Pompeius personally undertook to watch over Italy, where at the head of the commission of twenty he prosecuted the execution of the agrarian law and furnished nearly 20,000 burgesses, in great part old soldiers from his army, with land in the territory of Capua.

Caesar's north-Italian legions served to back him against the opposition in the capital.

There existed no prospect, immediately at least, of a rupture among the holders of power themselves.
The laws issued by Caesar as consul, in the maintenance of which Pompeius was at least as much interested as Caesar, formed a guarantee for the continuance of the breach between Pompeius and the aristocracy--whose heads, and Cato in particular, continued to treat these laws as null--and thereby a guarantee for the subsistence of the coalition.

Moreover, the personal bonds of connection between its chiefs were drawn closer.

Caesar had honestly and faithfully kept his word to his confederates without curtailing or cheating them of what he had promised, and in particular had fought to secure the agrarian law proposed in the interest of Pompeius, just as if the case had been his own, with dexterity and energy; Pompeius was not insensible to upright dealing and good faith, and was kindly disposed towards the man who had helped him to get quit at a blow of the sorry part of a suppliant which he had been playing for three years.