to the support of Domitius at Corfinium; and when it comes to Pompey's resolve to leave Italy, he is almost in despair. How can he join Pompey in bearing arms against his country? What does posterity think of Hippias and Tarquin and Coriolanus, who did the same?[1] "Is not his cause then a good one? Nay, it is the best in the world; but it will be played for, mark my words, most foully."[2] Pompey will starve out the Roman People; he will bring hosts of Thracians and Colchians and Armenians to invade Italy; he will ravage, burn, and rob. Again it occurs to him that he is staking too much on a single life, that Pompey is after all a man, that he is subject each year to grave sickness,[3] that a thousand chances might cut him off, "but that our city and nation ought, so far as in us lies, to be preserved to eternity."[4] The threatening language of the Optimates and the prospect of a victory, cruel as that of Sulla, likewise affect him painfully; and it is to be noticed that at this time he is inclined to include Pompey in the same condemnation with his followers on the score of cruelty. Nay, he sometimes writes as if he fancied that Pompey no less than Cæsar was aiming at a despotism,[5] or that he might sacrifice the Republic and Cicero (as he had done at Luca) to Cæsar as the price of a private reconciliation.[6] When all was over, and Cicero had
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49 B.C.]
Cicero's Judgements.
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