Pompey

Having decided the matter in this way, Pompey set out in pursuit of Caesar, determined to avoid a battle, but to keep him under siege and harass him with lack of supplies by following close upon him. He had reasons for thinking this the best course, and besides, a saying current among the cavalry reached his ears, to the effect that as soon as they had routed Caesar they must put down Pompey himself also.

And some say this was also the reason why Pompey called upon Cato for no service of any importance, but even when marching against Caesar left him at the coast in charge of the baggage, fearing lest, if Caesar should be taken off, he himself also might be forced by Cato to lay down his command at once. While he was thus quietly following the enemy he was loudly denounced, and charges were rife that he was directing his campaign, not against Caesar, but against his country and the senate, in order that he might always be in office and never cease to have for his attendants and guards men who claimed to rule the world.

Domitius Ahenobarbus, too, by calling him Agamemnon, and King of Kings, made him odious. And Favonius was no less displeasing to him than those who used a bolder speech, when he bawled out his untimely jest: O men, this year, also, shall we eat no figs of Tusculum? And Lucius Afranius, who lay under a charge of treachery for having lost his forces in Spain,[*](He was accused of taking a bribe from Caesar for the surrender of the Spains (see the Caesar, xli. 2).) on seeing Pompey now avoiding a battle with Caesar, said he was astonished that his accusers did not go forth and fight this trafficker in provinces.

With these and many similar speeches they forced Pompey from his settled purpose,—a man who was a slave to fame and loath to disappoint his friends,—and dragged him into following after their own hopes and impulses, abandoning his best laid plans, a thing which even in the master of a ship, to say nothing of a general in sole command of so many nations and armies, would have been unbecoming.

Pompey himself approved of those physicians who never gratify the morbid desires of their patients, and yet he yielded to the diseased passion of his followers, for fear of offending if he tried to heal and save them. For how can one say that those men were sound and well, some of whom were already going about among the soldiers and canvassing for consulships and praetorships, while Spinther, Domitius, and Scipio were quarrelling, scheming, and conspiring over the pontificate of Caesar,[*](Since 63 B.C., Caesar had been pontifex maximus. Cf. Bell. Civ. iii. 83. )

just as though Tigranes the Armenian were encamped over against them, or the king of the Nabataeans, and not that Caesar, and that army, who had taken by storm a thousand cities, subdued more than three hundred nations, and fought unvanquished with Germans and Gauls in more battles than one could number, taking a hundred times ten thousand prisoners, and slaying as many, after routing them on the battle-field.