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M. Calpurnius Bibulus, a staunch aristocrat, but a fainéant consul.

§ 3. Caesar, having effected the reconciliation of Pompey and Crassus, now invited Cicero to join them, but he preferred to retain his independence, and the coalition (incorrectly called the first triumvirate) of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, to which he might have belonged, was established without him.

§ 1. Caesar, having failed to carry through the Senate an agrarian law providing inter alia for Pompey's veterans, brought another law before the assembly of the people distributing the ager Campanus among those veterans, and this law was carried despite the opposition of the consul Bibulus and some of the tribunes.

§ 2. P. Vatinius, one of the most unprincipled men of the time, was a humble hireling of Caesar, and now as tribune he carried the famous Lex Vatinia, which gave Caesar the command of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum with three legions for five years; and the Senate, on the motion of Pompey (now, by his marriage with Julia, Caesar's son-in-law), added Transalpine Gaul to his command, with a fourth legion.

§ 3. In March Cicero, in defending his former colleague C. Antonius, who was accused of extortion as proconsul of Macedonia, attacked the triumvirate, causing grave offence to Caesar, who immediately