The special preparation which was, in Cicero's time, employed for
students at the bar is also described in the treatise from which I
have quoted--the preparation which is supposed to have been the very
opposite of that afforded by the "rhetores." "Among ourselves, the
youth who was intended to achieve eloquence in the Forum, when already
trained at home and exercised in classical knowledge, was brought by
his father or his friends to that orator who might then be considered
to be the leading man in the city. It became his daily work to follow
that man, to accompany him, to be conversant with all his speeches,
whether in the courts of law or at public meetings, so that he might
learn, if I might say so, to fight in the very thick of the throng."
It was thus that Cicero studied his art. A few lines farther down, the
pseudo-Tacitus tells us that Crassus, in his nineteenth year, held a
brief against Carbo; that Caesar did so in his twenty-first against
Dolabella; and Pollio, in his twenty-second year, against Cato.[43] In
this precocity Cicero did not imitate Crassus, or show an example to
the Romans who followed him. He was twenty-six when he pleaded his
first cause. Sulla had then succeeded in crushing the Marian faction,
and the Sullan proscriptions had taken place, and were nominally over.
Sulla had been declared Dictator, and had proclaimed that there should
be no more selections for death. The Republic was supposed to be
restored. "Recuperata republica----tum primum nos ad causas et
privatas et publicas adire cepimus,"[44] "The Republic having been
restored, I then first applied myself to pleadings, both private and
public."

Of Cicero's politics at that time we are enabled to form a fair
judgment. Marius had been his townsman; Sulla had been his captain.
But the one thing dear to him was the Republic--what he thought to be
the Republic. He was neither Manan nor Sullan The turbulence in which