In 70 B.C., at the age of thirty-six, Cicero at last found his great
chance, and seized it. The impeachment of Verres for maladministration in
the government of Sicily was a political trial of great constitutional
importance. It was undertaken at the direct encouragement of Pompeius,
who had entered on his first or democratic consulate, and was indirectly
a formidable attack both on the oligarchic administration of the
provinces and on the senatorian jury-panels, in whose hands the Sullan
constitution had placed the only check upon misgovernment. The defence of
Verres was undertaken by Hortensius; the selection of Cicero as chief
counsel for the prosecution by the democratic leaders was a public
recognition of him as the foremost orator on the Pompeian side. He threw
himself into the trial with all his energy. After his opening speech, and
the evidence which followed, Verres threw up his defence and went into
exile. This, of course, brought the case to an end; but the cause turned
on larger issues than his particular guilt or innocence. The whole of the
material prepared against him was swiftly elaborated by Cicero into five
great orations, and published as a political document. These orations,
the _Second Action against Verres_ as they are called, were at once the
most powerful attack yet made on the working of the Sullan constitution,
and the high-water mark of the earlier period of Cicero's eloquence. It
was not till some years later that his oratory culminated; but he never
excelled these speeches in richness and copiousness of style, in ease and
lucidity of exposition, and in power of dealing with large masses of
material. He at once became an imposing political force; perhaps it was
hardly realised till later how incapable that force was of going straight
or of bearing down opposition. The series of political and semi-political
speeches of the next ten years, down to his exile, represent for the time
the history of Rome; and together with these we now begin the series of
his private letters. The year of his praetorship, 66 B.C., is marked by
the two orations which are on the whole his greatest, one public and the