ain when he had allowed himself to be
chosen consul for 684, he could not now desire, since Lucullus
seemed to have practically ended that war with the campaign of 683.
He deemed it beneath his dignity to accept the consular province
assigned to him by the senate in accordance with the Sempronian
law, and Crassus in this followed his example. Accordingly
when Pompeius after discharging his soldiers resigned his consulship
on the last day of 684, he retired for the time wholly from public
affairs, and declared that he wished thenceforth to live a life
of quiet leisure as a simple citizen. He had taken up such a position
that he was obliged to grasp at the crown; and, seeing that he was
not willing to do so, no part was left to him but the empty one
of a candidate for a throne resigning his pretensions to it.

Senate, Equites, and Populares

The retirement of the man, to whom as things stood the first place
belonged, from the political stage reproduced in the first instance
nearly the same position of parties, which we found in the Gracchan
and Marian epochs. Sulla had merely strengthened the senatorial
government, not created it; so, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla
had fallen, the government nevertheless remained primarily
with the senate, although, no doubt, the constitution with which
it governed--in the main the restored Gracchan constitution--
was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the oligarchy. The democracy
had effected the re-establishment of the Gracchan constitution;
but without a new Gracchus it was a body without a head,
and that neither Pompeius nor Crassus could be permanently such a head,
was in itself clear and had been made still clearer by the recent
events. So the democratic opposition, for want of a leader
who could have directly taken the helm, had to content itself
for the time being with hampering and annoying the government
at every step. Between the oligarchy, however, and the democracy
there rose into new consideration the capitalist party,
which in the recent crisis had made common cause with the latter,
but which the oligarchs now zealously endeavoured to draw over
to their side, so as to acquire in it a counterpoise to the democracy.
Thus courted on both sides the moneyed lords did not neglect to turn
their advantageous position to profit, and to have the only one
of their former privileges which they had not yet regained--the fourteen
benches reserved for the equestrian order in th