[237] These two leaders of the party of the optimates had been consuls, Catulus in the year B.C. 78, and C. Piso in B.C. 67; and Catulus had also been censor in B.C. 65. Both were enemies of Caesar, who had defeated Catulus in his canvas for the office of pontifex maximus, and had caused a judicial inquiry to be instituted against Piso, about the manner in which he had conducted the proconsular administration of Gaul. Caesar was even then considered as the leader of the popular party, and as an opponent of the senate and its influence in the constitution. [238] It was at that time that Caesar, on going from home to the elective assembly, said to his mother, 'To-day you shall see your son either as pontifex, or you shall never see him again.' Caesar, however, is here called an _adolescentulus_ only in comparison with the aged Catulus, for he was at that time thirty-six years old. [239] 'In public life by the greatest exhibitions;' for _munera_ are exhibitions by means of which a private person, and still oftener a magistrate, endeavoured to win the favour of the people. As regards Caesar, that which is said here refers to the brilliant exhibitions in his aedileship, and the games which he gave while invested with that office. But he had thereby got so deeply into debt, that when, after his praetorship--with which he was invested in B. C. 62, the year after the Catilinarian conspiracy--he wanted to leave Rome to go to his province of Spain, he was kept back by his creditors; and he was not allowed to depart until M. Crassus had given security for him. [240] _Dicerent_. Respecting this subjunctive, see Zumpt, S 551. [241] _Mobilitas animi_, 'irritability,' or that state of mind which is easily excited, or upon which it is easy to make an impression. _Clarius esset_ is an explanation of _gladio minitarentur_.