of January--publicly declared that he sought neither a provincial government, nor honour, nor advantage, nor anything which it would be in the power of a tribune of

the people to oppose. And he made this noble promise: "I will, Conscript Fathers, so demean myself in this magistracy as to be able to chastise the tribunes if they are at enmity with the Republic, and despise them if they are at enmity with myself." This was, indeed, as he himself declared at the time, the only way in which the office could be discharged with dignity and freedom; but it was not the less praiseworthy in him to commit himself to such an act of selfdenial, and look solely for his reward in the approval of his own conscience and the regard of his fellow-citizens. Sallust says that he had already won over his colleague Antonius, by agreeing to resign to him the province that might fall to his lot, in case it were better worth having than the one which

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Antonius obtained. Afterwards, when the lots were drawn, and Cicero got Macedonia-a tempting prize-he at once made it over to Antonius, and contented himself with Cisalpine Gaul. This, however, he did not retain, but voluntarily gave it up and exerted himself to get it assigned to Q. Metellus Celer.

At the very outset of his new career he distinguished himself by three remarkable triumphs as an orator. The first of them is characterised by Niebuhr as "one of the most brilliant achievements of eloquence." A bill called a lex agraria was brought forward by the tribune P. Servilius Rullus, the object of which was to create ten commissioners, called Decemvirs, for five years, with power to dispose absolutely, with a few exceptions, of the whole of the public lands of the state, and out of the proceeds of the sale to purchase other lands in Italy on which to settle colonies from Rome They were also to have the entire control over all the prize or booty taken in war, except such as was already in the hands of Pompey, and if we may trust the account which Cicero gives of the measure in his impassioned argument against it, they would become in fact the uncontrolled masters of the whole revenues of the Republic. He first opposed the bill in the Senate in a speech of which a great part is lost. He challenged Rullus, and those who supported him, to meet him in the Forum, and let the people decide between them. They deemed it more prudent not to accept the challenge, but Cicero harangued the multitude from the Rostra in two speeches, the first of which is remarkable for its ability and power. He had a difficult part to play, for the measure professed to be one of relief for the populace of Rome, and the multitude that thronged the Forum that day must at first have listened with unwilling ears to a speaker whose object was to make them relinquish a proffered boon. But he succeeded, and by a simple method. He told the people that the proposed Decemvirate was nothing more nor less than tyranny in disguise. The ten commissioners would be ten kings, the name most hateful to Roman ears. From first to last he impressed this upon his hearers, and drew a startling and no doubt an exaggerated picture of what would happen if the bill passed into a law.

H