Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/83

67 B.C.] being well off in every way chose to pass his time more agreeably, as he thought, or at any rate less laboriously. Just as the brilliancy fades from the colouring of an old picture, so the first, the second, and the third year each robbed him of something not noticeable by a casual observer, but which an educated and discerning critic could detect. As time went on, he continued to deteriorate in his delivery, especially in readiness and sustained flow of utterance, until he became every day more unlike his old self. . . . By the time that I was made consul, six years after his own consulship, Hortensius had almost effaced himself. Then he began again to take pains; for now that he and I were equals in rank, he wished us to be equals in everything. Thus for the twelve years following my consulship we two were engaged in the most important cases with unbroken friendliness. I always considered him superior to myself; he put me first."

The most notable case in which Cicero was engaged during the period immediately before his consulship was his defence of Caius Cornelius, who as tribune in the year 67 B.C. had attempted to check the practice, by which the Senate granted dispensations from general laws under peculiar circumstances. The permission to Pompey to stand for the consulship in 70 B.C. is one instance of the kind, and Cæsar's request for a triumph in 6o B.C. is another. In pressing his bill through its earlier stages Cornelius had certainly been guilty of irregularities; still he had not persevered in illegal courses, but had withdrawn his measure and substituted another,