t all. It was a different question
whether the regents, at least for the present, were determined
to keep together and mutually to acknowledge without reserve their title
to rank as equals. That this was the case with Caesar, in so far
as he had acquired the interval necessary for the conquest of Gaul
at the price of equalization with Pompeius, has been already set forth.
But Pompeius was hardly ever, even provisionally, in earnest
with the collegiate scheme. His was one of those petty
and mean natures, towards which it is dangerous to practise magnanimity;
to his paltry spirit it appeared certainly a dictate of prudence
to supplant at the first opportunity his reluctantly acknowledged rival,
and his mean soul thirsted after a possibility of retaliating on Caesar
for the humiliation which he had suffered through Caesar's indulgence.
But while it is probable that Pompeius in accordance with his dull
and sluggish nature never properly consented to let Caesar
hold a position of equality by his side, yet the design
of breaking up the alliance doubtless came only by degrees
to be distinctly entertained by him. At any rate the public,
which usually saw better through the views and intentions
of Pompeius than he did himself, could not be mistaken
in thinking that at least with the death of the beautiful Julia--
who died in the bloom of womanhood in the autumn of 700 and was
soon followed by her only child to the tomb--the personal relation
between her father and her husband was broken up. Caesar attempted
to re-establish the ties of affinity which fate had severed;
he asked for himself the hand of the only daughter of Pompeius,
and offered Octavia, his sister's grand-daughter, who was now
his nearest relative, in marriage to his fellow-regent; but Pompeius
left his daughter to her existing husband Faustus Sulla the son
of the regent, and he himself married the daughter of Quintus Metellus
Scipio. The personal breach had unmistakeably begun, and it was
Pompeius who drew back his hand. It was expected that a political
breach would at once follow; but in this people were mistaken;
in public affairs a collegiate understanding continued for a time
to subsist. The reason was, that Caesar did not wish publicly
to dissolve the relation before the subjugation of Gaul
was accomplished, and Pompeius did not wish to dissolve it
before the governing authorities and Italy should be wholly reduced
under his power by his investiture