en of ruined fortunes. All the rabble high and low,
whose means and substance had been spent in refined or in vulgar
debauchery; the aristocratic lords, who had no farther mark
of quality than their debts; the Sullan troopers whom the regent's
fiat could transform into landholders but not into husbandmen,
and who, after squandering the first inheritance of the proscribed,
were longing to succeed to a second--all these waited only
the unfolding of the banner which invited them to fight against
the existing order of things, whatever else might be inscribed on it.
From a like necessity all the aspiring men of talent, in search
of popularity, attached themselves to the opposition; not only
those to whom the strictly closed circle of the Optimates denied
admission or at least opportunities for rapid promotion,
and who therefore attempted to force their way into the phalanx
and to break through the laws of oligarchic exclusiveness and seniority
by means of popular favour, but also the more dangerous men,
whose ambition aimed at something higher than helping to determine
the destinies of the world within the sphere of collegiate intrigues.
On the advocates' platform in particular--the only field of legal
opposition left open by Sulla--even in the regent's lifetime
such aspirants waged lively war against the restoration with the weapons
of formal jurisprudence and combative oratory: for instance,
the adroit speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero (born 3rd January 648),
son of a landholder of Arpinum, speedily made himself a name
by the mingled caution and boldness of his opposition to the dictator.
Such efforts were not of much importance, if the opponent desired
nothing farther than by their means to procure for himself a curule
chair, and then to sit in it in contentment for the rest of his life.
No doubt, if this chair should not satisfy a popular man
and Gaius Gracchus should find a successor, a struggle for life
or death was inevitable; but for the present at least no name could
be mentioned, the bearer of which had proposed to himself
any such lofty aim.

Power of the Opposition

Such was the sort of opposition with which the oligarchic government
instituted by Sulla had to contend, when it had, earlier than
Sulla himself probably expected, been thrown by his death
on its own resources. The task was in itself far from easy, and it
was rendered more difficult by the other social and political evils
of this age--especially by