[4] The
patricians revenged themselves in private by savage speeches and plots and
purposes. Fashionable society gathered in the theatres and hissed the
popular leaders. Lines were introduced into the plays reflecting on
Pompey, and were encored a thousand times. Bibulus from his closet
continued to issue venomous placards, reporting scandals about Caesar's
life, and now for the first time bringing up the story of Nicomedes. The
streets were impassable where these papers were pasted up, from the crowds
of loungers which were gathered to read them, and Bibulus for the moment
was the hero of patrician saloons. Some malicious comfort Cicero gathered
out of these manifestations of feeling. He had no belief in the noble
lords, and small expectations from them. Bibulus was, on the whole, a fit
representative for the gentry of the fish-ponds. But the Dynasts were at
least heartily detested in quarters which had once been powerful, and
might be powerful again; and he flattered himself, though he affected to
regret it, that the animosity against them was spreading. To all parties
there is attached a draggled trail of disreputables, who hold themselves
entitled to benefits when their side is in power, and are angry when they
are passed over.
"The State," Cicero wrote in the autumn of 59 to Atticus, "is in a worse
condition than when you left us; then we thought that we had fallen under
a power which pleased the people, and which, though abhorrent to the good,
yet was not totally destructive to them.
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