Tacitus was educated for the bar, and continued to plead causes, occasionally at least, and with not a little success, even after he had entered upon the great business of his life, as a writer of history. We find references to his first, and perhaps his last appearance, as an advocate, in the Letters of Pliny, which are highly complimentary. The first was, when Pliny was nineteen, and Tacitus a little older (how much we are not informed), when Tacitus distinguished himself, so as to awaken the emulation and the envy, though not in a bad sense, of Pliny. The last was some twenty years later, when Tacitus and Pliny, the tried friends of a whole life, the brightest ornaments of literature and of the forum, were associated by the choice of the Senate, and pleaded together at the bar of the Senate, and in the presence of the Emperor Trajan, for the execution of justice upon Marius Priscus, who was accused of maladministration in the proconsulship of Africa. Pliny says, that Tacitus spoke with singular gravity and eloquence, and the Senate passed a unanimous vote of approbation and thanks to both the orators, for the ability and success with which they had managed the prosecution (Plin. Epis. ii. 11) We have also the comments of Pliny on a panegyrical oration, which Tacitus pronounced, when consul, upon his predecessor in the consular office, Verginius Rufus, perhaps the most remarkable man of his age, distinguished alike as a hero, a statesman, and a scholar, and yet so modest or so wise that he repeatedly refused the offer of the imperial purple. "Fortune," says Pliny, "always faithful to Verginius, reserved for her last favor, such an orator to pronounce a eulogium on such virtues. It was enough to crown the glory of a well spent life" (Plin. Epis. ii. 1).