His colleague Bibulus, seeing how matters were going, retired to his own house, and there went through a farce of consular enactments.

Caesar carried all his purposes, and the people were content to laugh, dividing him into two personages, and talking of Julius and Caesar as the two Consuls of the year.

It was in this way that he procured to be allotted to him by the people his irregular command in Gaul.

He was to be Proconsul, not for one year, with perhaps a prolongation for two or three, but for an established period of five.

He was to have the great province of Cisalpine Gaul--that is to say, the whole of what we now call Italy, from the foot of the Alps down to a line running from sea to sea just north of Florence.