Part A Directions ： 
Read the following texts. Answer the questions on each text by choosing A. B，C or D.

Text 1

The political career of Cicero, a great Roman statesman and the most well-known speech-maker of his time, was a remarkable one. At the lime, high political offices in Rome, though techni­cally achieved by winning elections, were almost exclusively controlled by a group of wealthy no­ble families that had held them for many generations. Cicero’ s family, though noble, was not one of them, nor did it have great wealth. But Cicero had a great deal of political ambition； at a very young age he chose as his basic belief the same one Achilles was said to have had ： to always be the best and overtop the rest. Lacking the advantages of a proper tamily origin, there were essentially only two career options open to him. One was a military career, since military success was thought to result from exceptional personal qualities and could lead co popularity and therefore political op­portunity as was the case much later for American presidents Ulysses S. Gram and Dwight D. Eisen­hower. Cicero, however, was no soldier. He hated war, and served in the military only very brief­ly as a young man.

Instead. Cicero chose a career in the law. To prepare for this career. he studied law, rhetoric, and philosophy. When he felt he was ready, he began taking part in legal eases. A career in the law could lead to political success for several reasons, all of which are still relevant today. First, a lawyer would gain a great deal of experience in making speeches. Second, he could also gain ex­posure and popularity from cases. Finally. a successful lawyer would build up a network of politi­cal connections, which is important now but was even more important in Cicero ’ s lime, when po­litical competition was not conducted along party lines or on the basis of doctrine； f but instead was based on loose，shifting networks of personal friendships and commitment. Cicero proved to be an excellent speech-maker and lawyer, and an outstanding politician. He was elected to each of the principal Roman offices on his first try and at the earliest age at which he was legally allowed to run for them.