[Sidenote: The first triumvirate.] In 60 B. C. he returned to Rome, and soon formed with Pompey and Crassus the agreement known as the first triumvirate, by which he was assured of the consulship in 59 B. C., and the government of Gaul for the following five years. To strengthen the alliance he married his young and beautiful daughter Julia to Pompey. In 56 B. C. he met Pompey and Crassus at Lucca, in the presence of a great concourse of senators and their followers, and an agreement was made that Cæsar should continue to hold the province of Gaul through 49 B. C., while Pompey and Crassus were to be consuls in 55 B. C., after which Syria and Spain were to be given to Crassus and Pompey respectively for five years. The agreement was duly carried out, and in 54 B. C. Crassus went to Syria, where he lost his life after the battle of Carrhæ, in 53 B. C. In the same year Pompey’s wife, Julia, died. Pompey had not gone to Spain to take possession of his province, but remained at Rome, and soon became openly hostile to Cæsar. When the Gallic war was ended, the senatorial party, with Pompey at its head, demanded that Cæsar disband his army. [Sidenote: The civil war.] This he refused to do unless Pompey also gave up his military command. Hereupon the civil war broke out, Cæsar crossed the Rubicon, the boundary of his province, and Pompey fled to Greece, where he was defeated in 48 B. C., at Pharsalus, then to Egypt, where he was murdered. In 46 B. C. the senatorial party was finally defeated in the battle of Thapsus, in Africa, and their leader, Cato, committed suicide at Utica. [Sidenote: Cæsar’s dictatorship and death.] Cæsar now returned to Rome, where he was made _imperator_ and perpetual dictator, thus uniting in one person all the political power of the state. Henceforth the forms of republican government were but a thin mask disguising a real monarchy. In the brief period of his power Cæsar accomplished the reform of the calendar, and carried through numerous important changes for the improvement of the government, but nothing could placate the hatred of those who wished to restore the rule of the senate, whatever its abuses had been. On the Ides of March (March 15), 44 B. C., he was murdered in the senate-house by a band of conspirators headed by Brutus.