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Updated: June 6, 2025
His hands were clean in the midst of so much public plunder. He was the leader of the conservative party. The "Optimates," or "Boni," as Cicero indifferently calls them meaning, as we should say, the upper classes, who were minded to stand by their order believed in him, though they did not just at that time wish to confide to him the power which the people gave him.
Cicero was distracted by hesitation. He had pinned his faith on Pompey's ultimate opposition to Cæsar, and yet did not wholly trust him, and was fully aware of the unpracticable nature of Cato and the weakness of the Optimates.
If the laws were invalidated by the disregard of Bibulus and the signs of the sky, then the Cyprus mission had been invalid also, and Cato's fine performance void. Caesar's grand victories, the news of which was now coming in, made it inopportune to press the matter farther; and just then another subject rose, on which the optimates ran off like hounds upon a fresh scent.
According to their party names, which were first heard during this period, the "Optimates" wished to give effect to the will of the best, the "Populares" to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining community. Both parties contended alike for shadows, and numbered in their ranks none but enthusiasts or hypocrites.
My husband told me that the Carpazzi were of the genuine optimates of the Roman Duchy." "I think Cesare regrets in his heart," said the Princess Sansevero, "that his ancestors did not accept one, but I agree with him now." She stirred her coffee slowly and then added, "I am fond of the boy, but I do not think I shall have him to dinner soon again. He is too uncontrolled." The contessa agreed.
It might probably come to pass that the services of Pompey would be needed for restraining Cæsar. Pompey naturally belonged to the "optimates," while Cæsar was as naturally a conspirator. But there never again could come a time in which Cicero would willingly intrust Pompey with such power as was given to him nine years before by the Lex Manilia.
Sulla was made dictator, an officer that had been unknown for a century and a quarter, and proceeded to show his adhesion to the optimates by attempting to blot out the popular party. He announced that he would give a better government to Rome, but he found it necessary to kill all whom he pretended to think her enemies.
Cicero saw his favourite political object, the concordia ordinum, threatened by any opposition to the triumvirate, which he yet distrusted as dangerous to the constitution. We shall find him, therefore, vacillating between giving his support to its policy or standing by the extreme Optimates. P. Clodius is taking measures to be adopted into a plebeian gens, in order to stand for the tribuneship.
Part proposed to carry it to the Temple of Jupiter, in the Capitol, and to burn it under the eyes of the assassins; part to take it into the Senate-house and use the meeting-place of the Optimates a second time as the pyre of the people's friend. A few legionaries, perhaps to spare the city a general conflagration, advised that it should be consumed where it lay.
C. SCRIBONIUS CURIO, son of a great friend of Cicero, after a jeunesse orageuse, returned to Rome from his quæstorship in Asia, in B.C. 53, to take up the inheritance of his father, which he quickly dissipated. Cicero seems to have had a high idea of his abilities, and to have believed him capable of taking the lead of the Optimates.
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