money matters.

Cicero is known to us in three great capacities: as a statesman, an
advocate, and a man of letters. As the combination of such pursuits is
common in our own days, so also was it in his. Caesar added them all
to the great work of his life as a soldier. But it was given to Cicero
to take a part in all those political struggles, from the resignation
of Sylla to the first rising of the young Octavius, which were made on
behalf of the Republic, and were ended by its downfall. His political
life contains the story of the conversion of Rome from republican to
imperial rule; and Rome was then the world. Could there have been no
Augustus, no Nero, and then no Trajan, all Europe would have been
different. Cicero's efforts were put forth to prevent the coming of an
Augustus or a Nero, or the need of a Trajan; and as we read of them we
feel that, had success been possible, he would have succeeded.

As an advocate he was unsurpassed. From him came the feeling--whether
it be right or wrong--that a lawyer, in pleading for his client,
should give to that client's cause not only all his learning and
all his wit, but also all his sympathy. To me it is marvellous, and
interesting rather than beautiful, to see how completely Cicero can
put off his own identity and assume another's in any cause, whatever
it be, of which he has taken the charge. It must, however, be borne
in mind that in old Rome the distinction between speeches made in
political and in civil or criminal cases was not equally well marked
as with us, and also that the reader having the speeches which have
come down to us, whether of one nature or the other, presented to him
in the same volume, is apt to confuse the public and that which may,
perhaps, be called the private work of the man. In the speeches best
known to us Cicero was working as a public man for public objects, and