attempt to get possession of the consulate; which may have been
partly owing to the fact that a relative of the leader
of the democracy, Lucius Caesar, a weak man who was not unfrequently
employed by his kinsman as a tool, was on this occasion a candidate
for the consulship. But the reports from Asia urged them to make
haste. The affairs of Asia Minor and Armenia were already
completely arranged. However clearly democratic strategists showed
that the Mithradatic war could only be regarded as terminated
by the capture of the king, and that it was therefore necessary
to undertake the pursuit round the Black Sea, and above all things
to keep aloof from Syria(11)--Pompeius, not concerning himself
about such talk, had set out in the spring of 690 from Armenia
and marched towards Syria. If Egypt was really selected
as the headquarters of the democracy, there was no time to be lost;
otherwise Pompeius might easily arrive in Egypt sooner than Caesar.
The conspiracy of 688, far from being broken up by the lax
and timid measures of repression, was again astir when the consular
elections for 691 approached. The persons were, it may be
presumed, substantially the same, and the plan was but little
altered. The leaders of the movement again kept in the background.
On this occasion they had set up as candidates for the consulship
Catilina himself and Gaius Antonius, the younger son of the orator
and a brother of the general who had an ill repute from Crete.
They were sure of Catilina; Antonius, originally a Sullan
like Catilina and like the latter brought to trial on that account
some years before by the democratic party and ejected
from the senate(12)--otherwise an indolent, insignificant man,
in no respect called to be a leader, and utterly bankrupt--
willingly lent himself as a tool to the democrats for the prize
of the consulship and the advantages attached to it. Through these
consuls the heads of the conspiracy intended to seize the government,
to arrest the children of Pompeius, who remained behind in the capital,
as hostages, and to take up arms in Italy and the provinces
against Pompeius. On the first news of the blow struck in the capital,
the governor Gnaeus Piso was to raise the banner of insurrection
in Hither Spain. Communication could not be held with him by way
of the sea, since Pompeius commanded the seas. For this purpose
they reckoned on the Transpadanes the old clients of the democracy--
among whom ther