devoted partisans of Pompey
and the Senate. Caesar, however, gained over Paullus and Curio by large
bribes, and with a lavish hand distributed immense sums of money among
the leading men of Rome. It was proposed in the Senate by the Consul C.
Marcellus that Caesar should lay down his command by the 13th of
November. But this was an unreasonable demand; Caesar's government had
upward of another year to run; and if he had come to Rome as a private
man to sue for the Consulship, there can be no doubt that his life would
have been sacrificed. Cato had declared that he would bring Caesar to
trial as soon as he laid down his command; but the trial would have been
only a mockery, for Pompey was in the neighborhood of the city at the
head of an army, and would have overawed the judges by his soldiery as
at Milo's trial. The Tribune Curio consequently interposed his veto
upon the proposition of Marcellus. The Senate, anxious to diminish the
number of his troops, had, under pretext of a war with the Parthians,
ordered that Pompey and Caesar should each furnish a legion to be sent
into the East. The legion which Pompey intended to devote to this
service was one he had lent to Caesar in B.C. 53, and which he now
accordingly demanded back; and, although Caesar saw that he should thus
be deprived of two legions, which would probably be employed against
himself, he complied with the request. Upon their arrival in Italy, they
were not sent to the East, but were ordered to pass the winter at Capua.
Caesar took up his quarters at Ravenna, the last town in his province
bordering upon Italy.

Though war seemed inevitable, Caesar still showed himself willing to
enter into negotiations with the aristocracy, and accordingly sent Curio
with a letter addressed to the Senate, in which he expressed his
readiness to resign his command if Pompey would do the same. Curio
arrived at Rome on the 1st of January, B.C. 49, the day on which the new
Consuls, L. Cornelius Lentulus and C. Claudius Marcellus, entered upon
their office. It was with great difficulty that the Tribunes, M.
Antonius, afterward the well-known Triumvir, and Q. Cassius Longinus,
forced the Senate to allow the letter to be read. After a violent
debate, the motion of Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, was carried, "that
Caesar should disband his army by a certain day, and that if he did not
do so he should be regarded as an enemy of the state." On the 6th of
January the Senate passed the