Lucius Valerius Flaccus had been praetor in Cicero's consulship, and had received the thanks of the senate for his zeal and vigour in the arrest of Catiline's accomplices; but he was now accused by Publius Lucius of rapine and oppression in the province of Asia, which had fallen to his lot after his praetorship. Part of the charge was on the ground that he had prohibited the Jews from carrying out of his province the gold which they used to collect annually throughout the empire for the temple at Jerusalem, and that he had seized it all, and remitted it to Rome. Hortensius was joined with Cicero in the defence; as is mentioned by Cicero in the last epistle of the second book of the Letters to Atticus; where he says, “With how much copiousness, with how much nobleness, with how much elegance, did your friend Hortensius But some editions read here Hortalus. extol me to the skies, both when he was speaking of the praetorship of Flaccus, and of the times of the Allobroges.”