section_path: Early career/Early legal activity
section_name: Early legal activity
paragraph_text: Early legal activity
  
  While Cicero had feared that the law courts would be closed forever, they were reopened in the aftermath of Sulla's civil war and the purging of Sulla's political opponents in the proscriptions. Many of the orators whom Cicero had admired in his youth were now dead from age or political violence. His first major appearance in the courts was in 81 BC at the age of 26 when he delivered Pro Quinctio, a speech defending certain commercial transactions which Cicero had recorded and disseminated.
  
  His more famous speech defending Sextus Roscius of Ameria – Pro Roscio Amerino – on charges of parricide in 80 BC was his first appearance in criminal court. In this high-profile case, Cicero accused a freedman of the dictator Sulla, Chrysogonus, of fabricating Roscius' father's proscription to obtain Roscius' family's property. Successful in his defence, Cicero tactfully avoided incriminating Sulla of any wrongdoing and developed a positive oratorical reputation for himself.
  
  While Plutarch claims that Cicero left Rome shortly thereafter out of fear of Sulla's response, according to Kathryn Tempest, "most scholars now dismiss this suggestion" because Cicero left Rome after Sulla resigned his dictatorship. Cicero, for his part, later claimed that he left Rome, headed for Asia, to develop his physique and develop his oratory. After marrying his wife, Terentia, in 80 BC, he eventually left for Asia Minor with his brother Quintus, his friend Titus Atticus, and others on a long trip spanning most of 79 through 77 BC. Returning to Rome in 77 BC, Cicero again busied himself with legal defence.