in Campania among the poorer citizens, not forgetting
Pompeius' old soldiers; also taking other measures which might make the
Senate recollect that Sulla had foretold that he would be another Marius
and more.

After this, he took Gaul as his province, and spent seven years in
subduing it bit by bit, and in making two visits to Britain. He might
pretty well trust the rotten state of Rome to be ready for his
interference when he came back. Clodius had actually dared to bring
Cicero to a trial for having put to death the friends of Catilina
without allowing them to plead their own cause. Pompeius would not help
him, and the people banished him four hundred miles from Rome, when he
went to Sicily, where he was very miserable; but his exile only lasted
two years, and then better counsels prevailed, and he was brought home
by a general vote, and welcomed almost as if it had been a triumph.

Marcus Porcius Cato was as honest and true a man as Cicero, but very
rough and stern, so that he was feared and hated; and there were often
fierce quarrels in the Senate and Forum, and in one of these Pompeius'
robe was sprinkled with blood. On his return home, his young wife Julia
thought he had been hurt, and the shock brought on an illness of which
she died; thus breaking the link between her husband and father.

[Illustration: AMPHITHEATRE.]

Pompeius did all he could to please the Romans when he was consul
together with Crassus. He had been for some time building a most
splendid theatre in the Campus Martius, after the Greek fashion, open to
the sky, and with tiers of galleries circling round an arena; but the
Greeks had never used their theatres for the savage sports for which
this was intended. When it was opened, five hundred lions, eighteen
elephants, and a multitude of gladiators were provided to fight in
different fashions with one another before thirty thousand spectators,
the whole being crowned by a temple to Conquering Venus. After his
consulate, Pompeius took Spain as his province, but did not go there,
managing it by deputy; while Crassus had Syria, and there went to war
with the wild Parthians on the Eastern border. In the battle of Carrhae,
the army of Crassus was entirely routed by the Parthians; he was killed,
his head was cut off, and his mouth filled up with molten gold in scorn
of his riches. At Rome, there was such distress that no one thought much
even of such a disaster. Bribes were given to secure elections,