r Their Security

The permanence of the arrangements made seemed also sufficiently
secured. The consulship was, at least for the next year, entrusted
to safe hands. The public believed at first, that it was destined
for Pompeius and Crassus themselves; the holders of power however
preferred to procure the election of two subordinate but trustworth
men of their party--Aulus Gabinius, the best among Pompeius' adjutants,
and Lucius Piso, who was less important but was Caesar's father-in-law--
as consuls for 696. Pompeius personally undertook to watch over Italy,
where at the head of the commission of twenty he prosecuted the execution
of the agrarian law and furnished nearly 20,000 burgesses,
in great part old soldiers from his army, with land in the territory
of Capua. Caesar's north-Italian legions served to back him
against the opposition in the capital. There existed no prospect,
immediately at least, of a rupture among the holders of power themselves.
The laws issued by Caesar as consul, in the maintenance of which
Pompeius was at least as much interested as Caesar, formed
a guarantee for the continuance of the breach between Pompeius
and the aristocracy--whose heads, and Cato in particular,
continued to treat these laws as null--and thereby a guarantee
for the subsistence of the coalition. Moreover, the personal bonds
of connection between its chiefs were drawn closer. Caesar had
honestly and faithfully kept his word to his confederates
without curtailing or cheating them of what he had promised,
and in particular had fought to secure the agrarian law proposed
in the interest of Pompeius, just as if the case had been his own,
with dexterity and energy; Pompeius was not insensible to upright
dealing and good faith, and was kindly disposed towards the man
who had helped him to get quit at a blow of the sorry part
of a suppliant which he had been playing for three years. Frequent
and familiar intercourse with a man of the irresistible amiableness
of Caesar did what was farther requisite to convert the alliance
of interests into an alliance of friendship. The result
and the pledge of this friendship--at the same time, doubtless,
a public announcement which could hardly be misunderstood
of the newly established conjoint rule--was the marriage of Pompeius
with Caesar's only daughter, three-and-twenty years of age.
Julia, who had inherited the charm of her father, lived
in the happiest domestic relations with her