Cicero, De Lege Manilia, §§ 34-5.

Pompeius used the renown won by this success to secure for himself the fruits of the Asiatic victories won by Lucullus. On the one hand, he worked in Rome against Lucullus so that he got the command transferred to himself; on the other, by bribery and the arts of Clodius, Lucullus’s brother-in-law and aide-de-camp, he worked up a mutiny among his troops. Then he went out to Asia and in a series of spectacular campaigns laid the East at his feet. His progress through Asia was a parade; it was no wonder that the Romans were dazzled by the news of the way in which he overran kingdoms and conquered vast territories of enormous wealth. Pompeius seemed to them a general of the rank of Hannibal or Alexander.

The Senate grew alarmed. They had not forgotten how Sulla had returned from the East in 83 and set himself up as Dictator, master of Rome. If Pompeius in 62 wanted to do the same there was nothing to prevent him. He had a great army, devoted to him and ready to follow him in any adventure. He was extremely popular with the people of Rome. He had never shown any particular respect for the laws and customs of the State when he wanted anything for himself. He had broken the rules Sulla had laid down, by which no one could hold high command until he had passed through all the lower offices. Now, while still in Asia, he demanded to be allowed to stand as consul, in his absence, although he had never been tribune or praetor. The Senate put difficulties in his way. Indeed they did everything they could to irritate Pompeius and give him the excuse for taking the strong line they dreaded. Only Julius Caesar, the young and rapidly rising leader of the Popular party, backed him. The Senate refused to allow Pompeius to stand for the consulship. Nepos, his emissary, would actually have been killed in the streets if Caesar had not saved him. Caesar pleased him by proposing that he should finish rebuilding the Capitol.

The Senate’s fears were groundless, as Caesar knew. Pompeius was not like Sulla. Sulla always knew what he wanted. Pompeius had no clear aim. Opportunities lay open before him which he did not desire or know how to use. He wanted to be important, a big man of whom people spoke well, to whom they looked up; but his timid mind shrank from responsibility. He had never been fired by any great idea; he had no purpose that he wanted to impress upon the world. He had not even got that harsh and cold contempt for the mass of mankind that caused Sulla to feel a sort of bitter pleasure in imposing his will upon them. Of Caesar’s fire he had nothing. Politically he had never taken a firm line. If no one in Rome quite knew where he stood, Pompeius was in the same doubt himself. His was a respectable nature with a natural inclination towards safety. But in the Rome of his day things were in a state of uneasy movement; there was no safety or quiet for any one who wanted at the same time to be a big figure. Pompeius was later forced to take action. This action was weak and irresolute because his mind had never been clear. Most people are like Pompeius: they do not know what they want; or they want something vague, like happiness or the good opinion of others; or they want a number of things which cannot be had together. The mark of those men who stand out in history is that they conceived clearly something they wanted to have or do; and by force of will drove through to it. Even when they failed, as Hannibal, for instance, failed, their failure has in it something more magnificent than ordinary success. But this power to will implies a readiness to make sacrifices. If you want one thing you must be prepared to do without others. If you want to please yourself you must be ready to displease other people. You cannot have your own way and at the same time have the good opinion of everybody. This Pompeius never saw.

A TRIUMPH
from a relief of the Empire

When he returned from his great campaigns in the East in the year 62 Pompeius landed at Brundisium and dismissed his soldiers to their homes. The senators heaved a vast sigh of relief. He was not going to be dangerous. When Pompeius arrived in Rome without his army he found that nobody much wanted him. People were more interested in the struggles that had been going on at home—Catiline’s conspiracy, Cicero’s strong line in putting the conspirators to death, the question whether Caesar had been implicated, the friendship between Caesar and Crassus—than in what Pompeius had been doing in the East. Without his army nobody was afraid of Pompeius. He found Lucullus, in the Senate and political circles generally, doing everything he could to thwart him, supported by Cato the Younger, who thought that imperialism, Eastern conquests, and new wealth were bad things, likely to ruin Rome. Pompeius celebrated a stupendous triumph which made him the idol of the mob; but the Senate would not hear of his being made consul or make grants of lands to his soldiers. The Conservative party had thwarted Pompeius at every turn; he was deeply hurt, and in his most sensitive part, his vanity. This hurt finally drove him into an alliance with Caesar and Crassus, the leaders of the Popular party, and his own most dangerous rivals. He disliked Crassus and feared Caesar. At the moment his support was invaluable to the Popular party; therefore Caesar set himself to overcome Pompeius’s distrust of himself and Crassus’s deep detestation of Pompeius. He had good arguments for each of them; and behind them a charm of manner that few people could resist.

Three years after Pompeius returned from the East the three strongest men in Rome were bound together. This first Triumvirate (60), as it was afterwards called, was a private arrangement. People only learned of its existence when they saw it at work. Pompeius married Caesar’s daughter, Julia, who, so long as she lived, kept him friendly with her father. Caesar was made consul and at once confirmed all that Pompeius had done in the East and made grants of lands to his soldiers. A big programme of land reform was passed through. The corn distribution was reorganized. People who criticized the Triumvirate too openly, like Cato, were banished. Cicero also was exiled, since Clodius had sworn vengeance on him. Caesar would have saved him by taking him with him to Gaul, as well as his brother Quintus, who was one of his adjutants; but Cicero refused. Caesar went off to Gaul the year after his consulship (58); Pompeius and Crassus were left masters in Rome.

There were at the time incessant disorders in the city. The strife of parties waxed bitter and furious. Fights between different political clubs were of nightly occurrence. The ingenious Clodius had reorganized the old associations of the workers into guilds of a more or less political kind, and thus built up a machinery in every quarter of the city which he handled with great adroitness at election times. Moreover, he organized something like a voters’ army of slaves and freedmen, which turned out on his instructions, and lived on the free corn given out by the State. Pompeius did nothing to cope with this state of things. He fell, in fact, into a strange condition of indolence, and took hardly any part in public affairs. The news of Caesar’s victories in Gaul did not rouse him, though Caesar’s popularity increased daily and his own declined.