The ground had been well prepared for his election. His popularity had been steadily on the increase; and the Senate, too much elated by its successes, had estranged those who possessed the greatest influence. Pompey, discontented at the uniform refusals with which his just demands had been met, knew well also that the recent law, declaring enemies of the State those who bribed the electors, was a direct attack against himself, since he had openly paid for the election of the consul Afranius; but, always infatuated with his own personal attractions, he consoled himself for his checks by strutting about in his gaudy embroidered robe.[1074] Crassus, who had long remained faithful to the aristocratic party, had become its enemy, on account of the ill-disguised jealousy of the nobles towards him, and their intrigues to implicate him with Cæsar in the conspiracy of Catiline. However, though he held in his hands the strings of many an intrigue, he was fearful of compromising himself, and shrank from _declaring in public against any man in credit_.[1075] Lucullus, weary of warfare and of intestine struggles, was withdrawing from politics in order to enjoy his vast wealth in tranquillity. Catulus was dead, and the majority of the nobles were ready to follow the impulse given them by certain enthusiastic senators who, caring little about public affairs, thought themselves the happiest of men if they had _in their fishponds carp sufficiently tamed to come and eat out of their hands_.[1076] Cicero felt his own solitary position. The nobles, whose angry feelings he had served, now that the peril was over, regarded him as no better than an upstart. Therefore he prudently changed his principles; he, the exterminator of conspirators, had become the defender of P. Sylla, one of Catiline’s accomplices, and procured his acquittal in the teeth of the evidence;[1077] he, the energetic opponent of all partitions of land, had spoken in favour of the agrarian law of Flavius. He wrote to Atticus, “I have seen that those men whose happiness belongs to the passing hour, those illustrious lovers of fishponds, are no longer able to conceal their jealousy of me; so I have sought more solid support.”[1078]