The justice which the fear of a popular movement had caused to be rendered to Cæsar had not discouraged the hatred of his enemies. They tried to renew against him the accusation of having been an accomplice in Catiline’s conspiracy. At their instigation, Vettius, a man who had been formerly employed by Cicero as a spy to discover the plot, summoned him before the questor Novius Niger;[1009] and Curius, to the latter of whom a public reward had been decreed, accused him before the Senate. They both swore to his enrolment among the conspirators, pretending that they had received their information from the lips of Catiline himself. Cæsar had no difficulty in defending himself, and appealed to the testimony of Cicero, who at once declared his innocence. The court, however, sat for a long time; and the rumour of the charge having been spread abroad in the city, the crowd, uneasy as to what might be Cæsar’s fate, assembled in great numbers to demand his release. So irritated they appeared, that to calm them, Cato conceived it necessary to propose to the Senate a decree ordering a distribution of wheat to the poor: a largess which cost the treasury more than 1,250 talents yearly (7,276,250 francs [£291,050]).[1010] No time was lost in pronouncing the charge calumnious; Curius was deprived of his promised reward; and Vettius, on his way to prison, was all but torn to pieces before the rostra.[1011] The questor Nevius was in like manner arrested for having allowed a prætor, whose authority was superior to his own, to be accused before his tribunal.[1012] Not satisfied with conciliating the good-will of the people, Cæsar won for himself the favour of the noblest dames of Rome; and, notwithstanding his notorious passion for women, we cannot help discovering a political aim in his choice of mistresses, since all held by different ties to men who were then playing, or were destined to play, an important part. He had had important relations with Tertulla, the wife of Crassus; with Mucia, wife of Pompey; with Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius, who was consul in 696; with Postumia, wife of Servius Sulpicius, who was raised to the consulship in 703, and persuaded to join Cæsar’s party by her influence; but the woman he preferred was Servilia, sister of Cato and mother of Brutus, to whom, during his first consulship, he gave a pearl valued at six millions of sestertii (1,140,000 francs [£45,600]).[1013] This connection throws an air of improbability over the reports in circulation that Servilia favoured an intrigue between him and her daughter Tertia.[1014] Was it by the intermediation of Tertulla that Crassus was reconciled with Cæsar? or was that reconciliation due to the injustice of the Senate, and the jealousy of Crassus towards Pompey? Whatever was the cause that brought them together, Crassus seems to have made common cause with him in all the questions in which he was interested, subsequent to the consulship of Cicero.