and bore him proudly, whereas it would not endure any other rider.  Consequently his expectations were of no small character, so that he willingly resigned the triumphal celebration and entered the city to canvass for office.  Here he courted Pompey and Crassus and the rest so skillfully that though they were still at enmity with each other, and their political clubs were likewise, and though each opposed everything that he learned the other wished, he won them over and was unanimously appointed by them all.  This evidences his cleverness in the greatest degree that he should have known and arranged the occasions and the amount of his services so well as to attach them both to him when they were working against each other.

[-55-] He was not even satisfied with this, but actually reconciled them, not because he was desirous of having them agree, but because he saw that they were the most powerful persons.  And he understood well that without the aid of both or of one he could never come to any great power; but if he should make a friend of merely either one of them, he should by that fact find the other his antagonist and should suffer more reverses through him than he would win success by the support of the other.  For, on the one hand, it seemed to him that all men work more strenuously against their enemies than they cooeperate with their friends, not merely as a corollary of the fact that anger and hate impel more earnest endeavor than any friendship, but also because, when one man works for himself, and a second for another, success does not hold a like amount of pleasure or failure of pain in the two cases.  Per contra he reflected that it was handier to get in people’s way and prevent their reaching any prominence than to be willing to lead them to great heights.  The chief reason for this was that he who keeps another from attaining magnitude pleases others as well as himself, whereas he who exalts another renders him burdensome to both those parties.

[-56-] These reasons led Caesar at that time to insinuate himself into their good graces, and subsequently he reconciled them with each other.  He did not believe that without them he could either attain permanent power or fail to offend one of them some time, and had equally little fear of their harmonizing their plans and so becoming stronger than he.  For he understood perfectly that he should master other people immediately through their friendship, and a little later master them through the agency of each other.  And so it was.[28]

Pompey and Crassus, the moment they entered into his plan, themselves made peace each with the other as if of their own accord, and took Caesar into partnership respecting their designs.  Pompey, on his side, was not so strong as he had hoped to be, and seeing that Crassus was in power and that Caesar’s influence was growing feared that he should be utterly overthrown by them; but he had the additional hope that if he made them sharers in present advantages,