Evidently the aristocracy held that the moment had come for beginning the struggle not with Pompeius against Caesar, but against the -tyrannis- generally.  What would further follow might easily be seen.  Domitius made no secret that he intended as consul to propose to the burgesses the immediate recall of Caesar from Gaul.  An aristocratic restoration was at work; and with the attack on the colony of Capua the nobility threw down the gauntlet to the regents.

Conference of the Regents at Luca

Caesar, although receiving from day to day detailed accounts of the events in the capital and, whenever military considerations allowed, watching their progress from as near a point of his southern province as possible, had not hitherto, visibly at least interfered in them.  But now war had been declared against him as well as his colleague, in fact against him especially; he was compelled to act, and he acted quickly.  He happened to be in the very neighbourhood; the aristocracy had not even found it advisable to delay the rupture, till he should have again crossed the Alps.  In the beginning of April 698 Crassus left the capital, to concert the necessary measures with his more powerful colleague; he found Caesar in Ravenna.  Thence both proceeded to Luca, and there they were joined by Pompeius, who had departed from Rome soon after Crassus (11 April), ostensibly for the purpose of procuring supplies of grain from Sardinia and Africa.  The most noted adherents of the regents, such as Metellus Nepos the proconsul of Hither Spain, Appius Claudius the propraetor of Sardinia, and many others, followed them; a hundred and twenty lictors, and upwards of two hundred senators were counted at this conference, where already the new monarchical senate was represented in contradistinction to the republican.  In every respect the decisive voice lay with Caesar.  He used it to re-establish and consolidate the existing joint rule on a new basis of more equal distribution of power of most importance in a military point of view, next to that of the two Gauls, were assigned to his two colleagues—­that of the two Spains to Pompeius, that of Syria to Crassus; and these offices were to be secured to them by decree of the people for five years (700-704), and to be suitably provided for in a military and financial point of view.  On the other hand Caesar stipulated for the prolongation of his command, which expired with the year 700, to the close of 705, as well as for the prerogative of increasing his legions to ten and of charging the pay for the troops arbitrarily levied by him on the state-chest.  Pompeius and Crassus were moreover promised a second consulship for the next year (699) before they departed for their governorships, while Caesar kept it open to himself to administer the supreme magistracy a second time after the termination of his governorship in 706, when the ten years’ interval legally requisite between two consulships should have in his case elapsed.