charge was never pressed; indeed it was manifestly false, for Caesar was too sure of the favor of the people to have need of conspiring to win it.  The next year he was made praetor, and after his term of office was ended, governor of Further Spain.  The old trouble of debt still pressed upon him, and he could not leave Rome till he had satisfied the most pressing of his creditors.  This he did by help of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who stood security for nearly two hundred thousand pounds.  To this time belong two anecdotes which, whether true or no, are curiously characteristic of his character.  He was passing, on the way to his province, a town that had a particularly mean and poverty-stricken look.  One of his companions remarked, “I dare say there are struggles for office even here, and jealousies and parties.”  “Yes,” said Caesar; “and indeed, for myself, I would sooner be the first man here than the second in Rome.”  Arrived at his journey’s end, he took the opportunity of a leisure hour to read the life of Alexander.  He sat awhile lost in thought, then burst into tears.  His friends inquired the cause.  “The cause?” he replied.  “Is it not cause enough that at my age Alexander had conquered half the world, while I have done nothing?” Something, however, he contrived to do in Spain.  He extended the dominion of Rome as far as the Atlantic, settled the affairs of the provincials to their satisfaction, and contrived at the same time to make money enough to pay his debts.  Returning to Rome when his year of command was ended, he found himself in a difficulty.  He wished to have the honor of a triumph (a triumph was a procession in which a victorious general rode in a chariot to the Capitol, preceded and followed by the spoils and prisoners taken in his campaigns), and he also wished to become a candidate for the consulship.  But a general who desired a triumph had to wait outside the gates of the city till it was voted to him, while a candidate for the consulship must lose no time in beginning to canvass the people.  Caesar, having to make his choice between the two, preferred power to show.  He stood for the consulship, and was triumphantly elected.

Once consul he made that famous Coalition which is commonly called the First Triumvirate.  Pompey was the most famous soldier of the day, and Crassus, as has been said before, the richest man.  These two had been enemies, and Caesar reconciled them; and then the three together agreed to divide power and the prizes of power between them.  Caesar would have willingly made Cicero a fourth, but he refused, not, perhaps, without some hesitation.  He did more; he ventured to say some things which were not more agreeable because they were true of the new state of things.  This the three masters of Rome were not willing to endure, and they determined that this troublesome orator should be put out of the way.  They had a ready means of doing it.  A certain Clodius, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, felt