Cæsar had skilfully taken precautions that his influence should be felt at Rome during his absence, as much as the instability of the magistracy would permit. By the aid of his daughter Julia, whose charms and mental accomplishments captivated her husband, Cæsar retained his influence over Pompey. By his favours to the son of Crassus, a young man of great merit, who was appointed his lieutenant, he assured himself of his father. Cicero is removed, but soon Cæsar will consent to his return, and will conciliate him again by taking into his favour his brother Quintus. There remains the opposition of Cato. Clodius undertakes to remove him under the pretence of an honourable mission: he is sent to Cyprus to dethrone King Ptolemy, whose irregularities excited the hatred of his subjects.[1217] Finally, all the men of importance who had any chance of obtaining employment are gained to the cause of Cæsar; some even engage themselves to him by writing.[1218] He can thus proceed to his province; Destiny is about to open a new path; immortal glory awaits him beyond the Alps, and this glory, reflected upon Rome, will change the face of the world. [Sidenote: The Explanation of Cæsar’s Conduct.] VII. We have shown Cæsar obeying only his political convictions, whether as the ardent promoter of all popular measures, or as the declared partisan of Pompey; we have shown him aspiring with a noble ambition to power and honours; but we are not ignorant that historians in general give other motives for his conduct. They represent him, in 684, as having already his plans defined, his schemes arranged, his instruments all prepared. They attribute to him an absolute prescience of the future, the faculty of directing men and things at his will, and of rendering each one, unknowingly, the accomplice of his profound designs. All his actions have a hidden motive, which the historian boasts of having discovered. If Cæsar raises up again the standard of Marius, makes himself the defender of the oppressed, and the persecutor of the hired assassins of past tyranny, it is to acquire a concurrence necessary to his ambition; if he contends with Cicero in favour of legality in the trial of the accomplices of Catiline, or to maintain an agrarian law of which he approves the political aim, or if, to repair a great injustice of Sylla, he supports the restoration of the children of the proscribed to their rights, it is for the purpose of compromising the great orator with the popular party. If, on the contrary, he places his influence at the service of Pompey; if, on the occasion of the war against the pirates, he contributes to obtain for him an authority considered exorbitant; if he seconds the plebiscitum which further confers upon him the command of the army against Mithridates; if subsequently he causes extraordinary honours to be awarded him, though absent, it is still with the Machiavellian aim of making the greatness of Pompey redound to his own profit.