if we may trust his own account of his proceedings, was
exceptionally just, and not only just, but even generous in his dealings
with the provincials, made, as we have seen, the very handsome profit of
twenty thousand pounds out of a year of office. Verres, who, on the
other hand, was exceptionally rapacious, made three hundred and fifty
thousand pounds in three years, besides collecting works of art of
incalculable value. But the honors and profits to which most of his
contemporaries looked forward with eagerness did not attract Cicero. He
did not care to be absent from the center of political life, and felt
himself to be at once superior to and unfitted for the pettier affairs
of a provincial government.

He had successfully avoided the appointment after his praetorship and
again after his consulship. But the time came when it was forced upon
him. Pompey in his third consulship had procured the passing of a law by
which it was provided that all senators who had filled the office of
praetor or consul should cast lots for the vacant provinces. Cicero had
to take his chance with the rest, and the ballot gave him Cilicia. This
was in B.C. 51, and Cicero was in his fifty-sixth year.

Cilicia was a province of considerable extent, including, as it did, the
south-eastern portion of Asia Minor, together with the island of Cyprus.
The position of its governor was made more anxious by the neighborhood
of Rome's most formidable neighbors, the Parthians, who but two years
before had cut to pieces the army of Crassus. Two legions, numbering
twelve thousand troops besides auxiliaries, were stationed in the
province, having attached to them between two and three thousand
cavalry.

Cicero started to take up his appointment on May 1st, accompanied by his
brother, who, having served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul, had
resigned his command to act as lieutenant in Cilicia. At Cumae he
received a levee of visitors--a "little Rome," he says. Hortensius was
among them, and this though in very feeble health (he died before
Cicero's return). "He asked me for my instructions. Every thing else I
left with him in general terms, but I begged him especially not to allow
as far as in him lay, the government of my province to be continued to
me into another year." On the 17th of the month he reached Tarentum,
where he spent three days with Pompey. He found him "ready to defend the
State from the dangers that we dread." The shadows of the ci