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 them.
The senate was directed to give access to foreign envoys on set days,
with the view of preventing the usual postponement of audiences.
Loans raised by foreign ambassadors in Rome were declared non-actionable,
as this was t