On the other hand Cato and his followers, instead of combating with their wonted sternness the proposal to confer the dictatorship on Pompeius, had made it with immaterial alterations of form their own; Pompeius had received the undivided consulship primarily from the hands of Bibulus and Cato. While the Catonian party and Pompeius had thus at least a tacit understanding as early as the beginning of 702, the alliance might be held as formally concluded, when at the consular elections for 703 there was elected not Cato himself indeed, but - along with an insignificant man belonging to the majority of the senate - one of the most decided adherents of Cato, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Marcellus was no furious zealot and still less a genius, but a steadfast and strict aristocrat, just the right man to declare war if war was to be begun with Caesar. As the case stood, this election, so surprising after the repressive measures adopted immediately before against the republican opposition, can hardly have occurred otherwise than with the consent, or at least under the tacit permission, of the regent of Rome for the time being. Slowly and clumsily, as was his wont, but steadily Pompeius moved onward to the rupture.

It was not the intention of Caesar on the other hand to fall out at this moment with Pompeius. He could not indeed desire seriously and permanently to share the ruling power with any colleague, least of all with one of so secondary a sort as was Pompeius; and beyond doubt he had long resolved after terminating the conquest of Gaul to take the sole power for himself, and in case of need to extort it by force of arms. But a man like Caesar, in whom the officer was thoroughly subordinate to the statesman, could not fail to perceive that the regulation of the political organism by force of arms does in its consequences deeply and often permanently disorganize it; and therefore he could not but seek to solve the difficulty, if at all possible, by peaceful means or at least without open civil war. But even if civil war was not to be avoided, he could not desire to be driven to it at a time, when in Gaul the rising of Vercingetorix imperilled afresh all that had been obtained and occupied him without interruption from the winter of 701-702 to the winter of 702-703, and when Pompeius and the constitutional party opposed to him on principle were dominant in Italy. Accordingly he sought to preserve the relation with Pompeius and thereby the peace unbroken, and to attain, if at all possible, by peaceful means to the consulship for 706 already assured to him at Luca. If he should then after a conclusive settlement of Celtic affairs be placed in a regular manner at the head of the state, he, who was still more decidedly superior to Pompeius as a statesman than as a general, might well reckon on outmanoeuvring the latter in the senate-house and in the Forum without special difficulty. Perhaps it was possible to find out for his awkward, vacillating, and arrogant rival some sort of honourable and influential position, in which the latter might be content to sink into a nullity; the repeated attempts of Caesar to keep himself related by marriage to Pompeius, may have been designed to pave the way for such a solution and to bring about a final settlement of the old quarrel through the succession of offspring inheriting the blood of both competitors. The republican opposition would then remain without a leader and therefore probably quiet, and peace would be preserved. If this should not be successful, and if there should be, as was certainly possible, a necessity for ultimately resorting to the decision of arms, Caesar would then as consul in Rome dispose of the compliant majority of the senate; and he could impede or perhaps frustrate the coalition of the Pompeians and the republicans, and conduct the war far more suitably and more advantageously, than if he now as proconsul of Gaul gave orders to march against the senate and its general.

Certainly the success of this plan depended on Pompeius being good-natured enough to let Caesar still obtain the consulship for 706 assured to him at Luca; but, even if it failed, it would be always of advantage for Caesar to have given practical and repeated evidence of the most yielding disposition. On the one hand time would thus be gained for attaining his object meanwhile in Gaul; on the other hand his opponents would be left with the odium of initiating the rupture and consequently the civil war - which was of the utmost moment for Caesar with reference to the majority of the senate and the party of material interests, and more especially with reference to his own soldiers.

On these views he acted. He armed certainly; the number of his legion was raised through new levies in the winter of 702-703 to eleven, including that borrowed from Pompeius. But at the same time he expressly and openly approved of Pompeius' conduct during the dictatorship and the restoration of order in the capital which he had effected, rejected the warnings of officious friends as calumnies, reckoned every day by which he succeeded in postponing the catastrophe a gain, overlooked whatever could be overlooked and bore whatever could be borne - immoveably adhering only to the one decisive demand that, when his governorship of Gaul came to an end with 705, the second consulship, admissible by republican state-law and promised to him according to agreement by his colleague, should be granted to him for the year 706.

This very demand became the battle-field of the diplomatic war which now began. If Caesar were compelled either to resign his office of governor before the last day of December 705, or to postpone the assumption of the magistracy in the capital beyond the 1st January 706, so that he should remain for a time between the governorship and the consulate without office, and consequently liable to criminal impeachment - which according to Roman law was only allowable against one who was not in office - the public had good reason to prophesy for him in this case the fate of Milo, because Cato had for long been ready to impeach him and Pompeius was a more than doubtful protector.

Now, to attain that object, Caesar's opponents had a very simple means. According to the existing ordinance as to elections, every candidate for the consulship was obliged to announce himself personally to the presiding magistrate, and to cause his name to be inscribed on the official list of candidates before the election, that is half a year before entering on office. It had probably been regarded in the conferences at Luca as a matter of course that Caesar would be released from this obligation, which was purely formal and was very often dispensed with; but the decree to that effect had not yet been issued, and, as Pompeius was now in possession of the decretive machinery, Caesar depended in this respect on the good will of his rival. 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. 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.