Rise Of Caesar
Then a new combination offered itself. The leader of the democratic party had actively employed in his own interest the political calm which had immediately followed on the retirement of the previous holder of power. When Pompeius returned from Asia, Caesar had been little more than what Catilina was--the chief of a political party which had dwindled almost into a club of conspirators, and a bankrupt. But since that event he had, after administering the praetorship (692), been invested with the governorship of Further Spain, and thereby had found means partly to rid himself of his debts, partly to lay the foundation for his military repute. His old friend and ally Crassus had been induced by the hope of finding the support against Pompeius, which he had lost in Piso,(4) once more in Caesar, to relieve him even before his departure to the province from the most oppressive portion of his load of debt. He himself had energetically employed his brief sojourn there. Returning from Spain in the year 694 with filled chests and as Imperator with well-founded claims to a triumph, he came forward for the following year as a candidate for the consulship; for the sake of which, as the senate refused him permission to announce himself as a candidate for the consular election in absence, he without hesitation abandoned the honour of the triumph. For years the democracy had striven to raise one of its partisans to the possession of the supreme magistracy, that by way of this bridge it might attain a military power of its own. It had long been clear to discerning men of all shades that the strife of parties could not be settled by civil conflict, but only by military power; but the course of the coalition between the democracy and the powerful military chiefs, through which the rule of the senate had been terminated, showed with inexorable clearness that every such alliance ultimately issued in a subordination of the civil under the military elements, and that the popular party, if it would really rule, must not ally itself with generals properly foreign and even hostile to it, but must make generals of its own leaders themselves. The attempts made with this view to carry the election of Catilina as consul, and to gain a military support in Spain or Egypt, had failed; now a possibility presented itself of procuring for their most important man the consulship and the consular province in the usual constitutional way, and of rendering themselves independent of their dubious and dangerous ally Pompeius by the establishment, if we may so speak, of a home power in their own democratic household.
Second Coalition Of Pompeius, Crassus, And Caesar
But the more the democracy could not but desire to open up for itself this path, which offered not so much the most favourable as the only prospect of real successes, the more certainly it might reckon on the resolute resistance of its political opponents. Everything depended on whom it found opposed to it in this matter. The aristocracy isolated was not formidable; but it had just been rendered evident in the Catilinarian affair that it could certainly still exert some influence, where it was more or less openly supported by the men of material interests and by the adherents of Pompeius. It had several times frustrated Catilina's candidature for the consulship, and that it would attempt the like against Caesar was sufficiently certain. But, even though Caesar should perhaps be chosen in spite of it, his election alone did not suffice. He needed at least some years of undisturbed working out of Italy, in order to gain a firm military position; and the nobility assuredly would leave no means untried to thwart his plans during this time of preparation. The idea naturally occurred, whether the aristocracy might not be again successfully isolated as in 683-684, and an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be established between the democrats with their ally Crassus on the one side and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide. His weight hitherto in the state rested on the fact, that he was the only party-leader who at the same time disposed of legions-- which, though now dissolved, were still in a certain sense at his disposal. The plan of the democracy was directed to the very object of depriving him of this preponderance, and of placing by his side in their own chief a military rival. Never could he consent to this, and least of all personally help to a post of supreme command a man like Caesar, who already as a mere political agitator had given him trouble enough and had just furnished the most brilliant proofs also of military capacity in Spain. But on the other hand, in consequence of the cavilling opposition of the senate and the indifference of the multitude to Pompeius and Pompeius' wishes, his position, particularly with reference to his old soldiers, had become so painful and so humiliating, that people might well expect from his character to gain him for such a coalition at the price of releasing him from that disagreeable situation. And as to the so-called equestrian party, it was to be found on whatever side the power lay; and as a matter of course it would not let itself be long waited for, if it saw Pompeius and the democracy combining anew in earnest. It happened moreover, that on account of Cato's severity-- otherwise very laudable--towards the lessees of the taxes, the great capitalists were just at this time once more at vehement variance with the senate.
Change In The Position Of Caesar
So the second coalition was concluded in the summer of 694. Caesar was assured of the consulship for the following year and a governorship in due course; to Pompeius was promised the ratification of his arrangements made in the east, and an assignation of lands for the soldiers of the Asiatic army; to the equites Caesar likewise promised to procure for them by means of the burgesses what the senate had refused; Crassus in fine--the inevitable--was allowed at least to join the league, although without obtaining definite promises for an accession which he could not refuse.