The oratory of Cicero was essentially judicial: he was himself conscious that his talents lay in that direction, and he saw that in that field was the best opportunity for displaying oratorical power. Even his political orations are rather judicial than deliberative. He was not born for a politician. He possessed not that analytical character of mind which penetrates into the remote causes of human action, nor the synthetical power which enables a man to follow them out to their farthest consequences; he had not that comprehensive grasp of mind which can dismiss at once all points of minor importance and useless speculation, and, seizing all the salient points, can bring them to bear together upon questions of practical expediency. Of the three qualities necessary for a statesman he possessed only two, honesty and patriotism: he had not political wisdom. Hence, in the finest specimens of his political harangues, his Catilinarians and Philippics, and that in support of the Manilian law, we look in vain for the calm, practical weighing of the subject which is necessary in addressing a deliberative assembly. This was not the habit of his mind. He was only lashed to action by circumstances of great emergency; but even then he is still an advocate—all is excitement, personal feeling, and party spirit: he deals in invective and panegyric, and the denunciation of the enemies of his country; and the parts which especially call forth our admiration differ in nothing from those which we admire in his judicial orations. Nevertheless, so irresistible was the influence which he exercised upon the minds of his hearers, that all his political speeches were triumphs. His panegyric on Pompey,[825] in the speech for the Manilian law, carried his appointment as commander-in-chief of the armies of the East. The consequence of the oration _de Provinciis Consularibus_ continued to Cæsar his administration of Gaul. He crushed in Catiline one of the most formidable traitors that had ever menaced the safety of the republic. Antony’s fall followed the complete exposure of his debauchery in private life, and the factiousness of his public career.[826]