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 35

Pompeius incomprehensibly abandoned of his own accord this completely secure position; with his consen and during his dictatorship (702) the personal appearance of Caesar was dispensed with by a tribunician law. When however soon afterwards the new election-ordinance(16) was issued, the obligation of candidates personally to enrol themselves was repeated in general terms, and no sort of exception was added in favour of those released from it by earlier resolutions of the people; according to strict form the privilege granted in favour of Caesar was cancelled by the later general law.

16. Cf. V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistrates and the Jury-System

Caesar complained, and the clause was subsequently appended but not confirmed by special decree of the people, so that this enactment inserted by mere interpolation in the already promulgated law could only be looked on de jure as a nullity. Where Pompeius, therefore, might have simply kept by the law, he had preferred first to make a spontaneous concession, then to recall it, and lastly to cloak this recall in a manner most disloyal.

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