she miscarried.  Even those who found most fault with the alliance of Caesar and Pompeius, could not blame the woman for her affection.  She became pregnant a second time and brought forth a female child, but she died of the pains of labour and the child did not survive her many days.  Pompeius made preparations to bury her in his Alban villa, but the people by force took the body and carried it down into the Field of Mars, more from pity for the young woman than to please Pompeius and Caesar.  But of the two, it was considered that the people gave a larger portion of the honour to Caesar who was absent than to Pompeius who was present.  But in the city the waves forthwith began to move and everything was tossed to and fro, and was the subject of conversation tending to a complete split, now that the marriage connection was ended which hitherto rather veiled than checked the ambition of the two men.  After no long time news also arrived that Crassus had lost his life among the Parthians; and that which had been a great hindrance to the civil war breaking out was now removed, for both Caesar and Pompeius feared Crassus, and accordingly to some extent confined themselves within limits in their behaviour towards one another.  But when fortune had cut off the man who was keeping a watch over the struggle, forthwith the words of the comic poet became applicable: 

    “Now each against the other smears his limbs,
    And strews his hands with dust.”

So small a thing is fortune in comparison with men’s nature.  For fortune cannot satisfy men’s desires, since so great an amount of command and extent of wide-stretched territory put no check on the desires of two men, but though they heard and read that “all things[328] were divided into three portions for the gods and each got his share of dominion,” they thought the Roman empire was not enough for them who were only two.

LIV.  Yet Pompeius once said when he was addressing the people, that he had obtained every office sooner than he expected, and laid it down sooner than was expected.  And in truth he had the disbandings of his forces a perpetual testimony of the truth of what he said.  But now being convinced that Caesar would not give up his power, he sought by means of the functionaries of the state to strengthen himself against him, but he attempted no change of any kind and did not wish to be considered to distrust Caesar, but to disregard him rather and to despise him.  However when he saw that the officers were not disposed of according to his judgment, the citizens being bribed, he allowed anarchy to spring up in the state; and forthwith there was much talk about a dictator, whom Lucilius the tribune first ventured to mention by advising the people to choose Pompeius dictator.  Cato attacked him for this, and Lucilius ran the risk of losing his tribunate, and many of the friends of Pompeius came forward to exculpate him and said that he did not seek that office or wish for it.  Upon