The rival claims of the two leaders reached an acute stage when Pompeius, now Consul, passed legislation by which an interval of five years was required between service as a provincial governor and as a magistrate in Rome. Cæsar’s term of office expired in B.C. 49; he had received leave to stand for the consulship and had requested to be left in possession of his provinces till the end of 49. Now in Pompeius’ legislation there was required, unless special permission were given, personal candidature, and also the Senate was given authority to relieve provincial governors at any time during the last year of their service. Cæsar might find himself relieved of his proconsulship before he had been elected Consul. It would be a dangerous position for him to confront a rival armed with extraordinary powers, while he was only an individual citizen. There were further grounds of irritation because the senatorial party refused to recognize certain administrative acts of Cæsar, by which he had extended the franchise to various provincial towns. In arranging the question of provincial succession there was much delay. Pompeius hesitated to accept the Senate’s drastic measure, by which Cæsar would be relieved long before he could be elected Consul. He made a show of conciliation by shortening the interval and also by promising to resign his own command before the expiration of his term if the Senate so desired. Cæsar’s agent in Rome, the Tribune Curio, displayed much ingenuity in obstructing all measures aimed at his chief, and it was plain from the way the political game was being played that Cæsar’s minimum, service as Proconsul till the end of 49, and entrance into the consulship on January 1, 48, would be the watchword of his partisans. In all other respects he showed himself ready for conciliation and compromise. When two legions were asked for the Parthian war, they were promptly sent, and no protest was made at their being kept at Capua, when they were no longer wanted in the East. Curio, too, was ordered to cease blocking the vote of money to pay Pompeius’ troops. But the senatorial party were not ready to make terms; it seemed to them that with the co-operation of Pompeius they could place Cæsar in an _impasse_. They miscalculated his personal popularity and his military strength, and now were all the more confident, because they were successfully intriguing with Labienus to detach him from his chief. The weakness of the senatorial clique was its obvious insincerity in claiming to be the representative of the party of law and order. It was absurd to object to Cæsar stepping directly from the proconsulship to the consulship as an irregularity, when Pompeius had held both offices together; indeed he had been twice Consul within four years, entirely in contravention of the required legal interval of ten years between the holding by one individual of the highest magistracy.