however hopelessly civilian in tastes and antecedents, might be sent to
conduct a campaign in Italy or abroad at a few hours' notice. If a man was
a heaven-born general, all went well; if not, he had usually a chance of
learning in the school of defeat. It was desirable, at all events, that he
should have seen what war was in his youth. Young Cicero served his first
campaign, at the age of eighteen, under the father of a man whom he was to
know only too well in after life--Pompey the Great--and in the division of
the army which was commanded by Sylla as lieutenant-general. He bore arms
only for a year or two, and probably saw no very arduous service, or we
should certainly have beard of it from himself; and he never was in camp
again until he took the chief command, thirty-seven years afterwards,
as pro-consul in Cilicia. He was at Rome, leading a quiet
student-life--happily for himself, too young to be forced or tempted into
an active part--during the bloody feuds between Sylla and the younger
Marius.

He seems to have made his first appearance as an advocate when he was
about twenty-five, in some suit of which we know nothing. Two years
afterwards he undertook his first defence of a prisoner on a capital
charge, and secured by his eloquence the acquittal of Sextus Roscius on an
accusation of having murdered his father. The charge appears to have been
a mere conspiracy, wholly unsupported by evidence; but the accuser was a
favourite with Sylla, whose power was all but absolute; and the innocence
of the accused was a very insufficient protection before a Roman jury of
those days. What kind of considerations, besides the merits of the case
and the rhetoric of counsel, did usually sway these tribunals, we shall
see hereafter. In consequence of this decided success, briefs came in upon
the young pleader almost too quickly. Like many other successful orators,
he had to combat some natural deficiencies; he had inherited from his
father a somewhat delicate constitution; his lungs were not powerful,