[Life of Cicero by Anthony Trollope]@TWC D-Link book
Life of Cicero

CHAPTER IV
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In Rome all exterior gifts were there.

Cicero knew how to use them, so that the judges who made so large a part in the pageant should not dare to disgrace themselves because of its publicity.
Quintilian gives his pupils much advice as to the way in which they should dress themselves[76] and hold their togas--changing the folds of the garment so as to suit the different parts of the speech--how they should move their arms, and hold their heads, and turn their necks; even how they should comb their hair when they came to stand in public and plead at the bar.

All these arts, with many changes, no doubt, as years rolled on, had come down to him from days before Cicero; but he always refers to Cicero as though his were the palmy days of Roman eloquence.
We can well believe that Cicero had studied many of these arts by his twenty-seventh year--that he knew how to hold his toga and how to drop it--how to make the proper angle with his elbow--how to comb his hair, and yet not be a fop--and to add to the glory of his voice all the personal graces which were at his command.
Sextus Roscius Amerinus, with all his misfortunes, injustices, and miseries, is now to us no more than the name of a fable; but to those who know it, the fable is, I think, more attractive than most novels.
We know that Cicero pleaded other causes before he went to Greece in the year 79 B.C., especially those for Publius Quintius, of which we have his speech, and that for a lady of Arretium, in which he defended her right to be regarded as a free woman of that city.

In this speech he again attacked Sulla, the rights of the lady in question having been placed in jeopardy by an enactment made by the Dictator; and again Cicero was successful.

This is not extant.


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