If we compare Cicero’s veneration for his high born patrons, with his affection for P. Sulpicius, whose political views were diametrically opposed to those of his older friends, we are somewhat startled; but he follows up the truth wherever he finds it, and we may recognise in this the inward struggle of his mind. Those old gentlemen were very respectable; but they had not highly intellectual minds: P. Sulpicius was full of intellect, and as he was a partisan of Marius, there was a closer bond between him and Cicero, who felt a patriotic enthusiasm for Marius, and, when a youth, even sang of him in a poem. When the revolutions began, he was in no danger from either of the parties, as he was true-hearted and friendly to both; that of Marius protected him with good will, and that of Sylla was not fierce against him: he was grieved to see that the wrong was on both sides. Thus, although the distracted state of his country well nigh broke his heart, he worked by himself, making shift with a sort of neutrality. When the time of Sylla’s rule began, he was in his twenty-seventh year, and had already pleaded several _causæ privatæ_. The earliest of his orations is the one _pro Roscio comœdo_, which is much older than is generally thought, being several years earlier than the oration _pro Quinctio_, as Garatoni has proved. The oration _pro Quinctio_ seems first to have drawn much attention to him, owing to the boldness with which he defended his persecuted client: still more did he gain the high esteem of the public by the oration _pro Sexto Roscio Amerino_, whom Chrysogonus, a freedman of Sylla, wanted to send out of the world. It needed a truly heroic courage for a young man not to be afraid of this dangerous favourite of Sylla, especially for one who was himself connected with the Marian party. He carried his point; but his friends advised him to leave Rome, that Chrysogonus might forget him. Thus he went to Rhodes and Asia, and completed his study of Greek. What he was deficient in, was the knowledge of mathematics, of which he had very little, whereas the Greeks at that time regularly made them a part of their education. Moreover, he never systematically studied Roman history, and its writers were not to his taste. He was fond of poetry, yet only in a limited style: his chief favourites in literature were the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides; he was also well read in Theopompus, Timæus, and the rest of these: he enthusiastically admired the Athenian orators, in reading whom he felt called upon to vie with them. He had the greatest facility for work, an excellent memory, readiness and richness of expression, all the talents of a speaker. The predominant faculty of his mind was wit, in which he was not equalled by any man of ancient times: it was striking, easy, lively and inexhaustible, what we should perhaps call the French manner.