lf vehemently, successfully, and, we must needs say,
patriotically.

The intense interest which Cicero threw into his work is as manifest in
these agrarian orations as in those subsequently made as to the Catiline
conspiracy. He ascends in his energy to a dignity of self-praise which
induces the reader to feel that a man who could so speak of himself
without fear of contradiction had a right to assert the supremacy of his
own character and intellect. He condescends, on the other hand, to a
virulence of personal abuse against Rullus which, though it is to our
taste offensive, is, even to us, persuasive, making us feel that such a
man should not have undertaken such a work. He is describing the way in
which the bill was first introduced: "Our Tribunes at last enter upon
their office. The harangue to be made by Rullus is especially expected.
He is the projector of the law, and it was expected that he would carry
himself with an air of special audacity. When he was only Tribune elect
he began to put on a different countenance, to speak with a different
voice, to walk with a different stop. We all saw how he appeared with
soiled raiment, with his person uncared for, and foul with dirt, with
his hair and beard uncombed and untrimmed."[168] In Rome men under
afflictions, particularly if under accusation, showed themselves in
soiled garments so as to attract pity, and the meaning here is that
Rullus went about as though under grief at the condition of his poor
fellow-citizens, who were distressed by the want of this agrarian law.
No description could be more likely to turn an individual into ridicule
than this of his taking upon himself to represent in his own person the
sorrows of the city. The picture of the man with the self-assumed
garments of public woe, as though he were big enough to exhibit the
grief of all Rome, could not but be effective. It has been supposed that
Cicero was insulting the Tribune because he was dirty. Not so. He was
ridiculing Rullus because Rullus had dared to go about in
mourning--"sordidatus"--on behalf of his country.

But the tone in which Cicero speaks of himself is magnificent. It is so
grand as to make us feel that a Consul of Rome, who had the cares of
Rome on his shoulders, was entitled to declare his own greatness to the
Senate and to the people. There are the two important orations--that
spoken first in the Senate, and then the speech to the people from which
I have already quoted the pas