The object of the Senate was either to ruin Caesar, if he complied with this order, or to put him in the wrong by provoking him to disobedience. The scheme was ingenious; but if the Senate could mine, Caesar could countermine. Caelius said that Curio was violent against him: and so Curio had been. Curio was a young man of high birth, dissolute, extravagant, and clever. His father, who had been consul five-and-twenty years before, was a strong aristocrat and a close friend of Cicero's. The son had taken the same line; but, among other loose companions, he had made the acquaintance, to his father's regret, of Mark Antony, and though they had hitherto been of opposite politics, the intimacy had continued. The Senate's influence had made Curio tribune for the year 49. Antony had been chosen tribune also. To the astonishment of everybody but Cicero, it appeared that these two, who were expected to neutralize each other, were about to work together, and to veto every resolution which seemed an unfair return for Caesar's services. Scandal said that young Curio was in money difficulties, and that Caesar had paid his debts for him. It was perhaps a lie invented by political malignity; but if Curio was purchasable, Caesar would not have hesitated to buy him. His habit was to take facts as they were, and, when satisfied that his object was just, to go the readiest way to it. The desertion of their own tribune was a serious blow to the Senate. Caelius, who was to be praetor, was inclining to think that Caesar would win, and therefore might take his side also. The constitutional opposition would then be extremely strong; and even Pompey, fiercely as he had spoken, doubted what to do. The question was raised in the Senate, whether the tribunes' vetoes were to be regarded. Marcellus, who had flogged the citizen of Como, voted for defying them, but the rest were timid. Pompey did not know his own mind.[7] Caelius's account of his own feelings in the matter represented probably those of many besides himself. "In civil quarrels," he wrote to Cicero, "we ought to go with the most honest party, as long as the contest lies within constitutional limits. When it is an affair of camps and battles, we must go with the strongest. Pompey will have the Senate and the men of consideration with him. All the discontented will go with Caesar. I must calculate the forces on both sides, before I decide on my own part." [8]