In the year 76 B.C. Cicero became father of a daughter, whom we shall know as Tullia--who, as she grew up, became the one person whom he loved best in all the world--and was elected Quæstor. Cicero tells us of himself that in the preceding year he had solicited the Quæstorship, when Cotta was candidate for the Consulship and Hortensius for the Prætorship. There are in the dialogue De Claris Oratoribus--which has had the name of Brutus always given to it--some passages in which the orator tells us more of himself than in any other of his works. I will annex a translation of a small portion because of its intrinsic interest; but I will relegate it to an appendix, because it is too long either for insertion in the text or for a note.[84] CHAPTER V. _CICERO AS QUÆSTOR._ Cicero was elected Quæstor in his thirtieth year, B.C. 76. He was then nearly thirty-one. His predecessors and rivals at the bar, Cotta and Hortensius, were elected Consul and Prætor, respectively, in the same year. To become Quæstor at the earliest age allowed by the law (at thirty-one, namely) was the ambition of the Roman advocate who purposed to make his fortune by serving the State. To act as Quæstor in his thirty-second year, Ædile in his thirty-seventh, Prætor in his forty-first, and Consul in his forty-fourth year, was to achieve, in the earliest succession allowed by law, all the great offices of trust, power, and future emolument. The great reward of proconsular rapine did not generally come till after the last step, though there were notable instances in which a Proprætor with proconsular authority could make a large fortune, as we shall learn when we come to deal with Verres, and though Ædiles, and even Quæstors, could find pickings. It was therefore a great thing for a man to begin as early as the law would permit, and to lose as few years as possible in reaching the summit. Cicero lost none. As he himself tells us in the passage to which I have referred in the last chapter, and which is to be found in the Appendix, he gained the good-will of men--that is, of free Romans who had the suffrage, and who could therefore vote either for him or against him--by the assiduity of his attention to the cases which he undertook, and by a certain brilliancy of speech which was new to them.[85] Putting his hand strenuously to the plough, allowing himself to be diverted by none of those luxuries to which Romans of his day were so wont to give way, he earned his purpose by a resolution to do his very best. He was "Novus Homo"--a man, that is, belonging to a family of which no member had as yet filled high office in the State. Against such there was a strong prejudice with the aristocracy, who did not like to see the good things of the Republic dispersed among an increased number of hands. The power of voting was common to all Roman male citizens; but the power of influencing the electors had passed very much into the hands of the rich.