Pompey

For to everybody’s surprise he married Julia, the daughter of Caesar, although she was betrothed to Caepio and was going to be married to him within a few days; and to appease the wrath of Caepio, Pompey promised him his own daughter in marriage, although she was already engaged to Faustus the son of Sulla. Caesar himself married Calpurnia, the daughter of Piso.

After this, Pompey filled the city with soldiers and carried everything with a high hand. As Bibulus the consul was going down into the forum with Lucullus and Cato, the crowd fell upon him and broke the fasces of his lictors, and somebody threw a basket of ordure all over the head of Bibulus himself, and two of the tribunes who were escorting him were wounded.

When they had thus cleared the forum of their opponents, they passed the law concerning the distribution of lands; and the people, caught by this bait, became tame at once in their hands, and ready to support any project, not meddling at all, but silently voting for what was proposed to them.

Accordingly, Pompey got those enactments of his ratified which Lucullus contested; Caesar received the two Gauls and Illyricum for five years, together with four complete legions; and it was decided that the consuls for the ensuing year[*](58 B.C.) should be Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, and Gabinius, who was the most extravagant of Pompey’s flatterers.

While this was going on, Bibulus shut himself up in his house and for the eight months remaining of his consulship did not appear in public, but issued edicts which were full of accusations and slanders against Pompey and Caesar; Cato, as though inspired and possessed by a spirit of prophecy, foretold in the senate what the future would bring to the city and to Pompey; while Lucullus renounced the struggle and led a life of ease, on the plea that he was past the age for political affairs; whereat Pompey remarked that for an old man luxurious living was more unseasonable than political activity.