The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order · Marcus Tullius Cicero
ROME, JULY
We have no letters to or from Cicero in the years B.C. 64 and 63,[56] partly, no doubt, because Atticus was in Rome a great deal during these years. We take up the correspondence, therefore, after an interval of two years, which in many respects were the most important in Cicero's life. In B.C. 64 he attained his chief ambition by being elected to the consulship, but we have little trace of his public actions that year, only the fragments of one speech remaining, in defence of Q. Gallius on a charge of _ambitus_. The animus of the popular party, however, is shewn by the prosecution of some surviving partisans of Sulla on charges of homicide, among them Catiline, who by some means escaped conviction (Dio, xxxvii. 10). In the year of the consulship (B.C. 63) some of Cicero's most important speeches were delivered. The three on the agrarian proposals of Rullus present him to us for the first time as discussing an important question of home politics, the disposal of the _ager publicus_, a question which had become again prominent owing to the great additions made to it by the confiscations of Sulla. He also defended C. Rabirius, prosecuted by Iulius Cæsar for the murder of Saturninus as long ago as B.C. 100, and later in the year defended Murena on a charge of _ambitus_. Finally, the three Catilinarian speeches illustrate the event which coloured the whole of Cicero's life. In B.C. 62 his brother Quintus was prætor and Cicero defended in his court P. Sulla, accused of complicity with Catiline. On the 29th of December (B.C. 63) the tribune Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos prevented Cicero from making a speech when laying down his consulship, and went on to propose summoning Pompey to Rome, "to protect the lives of the citizens." This led to scenes of violence, and Metellus fled to Pompey, who reached Italy late in the year B.C. 62 from the East.
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