regarded as done away for ever and irrevocably.  While Caesar gave orders that the statues of Sulla which had been thrown down by the mob of the capital on the news of the battle of Pharsalus should be re-erected, and thus recognized the fact that it became history alone to sit in judgment on that great man, he at the same time cancelled the last remaining effects of Sulla’s exceptional laws, recalled from exile those who had been banished in the times of the Cinnan and Sertorian troubles, and restored to the children of those outlawed by Sulla their forfeited privilege of eligibility to office.  In like manner all those were restored, who in the preliminary stage of the recent catastrophe had lost their seat in the senate or their civil existence through sentence of the censors or political process, especially through the impeachments raised on the basis of the exceptional laws of 702.  Those alone who had put to death the proscribed for money remained, as was reasonable, still under attainder; and Milo, the most daring condottiere of the senatorial party, was excluded from the general pardon.

Discontent of the Democrats

Far more difficult than the settlement of these questions which already belonged substantially to the past was the treatment of the parties confronting each other at the moment—­on the one hand Caesar’s own democratic adherents, on the other hand the overthrown aristocracy.  That the former should be, if possible, still less satisfied than the latter with Caesar’s conduct after the victory and with his summons to abandon the old standing-ground of party, was to be expected.  Caesar himself desired doubtless on the whole the same issue which Gaius Gracchus had contemplated; but the designs of the Caesarians were no longer those of the Gracchans.  The Roman popular party had been driven onward in gradual progression from reform to revolution, from revolution to anarchy, from anarchy to a war against property; they celebrated among themselve the memory of the reign of terror and now adorned the tomb of Catilina, as formerly that of the Gracchi, with flowers and garlands; they had placed themselves under Caesar’s banner, because they expected him to do for them what Catilina had not been able to accomplish.  But as it speedily became plain that Caesar was very far from intending to be the testamentary executor of Catilina, and that the utmost which debtors might expect from him was some alleviations of payment and modifications of procedure, indignation found loud vent in the inquiry.  For whom then had the popular party conquered, if not for the people?  And the rabble of this description, high and low, out of pure chagrin at the miscarriage of their politico-economic Saturnalia began first to coquet with the Pompeians, and then even during Caesar’s absence of nearly two years from Italy (Jan. 706-autumn 707) to instigate there a second civil war within the first.

Caelius and Milo