operations.  But it is freedom alone that is absolutely and exclusively poetical and creative; it and it alone is able even in its most wretched caricature, even with its latest breath, to inspire fresh enthusiasm.  All the sound elements of literature were and remained anti-monarchical; and, if Caesar himself could venture on this domain without proving a failure, the reason was merely that even now he still cherished at heart the magnificent dream of a free commonwealth, although he was unable to transfer it either to his adversaries or to his adherents.  Practical politics was not more absolutely controlled by the regents than literature by the republicans.(10)

New Exceptional Measures Resolved on

It became necessary to take serious steps against this opposition, which was powerless indeed, but was always becoming more troublesome and audacious.  The condemnation of Gabinius, apparently, turned the scale (end of 700).  The regents agreed to introduce a dictatorship, though only a temporary one, and by means of this to carry new coercive measures especially respecting the elections and the jury-courts.  Pompeius, as the regent on whom primarily devolved the government of Rome and Italy, was charged with the execution of this resolve; which accordingly bore the impress of the awkwardness in resolution and action that characterized him, and of his singular incapacity of speaking out frankly, even where he would and could command.  Already at the close of 700 the demand for a dictatorship was brought forward in the senate in the form of hints, and that not by Pompeius himself.  There served as its ostensible ground the continuance of the system of clubs and bands in the capital, which by acts of bribery and violence certainly exercised the most pernicious pressure on the elections as well as on the jury-courts and kept it in a perpetual state of disturbance; we must allow that this rendered it easy for the regents to justify their exceptional measures.  But, as may well be conceived, even the servile majority shrank from granting what the future dictator himself seemed to shrink from openly asking.  When the unparalleled agitation regarding the elections for the consulship of 701 led to the most scandalous scenes, so that the elections were postponed a full year beyond the fixed time and only took place after a seven months’ interregnum in July 701, Pompeius found in this state of things the desired occasion for indicating now distinctly to the senate that the dictatorship was the only means of cutting, if not of loosing the knot; but the decisive word of command was not even yet spoken.  Perhaps it would have still remained for long unuttered, had not the most audacious partisan of the republican opposition Titus Annius Milo stepped into the field at the consular elections for 702 as a candidate in opposition to the candidates of the regents, Quintus Metellus Scipio and Publius Plautius Hypsaeus, both men closely connected with Pompeius personally and thoroughly devoted to him.