think that he could succeed if neither of them assisted him.
Accordingly, he set about reconciling them, by continually urging upon
them, and showing that by their attempts to ruin one another they
would increase the power of the Ciceros, and Catuli, and Catos, who
would lose all their influence if they would unite their friends and
adherents, and so direct the administration with combined strength,
and one purpose. By persuasion and effecting a reconciliation, he
brought them together, and he formed out of the union of all three an
irresistible power by which he put down the Roman senate and the
people, though he did not make Pompeius and Crassus more powerful, one
through the other, but by means of the two he made himself most
powerful; for immediately on being supported by Pompeius and Crassus,
he was elected consul by a great majority. While Cæsar was ably
discharging the business of the consulship, Crassus and Pompeius, by
procuring for him the command of armies, and by delivering Gaul into
his hands, fixed him in a kind of acropolis, thinking that they should
administer the rest of the State as they mutually agreed, after
securing to Cæsar the authority which the lot had given him. Now
Pompeius did all this through unbounded love of power; but to the old
vice of Crassus, his avarice, there was now added a new passion,
ambition for trophies and triumphs excited by the great exploits of
Cæsar, since it was in this alone that he was Cæsar's inferior; for he
had the superiority in everything else; and his passion remitted not
nor diminished till it resulted in an inglorious death and public
misfortunes. Cæsar had come down from Gaul to the city of Luca, and
many of the Romans went to him there, and Pompeius and Crassus had
private conferences with him, in which they agreed to take affairs in
hand more vigorously, and to hold the whole power of the State at
their disposal, to which end Cæsar was to remain in his military
command, and Pompeius and Crassus were to have other provinces and