As it can easily be seen, the coalition between Cæsar and Pompeius was not a natural one: psychologically they had nothing in common, and their interests soon began to diverge. Pompeius could hardly fail to perceive that Cæsar was climbing by his help and at his expense. The old general saw the memory of his great deeds eclipsed by the new one, and there was no lack of mischief-makers to widen the breach. The alliance had been cemented in a striking fashion at a conference at Lucca in 56 B.C. when the conservatives were threatening to annul Cæsar’s acts in Gaul. Cæsar had replied by inviting Pompeius to meet him in his southern province; he also invited those senators who were his friends to appear at the same time. Two hundred senators had answered the invitation, and for the time being the opposition died away into grumbling. But now the breach was growing open to all men’s eyes. Cæsar’s charming daughter, Julia, who had been married to Pompeius as a pledge of union, and had done much to hold the two chiefs together, died at an early age in the year 54. In the next year Crassus, the mediating third party of the “triumvirate,” met his fate at Carrhæ. In the next there were more than ordinary disorders over the elections, culminating in a fierce battle in the forum between the rival gangs of Clodius for the triumvirate and Milo for the senate. The senate-house was burnt and Clodius slain. Pompeius then became sole consul, and proceeded, under threat of his army, to introduce a series of laws almost openly aimed at Cæsar. By the Pompeian law of magistrates Cæsar would be compelled to appear in Rome as a private citizen for some months in the year 49, at the mercy of his enemies, while Pompeius himself, by having his titular command in Spain prolonged, would still be master of an army. These laws were passed at the crisis of Cæsar’s fate in Gaul, when the whole nation had risen in arms against him. But Cæsar emerged victorious, and was now, in the year 50, free to consider his position in regard to Pompeius and the senate. Cæsar himself maintains that he was reluctant to resort to violence, and I think we may believe him. Though nine legions were still under his command, he could hardly venture to denude the newly conquered province of its garrisons, while Pompeius was master of an equal number of legions, including the veteran Spanish troops, and could levy any number of recruits or reservists in Italy. Cæsar could not have faced the prospect of a civil war with any confidence as to the result, even if he had been the sort of man to provoke it without scruple. There is a further proof: as late as 50 B.C. he resigned two legions to Pompeius, which would have been madness if he had then intended to wade through bloodshed to a throne. In all the abortive negotiations which preceded the outbreak of the great civil war, Cæsar was prepared to resign everything except the one condition upon which his very life depended, namely, that he should