xtremes, which were becoming daily more marked. But of these
the party of the government, wretched and remiss as it was,
necessarily retained the advantage in presence of the equally
wretched and equally remiss opposition.

Quarrel between the Government and Their General Pompeius

But this state of matters so favourable to the government
was altered, when the differences became more distinctly developed
which subsisted between it and those of its partisans, whose hopes
aspired to higher objects than the seat of honour in the senate
and the aristocratic villa. In the first rank of these stood Gnaeus
Pompeius. He was doubtless a Sullan; but we have already shown(2)
how little he was at home among his own party, how his lineage,
his past history, his hopes separated him withal from the nobility
as whose protector and champion he was officially regarded.
The breach already apparent had been widened irreparably during
the Spanish campaigns of the general (677-683). With reluctance
and semi-compulsion the government had associated him as colleague
with their true representative Quintus Metellus; and in turn he accused
the senate, probably not without ground, of having by its careless
or malicious neglect of the Spanish armies brought about their
defeats and placed the fortunes of the expedition in jeopardy.
Now he returned as victor over his open and his secret foes,
at the head of an army inured to war and wholly devoted to him,
desiring assignments of land for his soldiers, a triumph
and the consulship for himself. The latter demands came into
collision with the law. Pompeius, although several times invested
in an extraordinary way with supreme official authority, had not yet
administered any ordinary magistracy, not even the quaestorship,
and was still not a member of the senate; and none but one
who had passed through the round of lesser ordinary magistracies
could become consul, none but one who had been invested
with the ordinary supreme power could triumph. The senate
was legally entitled, if he became a candidate for the consulship,
to bid him begin with the quaestorship; if he requested a triumph,
to remind him of the great Scipio, who under like circumstances
had renounced his triumph over conquered Spain. Nor was Pompeius
less dependent constitutionally on the good will of the senate
as respected the lands promised to his soldiers. But, although
the senate--as with its feebleness even in animosity
was