ultimately issued in a subordination of the civil under the military elements, and that the popular party, if it would really rule, must not ally itself with generals properly foreign and even hostile to it, but must make generals of its own leaders themselves.  The attempts made with this view to carry the election of Catilina as consul, and to gain a military support in Spain or Egypt, had failed; now a possibility presented itself of procuring for their most important man the consulship and the consular province in the usual constitutional way, and of rendering themselves independent of their dubious and dangerous ally Pompeius by the establishment, if we may so speak, of a home power in their own democratic household.

Second Coalition of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar

But the more the democracy could not but desire to open up for itself this path, which offered not so much the most favourable as the only prospect of real successes, the more certainly it might reckon on the resolute resistance of its political opponents.  Everything depended on whom it found opposed to it in this matter.  The aristocracy isolated was not formidable; but it had just been rendered evident in the Catilinarian affair that it could certainly still exert some influence, where it was more or less openly supported by the men of material interests and by the adherents of Pompeius.  It had several times frustrated Catilina’s candidature for the consulship, and that it would attempt the like against Caesar was sufficiently certain.  But, even though Caesar should perhaps be chosen in spite of it, his election alone did not suffice.  He needed at least some years of undisturbed working out of Italy, in order to gain a firm military position; and the nobility assuredly would leave no means untried to thwart his plans during this time of preparation.  The idea naturally occurred, whether the aristocracy might not be again successfully isolated as in 683-684, and an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might not be established between the democrats with their ally Crassus on the one side and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other.  For Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide.  His weight hitherto in the state rested on the fact, that he was the only party-leader who at the same time disposed of legions—­ which, though now dissolved, were still in a certain sense at his disposal.  The plan of the democracy was directed to the very object of depriving him of this preponderance, and of placing by his side in their own chief a military rival.  Never could he consent to this, and least of all personally help to a post of supreme command a man like Caesar, who already as a mere political agitator had given him trouble enough and had just furnished the most brilliant proofs also of military capacity in Spain.  But on the other hand, in consequence of the cavilling opposition of the senate and the indifference of the multitude to Pompeius