agitation was aimless; and we discern in it the perplexity
of its authors to find an object for their activity, for it
turned almost wholly on things already essentially settled
or on subordinate matters.

Impending Collision between the Democrats and Pompeius

It could not be otherwise. In the struggle with the aristocracy
the democrats had remained victors; but they had not conquered
alone, and the fiery trial still awaited them--the reckoning
not with their former foe, but with their too powerful ally,
to whom in the struggle with the aristocracy they were substantially
indebted for victory, and to whose hands they had now entrusted
an unexampled military and political power, because they dared
not refuse it to him. The general of the east and of the seas
was still employed in appointing and deposing kings. How long time
he would take for that work, or when he would declare the business
of the war to be ended, no one could tell but himself;
since like everything else the time of his return to Italy,
or in other words the day of decision, was left in his own hands.
The parties in Rome meanwhile sat and waited. The Optimates indeed
looked forward to the arrival of the dreaded general with comparative
calmness; by the rupture between Pompeius and the democracy, which they
saw to be approaching, they could not lose, but could only gain.
The democrats on the contrary waited with painful anxiety,
and sought, during the interval still allowed to them
by the absence of Pompeius, to lay a countermine against
the impending explosion.

Schemes for Appointing a Democratic Military Dictatorship

In this policy they again coincided with Crassus,
to whom no course was left for encountering his envied and hated rival
but that of allying himself afresh, and more closely than before,
with the democracy. Already in the first coalition a special
approximation had taken place between Caesar and Crassus
as the two weaker parties; a common interest and a common danger
tightened yet more the bond which joined the richest
and the most insolvent of Romans in closest alliance.
While in public the democrats described the absent general
as the head and pride of their party and seemed to direct
all their arrows against the aristocracy, preparations
were secretly made against Pompeius; and these attempts
of the democracy to escape from the impending military dictatorship
have historically a far higher significance than the noisy agitat