er.

We cannot regret too keenly the fact that we have no account of Curio's
meeting with Caesar, and his recital to Caesar of the course of events in
Rome. In drawing up the document which was prepared at this conference,
Caesar must have been largely influenced by the intimate knowledge which
Curio had of conditions in the capital, and of the temper of the senate.
It was an ultimatum, and, when Curio presented it to the senate, that body
accepted the challenge, and called upon Caesar to lay down his command on a
specified date or be declared a public enemy. Caesar replied by crossing
the border of his province and occupying one town after another in
northern Italy in rapid succession. All this had been agreed upon in the
meeting between Curio and Caesar, and Velleius Paterculus[139] is probably
right in putting the responsibility for the war largely on the shoulders
of Curio, who, as he says, brought to naught the fair terms of peace which
Caesar was ready to propose and Pompey to accept. The whole situation
points to the conclusion that Caesar did not desire war, and was not
prepared for it. Had he anticipated its immediate outbreak, he would
scarcely have let it arise when he had only one legion with him on the
border, while his other ten legions were a long distance away.

From the outset Curio took an active part in the war which he had done so
much to bring about, and it was an appropriate thing that the closing
events in his life should have been recorded for us by his great patron,
Caesar, in his narrative of the Civil War. On the 18th or 19th of January,
within ten days of the crossing of the Rubicon, we hear of his being sent
with a body of troops to occupy Iguvium,[140] and a month later he is in
charge of one of the investing camps before the stronghold of
Corfinium.[141] With the fall of Corfinium, on the 21st of February,
Caesar's rapid march southward began, which swept the Pompeians out of
Italy within a month and gave Caesar complete control of the peninsula. In
that brilliant campaign Curio undoubtedly took an active part, for at the
close of it Caesar gave him an independent commission for the occupation of
Sicily and northern Africa. No more important command could have been
given him, for Sicily and Africa were the granaries of Rome, and if the
Pompeians continued to hold them, the Caesarians in Italy might be starved
into submission. To this ill-fated campaign Caesar devotes the latter half
of the