to be impracticable, though the time came when he did, in
different ways, have his feet on both. With Catiline the chance of
success might be better. Crassus he had already compassed. Crassus was
like M. Poirier in the play--a man who, having become rich, then allowed
himself the luxury of an ambition. If Caesar joined the plot we can well
understand that Crassus should have gone with him. We have all but
sufficient authority for saying that it was so, but authority
insufficient for declaring it. That Sallust, in his short account of the
first conspiracy, should not have implicated Caesar was a matter of
course,[190] as he wrote altogether in Caesar's interest. That Cicero
should not have mentioned it is also quite intelligible. He did not wish
to pull down upon his ears the whole house of the aristocracy.
Throughout his career it was his object to maintain the tenor of the law
with what smallest breach of it might be possible; but he was wise
enough to know that when the laws were being broken on every side he
could not catch in his nets all those who broke them. He had to pass
over much; to make the best of the state of things as he found them. It
is not to be supposed that a conspirator against the Republic would be
horrible to him, as would be to us a traitor against the Crown: there
were too many of them for horror. If Caesar and Crassus could be got to
keep themselves quiet, he would be willing enough not to have to add
them to his list of enemies. Livy is presumed to have told us that this
conspiracy intended to restore the ejected Consuls, and to kill the
Consuls who had been established in their place. But the book in which
this was written is lost, and we have only the Epitome, or heading of
the book, of which we know that it was not written by Livy.[191]
Suetonius, who got his story not improbably from Livy, tells us that
Caesar was suspected of having joined this conspiracy with Crassus;[192]
and he goes on to say that Cicero, writing subsequently to one Axius,
declared that "Caesar had attempted in his Consulship to accomplish the
dominion which he had intended to grasp in his AEdileship" the year in
question. There is, however, no such letter extant. Asconius, who, as I
have said before, wrote in the time of Tiberius, declares that Cicero in
his lost oration, "In toga candida," accused Crassus of having been the
author of the conspiracy. Such is the information we have; and if we
elect to believe that Caesa