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60 B.C.]

of his present position, rendered him very open to the offers which Cæsar was prepared to make. If the three could agree on common action, they might hope to overbear all opposition, and hope would be almost a certainty if the adherence of Cicero could likewise be secured. His presence in the coalition would disarm the hostility of the middle class and of the country people of Italy, his character would give respectability to the new party, and his eloquence would sway public opinion to its side.

Cæsar's first scheme then was for a quattuorvirate, consisting of himself, Pompey, Crassus, and Cicero. This project was not, of course, openly proclaimed at the time; but four years later Cicero publicly anounced the fact. "Cæsar," he says, "wished me to be one of three consulars most intimately allied with himself. . . He showed, and I was not insensible to it, how friendly his intentions were, when he offered me a place side by side with the foremost of all the citizens, his own son-in-law." About the same time (56 B.C.) we find Cicero, in confidential letter to Atticus, lamenting that he, who had refused to be one of the masters in the coalition, should now be reduced to act as its servant.

Cæsar had probably made some tentative advances even before his arrival in Rome, for, as we saw in the last chapter (p. 188), Cicero expressed so early as the beginning of June the hope that he could bring Cæsar to a better mind.