Pompey

Therefore opposite counsels prevailed in the same day, and it was impossible for Pompey to get any true information about the enemy, since many reported to him whatever they happened to hear, and then were vexed if he did not believe them. Under these circumstances he issued an edict in which he recognized a state of civil war, ordered all the senators to follow him, declared that he would regard as a partisan of Caesar any one who remained behind, and late in the evening left the city.

The consuls also fled, without even making the sacrifices customary before a war. But even amid the actual terrors of the hour Pompey was a man to be envied for the universal good will felt towards him, because, though many blamed his generalship, there was no one who hated the general. Indeed, one would have found that those who fled the city for the sake of liberty were not so numerous as those who did so because they were unable to forsake Pompey.

A few days after this, Caesar entered and took possession of Rome. He treated everybody with kindness and calmed their fears, except that when Metellus, one of the tribunes, attempted to prevent him from taking money out of the public treasury, he threatened to kill him, and added to the threat a still harsher speech, namely, that it was easier for him to execute it than to utter it.[*](Cf. the Caesar, xxxv. 4. )

Having thus driven away Metellus, he took what he wanted, and then set out in pursuit of Pompey, being anxious to drive him out of Italy before his forces came back from Spain. But Pompey, having taken possession of Brundisium, where he found plenty of transports, immediately embarked the consuls, and with them thirty cohorts of soldiers, and sent them before him to Dyrrachium; Scipio his father-in-law, however, and Gnaeus his son, he sent to Syria to raise a fleet.