In the autumn of 692 Pompeius embarked for Italy. While in the capital all was being prepared for receiving the new monarch, news came that Pompeius, when barely landed at Brundisium, had broken up his legions and with a small escort had entered on his journey to the capital. If it is a piece of good fortune to gain a crown without trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did for Pompeius; but on those who lack courage the gods lavish every favour and every gift in vain.
The parties breathed freely. For the second time Pompeius had abdicated; his already-vanquished competitors might once more begin the race - in which doubtless the strangest thing was, that Pompeius was again a rival runner. In January 693 he came to Rome.
His position was an awkward one and vacillated with so much uncertainty between the parties, that people gave him the nickname of Gnaeus Cicero. He had in fact lost favour with all. The anarchists saw in him an adversary, the democrats an inconvenient friend, Marcus Crassus a rival, the wealthy class an untrustworthy protector, the aristocracy a declared foe[2]. He was still indeed the most powerful man in the state; his military adherents scattered through all Italy, his influence in the provinces, particularly those of the east, his military fame, his enormous riches gave him a weight such as no other possessed; but instead of the enthusiastic reception on which he had counted, the reception which he met with was more than cool, and still cooler was the treatment given to the demands which he presented. He requested for himself, as he had already caused to be announced by Nepos, a second consulship; demanding also, of course, a confirmation of the arrangements made by him in the east and a fulfilment of the promise which he had given to his soldiers to furnish them with lands. Against these demands a systematic opposition arose in the senate, the chief elements of which were furnished by the personal exasperation of Lucullus and Metellus Creticus, the old resentment of Crassus, and the conscientious folly of Cato. The desired second consulship was at once and bluntly refused. The very first request which the returning general addressed to the senate, that the election of the consuls for 693 might be put off till after his entry into the capital, had been rejected; much less was there any likelihood of obtaining from the senate the necessary dispensation from the law of Sulla as to re-election[3]. As to the arrangements which he had made in the eastern provinces, Pompeius naturally asked their confirmation as a whole; Lucullus carried a proposal thatevery ordinance should be separately discussed and voted upon, which opened the door for endless annoyances and a multitude of defeats in detail. The promise of a grant of land to the soldiers of the Asiatic army was ratified indeed in general by the senate, but was at the same time extended to the Cretan legions of Metellus; and - what was worse - it was not executed, because the public chest was empty and the senate was not disposed to meddle with the domains for this purpose. Pompeius, in despair of mastering the persistent and spiteful opposition of the senate, turned to the burgesses.
But he understood still less how to conduct his movements on this field. The democratic leaders, although they did not openly oppose him, had no cause at all to make his interests their own, and so kept aloof. Pompeius' own instruments - such as the consuls elected by his influence and partly by his money, Marcus Pupius Piso for 693 and Lucius Afranius for 694 - showed themselves unskilful and useless. When at length the assignation of land for the veterans of Pompeius was submitted to the burgesses by the tribune of the people Lucius Flavius in the form of a general agrarian law, the proposal, not supported by the democrats, openly combated by the aristocrats, was left in a minority (beg. of 694). The exalted general now sued almost humbly for the favour of the masses, for it was on his instigation that the Italian tolls were abolished by a law introduced by the praetor Metellus Nepos (694). But he played the demagogue without skill and without success; his reputation suffered from it, and he did not obtain what he desired. He had completely run himself into a noose. One of his opponents summed up his political position at that time by saying that he had endeavoured "to conserve by silence his embroidered triumphal mantle". In fact nothing was left for him but to fret.
Then a new combination offered itself. The leader of the democratic party had actively employed in his own interest the political calm which had immediately followed on the retirement of the previous holder of power. When Pompeius returned from Asia, Caesar had been little more than what Catilina was - the chief of a political party which had dwindled almost into a club of conspirators, and a bankrupt. But since that event he had, after administering the praetorship (692), been invested with the governorship of Further Spain, and thereby had found means partly to rid himself of his debts, partly to lay the foundation for his military repute. His old friend and ally Crassus had been induced by the hope of finding the support against Pompeius, which he had lost in Piso[4], once more in Caesar, to relieve him even before his departure to the province from the most oppressive portion of his load of debt. He himself had energetically employed his brief sojourn there. Returning from Spain in the year 694 with filled chests and as Imperator with well-founded claims to a triumph, he came forward for the following year as a candidate for the consulship; for the sake of which, as the senate refused him permission to announce himself as a candidate for the consular election in absence, he without hesitation abandoned the honour of the triumph. For years the democracy had striven to raise one of its partisans to the possession of the supreme magistracy, that by way of this bridge it might attain a military power of its own.
It had long been clear to discerning men of all shades that the strife of parties could not be settled by civil conflict, but only by military power; but the course of the coalition between the democracy and the powerful military chiefs, through which the rule of the senate had been terminated, showed with inexorable clearness that every such alliance ultimately issued in a subordination of the civil under the military elements, and that the popular party, if it would really rule, must not ally itself with generals properly foreign and even hostile to it, but must make generals of its own leaders themselves. The attempts made with this view to carry the election of Catilina as consul, and to gain a military support in Spain or Egypt, had failed; now a possibility presented itself of procuring for their most important man the consulship and the consular province in the usual constitutional way, and of rendering themselves independent of their dubious and dangerous ally Pompeius by the establishment, if we may so speak, of a home power in their own democratic household.
2. The impression of the first address, which Pompeius made to the burgesses after his return, is thus described by Cicero (ad Att. i. 14):