We have already described the man—­with his effort to be at once loyal republican and master of Rome, with his vacillation and indecision, with his pliancy that concealed itself under the boasting of independent resolution.  This was the first great trial to which destiny subjected him; and he failed to stand it.  The pretext under which Pompeius refused to dismiss the army was, that he distrusted Crassus and therefore could not take the initiative in disbanding the soldiers.  The democrats induced Crassus to make gracious advances in the matter, and to offer the hand of peace to his colleague before the eyes of all; in public and in private they besought the latter that to the double merit of having vanquished the enemy and reconciled the parties he would add the third and yet greater service of preserving internal peace to his country, and banishing the fearful spectre of civil war with which they were threatened.  Whatever could tell on a vain, unskilful, vacillating man—­all the flattering arts of diplomacy, all the theatrical apparatus of patriotic enthusiasm—­was put in motion to obtain the desired result; and—­which was the main point—­things had by the well-timed compliance of Crassus assumed such a shape, that Pompeius had no alternative but either to come forward openly as tyrant of Rome or to retire.  So he at length yielded and consented to disband the troops.  The command in the Mithradatic war, which he doubtless hoped to obtain when he had allowed himself to be chosen consul for 684, he could not now desire, since Lucullus seemed to have practically ended that war with the campaign of 683.  He deemed it beneath his dignity to accept the consular province assigned to him by the senate in accordance with the Sempronian law, and Crassus in this followed his example.  Accordingly when Pompeius after discharging his soldiers resigned his consulship on the last day of 684, he retired for the time wholly from public affairs, and declared that he wished thenceforth to live a life of quiet leisure as a simple citizen.  He had taken up such a position that he was obliged to grasp at the crown; and, seeing that he was not willing to do so, no part was left to him but the empty one of a candidate for a throne resigning his pretensions to it.

Senate, Equites, and Populares

The retirement of the man, to whom as things stood the first place belonged, from the political stage reproduced in the first instance nearly the same position of parties, which we found in the Gracchan and Marian epochs.  Sulla had merely strengthened the senatorial government, not created it; so, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla had fallen, the government nevertheless remained primarily with the senate, although, no doubt, the constitution with which it governed—­in the main the restored Gracchan constitution—­ was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the oligarchy.  The democracy had effected the re-establishment of the Gracchan constitution; but without a new Gracchus