eeting
on equal terms, but solely from the good will of Caesar, is evident
from the circumstances. Pompeius appeared at Luca in the painful
position of a powerless refugee, who comes to ask aid from his opponent.
Whether Caesar chose to dismiss him and to declare the coalition
dissolved, or to receive him and to let the league continue
just as it stood--Pompeius was in either view politically
annihilated. If he did not in this case break with Caesar, he became
the powerless client of his confederate. If on the other hand
he did break with Caesar and, which was not very probable,
effected even now a coalition with the aristocracy, this alliance
between opponents, concluded under pressure of necessity
and at the last moment, was so little formidable that it was hardly
for the sake of averting it that Caesar agreed to those concessions.
A serious rivalry on the part of Crassus with Caesar was utterly
impossible. It is difficult to say what motives induced Caesar
to surrender without necessity his superior position,
and now voluntarily to concede--what he had refused to his rival
even on the conclusion of the league of 694, and what the latter
had since, with the evident design of being armed against Caesar,
vainly striven in different ways to attain without, nay against,
Caesar's will--the second consulate and military power. Certainly
it was not Pompeius alone that was placed at the head of an army,
but also his old enemy and Caesar's ally throughout many years, Crassus;
and undoubtedly Crassus obtained his respectable military position
merely as a counterpoise to the new power of Pompeius. Nevertheless
Caesar was a great loser, when his rival exchanged his former
powerlessness for an important command. It is possible
that Caesar did not yet feel himself sufficiently master of his soldiers
to lead them with confidence to a warfare against the formal
authorities of the land, and was therefore anxious not to be forced
to civil war now by being recalled from Gaul; but whether civil war
should come or not, depended at the moment far more on the aristocracy
of the capital than on Pompeius, and this would have been
at most a reason for Caesar not breaking openly with Pompeius,
so that the opposition might not be emboldened by this breach,
but not a reason for conceding to him what he did concede.
Purely personal motives may have contributed to the result;
it may be that Caesar recollected how he had once stood in a posi