from my hopes and wishes, and from his present behavior, he will prefer to support the Conservatives and the senate.  In his present frame of mind he is simply bubbling over with this feeling.  The source and reason of this attitude of his lies in the fact that Caesar, who is in the habit of winning the friendship of men of the worst sort at any cost whatsoever, has shown a great contempt for him.  And of the whole affair it seems to me a most delightful outcome, and the view has been taken by the rest, too, to such a degree that Curio, who does nothing after deliberation, seems to have followed a definite policy and definite plans in avoiding the traps of those who had made ready to oppose his election to the tribunate—­I mean the Laelii, Antonii, and powerful people of that sort.”  Without strong convictions or a settled policy, unscrupulous, impetuous, radical, and changeable, these are the qualities which Caelius finds in Curio, and what we have seen of his career leads us to accept the correctness of this estimate.  In 61 he had been the champion of Clodius, and the leader of the young Democrats, while two years later we found him the opponent of Caesar, and an ultra-Conservative.  It is in the light of his knowledge of Curio’s character, and after receiving this letter from Caelius, that Cicero writes in December, 51 B.C., to congratulate him upon his election to the tribunate.  He begs him “to govern and direct his course in all matters in accordance with his own judgment, and not to be carried away by the advice of other people.”  “I do not fear,” he says, “that you may do anything in a fainthearted or stupid way, if you defend those policies which you yourself shall believe to be right....  Commune with yourself, take yourself into counsel, hearken to yourself, determine your own policy.”

The other point in the letter of Caelius, his analysis of the political situation, so far as Curio is concerned, is not so easy to follow.  Caelius evidently believes that Curio had coquetted with Caesar and had been snubbed by him, that his intrigues with Caesar had at first led the aristocracy to oppose his candidacy, but that Caesar’s contemptuous treatment of his advances had driven him into the arms of the senatorial party.  It is quite possible, however, that an understanding may have been reached between Caesar and Curio even at this early date, and that Caesar’s coldness and Curio’s conservatism may both have been assumed.  This would enable Curio to pose as an independent leader, free from all obligations to Caesar, Pompey, or the Conservatives, and anxious to see fair play and safeguard the interests of the whole people, an independent leader who was driven over in the end to Caesar’s side by the selfish and factious opposition of the senatorial party to his measures of reform and his advocacy of even-handed justice for both Caesar and Pompey.[130]