exchanged his former powerlessness for an important command.  It is possible that Caesar did not yet feel himself sufficiently master of his soldiers to lead them with confidence to a warfare against the formal authorities of the land, and was therefore anxious not to be forced to civil war now by being recalled from Gaul; but whether civil war should come or not, depended at the moment far more on the aristocracy of the capital than on Pompeius, and this would have been at most a reason for Caesar not breaking openly with Pompeius, so that the opposition might not be emboldened by this breach, but not a reason for conceding to him what he did concede.  Purely personal motives may have contributed to the result; it may be that Caesar recollected how he had once stood in a position of similar powerlessness in presence of Pompeius, and had been saved from destruction only by his—­pusillanimous, it is true, rather than magnanimous—­retirement; it is probable that Caesar hesitated to breakthe heart of his beloved daughter who was sincerely attached to her husband—­in his soul there was room for much besides the statesman.  But the decisive reason was doubtless the consideration of Gaul.  Caesar—­differing from his biographers—­regarded the subjugation of Gaul not as an incidental enterprise useful to him for the gaining of the crown, but as one on which depended the external security and the internal reorganization, in a word the future, of his country.  That he might be enabled to complete this conquest undisturbed and might not be obliged to take in hand just at once the extrication of Italian affairs, he unhesitatingly gave up his superiority over his rivals and granted to Pompeius sufficient power to settle matters with the senate and its adherents.  This was a grave political blunder, if Caesar had no other object than to become as quickly as possible king of Rome; but the ambition of that rare man was not confined to the vulgar aim of a crown.  He had the boldness to prosecute side by side, and to complete, two labours equally vast—­the arranging of the internal affairs of Italy, and the acquisition and securing of a new and fresh soil for Italian civilization.  These tasks of course interfered with each other; his Gallic conquests hindered much more than helped him on his way to the throne.  It was fraught to him with bitter fruit that, instead of settling the Italian revolution in 698, he postponed it to 706.  But as a statesman as well as a general Caesar was a peculiarly daring player, who, confiding in himself and despising his opponents, gave them always great and sometimes extravagant odds.

The Aristocracy Submits