act of regulating, might be claimed by the rival power. The very ground on which Pompey was encamped might be sold under his feet by virtue of this law. "Pompey," he says,[1] "is determined that whatever you decide, he will consider that he must bear it; but he will take good care, you may be sure, that whatever you cannot bear, he will not permit you to be compelled to bear it longer than you please."
"Are these," Cicero asks in another place,[2] "the plans of sober men or the dreams of wine-bibbers? Are they the calculations of sense, or the extravagances of lunacy?" The answer doubtless is, that the promoters of the bill can have hoped to carry a scheme, manifestly directed against Pompey, only on the supposition that he was too far off to trouble himself about their machinations, and that his friends in Rome would not honestly and fearlessly maintain his cause. In this they were disappointed; Cicero at once came forward, and in a series of spirited and effective speeches exposed the nature and object of the scheme. He directs many arguments against the promoters, but one is really sufficient, namely that the bill is a studied attack on the position of Pompey; with the name of Pompey he always couples the liberty and the greatness of Rome. He sums up the whole matter at the end of the third speech—"Is any one of you disposed for violence, for crime, for massacre? Not one. And yet it is for men who will do all these things that the land of
