Caesar too set out with such views; but they were simply ideals, which might have some influence on realities, but could not be directly realized.  Neither the simple civil power, as Gaius Gracchus possessed it, nor the arming of the democratic party, such as Cinna though in a very inadequate fashion had attempted, was able to maintain a permanent superiority in the Roman commonwealth; the military machine fighting not for a party but for a general, the rude force of the condottieri—­after having first appeared on the stage in the service of the restoration—­soon showed itself absolutely superior to all political parties.  Caesar could not but acquire a conviction of this amidst the practical workings of party, and accordingly he matured the momentous resolution of making this military machine itself serviceable to his ideals, and of erecting such a commonwealth, as he had in his view, by the power of condottieri.  With this design he concluded in 683 the league with the generals of the opposite party, which, notwithstanding that they had accepted the democratic programme, yet brought the democracy and Caesar himself to the brink of destruction.  With the same design he himself came forward eleven years afterwards as a condottiere.  It was done in both cases with a certain naivete—­with good faith in the possibility of his being able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords of others, at any rate by his own.  We perceive without difficulty that this faith was fallacious, and that no one takes an evil spirit into his service without becoming himself enslaved to it; but the greatest men are not those who err the least.  If we still after so many centuries bow in reverence before what Caesar willed and did, it is not because he desired and gained a crown (to do which is, abstractly, as little of a great thing as the crown itself) but because his mighty ideal—­of a free commonwealth under one ruler—­never forsook him, and preserved him even when monarch from sinking into vulgar royalty.

Caesar Consul

The election of Caesar as consul for 695 was carried without difficulty by the united parties.  The aristocracy had to rest content with giving to him—­by means of a bribery, for which the whole order of lords contributed the funds, and which excited surprise even in that period of deepest corruption—­a colleague in the person of Marcus Bibulus, whose narrow-minded obstinacy was regarded in their circles as conservative energy, and whose good intentions at least were not at fault if the genteel lords did not get a fit return for their patriotic expenditure.

Caesar’s Agrarian Law