law-courts were closed with the exception of the Commission for High-treason. This court had been instituted by the democratic and equestrian[1] parties against those friends of Drusus whose policy would have averted the Social War, and who were now accused of having caused it. The noblest men in Rome were brought to the bar on the charge of having "incited the allies to revolt." One of the victims was the orator Gaius Cotta. "His exile," writes Cicero,[2] "just at the time when I was most anxious to hear him was the first untoward incident in my career." Cicero had to content himself with listening to the political harangues of the magistrates. Of these there was no lack; Varius, Carbo and Cnæus Pomponius "seemed," he says, "as if they had taken lodgings on the Rostra." Cicero attended them all diligently "and every day wrote and read and took notes."
In the year 88 B.C. he studied the technical part of his art with the Rhodian rhetorician Molo, who was then visiting Rome. Philosophical training was supplied him first by the Athenian Academician Philo, (who fled from the disturbances of the Mithridatic War and took refuge at Rome in this year) and afterwards by the Stoic Diodotus. Diodotus became for many years an inmate of Cicero's house, and died there at last in the year 59, making his great pupil his heir.
A yet more important aid to Cicero's mental development was the instruction which he received
