In this dilemma, Caesar succeeded in making an arrangement with Crassus, who has already been spoken of as a man of unbounded wealth and great ambition, but not possessed of any considerable degree of intellectual power.

Crassus consented to give the necessary security, with an understanding that Caesar was to repay him by exerting his political influence in his favor.

So soon as this arrangement was made, Caesar set off in a sudden and private manner, as if he expected that otherwise some new difficulty would intervene.
[Sidenote: The Swiss hamlet.] He went to Spain by land, passing through Switzerland on the way.

He stopped with his attendants one night at a very insignificant village of shepherds' huts among the mountains.

Struck with the poverty and worthlessness of all they saw in this wretched hamlet, Caesar's friends were wondering whether the jealousy, rivalry, and ambition which reigned among men every where else in the world could find any footing there, when Caesar told them that, for his part, he should rather choose to be first in such a village as that than the second at Rome.