coast to look after the stores, through fear that if Caesar were
destroyed, Cato might forthwith compel him also to lay down his
command. Accordingly as he followed the enemy leisurely he was much
censured and there was a clamour against him, that his object was not
to defeat Caesar by his generalship, but his native country and the
Senate, that he might always keep the command and never give over
having as his attendants and guards those who considered themselves
the masters of the world. Domitius Ahenobarbus also by always calling
him Agamemnon and King of Kings made him odious. Favonius too made
himself no less disagreeable by his scoffing manner than others by the
unseasonable freedom of their language, calling out, "Men, we shall
not eat figs in Tusculum[364] even this year!" Lucius Afranius who had
lost his forces in Iberia and on that account had fallen under the
imputation of treachery, now seeing that Pompeius avoided a battle,
said he was surprised that those who accused him did not advance and
fight against the trafficker in provinces. By these and like
expressions often repeated they at last prevailed over Pompeius, a man
who was a slave to public fame and the opinion of his friends, and
drew him on to follow their own hopes and impetuosity and to give up
the best considered plans, a thing which would have been unbefitting
even in the master of a vessel, to say nothing of the
commander-in-chief of so many nations and forces. Pompeius approved of
the physician who never gratifies the desires of his patients, and yet
he yielded to military advisers who were in a diseased state, through
fear of offending if he adopted healing measures. And how can one say
those men were in a healthy state, some of whom were going about among
the troops and already canvassing for consulships and praetorships, and
Spinther and Domitius[365] and Scipio were disputing and quarrelling
about the priesthood of Caesar and canvassing, just as if Tigranes the
Armenian were encamped by them or the King of the Nabathaeans, and not
that Caesar and that force with which he had taken a thousand cities by
storm, and subdued above three hundred nations, and had fought with
Germans and Gauls unvanquished in more battles than could be counted,
and had taken a hundred times ten thousand prisoners, and had
slaughtered as many after routing them in pitched battles.

LXVIII. However, by importunity and agitation, after the army had
descended into th