Pleased with the success of his administration, and flattering himself that all Rome was celebrating his praises, he reached this place, and mingled amongst the crowd. What was his disappointment and mortification, to be asked by the first friend he met, “How long since you left Rome, and what is the news there?” “I came from the provinces,” was the reply. “From Africa, I suppose,” said one of the bystanders. “No, I came from Sicily,” said Cicero, a little vexed. “How, did you not know that Cicero was quæstor of Syracuse?” said another person present; thus showing his ignorance, while he pretended to be wiser than the rest. This incident humbled Cicero for the time, and made him feel that he had not yet made himself so conspicuous as to live perpetually in the eye of so mighty a city as Rome. Having now devoted himself to a life of business and ambition, he omitted none of the usual arts of recommending himself to popular favor, and facilitating his advancement to the highest honors. “He thought it absurd,” says Plutarch, “that, when every little artificer knew the name and use of all his tools, a statesman should neglect the knowledge of men, who were the proper instruments with which he was to work; he made it his business, therefore, to learn the name, the place, and the condition of every eminent citizen; what estate, what friends, what neighbors he had; and could readily point out their several houses, as he travelled through Italy.” This knowledge was deemed so necessary at Rome, where the people expected to be courted by their public men, that every individual who aspired to official dignities, kept a slave or two in his family, whose sole business it was to know the name and person of every citizen at sight, so that he might whisper them to his master as he passed through the streets, and enable him to salute them familiarly, as particular acquaintances. Such artifices, which appear degrading in our day, were by no means beneath the practice of one so elevated in his sense of propriety as Cicero. Having reached his thirty-seventh year, and being therefore eligible to the office of edile, he offered himself as a candidate, and was elected by the people. Before he entered upon its duties, however, he undertook the prosecution of C. Verres, the late prætor of Sicily, charged with many flagrant acts of injustice, rapine and cruelty, during his triennial government of that island. This was one of the most memorable transactions of Cicero’s life, and has given him greater fame than any other.