Cæsar showed more diplomacy, paying the general the compliment of requesting him to finish the Capitoline temple, one of the chief shrines of the civic religion of Rome. This duty came within Cæsar’s province as Pontifex Maximus, and besides as Prætor for this year he held a position which made his influence useful to the returning general. Both the scheme for the restoration of the temple and a measure for recalling Pompeius to the city, which was supported by Cæsar, were opposed by the Senate, and the discussion led to such violence that the Senate suspended Cæsar from his functions as magistrate, and only restored him when he had personally intervened to quiet the passions of the mob. Though Cæsar’s year of office was over (61 B.C.), and the time had come for him to administer Spain as Proprætor, that being the province assigned him, he delayed his departure. There were many grounds for this course. Pompeius had been keeping his own counsel as to his future plans, and required watching. Cæsar had difficulties with his creditors; he had long been heavily in debt, and his year of office, with its sensational political activities, must have severely drained his resources. But the chief cause which delayed his journey west was the violation, in the House of the Pontifex Maximus, of the sacred mysteries of the Bona Dea by a young Quæstor-elect, Clodius, who was suspected of being the lover of Cæsar’s wife, Pompeia. A scandal involving the head of the state religion was a serious matter, and Cæsar lived up to the rôle assigned him by sententiously remarking that Cæsar’s wife ought not even to be suspected and by seizing this opportunity of divorcing her. The step satisfied public opinion at the time, but the dignity of the act is somewhat lessened in the eyes of later critics from the fact that the Pontifex Maximus himself was, even according to the flexible standards of Rome, notorious for his moral laxity. When Clodius’ trial was held, Cæsar diplomatically denied that he had any certain knowledge of the case. Politics were so much involved in this trial that proscriptions might have been initiated. Clodius was a figure in the popular party, and, in the end, by the common method of bribing the judges, an acquittal was secured. Pompeius, in the midst of this exciting time, had arrived in Rome, thus giving Cæsar an opportunity of taking the measure of the over-praised Eastern conqueror. Before Cæsar left for Spain, mutual advances had taken place, and he felt sure that Pompeius would not ally himself with the senatorial party. Cæsar also continued to be on good terms with the millionaire Crassus, and before leaving Italy he borrowed from him eighteen hundred talents to satisfy the demands of creditors.