And yet the cause maintained by these men was condemned to perish, as everything which has had its time. Notwithstanding their virtues, they were only an additional obstacle to the steady march of civilisation, because they wanted the qualities most essential for a time of revolution--an appreciation of the wants of the moment, and of the problems of the future. Instead of trying what they could save from the shipwreck of the ancient regime, just breaking to pieces against a fearful rock, the corruption of political morals, they refuse to admit that the institutions to which the Republic owed its grandeur could bring about its decay. Terrified at all innovation, they confounded in the same anathema the seditious enterprises of certain tribunes, and the just reclamations of the citizens. But their influence was so considerable, and ideas consecrated by time have so much empire over minds, that they would have yet hindered the triumph of the popular cause, if Cæsar, in putting himself at its head, had not given it a new glory and an irresistible force. A party, like an army, can only conquer with a chief worthy to command it; and all those who, since the Gracchi, had unfurled the standard of reform, had sullied it with blood, and compromised it by revolts. Cæsar raised and purified it. To constitute his party, it is true, he had recourse to agents but little estimated; the best architect can build only with the materials under his hand; but his constant endeavour was to associate to himself the most trustworthy men, and he spared no effort to gain by turns Pompey, Crassus, Cicero, Servilius Cæpio, Q. Fufius Calenus, Serv. Sulpicius, and many others. In moments of transition, when the old system is at an end, and the new not yet established, the greatest difficulty consists, not in overcoming the obstacles which are in the way of the advent of a regime demanded by the country, but to establish the latter solidly, by establishing it upon the concurrence of honourable men penetrated with the new ideas, and steady in their principles. CHAPTER III. (691-695.) [Sidenote: Cicero and Antonius, Consuls (691).] I. In the year 690, the candidates for the consulship were Cicero, C. Antonius Hybrida, L. Cassius Longinus, Q. Cornificius, C. Lucinius Sacerdos, P. Sulpicius Galba, and Catiline.[933] Informed of the plots so long in progress, the Senate determined to combat the conspiracies of the last by throwing all the votes they could dispose of upon Cicero, who was thus unanimously elected, and took possession of his office at the beginning of 691. This choice made up for the mediocrity of his colleague Antonius.