to moral and thereby even to political importance.  In an utterly wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told powerfully on the multitude; he even formed a school, and there were individuals—­it is true they were but few—­who in their turn copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher.  On the same cause depended also his political influence.  As he was the only conservative of note who possessed if not talent and insight, at any rate integrity and courage, and was always ready to throw himself into the breach whether it was necessary to do so or not, he soon became the recognized champion of the Optimate party, although neither his age nor his rank nor his intellect entitled him to be so.  Where the perseverance of a single resolute man could decide, he no doubt sometimes achieved a success, and in questions of detail, more particularly of a financial character, he often judiciously interfered, as indeed he was absent from no meeting of the senate; his quaestorship in fact formed an epoch, and as long as he lived he checked the details of the public budget, regarding which he maintained of course a constant warfare with the farmers of the taxes.  For the rest, he lacked simply every ingredient of a statesman.  He was incapable of even comprehending a political aim and of surveying political relations; his whole tactics consisted in setting his face against every one who deviated or seemed to him to deviate from the traditionary moral and political catechism of the aristocracy, and thus of course he worked as often into the hands of his opponents as into those of his own party.  The Don Quixote of the aristocracy, he proved by his character and his actions that at this time, while there was certainly still an aristocracy in existence, the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.

Democratic Attacks

To continue the conflict with this aristocracy brought little honour.  Of course the attacks of the democracy on the vanquished foe did not on that account cease.  The pack of the Populares threw themselves on the broken ranks of the nobility like the sutlers on a conquered camp, and the surface at least of politics was by this agitation ruffled into high waves of foam.  The multitude entered into the matter the more readily, as Gaius Caesar especially kept them in good humour by the extravagant magnificence of his games (689)—­in which all the equipments, even the cages of the wild beasts, appeared of massive silver—­and generally by a liberality which was all the more princely that it was based solely on the contraction of debt.  The attacks on the nobility were of the most varied kind.  The abuses of aristocratic rule afforded copious materials; magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed a liberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, Marcus Cicero, continued systematically to unveil the most offensive and scandalous aspects of the Optimate doings and to propose laws against