Cicero had just come
back from the Greek
East and Asia Minor
He had gone with:
Quintus - brother
Atticus - friend
Lucius - cousin
Terentia - wife
Marriage had helped to
increase his support
base
To learn + improve himself
psychically (to improve his oratorical
career)
He had also become richer -
due to a huge sum of money
from a legacy
Voters were lured to
Rome for the election
due to the games +
festivals
Cicero was voted 'in first place'
Cicero was allotted the
post of quaestor in
western Sicily
Significance
Cicero was the first name to be called out
He had achieved the role in
the first year it was available to
him
Taught him 3 important lessons
1 - He needed to create a personal
support group to compensate for his
lack of ancestral ties
2 - An advantage was the opportunity it
opened in his oratorical career
During his farewell speech he promised to serve
as a patron of the Sicilian people, if they ever
needed his services as an advocate - they called
upon this in 70 BC, the Verres Trial
3 - There was a great value to be placed on seeing +
being seen in Rome
Due to promising to serve as a patron pf the Sicilians in
his farewell speech - in 70 BC he was asked to defend
them in the trial of Verres
Events
There had been a shortage of grain in Sicily
Sicily had acquired an
important rep as 'the nation's
warehouse'
Led to increasing demands being
made upon the farmers to raise the
supply they made to Rome
Cicero's evident care for the provincials +
his eye for justice made him the most
popular quaestor among the Sicilians
Cicero did raise the amount the
farmers needed to send to Rome, but
his sense of fairness and leniency
won him many friends