In the year 67 Cicero stood for the praetorship, the election to which was twice put off, owing to the disturbances connected with Gabinius' motion for giving the command of the Mediterranean to Pompey, and that of Otho for assigning separate seats in the theatre to the knights. But the third election ratified the results of the two previous ones, and brought in Cicero with a large majority as _Praetor Urbanus_ over the heads of seven, some of them very distinguished, competitors. He entered on his office 66 B.C. and signalised himself by his high conduct as a judge; but this did not, however, prevent him from exercising his profession as an advocate, for in this year he defended Fundanius [14] in a speech now lost, and Cluentius [15] (who was accused of poisoning) in an extremely long and complicated argument, one of the most difficult, but from the light it throws on the depraved morals of the time one of the most important of all his speeches. Another oration belonging to this year, and the first political harangue which Cicero delivered, was that in favour of the Manilian law, [16] which conferred on Pompey the conduct of the war against Mithridates. The bill was highly popular; Caesar openly favoured it, and Cicero had no difficulty in carrying the entire assembly with him. It is a singularly happy effort of his eloquence, and contains a noble panegyric on Pompey, the more admirable because there was no personal motive behind it. At the expiration of his praetorian year he had the option of a province, which was a means of acquiring wealth eagerly coveted by the ambitious; but Cicero felt the necessity of remaining at Rome too strongly to be tempted by such a bribe. "Out of sight, out of mind," was nowhere so true as at Rome. If he remained away a year, who could tell whether his chance for the Consulship might not be irretrievably compromised?