lies who have done the State good service in past time. They have
no images of their ancestors in their houses; they come from municipal
towns, or spring from some low family in the city; they may have
raised themselves by their talents, perhaps only by their money,
but they have no guarantee of antiquity, their names are not in our
annals. All we true conservative Romans (and a, Roman is hardly a
Roman if not conservative) profoundly believe that a man whose family
has once attained to high public honour and done good public service,
will be a safer person to elect as a magistrate than one whose family
is unknown and untried--a belief which is surely based on a truth of
human nature. I should count a man who happens not to be in the senate
himself, for want of wealth or inclination, but whose family has its
images and its traditions of great ancestors, as far more truly an
"optimate" than most of these new men. Fortunately our most famous
families, whose names are known all over the Empire, are still to be
found in the senate, and indeed form a powerful body there, capable of
resisting to the last the revolutionary dangers that threaten us. The
people still elect to magistracies the Aemilii, Lutatii, Claudii,
Cornelii, Julii, and many more families that have been famous in our
history, and will, I trust, continue to elect them so long as our
Republic lasts."[149]

There was indeed a glamour about these splendid names, as there is
about the titles of our ancient noble families; their holders may
almost be said to have claimed high office as a right, like the Whig
families Of the Revolution for a century after their triumph. Though
we may use the word in a wider sense in this chapter, these grand old
families were the true aristocracy, and inspired just that respect in
the minds of men outside their circle which is still so familiar to us
in England. Cicero was to such men an "outsider," a _novus homo_; and
the close reader of Cicero's letters, if he is looking out (as he
should be) for Cicero's constantly changing attitude of mind as he
addresses himself to various correspondents, cannot fail to see how
comparatively awkward and stilted he often is when writing to one of
these great nobles, with whom he has never been really intimate; and
how easily his pen glides along when he is letting himself talk to
Atticus, or Poetus, or M. Marius, men who were outside the pale of
nobility. It is true that he is sometimes embarras