poetical of all heroic figures, he began to compare himself
with Alexander the Great, and to account himself a man of unique
standing, whom it did not beseem to be merely one of the five
hundred senators of Rome. In reality, no one was more fitted
to take his place as a member of an aristocratic government than
Pompeius. His dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality,
his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want
of all initiative might have gained for him, had he been born
two hundred years earlier, an honourable place by the side
of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius: this mediocrity, so characteristic
of the genuine Optimate and the genuine Roman, contributed not a little
to the elective affinity which subsisted at all times between Pompeius
and the mass of the burgesses and the senate. Even in his own age
he would have had a clearly defined and respectable position
had he contented himself with being the general of the senate,
for which he was from the outset destined. With this he was
not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight of wishing
to be something else than he could be. He was constantly aspiring
to a special position in the state, and, when it offered itself,
he could not make up his mind to occupy it; he was deeply indignant
when persons and laws did not bend unconditionally before him,
and yet he everywhere bore himself with no mere affectation
of modesty as one of many peers, and trembled at the mere thought
of undertaking anything unconstitutional. Thus constantly
at fundamental variance with, and yet at the same time the obedient
servant of, the oligarchy, constantly tormented by an ambition
which was frightened at its own aims, his much-agitated life
passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction.

Crassus