Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/274

260 for Dyrrachium on March 17. Caesar, without any serious engagement, occupied all Italy in sixty days. This astonishing result was due mainly to the vacillation, negligence, and cowardice of the Pompeians, partly to the indifference of the Italians in general. The Italian people did not sympathize deeply with a republican government which did not truly represent them, which did not pursue a national, but rather a municipal, policy, and under which elections were usually decided and laws enacted by the city rabble influenced by intrigues, bribes, and intimidation.

Provisional Settlement of Affairs at Rome. — Soon afterward Caesar went to Rome. Even before his arrival one of his adherents carried a law granting citizenship to the transpadane Latins, and thus ratified Caesar's treatment of them. By a later law (lex Rubria) of 49 the relations of the local and the Roman authorities were regulated. Cisalpine Gaul remained a province until 42. It was apparently in 49 that Caesar satisfied an old democratic demand by causing a law (lex Antonia de proscriptorum liberis) to be passed, which made the children of persons proscribed by Sulla eligible to office.

The courts were reopened, and the machinery of government was again set in motion. The people at Rome were the only organ competent to pass laws and to elect magistrates, and the senators duly summoned at Rome were the only legitimate Roman senate. Caesar and his party had therefore the great formal advantage that they could claim to be, or to represent, the legitimate government of the Roman state. Everything depended, however, on the issue of the war, and Caesar made as few changes as possible and avoided the use of force wherever he could. He caused the senate to be convened, but was unable to secure its coöperation. Through the irony of fate he, the democratic champion, was compelled to disregard the tribunician right of intercession and