y which he had
already given-appear a specially difficult task.

Attempts of Pompeius to Obtain a Command through the Senate
Administration of the Supplies of Corn

Things had taken such a turn as naturally to suggest an understanding
between Pompeius and the republican party. Whether such
an approximation was to take place, and what shape the mutual
relations of the two regents and of the aristocracy, which had become
utterly enigmatical, were next to assume, fell necessarily
to be decided, when in the autumn of 697 Pompeius came to the senate
with the proposal to entrust him with extraordinary official power.
He based his proposal once more on that by which he had
eleven years before laid the foundations of his power,
the price of bread in the capital, which had just then--as previously
to the Gabinian law--reached an oppressive height. Whether
it had been forced up by special machinations, such as Clodius imputed
sometimes to Pompeius, sometimes to Cicero, and these in their turn
charged on Clodius, cannot be determined; the continuance of piracy,
the emptiness of the public chest, and the negligent and disorderly
supervision of the supplies of corn by the government were already
quite sufficient of themselves, even without political forestalling,
to produce scarcities of bread in a great city dependent
almost solely on transmarine supplies. The plan of Pompeius
was to get the senate to commit to him the superintendence
of the matters relating to corn throughout the whole Roman empire,
and, with a view to this ultimate object, to entrust him
on the one hand with the unlimited disposal of the Roman state-
treasure, and on the other hand with an army and fleet, as well as
a command which not only stretched over the whole Roman empire,
but was superior in each province to that of the governor--in short
he designed to institute an improved edition of the Gabinian law,
to which the conduct of the Egyptian war just then pending(3)
would therefore quite as naturally have been annexed as the conduct
of the Mithradatic war to the razzia against the pirates.
However much the opposition to the new dynasts had gained ground
in recent years, the majority of the senate was still, when this matter
came to be discussed in Sept. 697, under the constraint of the terror
excited by Caesar. It obsequiously accepted the project in principle,
and that on the proposition of Marcus Cicero, who was expected to give,
and gave, in this