TALES OF THE ROMANS
in the midst of his guards, and embraced the newcomer with much good-will. Brutus waited calmly for the trial of strength. The day before the battle of Pharsalia, while all the other men in the camp were talking of the fight that was coming, he sat quietly reading and writing.
Pompey lost the battle. Cæsar's Romans were clambering up the mounds that formed the walls of Pompey's camp. Brutus fled through one of the entrances on the opposite side to the storming party. A marsh was near. Amid the reeds he forced his way, his feet slipping in the pools of muddy water; and so he escaped. Not long afterward he wrote a letter to Cæsar, and became for a time his close friend.
But only for a time. Brutus hated the idea of one man, however wise, being lord of the Roman world, though I do not think he could have explained how so large an empire was to be ruled better. Many other Roman patricians had like thoughts. They urged him to resist Cæsar. He found papers laid on his chair in the senate-house, on which were written these words:
“Brutus, thou sleepest! Thou art not a true Brutus.”
And, as you know, his was one of the daggers that killed the great general.
Nor did he care to submit to young Octavius, the nephew of Caesar. He collected an army in
162
