term up to the arrival
of the successor. But now, since the new regulation of 702
called to the governorships not the consuls and praetors
going out, but those who had gone out five years ago or more,
and thus prescribed an interval between the civil magistracy
and the command instead of the previous immediate sequence,
there was no longer any difficulty in straightway filling up
from another quarter every legally vacant governorship, and so,
in the case in question, bringing about for the Gallic provinces
the change of command on the 1st March 705, instead of the 1st Jan. 706.
The pitiful dissimulation and procrastinating artifice of Pompeius
are after a remarkable manner mixed up, in these arrangements,
with the wily formalism and the constitutional erudition
of the republican party. Years before these weapons of state-law
could be employed, they had them duly prepared, and put themselves
in a condition on the one hand to compel Caesar to the resignation
of his command from the day when the term secured to him by Pompeius'
own law expired, that is from the 1st March 705, by sending successors
to him, and on the other hand to be able to treat as null and void
the votes tendered for him at the elections for 706. Caesar,
not in a position to hinder these moves in the game, kept silence
and left things to their own course.

Debates as to Caesar's Recall

Gradually therefore the slow course of constitutional procedure
developed itself. According to custom the senate had to deliberate
on the governorships of the year 705, so far as they went
to former consuls, at the beginning of 703, so far as they went
to former praetors, at the beginning of 704; that earlier deliberation
gave the first occasion to discuss the nomination of new governors
for the two Gauls in the senate, and thereby the first occasion
for open collision between the constitutional party pushed forward
by Pompeius and the senatorial supporters of Caesar. The consul
Marcus Marcellus introduced a proposal to give the two provinces
hitherto administered by the proconsul Gaius Caesar
from the 1st March 705 to the two consulars who were to be provided
with governorships for that year. The long-repressed indignation
burst forth in a torrent through the sluice once opened;
everything that the Catonians were meditating against Caesar
was brought forward in these discussions. For them it was
a settled point, that the right granted by exceptional law
to th