e proconsul Caesar of announcing his candidature for the consulship
in absence had been again cancelled by a subsequent decree of the people,
and that the reservation inserted in the latter was invalid.
The senate should in their opinion cause this magistrate,
now that the subjugation of Gaul was ended, to discharge immediately
the soldiers who had served out their time. The cases in which
Caesar had bestowed burgess-rights and established colonies
in Upper Italy were described by them as unconstitutional and null;
in further illustration of which Marcellus ordained that a respected
senator of the Caesarian colony of Comum, who, even if that place
had not burgess but only Latin rights, was entitled to lay claim
to Roman citizenship,(17) should receive the punishment
of scourging, which was admissible only in the case of non-burgesses.

The supporters of Caesar at this time--among whom Gaius Vibius Pansa,
who was the son of a man proscribed by Sulla but yet had entered
on a political career, formerly an officer in Caesar's army
and in this year tribune of the people, was the most notable--
affirmed in the senate that both the state of things in Gaul
and equity demanded not only that Caesar should not be recalled
before the time, but that he should be allowed to retain the command
along with the consulship; and they pointed beyond doubt to the facts,
that a few years previously Pompeius had just in the same way
combined the Spanish governorships with the consulate,
that even at the present time, besides the important office
of superintending the supply of food to the capital, he held
the supreme command in Italy in addition to the Spanish,
and that in fact the whole men capable of arms had been sworn in by him
and had not yet been released from their oath.

The process began to take shape, but its course was not on that account
more rapid. The majority of the senate, seeing the breach approaching,
allowed no sitting capable of issuing a decree to take place for months;
and other months in their turn were lost over the solemn procrastination
of Pompeius. At length the latter broke the silence and ranged himself,
in a reserved and vacillating fashion as usual but yet plainly enough,
on the side of the constitutional party against his former ally.
He summarily and abruptly rejected the demand of the Caesarians
that their master should be allowed to conjoin the consulship
and the proconsulship; this demand, he added with