ossible, he would have succeeded.

As an advocate he was unsurpassed. From him came the feeling--whether it
be right or wrong--that a lawyer, in pleading for his client, should
give to that client's cause not only all his learning and all his wit,
but also all his sympathy. To me it is marvellous, and interesting
rather than beautiful, to see how completely Cicero can put off his own
identity and assume another's in any cause, whatever it be, of which he
has taken the charge. It must, however, be borne in mind that in old
Rome the distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or
criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us, and also that the
reader having the speeches which have come down to us, whether of one
nature or the other, presented to him in the same volume, is apt to
confuse the public and that which may, perhaps, be called the private
work of the man. In the speeches best known to us Cicero was working as
a public man for public objects, and the ardor, I may say the fury, of
his energy in the cause which he was advocating was due to his public
aspirations. The orations which have come to us in three sets, some of
them published only but never spoken--those against Verres, against
Catiline, and the Philippics against Antony--were all of this nature,
though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge against one
individual. Of these I will speak in their turn; but I mention them here
in order that I may, if possible, induce the reader to begin his inquiry
into Cicero's character as an advocate with a just conception of the
objects of the man. He wished, no doubt, to shine, as does the barrister
of to-day: he wished to rise; he wished, if you will, to make his
fortune, not by the taking of fees, but by extending himself into higher
influence by the authority of his name. No doubt he undertook this and
the other case without reference to the truth or honesty of the cause,
and, when he did so, used all his energy for the bad, as he did for the
good cause. There seems to be special accusation made against him on his
head, as though, the very fact that he undertook his work without pay
threw upon him the additional obligation of undertaking no cause that
was not in itself upright. With us the advocate does this notoriously
for his fee. Cicero did it as notoriously in furtherance of some
political object of the moment, or in maintenance of a friendship which
was politically important. I