Sulla, with a purpose, had seized it, yet seems never to have got beyond the old Roman idea of a temporary Dictatorship.

The old Roman horror of a king was present to these Romans, even after they had become kings.

Pompey, no doubt, liked to be first, and when he came back from the East thought that by his deeds he was first, easily first.

Whether Consul year after year, as Marius had been, or Dictator, as Sulla had been, or Imperator, with a running command over all the Romans, it was his idea still to adhere to the forms of the Republic.

Mommsen, foreseeing--if an historian can be said to foresee the future from his standing-point in the past--that a master was to come for the Roman Empire, and giving all his sympathies to the Caesarean idea, despises Pompey because Pompey would not pick up the diadem.