the juries and driven into exile—Vargunteius, Læca, Servius Sulla, Cornelius, and Autronius. Autronius, along with Publius Sulla, had been unseated for bribery after the consular elections in the year 66 B.C., and he lay under suspicion of having had a hand in the supposed "first conspiracy"[1] of Catiline in the years 66 and 65 B.C. His companion Publius Sulla was now brought to the bar on charges connected with both conspiracies, and Cicero came forward in his defence. Leaving Hortensius to deal with the first part of the case, he contented himself with rebutting the assertion that Sulla had taken any part in the conspiracy of the year 63 B.C. On this point Cicero was able to speak from his own knowledge, and his exculpation of Sulla was decisive with the jury.
The other speech is of a very different type. The Greek poet Archias, Cicero's earliest tutor, was accused of having improperly usurped the Roman citizenship at the time of the Social War twenty-seven years before, and an inquisition was now held into his title. Cicero appeared, as in duty bound, to speak on behalf of his old friend and teacher. He passed lightly over the technical objections urged against his client's rights, and dwelt by preference on his great fame and merit as a man of letters, whose poems, like those of Ennius, had preserved the record of the martial deeds of Rome; "for, if any one thinks that more glory is reaped when actions are enshrined in Latin poetry than in Greek, he is much mistaken; for the Greek is read in all
- ↑ See above, p. 90.
