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Rh was added by a decree of the senate Transalpine Gaul also. This command not only opened to him a great military career, but enabled him, as the master of the valley of the Po, to keep an effective watch on the course of affairs in Italy.

Early the next year the attack upon himself which Cicero had foreseen was made. (q.v.) as tribune brought forward a law enacting that any one who had put a Roman citizen to death without trial by the people should be interdicted from fire and water. Cicero,

finding himself deserted even by Pompey, left Rome in a panic, and by a second Clodian law he was declared to be outlawed. With Caesar away in his province, and Cicero banished, Clodius was for the time master in Rome. But, absolute as he was in the streets, and recklessly as he parodied the policy of the Gracchi by violent attacks on the senate, his tribunate merely illustrated the anarchy which now inevitably followed the withdrawal of a strong controlling hand. A reaction speedily followed. Pompey, bewildered and alarmed by Clodius's violence, at last bestirred himself. Cicero's recall was decreed by the senate, and early in August 57 in the comitia centuriata, to which his Italian supporters flocked in crowds, a law was passed revoking the sentence of outlawry passed upon him.

Intoxicated by the acclamations which greeted him, and encouraged by Pompey's support, and by the salutary effects of Clodius's excesses, Cicero's hopes rose high. With indefatigable energy he strove to reconstruct a solid constitutional party, but only to fail once more.

Pompey was irritated by the hostility of a powerful section in the senate, who thwarted his desires for a fresh command and even encouraged Clodius in insulting the conqueror of the East. Caesar became alarmed at the reports which reached him that the repeal of his agrarian law was threatened and that the feeling against the coalition was growing in strength; above all, he was anxious for a renewal of his five years' command. He acted at once, and in the celebrated

conference at Luca (56) the alliance of the three self-constituted rulers of Rome was renewed. Cicero succumbed to the inevitable and withdrew in despair from public life. Pompey and Crassus became consuls for 55. Caesar's command was renewed for another five years, and to each of his two allies important provinces were assigned for a similar period—Pompey receiving the two Spains and Africa, and Crassus Syria. The coalition now divided between them the control of the empire. For the future the question was, how long the coalition itself would last. Its duration proved to be

short. In 53 Crassus was defeated and slain by the Parthians at Carrhae, and in Rome the course of events slowly forced Pompey into an attitude of hostility to Caesar. The year 54 brought with it a renewal of the riotous anarchy which had disgraced Rome in 58-57. Conscious of its own helplessness, the senate, with the eager assent of all respectable citizens, dissuaded Pompey from leaving Italy; and he accordingly left his provinces to be governed by his legates. But the anarchy and confusion only grew worse, and even strict constitutionalists like Cicero talked of the necessity of investing Pompey with some extraordinary powers for the preservation of order. At last

in 52 he was elected sole consul, and not only 50, but

his provincial command was prolonged for five years more, and fresh troops were assigned him. The rôle of “saviour of society” thus thrust upon Pompey was one which flattered his vanity, but it entailed consequences which it is probable he did not foresee, for it brought him into close alliance with the senate, and in the senate there was a powerful party who were resolved to force him into heading the attack they could not successfully make without him upon Caesar. It was known that the latter, whose command

expired in March 49, but who in the ordinary course of things would not have been replaced by his successor until January 48, was anxious to be allowed to stand for his second consulship in the autumn of 49 without coming in person to Rome. His opponents in the senate were equally bent on bringing his command to an end at the legal time, and so obliging him to disband his troops and stand for the consulship as a private person, or, if he kept his command, on preventing his standing for the consulship. Through 51 and 50 the discussions in the senate and the negotiations with Caesar continued, but with no result. On 1st January 49 Caesar made a last offer of compromise. The senate replied by requiring him on pain of outlawry to disband his legions. Two tribunes who supported him were ejected from the senate-house, and the magistrates with Pompey were authorized to take measures to protect the republic. Caesar hesitated no longer;

he crossed the Rubicon and invaded Italy. The rapidity of his advance astounded and bewildered his foes. Pompey, followed by the consuls, by the majority of the senate and a long train of nobles, abandoned Italy as untenable, and crossed into Greece. At the end of March Caesar entered Rome as the master of Italy. Four years later, after the final victory of Munda (45), he became the undisputed master of the Roman world.

The task which Caesar had to perform was no easy one. It came upon him suddenly; for there is no sufficient reason to believe that Caesar had long premeditated revolution, or that he had previously aspired to anything more than such a position as that which Pompey had

already won, a position unrepublican indeed, but accepted by republicans as inevitable. War was forced upon him as the alternative to political suicide, but success in war brought the responsibilities of nearly absolute power, and Caesar's genius must be held to have shown itself in the masterly fashion in which he grasped the situation, rather than in the supposed sagacity with which he is said to have foreseen and prepared for it. In so far as he failed, his failure was mainly due to the fact that his tenure of power was too short for the work which he was required to perform. From the very first moment when Pompey's ignominious retreat left him master of Italy, he made it clear that he was neither a second Sulla nor even the reckless anarchist which many believed him to be. The Roman and Italian public were