And now another very great name comes into the story, that of Pompey—Pompey the Great as he was sometimes called. In Rome, Sulla had drowned in blood the opposition of the popular party; but there were legions outside Italy itself, and some of them, in Spain, were under popular leadership. Against these Pompey went out as commander on the patrician side. After some three years of fighting he was completely successful. Sulla, wearied of power and tyranny, had thrown up his dictatorship at Rome and had retired into the country and to private life. Pompey led back his victorious legions, and with his soldiers at the gates of the city demanded the honours which he thought due to him as victor.
There was no denying them to him, and he was elected Consul.
The condition of affairs in Italy was bad. There had been a great uprising of the slaves who had become very numerous and had banded themselves together, to a number said to be 70,000. They traversed the country, pillaging and acting in defiance of all law.
Pompey, as Consul and with the military power at his command, showed himself a far less cruel dictator than Sulla. He revoked many of the worst laws and lawless institutions of Sulla. The slave revolt, as it was called, was put down. Something like order was restored again. And when all this had been done in Italy, Pompey was given, or maybe took for himself, command of a fleet and of armies in the East, for the special purpose of destroying the sea pirates in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and strengthening the Roman power in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. The treaty with Mithridates had not succeeded in making peace in that corner of the world for long, and, though he had been beaten in one or two battles by the legions, he was still in the field and far beyond the boundaries which that treaty had assigned to him.
Julius Cæsar
Pompey carried all before him. He put down the pirates in a series of sea fights, settled affairs in Syria, which he at length made into a Roman province, and then went northward, where he met Mithridates and defeated him so decisively that he gave the Romans no further trouble, and shortly afterwards took his own life. With all these victories to his credit, Pompey returned to Italy, where by that time had come into the story one whose name, great as was that of Pompey, was to become greater even than his—Julius Cæsar.
Cæsar had gained fame both as an orator and as a soldier. His sympathies were with the popular party. He had been chosen as Consul, but had not yet entered into that office when Pompey came back, triumphant, from the East. We might expect that Pompey, who was on the patrician side, would be opposed to Cæsar, but Pompey was dissatisfied with his treatment by his own party. He seems to have promised his soldiers, as a reward for their bravery and their victories, that they should be given grants of land, to live on, in Italy. The Senate were not ready to confirm this promise, and they did not approve of all that he had done in Asia Minor.
The result was that Cæsar and Pompey became friends and allies. Cæsar married Pompey's daughter. They brought into their alliance one Crassus, whose chief value to them as a friend was that he had immense wealth. This combination was known as the Triumvirate, or combination of three men (from tres, meaning three, and vir, meaning man). Acting together, the three could get any laws passed that they pleased. One of the measures which they joined in passing made an immense difference in our story. It was that measure which gave to Cæsar the command of the legions in Gaul.
The difference that it was to make was not seen just at first. Cæsar went up north to his command. His campaign against the Gauls, of which he himself has written the account in his "Commentaries," are a little out of the direct line of our great story. They had their effect on the big story, for if they had ended in any other way than the way in which they did, if Cæsar had been killed or conquered—and he was nearly killed or conquered more than once—the big story might have gone quite differently. But as it was, in the end—and the end of his campaigns in Gaul did not come until nine years had passed—he was completely victorious. During those years he made an expedition to Great Britain, but did not stay there long. At the end of the nine years he came back. He was chosen as Consul for the second time. He came back to the borders of Italy at the head of his victorious legions. He was commanded by the Senate to disband his troops before coming to Rome to be made Consul. The Senate and Pompey, for Pompey still was chief man in Rome, did not want a general with soldiers devoted to him at the gates of the city.