Immediately after the decision of this cause, Cicero, partly on account of his health, and partly for improvement, travelled into Greece and Asia, where he spent two years in the assiduous study of philosophy and eloquence, under the ablest teachers of Athens and Asia Minor. Nor was his style alone formed and improved by imitation of the Greek rhetoricians: his pronunciation also was corrected, by practising under Greek masters, from whom he learned the art of commanding his voice, and of giving it greater compass and variety than it had hitherto attained(316). The first cause which he pleaded after his return to Rome, was that of Roscius, the celebrated comedian, in a dispute, which involved a mere matter of civil right, and was of no peculiar interest or importance. All the orations which he delivered during the five following years, are lost, of which number were those for Marcus Tullius, and L. Varenus, mentioned by Priscian as extant in his time. At the end of that period, however, and when Cicero was now in the thirty-seventh year of his age, a glorious opportunity was afforded for the display of his eloquence, in the prosecution instituted against Verres, the Prætor of Sicily, a criminal infinitely more hateful than Catiline or Clodius, and to whom the Roman _republic_, at least, never produced an equal in turpitude and crime. He was now accused by the Sicilians of many flagrant acts of injustice, rapine, and cruelty, committed by him during his triennial government of their island, which he had done more to ruin than all the arbitrary acts of their native tyrants, or the devastating wars between the Carthaginians and Romans. In the advanced ages of the republic, extortion and violence almost universally prevailed among those magistrates who were exalted abroad to the temptations of regal power, and whose predecessors, by their moderation, had called forth in earlier times the applause of the world. Exhausted in fortune by excess of luxury, they now entered on their governments only to enrich themselves with the spoils of the provinces intrusted to their administration, and to plunder the inhabitants by every species of exaction. The first laws against extortion were promulgated in the beginning of the seventh century. But they afforded little relief to the oppressed nations, who in vain sought redress at Rome; for the decisions there depending on judges generally implicated in similar crimes, were more calculated to afford impunity to the guilty, than redress to the aggrieved. This undue influence received additional weight in the case of Verres, from the high quality and connections of the culprit.