In fact, for years past, the dominant party had strained every nerve to prevent these processes, thus encouraging the less honourable governors to abuse their authority. The result had been the rise in the public conscience of a feeling of uneasiness, discontent, and irritation, which the stories, often exaggerated, of the cruelty and violence of the governors served only to accentuate. And by none at that moment was this uneasiness more acutely felt than by Cicero. Cicero belonged to a family of equestrian rank—middle-class we should call it—from Arpino. He was a _homo novus_, a self-made man, to use a modern expression, because he was the first of the family to become a member of the Senate. He was not very rich and, though a man of intelligence and vigour, he was somewhat lacking in courage. Consequently, he was not the man to dare open defiance of the wrath, or a frontal attack on the interests, of the dominant caste; rather were these violent and terrible accusations so repugnant to his nature that he had never brought himself hitherto to assume the rôle of prosecutor in any action. He had always preferred the more humane part of defender. He was, however, an honourable man, with small affection—like all the equestrian order—for the faction and government formed by Sulla; and he was fully conscious of the obligation imposed on him by the promise which he had made so solemnly to the Sicilians. Besides, he was young—only thirty-six years old—and was still a man of secondary importance. A case of great public interest, which set all Italy talking, and in which he was the popular protagonist, might be of great service to his lofty and legitimate ambitions. In addition, things had been moving fast recently, to the detriment of the party in power, who were accused on all sides of outrage and corruption. The consuls for that year were Pompey and Crassus, who, though members of the Sullan party, had come forward as candidates with a Democratic programme, promising no less than that they would restore to the tribunes of the _plebs_ those powers of which Sulla had stripped them. There was a feeling in the air which seemed to promise that just for once the infamies of a governor might receive condign punishment from outraged public opinion.