This year in fact proved a new turning point in Cicero’s politics. Pompey had now been absent for two years and his coalition lacked effective leadership. The democrats had suffered in prestige by electing to the consulship Autronius and Sulla, who were presently convicted of bribery and deposed. In the reaction against the radicals two conservatives had been elected. The deposed candidates made matters worse for their party by entering into (or so it was widely rumored) a conspiracy to seize power, only to fail again. Catiline, one of their aides, continued the agitation with more and more questionable proposals, and the party was so far discredited that the soberer element began to look for saner leadership. The party itself, under such leadership as Catiline could give, drifted far toward the left, and among the stronger men only ambitious politicians like Caesar and Crassus—who hoped to use its fortunes to their advantage—remained in nominal allegiance. Cicero of course could not follow such guidance, and it is probable that most of the property-owning knights had drifted rightward before the year was over. These men of the middle class had been willing to support the Gracchan theory of popular sovereignty because it seemed to insure the possibility of progressive legislation; but when the more radical democrats began to talk of using the assembly for monetary inflation and moratoria on private debts, the knights were of course frightened. Caesar and Crassus added to their fears by proposing to ask for imperialistic commands for themselves and to check the power of Pompey who had been winning provinces which the knights hoped to exploit under a stable régime. Unfortunately none of Cicero’s utterances have survived from this momentous year (July 65 to July 64) when, like the rest of the knights, he must have drifted steadily away from the old coalition, or rather when he saw the left wing of the party drifting steadily away from the time-honored Roman devotion to law and property rights.