THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

V. The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter IX - Death of Crassus - Rupture between the Joint Rulers

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Page 37

Debates as to Caesar's Recall

Gradually therefore the slow course of constitutional procedure developed itself. According to custom the senate had to deliberate on the governorships of the year 705, so far as they went to former consuls, at the beginning of 703, so far as they went to former praetors, at the beginning of 704; that earlier deliberation gave the first occasion to discuss the nomination of new governors for the two Gauls in the senate, and thereby the first occasion for open collision between the constitutional party pushed forward by Pompeius and the senatorial supporters of Caesar. The consul Marcus Marcellus introduced a proposal to give the two provinces hitherto administered by the proconsul Gaius Caesar from the 1st March 705 to the two consulars who were to be provided with governorships for that year.

The long-repressed indignation burst forth in a torrent through the sluice once opened; everything that the Catonians were meditating against Caesar was brought forward in these discussions. For them it was a settled point, that the right granted by exceptional law to the proconsul Caesar of announcing his candidature for the consulship in absence had been again cancelled by a subsequent decree of the people, and that the reservation inserted in the latter was invalid.

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