IntroductionThe authorMarcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 BC and was thus an exactcontemporary of Pompey the Great and slightly older than Caesarthe Dictator. Members of the last generation of the Roman Republic,all three were to die by violence in the decade of the forties, whenthe Republic itself was in the death throes of civil war. Pompey hadsaid in public that, without Cicero's service to his country as consul,there would have been no Rome to witness his third triumph(Off. 1.78); Caesar had written of Cicero's service to Latin letters:'You have won greater laurels than the triumphal wreath, for it isa greater achievement to have extended the frontiers of the Romangenius than those of Rome's empire' (Pliny NH vii.117). Yet thesewere two of the greatest generals in a state that admired, above all,military victory and conquest. What feats of statesmanship andeloquence had made such praise, orflattery,appropriate?