Once more fate had been working for Pompeius; Crassus was dead, all Gaul was in revolt, Pompeius was practically dictator of Rome and master of the senate.  What might have happened, if he had now, instead of remotely intriguing against Caesar, summarily compelled the burgesses or the senate to recall Caesar at once from Gaul!  But Pompeius never understood how to take advantage of fortune.  He heralded the breach clearly enough; already in 702 his acts left no doubt about it, and in the spring of 703 he openly expressed his purpose of breaking with Caesar; but he did not break with him, and allowed the months to slip away unemployed.

The Old Party Names and the Pretenders

But however Pompeius might delay, the crisis was incessantly urged on by the mere force of circumstances.

The impending war was not a struggle possibly between republic and monarchy—­for that had been virtually decided years before—­ but a struggle between Pompeius and Caesar for the possession of the crown of Rome.  But neither of the pretenders found his account in uttering the plain truth; he would have thereby driven all that very respectable portion of the burgesses, which desired the continuance of the republic and believed in its possibility, directly into the camp of his opponent.  The old battle-cries raised by Gracchus and Drusus, Cinna and Sulla, used up and meaningless as they were, remained still good enough for watchwords in the struggle of the two generals contending for the sole rule; and, though for the moment both Pompeius and Caesar ranked themselves officially with the so-called popular party, it could not be for a moment doubtful that Caesar would inscribe on his banner the people and democratic progress, Pompeius the aristocracy and the legitimate constitution.

The Democracy and Caesar

Caesar had no choice.  He was from the outset and very earnestly a democrat; the monarchy as he understood it differed more outwardly than in reality from the Gracchan government of the people; and he was too magnanimous and too profound a statesman to conceal his colours and to fight under any other escutcheon than his own.  The immediate advantage no doubt, which this battle-cry brought to him, was trifling; it was confined mainly to the circumstance that he was thereby relieved from the inconvenience of directly naming the kingly office, and so alarming the mass of the lukewarm and his own adherents by that detested word.  The democratic banner hardly yielded farther positive gain, since the ideals of Gracchus had been rendered infamous and ridiculous by Clodius; for where was there now—­laying aside perhaps the Transpadanes—­ any class of any sort of importance, which would have been induced by the battle-cries of the democracy to take part in the struggle?

The Aristocracy and Pompeius