thread of political history in those tangled
times. Cicero was at the highest of his fame and power when Pompey
returned from his Asiatic conquests, the great hero of his age, on whom
all eyes were fixed, and to whom all bent the knee of homage and
admiration. His triumph, at the age of forty-five, was the grandest ever
seen. It lasted two days. Three hundred and twenty-four captive princes
walked before his triumphal car, followed by spoils and emblems of a war
which saw the reduction of one thousand fortresses. The enormous sum of
twenty thousand talents was added to the public treasury.

(M1006) Pompey was, however, greater in war than in peace. Had he known
how to make use of his prestige and his advantages, he might have
henceforth reigned without a rival. He was not sufficiently noble and
generous to live without making grave mistakes and alienating some of his
greatest friends, nor was he sufficiently bad and unscrupulous to abuse
his military supremacy. He pursued a middle course, envious of all talent,
absorbed in his own greatness, vain, pompous, and vacillating. His
quarrels with Crassus and Lucullus severed him from the aristocratic
party, whose leader he properly was. His haughtiness and coldness
alienated the affections of the people, through whom he could only advance
to supreme dominion. He had neither the arts of a demagogue, nor the
magnanimity of a conqueror.

(M1007) It was at this crisis that Caesar returned from Spain as the
conqueror of the Lusitanians. Caius Julius Caesar belonged to the ancient
patrician family of the Julii, and was born B.C. 100, and was six years
younger than Pompey and Cicero. But he was closely connected with the
popular party by the marriage of his aunt Julia with the great Marius, and
his marriage with Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, one of the chief
opponents of Sulla. He early served in the army of the East, but devoted
his earliest years to the art of oratory. His affable manners and
unbounded liberality made him popular with the people. He obtained the
quaestorship at thirty-two, the year he lost his wife, and went as quaestor
to Antistius Vetus, into the province of Further Spain. On his return, the
following year, he married Pompeia, the granddaughter of Sulla, of the
Cornelia gens, and formed a union with Pompey. By his family connections
he obtained the curule aedileship at the age of thirty-five, and surpassed
his predecessors in the extravagance of his shows an