pt was thus converted into a direct military
occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy
was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double
burden imposed on it.

Chapter V

The Struggle of Parties During the Absence of Pompeius.

The Defeated Aristocracy

With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the capital
changed positions. From the time that the elected general
of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his party,
or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance in the capital.
The nobility doubtless still stood in compact array, and still
as before there issued from the comitial machinery none but consuls,
who according to the expression of the democrats were already
designated to the consulate in their cradles; to command the elections
andbreak down the influence of the old families over them was beyond
the power even of the holders of power. But unfortunately the consulate,
at the very moment when they had got the length of virtually excluding
the "new men" from it, began itself to grow pale before the newly-
risen star of the exceptional military power. The aristocracy felt
this, though they did not exactly confess it; they gave themselves
up as lost. Except Quintus Catulus, who with honourable firmness
persevered at his far from pleasant post as champion of a vanquished
party down to his death (694), no Optimate could be named
from the highest ranks of the nobility, who would have sustained
the interests of the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness.
Their very men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus
Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired,
so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas,
in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the senate-house
amidst their gardens and libraries, their aviaries and fish-ponds.
Still more, of course, was this the case with the younger generation
of the aristocracy, which was either wholly absorbed in luxury
and literature or turning towards the rising sun.

Cato

There was among the younger men a single exception; it was
Marcus Porcius Cato (born in 659), a man of the best intentions
and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most Quixotic
and one of the most cheerless phenomena in this age so abounding
in political caricatures. Honourable and steadfast, earnest in purpose
and in action, full of attachment to his country and to its hereditary
consti