invidious equivocal position towards the senate,(10) and he himself had once been in the ranks of the Cinnans(11)—­recollections which were suppressed perhaps, but not forgotten.  The prominent position which Pompeius acquired for himself under Sulla set him at inward variance with the aristocracy, quite as much as it brought him into outward connection with it.  Weak-headed as he was, Pompeius was seized with giddiness on the height of glory which he had climbed with such dangerous rapidity and ease.  Just as if he would himself ridicule his dry prosaic nature by the parallel with the most poetical of all heroic figures, he began to compare himself with Alexander the Great, and to account himself a man of unique standing, whom it did not beseem to be merely one of the five hundred senators of Rome.  In reality, no one was more fitted to take his place as a member of an aristocratic government than Pompeius.  His dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality, his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want of all initiative might have gained for him, had he been born two hundred years earlier, an honourable place by the side of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius:  this mediocrity, so characteristic of the genuine Optimate and the genuine Roman, contributed not a little to the elective affinity which subsisted at all times between Pompeius and the mass of the burgesses and the senate.  Even in his own age he would have had a clearly defined and respectable position had he contented himself with being the general of the senate, for which he was from the outset destined.  With this he was not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight of wishing to be something else than he could be.  He was constantly aspiring to a special position in the state, and, when it offered itself, he could not make up his mind to occupy it; he was deeply indignant when persons and laws did not bend unconditionally before him, and yet he everywhere bore himself with no mere affectation of modesty as one of many peers, and trembled at the mere thought of undertaking anything unconstitutional.  Thus constantly at fundamental variance with, and yet at the same time the obedient servant of, the oligarchy, constantly tormented by an ambition which was frightened at its own aims, his much-agitated life passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction.

Crassus

Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy.  He is a personage highly characteristic of this epoch.  Like Pompeius, whose senior he was by a few years, he belonged to the circle of the high Roman aristocracy, had obtained the usual education befitting his rank, and had like Pompeius fought with distinction under Sulla in the Italian war.  Far inferior to many of his peers in mental gifts, literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped them by his boundless activity, and by the perseverance