revolt, a rule which promised order
and security, although at the price of freedom, would receive
the submission of the whole middle party--embracing especially
the merchants who concerned themselves only about their material
interests, but including also a great part of the aristocracy,
which, disorganized in itself and politically hopeless, had to rest
content with securing for itself riches, rank, and influence
by a timely compromise with the prince; perhaps even a portion
of the democracy, so sorely smitten by the recent blows, might submit
to hope for the realization of a portion of its demands
from a military chief raised to power by itself. But, whatever might be
the position of party-relations, of what importance, in the first
instance at least, were the parties in Italy at all in presence
of Pompeius and his victorious army? Twenty years previously Sulla,
after having concluded a temporary peace with Mithradates,
had with his five legions been able to carry a restoration
runningcounter to the natural development of things in the face
of the whole liberal party, which had been arming en masse for years,
from the moderate aristocrats and the liberal mercantile class down
to the anarchists. The task of Pompeius was far less difficult.
He returned, after having fully and conscientiously performed
his different functions by sea and land. He might expect to encounter
no other serious opposition save that of the various extreme
parties, each of which by itself could do nothing, and which even
when leagued together were no more than a coalition of factions
still vehemently hostile to each other and inwardly at thorough
variance. Completely unarmed, they were without a military force
and without a head, without organization in Italy, without support
in the provinces, above all, without a general; there was in their
ranks hardly a soldier of note--to say nothing of an officer--who
could have ventured to call forth the burgesses to a conflict
with Pompeius. The circumstance might further be taken into account,
that the volcano of revolution, which had been now incessantly
blazing for seventy years and feeding on its own flame, was visibly
burning out and verging of itself to extinction. It was very doubtful
whether the attempt to arm the Italians for party interests
would now succeed, as it had succeeded with Cinna and Carbo.
If Pompeius exerted himself, how could he fail to effect
a revolution of the state, whic