of parliamentary speeches
to which we are accustomed. The getting up of his cases must have taken
great time. Letters went slowly and at a heavy cost. Writing must have
been tedious when that most common was done with a metal point on soft
wax. An advocate who was earnest in a case had to do much for himself.
We have heard how Cicero made his way over to Sicily, creeping in a
little boat through the dangers prepared for him, in order that he might
get up the evidence against Verres. In defending Aulus Cluentius when he
was Praetor, Cicero must have found the work to have been immense. In
preparing the attack upon Catiline it seems that every witness was
brought to himself. There were four Catiline speeches made in the year
of his Consulship, but in the same year many others were delivered by
him. He mentions, as we shall see just now, twelve various speeches made
in the year of his Consulship.

I imagine that the words spoken can in no case have been identical with
those which have come to us--which were, as we may say, prepared for the
press by Tiro, his slave and secretary. We have evidence as to some of
them, especially as to the second Catiline oration, that time did not
admit of its being written and learned by heart after the occurrence of
the circumstances to which it alludes. It needs must have been
extemporary, with such mental preparation as one night may have sufficed
to give him. How the words may have been taken down in such a case we do
not quite know; but we are aware that short-hand writers were employed,
though there can hardly have been a science of stenography perfected as
is that with us.[150] The words which we read were probably much
polished before they were published, but how far this was done we do not
know. What we do know is that the words which he spoke moved, convinced,
and charmed those who heard them, as do the words we read move, convince
and charm us. Of these twelve consular speeches Cicero gives a special
account to his friend. "I will send you," he says, "the speechlings[151]
which you require, as well as some others, seeing that those which I
have written out at the request of a few young men please you also. It
was an advantage to me here to follow the example of that fellow-citizen
of yours in those orations which he called his Philippics. In these he
brightened himself up, and discarded his 'nisi prius' way of speaking,
so that he might achieve something more dignified, something m