After 1688, the Language of Politics Was Largely Roman
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, with the Stuart pretension to Caesarean rule decisively rejected, political argument reached almost instinctively for an idealised Republican Rome—and especially for its patrician side.
That Rome gave a ready-made vocabulary to a propertied, governing but also embattled class: one that saw itself as liberty's guardian while fearing overreach from royal power above and democratic forces below.
The reference could be domestic: among the busts in the Westminster townhouse of Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Cicero had the best place.
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The self-image is convenient: a propertied governing class casting itself as liberty's guardian, besieged from above and below.
But the patrician filter is explicit. They reached for the elite side of Republican Rome, and the Cicero bust is not neutral decor.