and restoring the state of peace in the whole subject territory.
As early as the summer of 703, under the convenient pretext
of defending the frontier(19) but evidently in token of the fact
that the legions in Gaul were now beginning to be no longer
needed there, he moved one of them to North Italy. He could not avoid
perceiving now at any rate, if not earlier, that he would not
be spared the necessity of drawing the sword against his fellow-
citizens; nevertheless, as it was highly desirable to leave the legions
still for a time in the barely pacified Gaul, he sought even yet
to procrastinate, and, well acquainted with the extreme
love of peace in the majority of the senate, did not abandon
the hope of still restraining them from the declaration of war
in spite of the pressure exercised over them by Pompeius.
He did not even hesitate to make great sacrifices, if only he might
avoid for the present open variance with the supreme governing board.
When the senate (in the spring of 704) at the suggestion of Pompeius
requested both him and Caesar to furnish each a legion
for the impending Parthian war(20) and when agreeably to this resolution
Pompeius demanded back from Caesar the legion lent to him
some years before, so as to send it to Syria, Caesar complied with
the double demand, because neither the opportuneness of this decree
of the senate nor the justice of the demand of Pompeius
could in themselves be disputed, and the keeping within the bounds
of the law and of formal loyalty was of more consequence to Caesar
than a few thousand soldiers. The two legions came without delay
and placed themselves at the disposal of the government, but instead
of sending them to the Euphrates, the latter kept them at Capua
in readiness for Pompeius; and the public had once more the opportunity
of comparing the manifest endeavours of Caesar to avoid a rupture
with the perfidious preparation for war by his opponents.

Curio

For the discussions with the senate Caesar had succeeded
in purchasing not only one of the two consuls of the year,
Lucius Aemilius Paullus, but above all the tribune of the people
Gaius Curio, probably the most eminent among the many profligate men
of parts in this epoch;(21) unsurpassed in refined elegance, in fluent
and clever oratory, in dexterity of intrigue, and in that energy
which in the case of vigorous but vicious characters bestirs itself
only the more powerfully amid the pauses of idleness; but als