of them to whom nothing appears sufficient to possess, some to whom nothing seems sufficient to squander." The first was a reference to the popular image of Marcus Licinius Crassus and the second one referred to the popular image of Julius Caesar. The speeches of Cicero need to be understood in terms of the frictions between two political factions, the populares (in favour of the people) and the optimates (the good men). The former favoured the plebeians (the commoners), wanted to address the problems of the urban poor and promoted reforms which would help them, particularly the redistribution of land for the landless poor to farm and the problem of indebtedness. The latter was a conservative faction which favoured the patricians (the aristocracy). It opposed the mentioned reforms. It also wanted to limit the power of the plebeian tribunes and the Plebeian Council (the assembly of the plebeians) and strengthen the power of the senate, which represented the patricians. At that time Crassus and Caesar were leading figures of the populares. Cicero was a leading figure of the optimates and as such he was opposed to the bill. Cicero exaggerated the power which the land commission would be given by the bill. He described the commission as "... ten Kings of the treasury, of the revenues, of all provinces, of the whole Republic, of the kingdoms allied with us, the free nations confederate with us - in fact, ten Lords of the world are to be set up under the pretence and name of an agrarian law." He also exaggerated the implications of the commission's power to sell domains outside Italy which had become public property. He claimed that "all nations, and people, and provinces, and kingdoms, are given up and handed over to the dominion, and judgment, and power of the decimviri … and asked … what place there is anywhere in the world which the decemviri may not be able to say has been made the property of the Roman people [public property]?" He also alleged that all the lands and cities in Asia which had been ‘recovered’ by Sulla and Pompey in Asia would be declared public property and sold by the commissioners. He said Lucius Cornelius Sulla (the commander in the First Mithridatic War, 89–85 BC) had recovered land in Asia. However, Sulla had fought and recovered territories only in Greece. There was no land which