n it; with Milo he felt it to be sufficient to make the
outside world believe it. When Pompey triumphed, 70 B.C., and was made
Consul for the second time, he was already old in glory--when Cicero had
not as yet spoken those two orations against Verres which had made the
speaking of another impossible. Pompey, we may say, had never been
young. Cicero was never old. There was no moment in his life in which
Cicero was not able to laugh with the Curios and the Caeliuses behind the
back of the great man. There was no moment in which Pompey could have
done so. He who has stepped from his cradle on to the world's high
places has lost the view of those things which are only to be seen by
idle and luxurious young men of the day. Cicero did not live for many
years beyond Pompey, but I doubt whether he did not know infinitely more
of men. To Pompey it had been given to rule them; but to Cicero to live
with them.

CHAPTER VI.

_AFTER THE BATTLE._

[Sidenote: B.C. 48, aetat. 59.]

In the autumn of this year Cicero had himself landed at Brundisium. He
remained nearly a year at Brundisium, and it is melancholy to think how
sad and how long must have been the days with him. He had no country
when he reached the nearest Italian port; it was all Caesar's, and Caesar
was his enemy. There had been a struggle for the masterdom between two
men, and of the two the one had beaten with whom Cicero had not ranged
himself. He had known how it would be. All the Getae, and the men of
Colchis, and the Armenians, all the lovers of the fish-ponds and those
who preferred the delicacies of Baiae to the work of the Forum, all who
had been taught to think that there were provinces in order that they
might plunder, men who never dreamed of a country but to sell it, all
those whom Caesar was determined either to drive out of Italy or keep
there in obedience to himself, had been brought together in vain. We
already know, when we begin to read the story, how it will be with them
and with Caesar. On Caesar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to
the very brink of certainty; on the other is that fainting spirit of
despair which no battalions can assuage. We hear of no Scaeva and of no
Crastinus on Pompey's side. Men change their nature under such leading
as was that of Caesar. The inferior men become heroic by contact with the
hero; but such heroes when they come are like great gouts of blood
dabbled down upon a fair cloth. Who that has eyes t