go back to his masters for awhile[46].

He was twenty-eight when he started on this tour. It has been
suggested that he did so in fear of the resentment of Sulla, with
whose favorites and with whose practices he had dealt very plainly.
There is no reason for alleging this, except that Sulla was powerful,
that Sulla was blood-thirsty, and that Sulla must have been offended.
This kind of argument is often used. It is supposed to be natural, or
at least probable, that in a certain position a man should have been
a coward or a knave, ungrateful or cruel; and in the presumption
thus raised the accusation is brought against him. "Fearing Sulla's
resentment," Plutarch says, "he travelled into Greece, and gave out
that the recovery of his health was the motive." There is no evidence
that such was his reason for travelling; and, as Middleton says in his
behalf, it is certain that he "continued for a year after this in Rome
without any apprehension of danger." It is best to take a man's own
account of his own doings and their causes, unless there be ground for
doubting the statement made. It is thus that Cicero himself speaks of
his journey: "Now," he says, still in his Brutus[47], "as you wish to
know what I am--not simply what mark I may have on my body from my
birth, or with what surroundings of childhood I was brought up--I will
include some details which might perhaps seem hardly necessary. At
this time I was thin and weak, my neck being long and narrow--a habit
and form of body which is supposed to be adverse to long life; and
those who loved me thought the more of this, because I had taken to
speaking without relaxation, without recreation with all the powers of
my voice, and with much muscular action.

When my friends and the doctors desired me to give up speaking, I
resolved that, rather than abandon my career as an orator, I would