very conceivable--should yield those points and concede
to the victorious general, in return for his executioner's service
against the democratic chiefs, the triumph, the consulate,
and the assignations of land, an honourable annihilation
in senatorial indolence among the long series of peaceful
senatorial Imperators was the most favourable lot which the oligarchy
was able to hold in readiness for the general of thirty-six.
That which his heart really longed for--the command
in the Mithradatic war--he could never expect to obtain
from the voluntary bestowal of the senate: in their own well-understood
interest the oligarchy could not permit him to add to his Africa
and European trophies those of a third continent; the laurels
which were to be plucked copiously and easily in the east were reserved
at all events for the pure aristocracy. But if the celebrated general
did not find his account in the ruling oligarchy, there remained--
for neither was the time ripe, nor was the temperament of Pompeius
at all fitted, for a purely personal outspoken dynastic policy--
no alternative save to make common cause with the democratic party.
No interest of his own bound him to the Sullan constitution;
he could pursue his personal objects quite as well, if not better,
with one more democratic. On the other hand he found all that he needed
in the democratic party. Its active and adroit leaders were ready
and able to relieve the resourceless and somewhat wooden hero
of the trouble of political leadership, and yet much too insignificant
to be able or even wishful to dispute with the celebrated general
the first place and especially the supreme military control. Even
Gaius Caesar, by far the most important of them, was simply a young
man whose daring exploits and fashionable debts far more than his
fiery democratic eloquence had gained him a name, and who could not
but feel himself greatly honoured when the world-renowned Imperator
allowed him to be his political adjutant. That popularity,
to which men like Pompeius, with pretensions greater than their
abilities, usually attach more value than they are willing
to confess to themselves, could not but fall in the highest measure
to the lot of the young general whose accession gave victory
to the almost forlorn cause of the democracy. The reward of victory
claimed by him for himself and his soldiers would then follow
of itself. In general it seemed, if the oligarchy were overthrown,
t