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78 B.C.] like this, if exposed to over-exertion and strain of the lungs, is reckoned to incur fatal risks. My friends were the more anxious about me because my practice was to speak without any relief from change of tones, but always at the full stretch of my powers of voice and straining my whole body to the uttermost. They and the physicians urged me to give up speaking at the bar; but I felt that I would rather run any risks than renounce my ambitious hopes of being an orator. I reflected, however, that by changing my style of speaking and by lowering and regulating my voice, I might both avoid the danger to my health, and likewise bring my utterances better within compass. It was this purpose of a change in my habits of speaking that made me resolve on a journey to Asia. So after I had been two years at the bar, and had already some reputation in the courts, I set forth from Rome." Some account of his studies at Athens and in Asia Minor follows, and he continues: "Not content with these I came to Rhodes and resorted to Molo, the same whose pupil I had formerly been at Rome. Molo was not only an eminent writer and pleader in actual suits at the bar, but he had a rare skill in noting and correcting faults and in conveying instruction. He exerted all his powers in checking and keeping within bounds my tendency to exaggerate and to overflow, as it were, with a certain youthful hardihood and license of speech. I returned home after two years' absence, not only a more practised rhetorician, but almost a changed man. The over-straining of the voice had abated, my style had lost its frothiness, my