though there has been no small innovation in matters that concern eloquence; but as to his poetical reputation, owing to many poets of genius who have come after him, its fate has been to die away altogether unknown to fame and unhonoured. III. After being released from his youthful studies, he heard Philo[145] of the Academy, whom of all the scholars of Kleitomachus, the Romans admired most for his eloquence and loved most for his manners. At the same time by his intimacy with the Mucii,[146] who were statesmen and leaders in the Senate, he was aided in getting some knowledge of the law; and for a time, also, he served in the army under Sulla in the Marsic war.[147] But seeing that matters were coming to a civil war, and from a civil war to a pure monarchy, betaking himself to a life of quiet and contemplation, he kept company with learned Greeks and applied himself to the sciences, until Sulla had got the mastery, and the state seemed to have received a settlement. During this time Chrysogonus,[148] a freedman of Sulla, having laid an information about a man's property as being one of those who were put to death during the proscriptions, bought it for two thousand drachmæ. Roscius, the son and heir of the dead man, complained of this, and showed that the property was of the value of two hundred and fifty talents, on which Sulla, being convicted, was angry, and with the assistance of Chrysogonus instituted a prosecution against Roscius for parricide. No one gave Roscius help, but all were deterred through fear of the severity of Sulla, on which the young man in his desolate condition had recourse to Cicero, who was also importuned by his friends, who urged that he would never again have a more splendid opportunity of gaining a reputation nor a more honourable. Accordingly Cicero undertook the defence, and gained credit by his success; but, being afraid of Sulla, he went into Greece,[149] giving out that his bodily health required care. And indeed he was lean and had little flesh, and owing to weakness of stomach, he took little food, and that of a light kind late in the day; his voice was full and good, but hard and unmanageable, and owing to the vehemence and passion of his language being continually carried through the higher notes it gave him alarm about his health.