could not lord it over the Senate, as he wished to do, without aid from
the democratic party. He had no well-defined views, but he wished to be
the first man in Rome. He regarded himself as still greatly superior to
Caesar, who as yet had been no more than Praetor, and at this time was
being balked of his triumph because he could not at one and the same
moment be in the city, as candidate for the Consulship, and out of the
city waiting for his triumph. Pompey had triumphed three times, had been
Consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been
victorious east and west, and was called "Magnus." He did not as yet
fear to be overshadowed by Caesar.[235] Cicero was his bugbear.

Mommsen I believe to be right in eschewing the word "Triumvirate." I
know no mention of it by any Roman writer as applied to this conspiracy,
though Tacitus, Suetonius, and Florus call by that name the later
coalition of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus. The Langhornes, in
translating Plutarch's life of Crassus, speak of the Triumvirate; but
Plutarch himself says that Caesar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by
joining the three men.[236] Paterculus and Suetonius[237] explain very
clearly the nature of the compact, but do not use the term. There was
nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation,
though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been
used has been so far appropriate.

[Sidenote: B.C. 60, aetat. 47.]

Cicero was the bugbear to them all. That he might have been one of them,
if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of
the time can doubt. Had he so chosen he might again have been a "real
power in the State;" but to become so in the way proposed to him it was
necessary that he should join others in a conspiracy against the
Republic.

I do not wish it to be supposed that Cicero received the overtures made
to him with horror. Conspiracies were too common for horror; and these
conspirators were all our Cicero's friends in one sense, though in
another they might be his opponents. We may imagine that at first
Crassus had nothing to do with the matter, and that Pompey would fain
have stood aloof in his jealousy. But Caesar knew that it was well to
have Cicero, if Cicero was to be had. It was not only his eloquence
which was marvellously powerful, or his energy which had been shown to
be indomitable: there was his character, surpassed by that of no Roman
living