Such attacks could not indeed endanger the power of Rome, and a fresh disgrace had long ago ceased to occasion concern. But just about this period a people began to acquire political consolidation beyond the Danube in the wide Dacian steppes - a people which seemed destined to play a different part in history from that of the Bessi and the Dentheletae. Among the Getae or Dacians in primeval times there had been associated with the king of the people a holy man called Zalmoxis, who, after having explored the ways and wonders of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests and of the Greek Pythagoreans, had returned to his native country to endhis life as a pious hermit in a cavern of the "holy mountain". He remained accessible only to the king and his servants, and gave forth to the king and through him to the people his oracles with reference to every important undertaking. He was regarded by his countrymen at first as priest of the supreme god and ultimately as himself a god, just as it is said of Moses and Aaron that the Lord had made Aaron the prophet and Moses the god of the prophet.

This had become a permanent institution; there was regularly associated with the king of the Getae such a god, from whose mouth everything which the king ordered proceeded or appeared to proceed.

This peculiar constitution, in which the theocratic idea had become subservient to the apparently absolute power of the king, probably gave to the kings of the Getae some such position with respect to their subjects as the caliphs had with respect to the Arabs; and one result of it was the marvellous religious-political reform of the nation, which was carried out about this time by the king of the Getae, Burebistas, and the god Dekaeneos. The people, which had morally and politically fallen into utter decay through unexampled drunkenness, was as it were metamorphosed by the new gospel of temperance and valour; with his bands under the influence, so to speak, of puritanic discipline and enthusiasm king Burebistas founded within a few years a mighty kingdom, which extended along both banks of the Danube and reached southward far into Thrace, Illyria, and Noricum. No direct contact with the Romans had yet taken place, and no one could tell what might come out of this singular state, which reminds us of the early times of Islam; but this much it needed no prophetic gift to foretell, that proconsuls like Antonius and Piso were not called to contend with gods.

Among the democratic chiefs, who from the time of the consulate of Caesar were recognized officially, so to speak, as the joint rulers of the commonwealth, as the governing "triumvirs". Pompeius according to public opinion occupied decidedly the first place. It was he who was called by the Optimates the "private dictato"; it was before him that Cicero prostrated himself in vain; against him were directed the sharpest sarcasms in the wall-placards of Bibulus, and the most envenomed arrows of the talk in the saloons of the opposition. This was only to be expected. According to the facts before the public Pompeius was indisputably the first general of his time; Caesar was a dexterous party-leader and party-orator, of undeniable talents, but as notoriously of unwarlike and indeed of effeminate temperament. Such opinions had been long current; it could not be expected of the rabble of quality that it should trouble itself about the real state of things and abandon once established platitudes because of obscure feats of heroism on the Tagus. Caesar evidently played in the league the mere part of the adjutant who executed for his chief the work which Flavius, Afranius, and other less capable instruments had attempted and not performed. Even his governorship seemed not to alter this state of things. Afranius had but recently occupied a very similar position, without thereby acquiring any special importance; several provinces at once had been of late years repeatedly placed under one governor, and often far more than four legions had been united in one hand; as matters were again quiet beyond the Alps and prince Ariovistus was recognized by the Romans as a friend and neighbour, there was no prospect of conducting a war of any moment there. It was natural to compare the position which Pompeius had obtained by the Gabinio-Manilian law with that which Caesar had obtained by the Vatinian; but the comparison did not turn out to Caesar's advantage. Pompeius ruled over nearly the whole Roman empire; Caesar over two provinces. Pompeius had the soldiers and the treasures of the state almost absolutely at his disposal; Caesar had only the sums assigned to him and an army of 24,000 men. It was left to Pompeius himself to fix the point of time for his retirement; Caesar's command was secured to him for a long period no doubt, but yet only for a limited term.

Pompeius, in fine, had been entrusted with the most important undertakings by sea and land; Caesar was sent to the north, to watch over the capital from upper Italy and to take care that Pompeius should rule it undisturbed.

But when Pompeius was appointed by the coalition to be ruler of the capital, he undertook a task far exceeding his powers. Pompeius understood nothing further of ruling than may be summed up in the word of command. The waves of agitation in the capital were swelled at once by past and by future revolutions; the problem of ruling this city - which in every respect might be compared to the Paris of the nineteenth century - without an armed force was infinitely difficult, and for that stiff and stately pattern-soldier altogether insoluble. Very soon matters reached such a pitch that friends and foes, both equally inconvenient to him, could, so far as he was concerned, do what they pleased; after Caesar's departure from Rome the coalition ruled doubtless still the destinies of the world, but not the streets of the capital.

The senate too, to whom there still belonged a sort of nominal government, allowed things in the capital to follow their natural course; partly because the section of this body controlled by the coalition lacked the instructions of the regents, partly because the angry opposition kept aloof out of indifference or pessimism, but chiefly because the whole aristocratic corporation began to feel at any rate, if not to comprehend, its utter impotence. For the moment therefore there was nowhere at Rome any power of resistance in any sort of government, nowhere a real authority. Men were living in an interregnum between the ruin of the aristocratic, and the rise of the military, rule; and, if the Roman commonwealth has presented all the different political functions and organizations more purely and normally than any other in ancient or modern times, it has also exhibited political disorganization-anarchy - with an unenviable clearness. It is a strange coincidence that in the same years, in which Caesar was creating beyond the Alps a workto last for ever, there was enacted in Rome one of the most extravagant political farces that was ever produced upon the stage of the world's history. The new regent of the commonwealth did not rule, but shut himself up in his house and sulked in silence.

The former half-deposed government likewise did not rule, but sighed, sometimes in private amidst the confidential circles of the villas, sometimes in chorus in the senate-house. The portion of the burgesses which had still at heart freedom and order was disgusted with the reign of confusion, but utterly without leaders and counsel it maintained a passive attitude-not merely avoiding all political activity, but keeping aloof, as far as possible, from the political Sodom itself.