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80 B.C.] distrust which frets and plagues him night and day, and to lend yourselves to secure him his ill-gotten gain." Cicero modestly ascribes it to his own obscurity that he is privileged to appear as the champion of such a cause, while all the leading advocates shrank from the undertaking; "my plain-speaking may be unobserved because I have as yet no pretensions to be a statesman, or it may be pardoned in consideration of my youth—though, to be sure, the notion of pardoning and even the practice of judging has faded from the memory of the Republic." That day was the last on which Cicero could plead the security of insignificance. He left the court a man of mark in Rome. He had done more than save his client; he had given voice to feelings which all the world must needs smother in silence; he had struck a keynote which vibrated in a thousand hearts, sick of bloodshed and robbery and terror.

All this required not only great boldness but great skill. He was pleading before a bench of senators, newly re-established in the law-courts by Sulla, who would not be likely to tolerate from a young man of equestrian family anything which implied disapproval of the Restoration or disrespect towards the government. Nevertheless, with the instinct of a great pleader, Cicero seems to have felt the pulse of the jury as he proceeded. He begins by protesting that he will touch on politics only so far as is absolutely necessary for his case; he ends by claiming