HORTENSIUS, Quintus, was one of the first and most famous orators at the Roman bar in the latter days of the republic, when the orator s art was particularly flourishing and was diligently cultivated. His father had been governor of Sicily, and had left behind him a good name for justice and uprightness. He was himself born in 114 b.c., and he lived to the year 50 b.c., so that his life and career ran parallel to that of Cicero, whose senior he was by only eight years. He had the best possible introductions into public life, and at the age of nineteen he made his first speech at the bar, and shortly afterwards successfully conducted the defence of a petty king of Bithynia, one of Rome s many dependants in the East. From that time his reputation as an eloquent advocate was decisively established. As the son-in-law of Catulus he was attached to the aristocratical party of which Sulla was the head, and among his clients he numbered several of its most eminent members. During Sulla s ascendency the courts of law were Under the control of the senate, the judges being themselves senators. To this circumstance perhaps as well as to his own merits Hortensius may have been indebted for much of his success. Many of his clients were the governors of provinces which they were accused of having plundered, and such men were generally sure to find themselves brought before a somewhat lenient or even friendly tribunal, one, too, which was shamefully accessible to corruption. Hortensius himself, according to Cicero, was not ashamed to avail himself of this disgraceful weakness, and a good deal of the plunder which his clients had got from the provincials went into the pockets of the judge*. Cicero made this statement in open court, and we are thus driven to assume that it must have had some foundation.
Hortensius, like other eminent Roman citizens, passed through the regular succession of public offices, rising from the qurestorship in 81 to the consulship in 69 b.c. In the year before his consulship he came into collision with the now rapidly rising eloquence of Cicero in the memorable case of Verres, and from that time his supremacy at the bar was shaken. In fact his younger rival stepped into his position. Cicero s success against a man who was backed up by all the influence of Sulla s party was a splendid triumph, and it must have been a heavy blow to Hortensius. Shortly afterwards he was again pitted against Cicero, and again failed. In 67 a proposal was made to supersede Lucullus in his command in the East against Mithradates in favour of Pompeius. This was supported by Cicero, and was successfully carried in face of the opposition of Hortensius, From the year 63 b.c., the famous year of Cicero s consulship and of the Catiline conspiracy, we find the two great rivals often associated together as counsel in the same case. The fact was that Cicero was now himself drawn towards the aristocratical party, the party of Hortensius. Consequently, in the many cases which had more or less of a political complexion as arising out of the disorder and turbulence incident to party quarrels, it was natural that the two men should have the same sympathies and be engaged on the same side. So it happened, for example, in the case of Licinius Murena, whom Cicero defended along with Hortensius against a charge of bribery in canvassing for the consulship. And so strongly declared was his sympathy with Milo against Cicero s bitter enemy Clodius that he was nearly murdered by some of Clodius s gang. After Pompeius s return from the East in 61 b.c., and the political revolution which for a time united him with Caesar, Hortensius withdrew from public life and devoted himself exclusively to his profession. For nine more years he was in continual employment as an advocate, and won a number of verdicts. In 50 b.c., the last year of his life, he defended successfully one Appius Claudius against Dolabella, Cicero s son-in-law, who prosecuted the man on a serious charge of bribery.
