Cicero said that "[t]he republic enabled him to display his liberality, which he did so effectually as to engage in his interest many tribes which are connected with the municipalities of that district [Umbria].
"[2] He returned to Rome from Gaul before the end of his term to stand for the consulship for 62 BC and left his brother, Gaius Murena, in charge of the province as his deputy.
[3] Cicero said that his "conduct in his province procured him the affection of many influential men, and a great accession of reputation" and that "he contrived by his equity and diligence to enable many of our citizens to recover debts which they had entirely despaired of.
In turn, Murena appointed a man to keep Cato under observation - the law stated that a defendant could do this to ensure the fairness of the prosecutor's evidence.
During the trial, Cicero, acting as Murena's advocate, took advantage of Cato's well-known Stoic principles to joke about their obvious paradoxes.
[9] During his consulship, Murena and Decimus Junius Silanus, his consular colleague, passed a law (the lex Junia Licinia) which enforced more strictly, with greater punishment for not complying, the provisions of the lex Caecilia Didia of 98 BC, which provided that: 1) laws should be promulgated (notified publicly) a trinundium (either three Roman eight-day weeks or tertiae nundinae, on the third market-day, 17 days) before they were proposed to the comitia (the popular assembly); 2) leges saturae ("stuffed" laws), that is, statutes dealing with heterogeneous subject matter, were forbidden.
[10] It further enacted that, in order to prevent forgery, a copy of every proposed statute should be deposited before witnesses in the aerarium before it was put to the vote of the popular assembly.