h respect
to their subjects as the caliphs had with respect to the Arabs;
and one result of it was the marvellous religious-political reform
of the nation, which was carried out about this time by the king
of the Getae, Burebistas, and the god Dekaeneos. The people,
which had morally and politically fallen into utter decay through
unexampled drunkenness, was as it were metamorphosed by the new
gospel of temperance and valour; with his bands under the influence,
so to speak, of puritanic discipline and enthusiasm king Burebistas
founded within a few years a mighty kingdom, which extended along
both banks of the Danube and reached southward far into Thrace,
Illyria, and Noricum. No direct contact with the Romans had yet
taken place, and no one could tell what might come out of
this singular state, which reminds us of the early times of Islam;
but this much it needed no prophetic gift to foretell, that proconsuls
like Antonius and Piso were not called to contend with gods.

Chapter VIII

The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar

Pompeius and Caesar in Juxtaposition

Among the democratic chiefs, who from the time of the consulate
of Caesar were recognized officially, so to speak, as the joint
rulers of the commonwealth, as the governing "triumvirs," Pompeius
according to public opinion occupied decidedly the first place.
It was he who was called by the Optimates the "private dictator";
it was before him that Cicero prostrated himself in vain;
against him were directed the sharpest sarcasms in the wall-placards
of Bibulus, and the most envenomed arrows of the talk in the saloons
of the opposition. This was only to be expected. According to
the facts before the public Pompeius was indisputably the first general
of his time; Caesar was a dexterous party-leader and party-orator,
of undeniable talents, but as notoriously of unwarlike and indeed
of effeminate temperament. Such opinions had been long current;
it could not be expected of the rabble of quality that it should
trouble itself about the real state of things and abandon
once established platitudes because of obscure feats of heroism
on the Tagus. Caesar evidently played in the league the mere part
of the adjutant who executed for his chief the work which Flavius,
Afranius, and other less capable instruments had attempted
and not performed. Even his governorship seemed not to alter
this state of things. Afranius had but recently occupied
a very similar p