To me it is marvellous, and interesting rather than beautiful, to see how completely Cicero can put off his own identity and assume another's in any cause, whatever it be, of which he has taken the charge.

It must, however, be borne in mind that in old Rome the distinction between speeches made in political and in civil or criminal cases was not equally well marked as with us, and also that the reader having the speeches which have come down to us, whether of one nature or the other, presented to him in the same volume, is apt to confuse the public and that which may, perhaps, be called the private work of the man.

In the speeches best known to us Cicero was working as a public man for public objects, and the ardor, I may say the fury, of his energy in the cause which he was advocating was due to his public aspirations.

The orations which have come to us in three sets, some of them published only but never spoken--those against Verres, against Catiline, and the Philippics against Antony--were all of this nature, though the first concerned the conduct of a criminal charge against one individual.

Of these I will speak in their turn; but I mention them here in order that I may, if possible, induce the reader to begin his inquiry into Cicero's character as an advocate with a just conception of the objects of the man.