He was chosen by an overwhelming
majority, the votes given for him being larger than the collective numbers
of the votes entered for his opponents.
[Sidenote: B.C. 63.]
The election for the pontificate was on the 6th of March, and soon after
Caesar received a further evidence of popular favor on being chosen
praetor for the next year. As the liberal party was growing in courage and
definiteness, Cicero showed himself more decidedly on the other side. Now
was the time for him, highly placed as he was, to prevent a repetition of
the scandals which he had so eloquently denounced, to pass laws which no
future Verres or Lucullus could dare to defy. Now was his opportunity to
take the wind out of the reformers' sails, and to grapple himself with the
thousand forms of patrician villainy which he well knew to be destroying
the Commonwealth. Not one such measure, save an ineffectual attempt to
check election bribery, distinguished the consulship of Cicero. His entire
efforts were directed to the combination in a solid phalanx of the
equestrian and patrician orders. The danger to society, he had come to
think, was an approaching war against property, and his hope was to unite
the rich of both classes in defence against the landless and moneyless
multitudes.[9] The land question had become again as pressing as in the
time of the Gracchi.
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