administration earned him the gratitude of the inhabitants. It was
at their request that he undertook in 70 B. C. the Prosecution of
Verres, who as Praetor had subjected the Sicilians to incredible
extortion and oppression; and his successful conduct of this case,
which ended in the conviction and banishment of Verres, may be
said to have launched him on his political career. He became
aedile in the same year, in 67 B.C. praetor, and in 64 B. C. was
elected consul by a large majority. The most important event of the
year of his consulship was the conspiracy of Catiline. This
notorious criminal of patrician rank had conspired with a number
of others, many of them young men of high birth but dissipated
character, to seize the chief offices of the state, and to extricate
themselves from the pecuniary and other difficulties that had
resulted from their excesses, by the wholesale plunder of the city.
The plot was unmasked by the vigilance of Cicero, five of the
traitors were summarily executed, and in the overthrow of the
army that had been gathered in their support Catiline himself
perished. Cicero regarded himself as the savior of his country, and
his country for the moment seemed to give grateful assent.

But reverses were at hand. During the existence of the political
combination of Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, known as the first
triumvirate, P. Clodius, an enemy of Cicero's, proposed a law
banishing "any one who had put Roman citizens to death without
trial." This was aimed at Cicero on account of his share in the
Catiline affair, and in March, 58 B. C., he left Rome. The same
day a law was passed by which he was banished by name, and his
property was plundered and destroyed, a temple to Liberty being
erected on the site of his house in the city. During his exile
Cicero's manliness to some extent deserted him. He drifted from