in him a leader with a special gift for organizing and transforming the city-state, which had come to rule the Mediterranean world. Caesar was opposed by an oligarchy of aristocratic families, the optimates, who dominated the Senate and nearly monopolized state offices, who profited by the city's corruption and exploited the foreign conquests. They blocked the change necessitated by the times, stifling or coopting, at times by violence, any who advanced progressive programs. Although the state was dangerously unsteady, and the city often rent by armed mobs, the optimates rested on their heritage of the Roman tradition. Caesar sprang from the heart of this old nobility, yet he was born into a family which had already allied itself with the populares, i.e., those who favored constitutional change. Hence Caesar's career was associated with the struggle for a new order and, failing opportunity along peaceful avenues, he emerged as a military leader whose triumph at arms worked to advance political change. Yet both parties in this long struggle had checkered histories of violence and corruption. Mommsen, too, recognized and reported "Caesar the rake, Caesar the conspirator, and Caesar the groundbreaker for later centuries of absolutism." Some moderns follow the optimate view that it was a nefarious role that Caesar played in the fall of the Republic, whose ruling array of institutions had not yet outlived their usefulness. To the contrary, the Republic's fall ushered in the oppressive Empire whose 'divine' rulers held absolute power. Julius Caesar as villain was an opinion shared, of course, by his knife-wielding assassins, most of whom were also nobility. Shared also without shame by that epitome of classical Roman politics and letters, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43). For some observers, following Caesar's assassination Cicero saved his rather erratic career in politics by his high-profile stand in favor of the Republic. Also strong among Caesar's opponents was Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis (95–46), who had long led the opimates, supporters of the republican aristocracy, against the populares and in particular against Julius Caesar. During the Imperial era the stoic Cato became the symbol of lost republican virtue. Nonetheless, even deadly foes could see the bright genius of Caesar; indeed, many conspitators were his beneficiaries. "Brutus, Cassius and the others who, like Cicero, attached themselves to the conspiracy acted less out of enmity to Caesar than out of a desire to destroy his dominatio." Too, the conspiracy failed to restore