a wink by one of the Triumvirate--Caesar, let us say--and
assented to with a nod by Pompey and Crassus, was sufficient for the
construction of such a conspiracy as that which I presume to have been
hatched when the First Triumvirate was formed.[231] Mommsen, who never
speaks of a Triumvirate under that name, except in his index,[232] where
he has permitted the word to appear for the guidance of persons less
well instructed than himself, connects the transaction which we call the
First Triumvirate with a former coalition, which he describes as having
been made in (B.C. 71) the year before the Consulship of Pompey and
Crassus. With that we need not concern ourselves as we are dealing with
the life of Cicero rather than with Roman history, except to say that
Caesar, who was the motive power of the second coalition, could have had
no personal hand in that of 71. Though he had spent his early years in
"harassing the aristocracy," as Dean Merivale tells us, he had not been
of sufficient standing in men's minds to be put on a par with Pompey and
Crassus. When this First Triumvirate was formed, as the modern world
generally calls it, or the second coalition between the democracy and
the great military leaders, as Mommsen with greater, but not with
perfect, accuracy describes it, Caesar no doubt had at his fingers' ends
the history of past years. "The idea naturally occurred," says Mommsen,
"whether * * * an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be
established between the democrats, with their ally, Crassus, on the one
side, and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other. For Pompeius
such a coalition was certainly a political suicide."[233] The democracy
here means Caesar. Caesar during his whole life had been learning that no
good could come to any one from an effete Senate, or from republican
forms which had lost all their salt. Democracy was in vogue with him;
not, as I think, from any philanthropic desire for equality; not from
any far-seeing view of fraternal citizenship under one great paternal
lord--the study of politics had never then reached to that height--but
because it was necessary that some one, or perhaps some two or three,
should prevail in the coming struggle, and because he felt himself to be
more worthy than others. He had no conscience in the matter. Money was
to him nothing. Another man's money was the same as his own--or better,
if he could get hold of it. That doctrine taught by Cicero th