Cicero was standing for the Praetorship, and the
confusion consequent upon it was so great that it was for awhile
impossible to carry on the election. In the year after his Praetorship
Cornelius was put upon his trial, and the two speeches were made.

The matter seems to have been one of vital interest in Rome. The contest
on the part of the Senate was for all that made public life dear to such
a body. Not to bribe--not to be able to lay out money in order that
money might be returned ten-fold, a hundred-fold--would be to them to
cease to be aristocrats. The struggles made by the Gracchi, by Livius
Drusus, by others whose names would only encumber us here, by this
Cornelius, were the expiring efforts of those who really desired an
honest Republic. Such were the struggles made by Cicero himself; though
there was present always to him an idea, with which, in truth, neither
the demagogues nor the aristocrats sympathized, that the reform could be
effected, not by depriving the Senate of its power, but by teaching the
Senate to use it honestly. We can sympathize with the idea, but we are
driven to acknowledge that it was futile.

Though we know that this was so, the fragments of the speeches, though
they have been made intelligible to us by the "argument" or story of
them prefixed by Asconius in his notes, cannot be of interest to
readers. They were extant in the time of Quintilian, who speaks of them
with the highest praise.[146] Cicero himself selects certain passages
out of these speeches as examples of eloquence or rhythm,[147] thus
showing the labor with which he composed them, polishing them by the
exercise of his ear as well as by that of his intellect. We know from
Asconius that this trial was regarded at the time as one of vital
interest.

We have two letters from Cicero written in the year after his
Praetorship, both to Atticus, the first of which tells us of his probable
competition for the Consulship; the second informs his friend that a son
is born to him--he being then forty-two years old--and that he is
thinking to undertake the defence of Catiline, who was to be accused of
peculation as Propraetor in Africa. "Should he be acquitted," says
Cicero, "I should hope to have him on my side in the matter of my
canvass. If he should be convicted, I shall be able to bear that too."
There were to be six or seven candidates, of whom two, of course, would
be chosen. It would be much to Cicero "to run," as our phrase g