husband, who was
nearly twice as old; and the burgesses longing for rest
and order after so many troubles and crises, saw in this nuptial
alliance the guarantee of a peaceful and prosperous future.

Situation of the Aristocracy

The more firmly and closely the alliance was thus cemented
between Pompeius and Caesar, the more hopeless grew the cause
of the aristocracy. They felt the sword suspended over their head
and knew Caesar sufficiently to have no doubt that he would,
if necessary, use it without hesitation. "On all sides," wrote
one of them, "we are checkmated; we have already through fear of death
or of banishment despaired of 'freedom'; every one sighs,
no one ventures to speak." More the confederates could not desire.
But though the majority of the aristocracy was in this desirable
frame of mind, there was, of course, no lack of Hotspurs among
this party. Hardly had Caesar laid down the consulship, when some
of the most violent aristocrats, Lucius Domitius and Gaius Memmius,
proposed in a full senate the annulling of the Julian laws.
This indeed was simply a piece of folly, which redounded only
to the benefit of the coalition; for, when Caesar now himself
insisted that the senate should investigate the validity of the laws
assailed, the latter could not but formally recognize their
legality. But, as may readily be conceived, the holders of power
found in this a new call to make an example of some of the most
notable and noisiest of their opponents, and thereby to assure
themselves that the remainder would adhere to that fitting policy
of sighing and silence. At first there had been a hope
that the clause of the agrarian law, which as usual required
all the senators to take an oath to the new law on pain of forfeiting
their political rights, would induce its most vehement opponents
to banish themselves, after the example of Metellus Numidicus,(11)
by refusing the oath. But these did not show themselves
so complaisant; even the rigid Cato submitted to the oath,
and his Sanchos followed him. A second, far from honourable,
attempt to threaten the heads of the aristocracy with criminal
impeachments on account of an alleged plot for the murder of Pompeius,
and so to drive them into exile, was frustrated by the incapacity
of the instruments; the informer, one Vettius, exaggerated
and contradicted himself so grossly, and the tribune Vatinius,
who directed the foul scheme, showed his complicity with that Vett