In the following year (B.C. 51) Pompey declared himself still more openly on the side of the Senate; but still he shrank from supporting all the violent measures of the Consul M. Claudius Marcellus, who proposed to send a successor to Caesar, on the plea that the war in Gaul was finished, and to deprive him of the privilege of becoming a candidate for the Consulship in his absence. The Consuls for the next year (B.C. 50), L. AEmilius Paullus and C. Claudius Marcellus, and the powerful Tribune C. Curio, were all reckoned devoted partisans of Pompey and the Senate. Caesar, however, gained over Paullus and Curio by large bribes, and with a lavish hand distributed immense sums of money among the leading men of Rome. It was proposed in the Senate by the Consul C. Marcellus that Caesar should lay down his command by the 13th of November. But this was an unreasonable demand; Caesar's government had upward of another year to run; and if he had come to Rome as a private man to sue for the Consulship, there can be no doubt that his life would have been sacrificed. Cato had declared that he would bring Caesar to trial as soon as he laid down his command; but the trial would have been only a mockery, for Pompey was in the neighborhood of the city at the head of an army, and would have overawed the judges by his soldiery as at Milo's trial. The Tribune Curio consequently interposed his veto upon the proposition of Marcellus. The Senate, anxious to diminish the number of his troops, had, under pretext of a war with the Parthians, ordered that Pompey and Caesar should each furnish a legion to be sent into the East. The legion which Pompey intended to devote to this service was one he had lent to Caesar in B.C. 53, and which he now accordingly demanded back; and, although Caesar saw that he should thus be deprived of two legions, which would probably be employed against himself, he complied with the request. Upon their arrival in Italy, they were not sent to the East, but were ordered to pass the winter at Capua. Caesar took up his quarters at Ravenna, the last town in his province bordering upon Italy.