When he returned from his great campaigns in the East in the year 62 Pompeius landed at Brundisium and dismissed his soldiers to their homes. The senators heaved a vast sigh of relief. He was not going to be dangerous. When Pompeius arrived in Rome without his army he found that nobody much wanted him. People were more interested in the struggles that had been going on at home--Catiline’s conspiracy, Cicero’s strong line in putting the conspirators to death, the question whether Caesar had been implicated, the friendship between Caesar and Crassus--than in what Pompeius had been doing in the East. Without his army nobody was afraid of Pompeius. He found Lucullus, in the Senate and political circles generally, doing everything he could to thwart him, supported by Cato the Younger, who thought that imperialism, Eastern conquests, and new wealth were bad things, likely to ruin Rome. Pompeius celebrated a stupendous triumph which made him the idol of the mob; but the Senate would not hear of his being made consul or make grants of lands to his soldiers. The Conservative party had thwarted Pompeius at every turn; he was deeply hurt, and in his most sensitive part, his vanity. This hurt finally drove him into an alliance with Caesar and Crassus, the leaders of the Popular party, and his own most dangerous rivals. He disliked Crassus and feared Caesar. At the moment his support was invaluable to the Popular party; therefore Caesar set himself to overcome Pompeius’s distrust of himself and Crassus’s deep detestation of Pompeius. He had good arguments for each of them; and behind them a charm of manner that few people could resist. Three years after Pompeius returned from the East the three strongest men in Rome were bound together. This first Triumvirate (60), as it was afterwards called, was a private arrangement. People only learned of its existence when they saw it at work. Pompeius married Caesar’s daughter, Julia, who, so long as she lived, kept him friendly with her father. Caesar was made consul and at once confirmed all that Pompeius had done in the East and made grants of lands to his soldiers. A big programme of land reform was passed through. The corn distribution was reorganized. People who criticized the Triumvirate too openly, like Cato, were banished. Cicero also was exiled, since Clodius had sworn vengeance on him. Caesar would have saved him by taking him with him to Gaul, as well as his brother Quintus, who was one of his adjutants; but Cicero refused. Caesar went off to Gaul the year after his consulship (58); Pompeius and Crassus were left masters in Rome.