66 B.C.]
Pompey and the East.
89
Manilius was carried by acclamation, and Pompey was invested with powers hardly inferior to those afterwards enjoyed by Augustus. For the next five years he remained in the East, marching, fighting, and organising. Meanwhile affairs in the capital went on their course without his active intervention; but amidst all the shifting scenes of parties and all the conflicts of statesmen, the presence in the background of the power of Pompey is never forgotten; it is felt that whatever men may do at home, his must be in the end the deciding will.
Among those who most envied the great position of Pompey was his former colleague Crassus. Crassus was anxious to win for himself some exceptional command which might hold in check the power of his great rival. It seems probable that Cæsar, who was now dazzling the world 65 B.C.with the extravagant splendour of his shows as ædile, encouraged these aspirations of Crassus, and that the democratic party, as a whole, followed his lead. Though they had supported Pompey in the struggle over the Gabinian and Manilian laws, the democrats seem to have recognised more clearly than the Optimates, that the great soldier would not readily fall in with the plans of a revolutionary party. Crassus and Cæsar looked to Egypt as the scene of their[1] operations. Crassus was censor this year, and he proposed to enrol Egypt in the list of provinces on the ground that it had been left to the Roman People by the will of the last king. This king- ↑ Plutarch, Crass., 13, 1.
