During the years of Cæsar's absence from Rome the first triumvirate had fallen to pieces. In the year 55 B.C. Pompey and Crassus, without opposition, had been elected to the consulship for a second term. At the conclusion of this consulship Crassus was sent with an army against the Parthians, by whom he was defeated and killed in 53 B.C. In the meantime Julia, daughter of Cæsar and wife of Pompey, had died at Rome in 54 B.C. Crassus and Julia had been the two persons who had kept Cæsar and Pompey together, and from this time these two leaders rapidly drifted apart. All this time affairs at Rome were constantly falling into worse and worse stages of corruption and confusion. In 58 B.C. (through the efforts of Cæsar's friends, led by Clodius) Cicero had been banished from Rome; in 57 B.C. he was recalled, and honors were heaped upon him. In 54 B.C. all the candidates for the consulship were prosecuted for bribery, and the consular elections postponed seven months. Many wanted Pompey named as dictator at this period. A little later he actually served for a considerable period as sole consul. It would probably have been possible for Pompey, at this time, to have anticipated Cæsar and to have made himself emperor of Rome, but his efforts were rather directed toward the restoration of the old order of things in the republic. The course of events had once more united Pompey with the moderate senatorial party. The election of 52 B.C. was notable, even among the other elections of this period, for the enormous extent of the corruption funds used by the various candidates. In the course of this campaign the notorious Clodius, who was a candidate for prætor, with a retinue of friends and clients one day chanced to encounter T. Annius Milo, a candidate for consul belonging to the senatorial party, with a like body of retainers. A conflict resulted in which Clodius was killed. The next day Clodius's friends, aided by all the lawless elements of the Roman population, made a pyre for the corpse out of the seats of the senate house and burned the dead body of Clodius and the senate house together. The Roman historian Florus thus reviews the situation reached by the Roman republic at the time of the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey: "This is the third age of the Roman people, with reference to its transactions beyond the sea; an age in which, when they had once ventured beyond Italy, they carried their arms through the whole world. Of which age, the first hundred years were pure and pious, and, as I have called them, 'golden'; free from vice and immorality, as there yet remained the sincere and harmless integrity of the pastoral life, and the imminent dread of a Carthaginian enemy supported the ancient discipline.