Agrarian laws were threatened, and Pompey himself was most
eager to see his soldiers satisfied. Cicero, who had hitherto opposed an
agrarian law with all his violence, discovered now that something might be
said in favor of draining "the sink of the city" [13] and repeopling
Italy. Besides the public advantage, he felt that he would please the
mortified but still popular Pompey; and he lent his help in the Senate to
improving a bill introduced by the tribunes, and endeavoring, though
unsuccessfully, to push it through.
[Sidenote: July, B.C. 60.]
So grateful was Pompey for Cicero's support that he called him, in the
Senate, "the saviour of the world." [14]Cicero was delighted with the
phrase, and began to look to Pompey as a convenient ally. He thought that
he could control and guide him and use his popularity for moderate
measures. Nay, even in his despair of the aristocracy, he began to regard
as not impossible a coalition with Caesar. "You caution me about Pompey,"
he wrote to Atticus in the following July. "Do not suppose that I am
attaching myself to him for my own protection; but the state of things is
such, that if we two disagree the worst misfortunes may be feared. I make
no concessions to him, I seek to make him better, and to cure him of his
popular levity; and now he speaks more highly by far of my actions than of
his own.
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