was restored for a time in the year 86. Cotta was still in exile, and for the next three years Hortensius was almost without a rival at the bar. Then with the return of Sulla from the East in 83 the civil wars and massacres began again, ending at last with the re-establishment by Sulla of the oligarchical constitution.
Just upon the close of this period of disorder, about the year 81 B.C., Cicero after his long preliminary training began to speak in the law-courts. He was now about twenty-five years of age. An early speech is preserved to us from a suit in which the young advocate matched himself for the first time with Hortensius. He repeatedly refers to his timidity on this occasion, and says[1] that when his friend Roscius, the great comic actor, urged him to the attempt, he replied, "that he fears he will seem as impudent as a man who should strive for the palm of comedy with Roscius himself." Elsewhere[2] he relates that he was ambitious to imitate the two leaders of the bar (for Cotta had now been restored by Sulla), but of the two he considered Hortensius the better model.
Next year Cicero had the opportunity of establishing once for all his own position as a great advocate. During Sulla's reign of terror, 80 B.C.legalised murder had been an everyday occurrence in Rome, and it was not easy to confine the slaughter within the precise limits which the Dictator ordained. In the midst of the confu-
