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The exceptional position of Pompeius even under the Gabinian, and much more under the Manilian, law was incompatible with a republican organization. He had been as even then his opponents urged with good reason, appointed by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but as regent of the empire; not unjustly was he designated by a Greek familiar with eastern affairs "king of kings."
It was a total revolution in the existing order of things, for which the foundation was laid in this project of law. Pompeius and the Gabinian Laws These measures of a man who had just given so striking proofs of his vacillation and weakness surprise us by their decisive energy.
The Domitian highway after long preparations furnished a secure land-route from Italy to Spain, and was closely connected with the founding of Aquae Sextiae and Narbo; the Gabinian and the Egnatian led from the principal places on the east coast of the Adriatic sea the former from Salona, the latter from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium into the interior; the network of roads laid out by Manius Aquillius immediately after the erection of the Asiatic province in 625 led from the capital Ephesus in different directions towards the frontier.
It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province of Narbo an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared in Rome.
Accordingly their leaders the praetor Lucius Quinctius, the same who seven years before had exerted himself for the restoration of the tribunician power, and the former quaestor Gaius Caesar supported the Gabinian proposals.
The Parties in Relation to the Gabinian Laws The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in secret, could not well come publicly forward against the project of law.
The previous hegemony of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a direct military occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double burden imposed on it. The Struggle of Parties During the Absence of Pompeius. The Defeated Aristocracy With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the capital changed positions.
The Manilian proposal was acceptable to none of the political parties; yet it scarcely anywhere encountered serious resistance. The democratic leaders, for the same reasons which had forced them to acquiesce in the Gabinian law, could not venture earnestly to oppose the Manilian; they kept their displeasure and their fears to themselves and spoke in public for the general of the democracy.
They proceeded thence with determined hostility into the Roman territories, which were already devastated without the injuries of war. There, without any one meeting them, not even an unarmed person, they passed through entire tracts destitute not only of troops, but even uncultivated, and reached the third milestone on the Gabinian road.
The price of grain had fallen immediately after the passing of the Gabinian laws to the ordinary rates an evidence of the hopes attached to the grand expedition and its glorious leader. These hopes were, as we shall have afterwards to relate, not merely fulfilled, but surpassed: in three months the clearing of the seas was completed.
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