en concerted for the 5th Feb.; but this too
was frustrated, because Catilina gave the signal too early,
before the bandits who were bespoken had all arrived. Thereupon
the secret was divulged. The government did not venture openly
to proceed against the conspiracy, but it assigned a guard
to the consuls who were primarily threatened, and it opposed to the band
of the conspirators a band paid by the government. To remove Piso,
the proposal was made that he should be sent as quaestor
with praetorian powers to Hither Spain; to which Crassus consented,
in the hope of securing through him the resources of that important
province for the insurrection. Proposals going farther
were prevented by the tribunes.

So runs the account that has come down to us, which evidently gives
the version current in the government circles, and the credibility
of which in detail must, in the absence of any means of checking
it, be left an open question. As to the main matter--the participation
of Caesar and Crassus--the testimony of their political opponents
certainly cannot be regarded as sufficient evidence of it. But their
notorious action at this epoch corresponds with striking exactness
to the secret action which this report ascribes to them. The attempt
of Crassus, who in this year was censor, officially to enrol
the Transpadanes in the burgess-list(9) was of itself directly
a revolutionary enterprise. It is still more remarkable,
that Crassus on the same occasion made preparations to enrol
Egypt and Cyprus in the list of Roman domains,(10) and that Caesar
about the same time (689 or 690) got a proposal submitted
by some tribunes to the burgesses to send him to Egypt,
in order to reinstate king Ptolemaeus whom the Alexandrians
had expelled. These machinations suspiciously coincide
with the charges raised by their antagonists. Certainty cannot be
attained on the point; but there is a great probability that Crassus
and Caesar had projected a plan to possess themselves of the military
dictatorship during the absence of Pompeius; that Egypt was selected
as the basis of this democratic military power; and that, in fine,
the insurrectionary attempt of 689 had been contrived to realize
these projects, and Catilina and Piso had thus been tools in the hands
of Crassus and Caesar.

Resumption of the Conspiracy

For a moment the conspiracy came to a standstill. The elections
for 690 took place without Crassus and Caesar renewing their