All we true conservative Romans (and a, Roman is hardly a Roman if not conservative) profoundly believe that a man whose family has once attained to high public honour and done good public service, will be a safer person to elect as a magistrate than one whose family is unknown and untried--a belief which is surely based on a truth of human nature.

I should count a man who happens not to be in the senate himself, for want of wealth or inclination, but whose family has its images and its traditions of great ancestors, as far more truly an "optimate" than most of these new men.

Fortunately our most famous families, whose names are known all over the Empire, are still to be found in the senate, and indeed form a powerful body there, capable of resisting to the last the revolutionary dangers that threaten us.

The people still elect to magistracies the Aemilii, Lutatii, Claudii, Cornelii, Julii, and many more families that have been famous in our history, and will, I trust, continue to elect them so long as our Republic lasts."[149] There was indeed a glamour about these splendid names, as there is about the titles of our ancient noble families; their holders may almost be said to have claimed high office as a right, like the Whig families Of the Revolution for a century after their triumph.

Though we may use the word in a wider sense in this chapter, these grand old families were the true aristocracy, and inspired just that respect in the minds of men outside their circle which is still so familiar to us in England.