I wish I could recall what it was that Cicero spoke about that night after dinner, but I fear I am the living proof of Demosthenes’s cynical assertion that content counts for nothing beside delivery. I stood discreetly out of sight, among the shadows, and all I can picture now are the moths whirling like flakes of ash around the torches, the wash of stars above the courtyard, and the enraptured faces of the young men, flushed in the firelight, turned toward Cicero. But I do remember Molon’s words afterwards, when his protégé, with a final bow of his head toward the imaginary jury, sat down. After a long silence, he got to his feet and said, in a hoarse voice: “ Cicero, I congratulate you and I am amazed at you. It is Greece and her fate that I am sorry for. The only glory that was left to us was the supremacy of our eloquence, and now you have taken that as well. Go back,” he said, and gestured with those three outstretched fingers, across the lamp-lit terrace to the dark and distant sea, “go back, my boy, and conquer Rome .”

VERY WELL, THEN. Easy enough to say. But how do you do this? How do you “conquer Rome ” with no weapon other than your voice?

The first step is obvious: you must become a senator.

To gain entry to the Senate at that time it was necessary to be at least thirty-one years old and a millionaire. To be exact, assets of one million sesterces had to be shown to the authorities simply to qualify to be a candidate at the annual elections in July, when twenty new senators were elected to replace those who had died in the previous year or had become too poor to keep their seats. But where was Cicero to get a million? His father certainly did not have that kind of money: the family estate was small and heavily mortgaged.