grudge against Cicero, which he presently had an opportunity of satisfying. The year of his return to Rome from Sicily (B.C. 60) was the same as that of Cæsar's return from Spain. Pompey--who had returned the year before--was at enmity with the senate on account of the difficulties raised to the confirmation of his _acta_ and the allotments for his veterans. Cæsar had a grievance because of the difficulties put in the way of his triumph. The two coalesced, taking in the millionaire Crassus, to form a triumvirate or coalition of three, with a view to getting measures they desired passed, and offices for themselves or their partisans. This was a great blow to Cicero, who clung feverously to Pompey as a political leader, but could not follow him in a coalition with Cæsar: for he knew that the object of it was a series of measures of which he heartily disapproved. His hope of seeing Pompey coming to act as acknowledged leader of the Optimates was dashed to the ground. He could not make up his mind wholly to abandon him, or, on the other hand, to cut himself adrift from the party of Optimates, to whose policy he had so deeply committed himself. Clodius was troubled by no such scruples. Perhaps Cæsar had given him substantial reasons for his change of policy. At any rate, from this time forward he acts as an extreme _popularis_--much too extreme, as it turned out, for Pompey's taste. As a patrician his next step in the official ladder would naturally have been the ædileship. But that peaceful office did not suit his present purpose. The tribuneship would give him the right to bring forward measures in the _comitia tributa_, such as he desired to pass, and would in particular give him the opportunity of attacking Cicero. The difficulty was that to become tribune he must cease to be a patrician. He could only do that by being adopted into a plebeian gens. He had a plebeian ready to do it in B.C. 59. But for a man who was _sui iuris_ to be adopted required a formal meeting of the old _comitia curiata_, and such a meeting required the presence of an augur, as well as some kind of sanction of the pontifices. Cæsar was Pontifex Maximus, and Pompey was a member of the college of augurs. Their influence would be sufficient to secure or prevent this being done. Their consent was, it appears, for a time withheld. But Cæsar was going to Gaul at the end of his consulship, and desired to have as few powerful enemies at Rome during his absence as possible. Still he had a personal feeling for Cicero, and when it was known that one of Clodius's objects in seeking to become a plebeian and a tribune was to attack him, Cæsar offered him two chances of honourable retreat--first as one of the commissioners to administer his land law, and again as one of his _legati_ in Gaul. But Cicero would not accept the first, because he was vehemently opposed to the law itself: nor the second, because he had no taste for provincial