the consuls elected by his influence and partly by his money, Marcus Pupius Piso for 693 and Lucius Afranius for 694—­showed themselves unskilful and useless.  When at length the assignation of land for the veterans of Pompeius was submitted to the burgesses by the tribune of the people Lucius Flavius in the form of a general agrarian law, the proposal, not supported by the democrats, openly combated by the aristocrats, was left in a minority (beg. of 694).  The exalted general now sued almost humbly for the favour of the masses, for it was on his instigation that the Italian tolls were abolished by a law introduced by the praetor Metellus Nepos (694).  But he played the demagogue without skill and without success; his reputation suffered from it, and he did not obtain what he desired.  He had completely run himself into a noose.  One of his opponents summed up his political position at that time by saying that he had endeavoured “to conserve by silence his embroidered triumphal mantle.”  In fact nothing was left for him but to fret.

Rise of Caesar

Then a new combination offered itself.  The leader of the democratic party had actively employed in his own interest the political calm which had immediately followed on the retirement of the previous holder of power.  When Pompeius returned from Asia, Caesar had been little more than what Catilina was—­the chief of a political party which had dwindled almost into a club of conspirators, and a bankrupt.  But since that event he had, after administering the praetorship (692), been invested with the governorship of Further Spain, and thereby had found means partly to rid himself of his debts, partly to lay the foundation for his military repute.  His old friend and ally Crassus had been induced by the hope of finding the support against Pompeius, which he had lost in Piso,(4) once more in Caesar, to relieve him even before his departure to the province from the most oppressive portion of his load of debt.  He himself had energetically employed his brief sojourn there.  Returning from Spain in the year 694 with filled chests and as Imperator with well-founded claims to a triumph, he came forward for the following year as a candidate for the consulship; for the sake of which, as the senate refused him permission to announce himself as a candidate for the consular election in absence, he without hesitation abandoned the honour of the triumph.  For years the democracy had striven to raise one of its partisans to the possession of the supreme magistracy, that by way of this bridge it might attain a military power of its own.  It had long been clear to discerning men of all shades that the strife of parties could not be settled by civil conflict, but only by military power; but the course of the coalition between the democracy and the powerful military chiefs, through which the rule of the senate had been terminated, showed with inexorable clearness that every such alliance