by their dependence and their fealty. It was said, in after times, that he often spoke of a civil war as a necessity; 52 and that, when the Senate first denied a demand he made, he struck the hilt of his sword, exclaiming, "This will give it me!" 53

The rapid exploits and towering designs of Cæsar are partly to be explained by the movements of his adversaries. Departing from Rome, he left the Senate humbled, the triumvirate firm, Clodius devoted, and Cicero prostrate. On returning, though Cicero was still powerless, Clodius was dead, after more outrages than Cæsar could have desired or controlled; Crassus had fallen in Parthia;54 Pompey was changed to an enemy; while nearly the whole Senate, with Cato, next to Pompey, at their head, were earnest against Cæsar to resist and to destroy him. The illwill of the Senate and the resistance of Cato, who had some time before sought the consulship with the avowed purpose of compelling both Pompey and Cæsar to humility, were according to the natural course of things as previously related. Pompey, by recurring to his former passion for active authority, especially on the loss of his wife Julia, the strongest

51 Cic., Ad Att., VII. 7. Suet., Cæs., 28.

52 Suet., Cæs., 27.

53 App., Bell. Civ., II. 25. The story is differently told in Plut., Cæs., 29; Pomp., 51. Cicero writes of the "terrores Cæsariani." Att., VI. 8.

Ad

55 Dion Cass., XL. 58. He failed in his canvass, because, says Plutarch, he would not take the common course to gain over the multitude. Cat., 49. Cato proposed, at an earlier time, that Cæsar should be delivered over to the barbarians, in requital for the cruelties

54 A. C. 53. Plut., Crass., 16 of which he had been guilty towards

et seq.

them. Ibid., 51, and Cæs., 22.

link between him and her father, Cæsar, was soon offended by the fame and the power of his younger associate. He had at first been contented with proconsular authority for five years over the markets; 56 and when Cæsar, two years after his departure for Gaul, came down to Lucca, on the frontier of his province, Pompey went thither, with Crassus and a throng of magistrates and Senators,57 to renew the triumvirate, against which some feeble demonstrations had lately been made at Rome. Cæsar succeeded in having the term of his proconsulship doubled, besides obtaining a grant of money for the payment of his troops, so that his spoils were free for other uses. Pompey, however, was no less satisfied on receiving the provinces of Spain and Africa for five years, which were easily procured, as well as the measures in Cæsar's favor, in the consulship to which Pompey and Crassus were elected,58 soon after the interview at Lucca, by the votes of Cæsar's numerous partisans. It was subsequently to this consulship and to the following year, when Pompey, engaged in building and opening a magnificent theatre at Rome," preferred to leave his provinces to his lieutenants, that his wife. died, and that he became restless and suspicious, especially of Cæsar.

49.

56 Liv., Epit. CIV. Plut., Pomp., Consuls in A. C. 55. See preceding references, with Dion Cass., XXXIX. 25-33; Liv., Epit. CV.; App., Bell. Civ., II. 18.

57 Two hundred Senators, with one hundred and twenty lictors, says Appian, Bell. Civ., II. 17. So Plut., Cæs., 21; Pomp., 51. This was in the spring of A. C. 56.

58 Pompey and Crassus were

59 Plut., Pomp., 52. Dion Cass., XXXIX. 38. Cic., Ad Div., VII. 1.

60

He at once bestirred himself, and in the midst of intrigues and disorders on all sides, he was chosen to the consulship without a colleague, as if it had been a dictatorship that he had claimed and obtained. The authority he thus acquired, however, was either less than he demanded, or more than he knew how to turn to his own advantage; for, with the exception of prolonging his command in the provinces and securing a large yearly grant to himself as Proconsul, he merely threw out a few proposals of laws, in order to restrain the ambition of his absent associate, some of which only were carried into effect.61 He married a new wife and admitted her father to share his consulship; 62 he joined a new party, as it then was to him, and received the Senators into his confidence; 63 and when the public and private connections between him and Cæsar were thus completely sundered, he entered into all the foolish measures which were urged against the authority and the prospects of his former confederate. His brain was more completely turned by the sacrifices offered for his recovery from an illness at Naples and the rejoicings with which he was welcomed on his journey homeward.64 And though it was the very year of Cæsar's coming to Ravenna, determined, as all men saw, to

60 A. C. 52. Plut., Pomp., 54. 61 App., Bell. Civ., II. 23; where (24, 25) the general disturbance and the flight of many to Casar are described. Dion Cass., XL. 55, 56. Suet., Cæs., 26. 62 Plut., Pomp., 55.

63 See Vell. Pat., II. 47; App., Bell. Civ., II. 25.

64 Plut., Pomp., 57. It had been better for him, as Velleius Paterculus suggests (II. 48), to have died.

make himself the sovereign of Rome, Pompey still fancied his own position so secure as to accept from the Senate the command of the public forces and revenues, with the assurance, on his part, that he had only to stamp his foot anywhere in Italy to raise an army. As it turned out, his adversary was only obliged to stamp his foot in Italy to clear it of Pompey, the Senate, and their whole host.

65

.....

66

"I see," wrote Cicero, just then returned to Italy, but not to Rome, from unhappy service in Cilicia, "I see that our affairs are in great danger, and that we have to deal with a man at once thoroughly audacious and perfectly prepared.. ... The only hope of resistance is in a single citizen. . . . . . And they are all contending for their own authorities, to the hazard of the laws." 67 The Commonwealth, indeed, was become too narrow to hold both the colossal forms beneath whose legs the best and the worst of their compatriots were creeping about as underlings.

"It cannot be told," writes Cicero again, on his arrival at Rome, "how low is every thing about us

65 Dion Cass., XL. 64. Plut., Roman hands. He made a little Pomp., 57. fortune, notwithstanding. Ad Att., XI. 1; Ad Div., V. 20. Nor was he content to stay where he was useful, but longed for Rome (Ad Att., V. 15); his dread having been lest his term should be extended. Ibid., 21.

66 He was sent to govern the province against his will, in consequence of one of Pompey's recent laws, which left a number of vacant provincial governments. Dion Cass., XL. 56. Cicero was appointed A. C. 52, and returned to Italy in 50. He did a great deal of good, and treated the Cilicians with moderation and justice, such as they had never before received at

67 See the whole letter (even these sentences being here transposed), Ad Att., VII. 3, and the other letters near it in the same collection.

here." 69 Pompey was as eager 69 as Cæsar was ready to shed the blood of his countrymen; and none who joined the one or the other saw any alternative for themselves but to submit, whether their leader should conquer or be conquered.70

Cæsar was, as has been mentioned, at Ravenna, with some of his best soldiers by his side and his whole army within his reach. Pompey was at Rome, supported by Cato, half trusted by Cicero, and obeyed by the Senate with their adherents in town and in country. The lower classes, and almost all the younger men, except of the nobility, favored Cæsar, whose cause was as vehemently supported in the city as though upheld with his own voice or his own sword, by the creatures whom he had bought, body and soul, to do his will. Scribonius Curio was succeeded in the tribuneship, at the close of the year, by Marcus Antonius, whom we call Mark Antony; and it would be difficult to decide which of the two, as a dazzling, a reckless, or a profligate man, would most accurately represent the party whom Cæsar led, or most strikingly contrast with the Tribunes of earlier days. After various parleys, messages, threats, edicts, and terrible commotions," the Senate decreed

68 Ad Div., VIII. 6. See Plut., vias?" Cic., Ad Att., VII. 7. Pomp., 53. "Ex victoria quum multa mala, tum certe tyrannus exsistet." Ibid., 5.

69 Not only on the authority of Cæsar or of Cæsar's mouthpiece (Bell. Civ., I. 4), but upon that of Cicero, the Pompeian. Ad Att., VII. 8.

70" Depugna, inquis, potius quam servias? Ut quid? Si victus eris, proscribare? Si viceris, tamen ser

71 For which see Cæs., Bell. Civ., I. 1 et seq.; Dion Cass., XL. 62 et seq., XLI. 1 et seq.; App., Bell. Civ., II. 29 et seq.; Plut., Pomp., 58; Cæs., 28-31; Ant., 5; Liv., Epit. CIX.; Flor., IV. 2.