often since Cicero told it himself, that I am almost ashamed to repeat
it. It is, however, too emblematic of the man, gives us too close
an insight both into his determination to do his duty and to his
pride--conceit, if you will--at having done it, to be omitted. In his
speech for Plancius[96] he tells us that by chance, coming direct from
Sicily after his Quaestorship, he found himself at Puteoli just at the
season when the fashion from Rome betook itself to that delightful
resort. He was full of what he had done--how he had supplied Rome with
corn, but had done so without injury to the Sicilians, how honestly he
had dealt with the merchants, and had in truth won golden opinions on
all sides--so much so that he thought that when he reached the city
the citizens in a mob would be ready to receive him. Then at Puteoli
he met two acquaintances. "Ah," says one to him, "when did you leave
Rome? What news have you brought?" Cicero, drawing his head up, as we
can see him, replied that he had just returned from his province. "Of
course, just back from Africa," said the other. "Not so," said Cicero,
bridling in anger--"stomachans fastidiose," as he describes it
himself--"but from Sicily." Then the other lounger, a fellow who
pretended to know everything, put in his word. "Do you not know that
our Cicero has been Quaestor at Syracuse?" The reader will remember
that he had been Quaestor in the other division of the island, at
Lilybaeum. "There was no use in thinking any more about it," says
Cicero. "I gave up being angry and determined to be like any one else,
just one at the waters." Yes, he had been very conceited, and well
understood his own fault of character in that respect; but he would
not have shown his conceit in that matter had he not resolved to do
his duty in a manner uncommon then among Quaestors, and been conscious
that ho had done it.

Perhaps there is no more certain way of judging a man than from his