ings. This course was chiefly followed
by the partisans of lesser note; but the able Marcus Marcellus,
the same who had brought about the rupture with Caesar,(35)
was to be found among these judicious persons and voluntarily
banished himself to Lesbos. In the majority, however, of the genuine
aristocracy passion was more powerful than cool reflection;
along with which, no doubt, self-deceptions as to success
being still possible and apprehensions of the inevitable
vengeance of the victor variously co-operated.

Cato

No one probably formed a judgment as to the situation of affairs
with so painful a clearness, and so free from fear or hope
on his own account, as Marcus Cato. Completely convinced
that after the days of Ilerda and Pharsalus the monarchy was inevitable,
and morally firm enough to confess to himself this bitter truth
and to act in accordance with it, he hesitated for a moment whether
the constitutional party ought at all to continue a war, which would
necessarily require sacrifices for a lost cause on the part of many
who did not know why they offered them. And when he resolved
to fight against the monarchy not for victory, but for a speedier
and more honourable fall, he yet sought as far as possible to draw
no one into this war, who chose to survive the fall of the republic
and to be reconciled to monarchy. He conceived that, so long
as the republic had been merely threatened, it was a right and a duty
to compel the lukewarm and bad citizen to take part in the struggle;
but that now it was senseless and cruel to compel the individual
to share the ruin of the lost republic. Not only did he himself
discharge every one who desired to return to Italy; but when the wildest
of the wild partisans, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger, insisted
on the execution of these people and of Cicero in particular:
it was Cato alone who by his moral authority prevented it.

Pompeius

Pompeius also had no desire for peace. Had he been a man
who deserved to hold the position which he occupied, we might suppose
him to have perceived that he who aspires to a crown cannot return
to the beaten track of ordinary existence, and that there is
accordingly no place left on earth for one who has failed.
But Pompeius was hardly too noble-minded to ask a favour,
which the victor would have been perhaps magnanimous enough
not to refuse to him; on the contrary, he was probably too mean
to do so. Whether it was that he could not make u