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Forsyth observes: "Crassus built this tomb of travertine stone 24 feet thick, to secure the bones of a single woman; while the adjoining castle had but a thin wall of soft tufo to defend all the Gaetani from the fury of civil war."
Pompeius, on his return from the East, again allied himself with Crassus and Cæsar, whose object was to acquire for himself the opportunity which Pompeius would not grasp. The alliance gave Pompeius the land allotments he required for his soldiers, and to Cæsar the consulship followed by a prolonged governorship of Gaul.
XXII. Now after a second triumph and the consulship were voted to him, Pompeius was not for this reason considered an object of admiration and a great man; but the people considered it a proof of his distinction, that Crassus, though the richest of all who were engaged in public life, and the most powerful speaker and the greatest man, and though he despised Pompeius and everybody else, did not venture to become a candidate for the consulship till he had applied to Pompeius.
Some of them who had served with Pompeius knew him as one who had received favours from Pompeius, and was supposed to be a friend to the Romans; but he now came to Crassus with a treacherous intent, and with the privity of the royal generals, to try if he could draw him far away from the river and the foot of the hills, into a boundless plain, where he might be surrounded by the enemy; for nothing was further from the intentions of the Parthians than to attack the Romans right in front.
In the beginning of April 698 Crassus left the capital, to concert the necessary measures with his more powerful colleague; he found Caesar in Ravenna.
Thus constantly at fundamental variance with, and yet at the same time the obedient servant of, the oligarchy, constantly tormented by an ambition which was frightened at its own aims, his much-agitated life passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction. Crassus Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy.
Caesar was assured of the consulship for the following year and a governorship in due course; to Pompeius was promised the ratification of his arrangements made in the east, and an assignation of lands for the soldiers of the Asiatic army; to the equites Caesar likewise promised to procure for them by means of the burgesses what the senate had refused; Crassus in fine the inevitable was allowed at least to join the league, although without obtaining definite promises for an accession which he could not refuse.
His danger was apparent to Octavius, who ran before any one else with a few men, from the higher ground to aid Crassus, upon which the rest of the men, abusing themselves for cowards, rushed forward, and, falling on the enemy, and repulsing them from the hill, put Crassus in the midst of them, and threw their shields before him, proudly exclaiming that there was no Parthian missile which should strike the Imperator until all of them had fallen in defence of him.
Cato was not present, for they had sent him seasonably out of the way into Cyprus; but Favonius, who was a zealous imitator of Cato, when he found he could do no good by opposing it, broke out of the house, and loudly declaimed against these proceedings to the people, but none gave him any hearing; some slighting him out of respect to Crassus and Pompey, and the greater part to gratify Caesar, on whom depended their hopes.
Of the three men then in greatest power, Crassus was Cicero's open enemy, Pompey indifferently made advances to both, and Caesar was going with an army into Gaul.
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