en so ready to oppose the rise of the _novus homo_ to the
praetorship. It was the consulship on which they tried to keep a tight
hand. Accordingly, immediately after the year of his praetorship, we find
him anxiously looking out for support and inquiring who are likely to be
his competitors. The interesting point in regard to this is his
connexion with Catiline. In his speech in the senate delivered in the
following year (_in toga candida_, B.C. 64) he denounced Catiline in the
most violent language, accusing him of every conceivable crime; yet in
B.C. 65 he not only contemplated being elected with him without any
expression of disgust, but even considered whether he should not
undertake his defence on some charge that was being brought against
him--perhaps for his conduct during the Sullan proscriptions. To
whitewash Catiline is a hopeless task; and it throws a lurid light upon
the political and moral sentiments of the time to find Cicero even
contemplating such a conjunction.

After this, for two years, there is a break in the correspondence.
Atticus had probably returned to Rome, and if there were letters to
others (as no doubt there were) they have been lost. A certain light is
thrown on the proceedings of the year of candidature (B.C. 64) by the
essay "On the duties of a candidate," ascribed to his brother Quintus,
who was himself to be a candidate for the praetorship in the next year
(B.C. 63). We may see from this essay that Pompey was still regarded as
the greatest and most influential man at Rome; that Catiline's character
was so atrocious in the eyes of most, that his opposition was not to be
feared; that Cicero's "newness" was a really formidable bar to his
election, and that his chief support was to be looked for from the
individuals and companies for whom he had acted as counsel, and who
hoped to secure his services in the future. The support of the nobles
was not a certainty. There had been a taint of _popularity_ in some of
Cicero's utterances, and the writer urges him to convince the consulars
that he was at one with the Optimates, while at the same time aiming at
the conciliation of the equestrian order. This was, in fact, to be
Cicero's political position in the future. The party of the
Optimates--in spite of his disgust at the indifference and frivolity of
many of them--was to be his party: his favourite constitutional object
was to be to keep the equites and the senate on good terms: and his
greatest