Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/236

202 fairly to entitle him to a triumph, and to confirm the inclination of the voters to raise the most popular of the Nobles at once to the consulship.

The triumph he was obliged to forego, owing to the spiteful interposition of Cato, who obstructed a dispensation which the Senate would have granted, and compelled Cæsar to forfeit his command by coming within the walls to sue for the consulship. This however was a small matter. Cæsar was duly elected consul for the next year, 59 B.C., having for his colleague Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus, who was the brother-in-law of Cato, and a vehement partisan of the oligarchy.

In anticipation of Cæsar's success the Senate, when assigning provinces for the consuls of 59 B.C., had chosen trivial and obscure spheres of administration. Cæsar did not intend to be thus set aside. He was determined to have a great provincial command, and the control of a powerful army; and to gain this object he set himself to combine all the powers which were at the moment in a state of alienation from the Senate.

He could count on the support of his old ally Crassus; and though Pompey and Crassus were generally on bad terms, he did not despair of uniting them. To Crassus he could point out how necessary it was for the fortunes of the democratic party that Pompey should be estranged once for all from the Senate; and as for Pompey himself, the insults and provocations to which he had been subjected for the last eighteen months, and the