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Though one of the Senate himself and full of the glory of the Senate, as he had declared plainly enough in that passage from one of the Verrine orations which I have quoted he had generally pleaded on the popular side. Such was his cleverness, that even when on the unpopular side as he may be supposed to have been when defending Fonteius he had given a popular aspect to the cause in hand.
The first is that of his immature early writings poems, treatises on rhetoric, and forensic speeches covering the period from his boyhood in the Civil wars, to the first consulship of Pompeius and Crassus, in 70 B.C. The second, covering his life as an active statesman of the first prominence, begins with the Verrine orations of that year, and goes down to the consulship of Julius Caesar, in 59 B.C. These ten years mark his culmination as an orator; and there is no trace in them of any large literary work except in the field of oratory.
Cicero's Verrine Orations contain a good deal that is valuable to a student of the Passion, especially in regard to scourging and crucifixion. Crucifixion was an extremely common form of punishment in the ancient world; but "the cross of the God-Man has put an end to the punishment of the crow."
Within the two years following his return he made a series of speeches, in all of which we find the altered tone of his mind. There is no longer that belief in the ultimate success of justice, and ultimate triumph of the Republic, which glowed in his Verrine and Catiline orations. He is forced to descend in his aspirations.
He was able to make important additions to Silius Italicus, Manilius, Lucretius, Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus, Columella, Celsus, Aulus Gellius, Statius, and others; and with the help of Leonardo Aretino he unearthed the last twelve comedies of Plautus, as well as the Verrine orations.
We know from one of the Verrine orations the nature of the laws on the subject, but cannot but marvel that, even with the assistance of such laws, the supply could be maintained with any fair proportion to the demand.
There is a story told by Cicero, in one of the Verrine Orations, which peculiarly illustrates this feature of the Roman character. The praetorian edicts forbade slaves to carry arms. There were no exceptions. A boar of great size was once given to Lucius Domitius, who was a Sicilian Praetor.
Then we have a book devoted to the special pillage of statues and other ornaments, which, for the genius displayed in story-telling, is perhaps of all the Verrine orations the most amusing. The Greek people had become in a peculiar way devoted to what we generally call Art.
In the Actio prima of his Verrine orations Cicero gives a graphic picture of a convivium beginning early, where the proposal was made and agreed to that the drinking should be "more graeco." But it would be a great mistake to suppose that this kind of self-indulgence was characteristic of the average Roman life of this age.
He devoted his life to an elaborate exegesis of the great Latin classics, more particularly Cicero. His commentary on the Orations, of which we possess considerable fragments, is written with sound sense, and in a clear pointed style. Some commentaries on the Verrine Speeches which bear his name, are the work of a much later hand, though perhaps drawn in great part from him.
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