for the subsistence of the coalition.  Moreover, the personal bonds of connection between its chiefs were drawn closer.  Caesar had honestly and faithfully kept his word to his confederates without curtailing or cheating them of what he had promised, and in particular had fought to secure the agrarian law proposed in the interest of Pompeius, just as if the case had been his own, with dexterity and energy; Pompeius was not insensible to upright dealing and good faith, and was kindly disposed towards the man who had helped him to get quit at a blow of the sorry part of a suppliant which he had been playing for three years.  Frequent and familiar intercourse with a man of the irresistible amiableness of Caesar did what was farther requisite to convert the alliance of interests into an alliance of friendship.  The result and the pledge of this friendship—­at the same time, doubtless, a public announcement which could hardly be misunderstood of the newly established conjoint rule—­was the marriage of Pompeius with Caesar’s only daughter, three-and-twenty years of age.  Julia, who had inherited the charm of her father, lived in the happiest domestic relations with her husband, who was nearly twice as old; and the burgesses longing for rest and order after so many troubles and crises, saw in this nuptial alliance the guarantee of a peaceful and prosperous future.

Situation of the Aristocracy

The more firmly and closely the alliance was thus cemented between Pompeius and Caesar, the more hopeless grew the cause of the aristocracy.  They felt the sword suspended over their head and knew Caesar sufficiently to have no doubt that he would, if necessary, use it without hesitation.  “On all sides,” wrote one of them, “we are checkmated; we have already through fear of death or of banishment despaired of ‘freedom’; every one sighs, no one ventures to speak.”  More the confederates could not desire.  But though the majority of the aristocracy was in this desirable frame of mind, there was, of course, no lack of Hotspurs among this party.  Hardly had Caesar laid down the consulship, when some of the most violent aristocrats, Lucius Domitius and Gaius Memmius, proposed in a full senate the annulling of the Julian laws.  This indeed was simply a piece of folly, which redounded only to the benefit of the coalition; for, when Caesar now himself insisted that the senate should investigate the validity of the laws assailed, the latter could not but formally recognize their legality.  But, as may readily be conceived, the holders of power found in this a new call to make an example of some of the most notable and noisiest of their opponents, and thereby to assure themselves that the remainder would adhere to that fitting policy of sighing and silence.  At first there had been a hope that the clause of the agrarian law, which as usual required all the senators to take an oath to the new law on pain of forfeiting their political rights, would induce