had occasion to pay a visit to the towns in northern Italy
to thank them for their support of Mark Antony, his candidate for the
tribunate, and the wild rumor flew to Rome that he had advanced four
legions to Placentia,[137] that his march on the city had begun, and
tumult and confusion followed. It was in these circumstances that the
consul Marcellus moved in the senate that successors be sent to take over
Caesar's provinces, but the motion was blocked by the veto of Curio,
whereupon the consul cried out: "If I am prevented by the vote of the
senate from taking steps for the public safety, I will take such steps on
my own responsibility as consul." After saying this he darted out of the
senate and proceeded to the suburbs with his colleague, where he presented
a sword to Pompey, and said: "My colleague and I command you to march
against Caesar in behalf of your country, and we give you for this purpose
the army now at Capua, or in any other part of Italy, and whatever
additional forces you choose to levy."[138] Curio had accomplished his
purpose. He had shown that Pompey as well as Caesar was a menace to the
state; he had prevented Caesar's recall; he had shown Antony, who was to
succeed him in the tribunate, how to exasperate the senate into using
coercive measures against his sacrosanct person as tribune and thus
justify Caesar's course in the war, and he had goaded the Conservatives
into taking the first overt step in the war by commissioning Pompey to
begin a campaign against Caesar without any authorization from the senate
or the people.

The news of the unconstitutional step taken by Marcellus and Pompey
reached Rome December 19 or 20. Curio's work as tribune was done, and on
the twenty-first of the month he set out for the North to join his leader.
The senate would be called together by the new consuls on January 1, and
since, before the reform in the calendar, December had only twenty-nine
days, there were left only eight days for Curio to reach Caesar's
head-quarters, lay the situation before him, and return to the city with
his reply. Ravenna, where Caesar had his head-quarters, was two hundred and
forty miles from Rome. He covered the distance, apparently, in three days,
spent perhaps two days with Caesar, and was back in Rome again for the
meeting of the senate on the morning of January 1. Consequently, he
travelled at the rate of seventy-five or eighty miles a day, twice the
rate of the ordinary Roman couri