Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/249

Rh and was so lucky as to obtain farther Spain as a province. Here he found pretexts for waging war, and distinguished himself both as a general and as an administrator. He paid his colossal debts and enriched himself and his soldiers. On his return to Rome in 60 he intended to secure a triumph, but promptly relinquished this design, as it hindered his candidacy for the consulate.

The First Triumvirate. — Taught by several failures in the past, Caesar now tried to unite all the elements opposed to the oligarchy, and thus to insure his own election and the execution of his other plans. He succeeded in concluding an agreement with Pompeius and Crassus that they should mutually assist one another and allow nothing to be done which was objectionable to any of the three. Caesar was to receive the consulate for 59 and the province of cisalpine Gaul for five years. Pompeius was to secure the ratification of his eastern ordinances, lands for his soldiers, and an extraordinary position as an agrarian commissioner. Crassus was also to become a commissioner, and, together with Pompeius, to attain a second consulship in due time.

This private and originally secret combination, or conspiracy, of the most renowned general of Rome, her richest man, and her most adroit politician as well as the greatest statesman of this epoch, was practically a revolution, and controlled Roman politics almost down to the outbreak of civil war. The triumvirate formed a new executive, which in reality superseded the senatorial government in the chief affairs of state. This was no doubt Caesar's fundamental aim.

Caesar was elected consul; but the oligarchy, by means of extraordinary bribery, gave him as a colleague Marcus Bibulus, a firm and obstinate oligarch and Caesar's enemy.