Pompey had triumphed three times, had been Consul at an unnaturally early age with abnormal honors, had been victorious east and west, and was called "Magnus." He did not as yet fear to be overshadowed by Caesar.[235] Cicero was his bugbear.
Mommsen I believe to be right in eschewing the word "Triumvirate." I know no mention of it by any Roman writer as applied to this conspiracy, though Tacitus, Suetonius, and Florus call by that name the later coalition of Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus.

The Langhornes, in translating Plutarch's life of Crassus, speak of the Triumvirate; but Plutarch himself says that Caesar combined "an impregnable stronghold" by joining the three men.[236] Paterculus and Suetonius[237] explain very clearly the nature of the compact, but do not use the term.

There was nothing in the conspiracy entitling it to any official appellation, though, as there were three leading conspirators, that which has been used has been so far appropriate.
[Sidenote: B.C.60, aetat.

47.] Cicero was the bugbear to them all.

That he might have been one of them, if ready to share the plunder and the power, no reader of the history of the time can doubt.