It was only so much the worse, that the authors of this law by no means be longed to the obstinate and incorrigible Optimates; they were no other than the sagacious and universally honoured Quintus Scaevola, destined, like George Grenville, by nature to be a jurist and by fate to be a statesman —who by his equally honourable and pernicious
inflamed more than any one else first the war between senate and equites, and then that between Romans and Italians — and the orator Lucius Crassus, the friend and ally of Drusus and altogether one of the most moderate and judicious of the Optimates.
The history of Rome; tr. with the sanction of the ... v.3. Mommsen, Theodor, 1817-1903
