ch Gabinius called him a banished criminal.[36] The Senate
then rose as one body to do honor to their late exile. He was, however,
afterward driven by the expostulations of Pompey to defend the man. At
his first trial Gabinius was acquitted, but was convicted and banished
when Cicero defended him. Cicero suffered very greatly in the constraint
thus put upon him by Pompey, and refused Pompey till Caesar's request was
added. We can imagine that nothing was more bitter to him than the
obligation thus forced upon him. We have nothing of the speech left, but
can hardly believe that it was eloquent. From this, however, there rose
a reconciliation between Crassus and Cicero, both Caesar and Pompey
having found it to their interest to interfere. As a result of this,
early in the next year Cicero defended Crassus in the Senate, when an
attempt was made to rob the late Consul of his coveted mission to Syria.
Of what he did in this respect he boasts in a letter to Crassus,[37]
which, regarded from our point of view, would no doubt be looked upon as
base. He despised Crassus, and here takes credit for all the fine things
he had said of him; but we have no right to think that Cicero could have
been altogether unlike a Roman. He speaks also in the Senate on behalf
of the people of Tenedos, who had brought their immunities and
privileges into question by some supposed want of faith. All we know of
this speech is that it was spoken in vain. He pleaded against an Asiatic
king, Antiochus of Comagene, who was befriended by Pompey, but Cicero
seems to have laughed him out of some of his petty possessions.[38] He
spoke for the inhabitants of Reate on some question of water-privilege
against the Interamnates. Interamna we now know as Terne, where a modern
Pope made a lovely water-fall, and at the same time rectified the
water-privileges of the surrounding district. Cicero went down to its
pleasant Tempe, as he calls it, and stayed there awhile with one
Axius.[39] He returned thence to Rome to undertake some case for
Fonteius, and attended the games which Milo was giving, Milo having been
elected AEdile. Here we have a morsel of dramatic criticism on Antiphon
the actor and Arbuscula the actress, which reminds one of Pepys. Then he
defended Messius, then Drusus, then Scaurus. He mentions all these cases
in the same letter, but so slightly that we cannot trouble ourselves
with their details. We only feel that he was kept as busy as a London
barri