not well be undertaken under circumstances more favourable.  It was in a high degree probable that, under the fresh impression of the Catilinarian revolt, a rule which promised order and security, although at the price of freedom, would receive the submission of the whole middle party—­embracing especially the merchants who concerned themselves only about their material interests, but including also a great part of the aristocracy, which, disorganized in itself and politically hopeless, had to rest content with securing for itself riches, rank, and influence by a timely compromise with the prince; perhaps even a portion of the democracy, so sorely smitten by the recent blows, might submit to hope for the realization of a portion of its demands from a military chief raised to power by itself.  But, whatever might be the position of party-relations, of what importance, in the first instance at least, were the parties in Italy at all in presence of Pompeius and his victorious army?  Twenty years previously Sulla, after having concluded a temporary peace with Mithradates, had with his five legions been able to carry a restoration runningcounter to the natural development of things in the face of the whole liberal party, which had been arming en masse for years, from the moderate aristocrats and the liberal mercantile class down to the anarchists.  The task of Pompeius was far less difficult.  He returned, after having fully and conscientiously performed his different functions by sea and land.  He might expect to encounter no other serious opposition save that of the various extreme parties, each of which by itself could do nothing, and which even when leagued together were no more than a coalition of factions still vehemently hostile to each other and inwardly at thorough variance.  Completely unarmed, they were without a military force and without a head, without organization in Italy, without support in the provinces, above all, without a general; there was in their ranks hardly a soldier of note—­to say nothing of an officer—­who could have ventured to call forth the burgesses to a conflict with Pompeius.  The circumstance might further be taken into account, that the volcano of revolution, which had been now incessantly blazing for seventy years and feeding on its own flame, was visibly burning out and verging of itself to extinction.  It was very doubtful whether the attempt to arm the Italians for party interests would now succeed, as it had succeeded with Cinna and Carbo.  If Pompeius exerted himself, how could he fail to effect a revolution of the state, which was chalked out by a certain necessity of nature in the organic development of the Roman commonwealth?

Mission of Nepos to Rome