cape_royds

It's an unfair comparison.

Cicero was a novus homo, what in Roman politics was called "some new guy."

By the Late Republic, Roman politics was a pure oligarchy and for someone without major wealth and family connections (what the Romans called auctoritas) to break in from the outside was quite unusual. Gaius Marius and Marcus Tullius Cicero were the last of the FNG's to make it to the consulate under the Republic.

Marius, of course, was a successful general. Tullius, on the other hand, made his way to the top through the courts and the assemblies, which was a unique achievement.

Cicero is often knocked for being a coward, but that's not really true. In his early career Cicero challenged head-on a number of very powerful people, at the risk of his life. The Late Roman Republic was a very violent place in which asassinations were a regular occurrence. If you didn't have some high-level "protection," you wouldn't last long in politics. But Cicero survived and made it to the top without enjoying that sort of protection.

Gaius Julius Caesar, on the other hand, came from a well-established and very rich Senatorial family. He was free to follow his own path in politics. Due to lack of means, Cicero had to make all sorts of ugly compromises in politics, trying to get others' support for his measures. It was pointed out that Cicero came from an equestrian family of some means, but wealth is relative, and when compared to the power and riches of rival politicians in Rome such as Hortensius, Clodius, or Caesar, Cicero was rather poor.

That's not to say Caesar wasn't the greater figure in history--he was. But Caesar was playing the game with a huge early lead on the likes of Cicero.