The great reward of proconsular rapine did not generally come till after the last step, though there were notable instances in which a Propraetor with proconsular authority could make a large fortune, as we shall learn when we come to deal with Verres, and though AEdiles, and even Quaestors, could find pickings.

It was therefore a great thing for a man to begin as early as the law would permit, and to lose as few years as possible in reaching the summit.

Cicero lost none.

As he himself tells us in the passage to which I have referred in the last chapter, and which is to be found in the Appendix, he gained the good-will of men--that is, of free Romans who had the suffrage, and who could therefore vote either for him or against him--by the assiduity of his attention to the cases which he undertook, and by a certain brilliancy of speech which was new to them.[85] Putting his hand strenuously to the plough, allowing himself to be diverted by none of those luxuries to which Romans of his day were so wont to give way, he earned his purpose by a resolution to do his very best.

He was "Novus Homo"-- a man, that is, belonging to a family of which no member had as yet filled high office in the State.