ld be urged immediately to depart for Spain, the consuls refused--
as they in the capacity of presiding officers were entitled to do--
to let a vote take place. Even the proposal of one of their
most decided partisans who was simply not so blind to the military
position of affairs as his party, Marcus Marcellus--to defer
the determination till the Italian levy en masse could be under arms
and could protect the senate--was not allowed to be brought to a vote.
Pompeius caused it to be declared through his usual organ,
Quintus Scipio, that he was resolved to take up the cause of the senate
now or never, and that he would let it drop if they longer delayed.
The consul Lentulus said in plain terms that even the decree
of the senate was no longer of consequence, and that, if it
should persevere in its servility, he would act of himself
and with his powerful friends take the farther steps necessary.
Thus overawed, the majority decreed what was commanded--
that Caesar should at a definite and not distant day give up
Transalpine Gaul to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Cisalpine Gaul
to Marcus Servilius Nonianus, and should dismiss his army,
failing which he should be esteemed a traitor. When the tribunes
of Caesar's party made use of their right of veto against this resolution,
not only were they, as they at least asserted, threatened
in the senate-house itself by the swords of Pompeian soldiers,
and forced, in order to save their lives, to flee in slaves'
clothing from the capital; but the now sufficiently overawed senate
treated their formally quite constitutional interference
as an attempt at revolution, declared the country in danger,
and in the usual forms called the whole burgesses to take up arms,
and all magistrates faithful to the constitution to place themselves
at the head of the armed (7 Jan. 705).

Caesar Marches into Italy

Now it was enough. When Caesar was informed by the tribunes
who had fled to his camp entreating protection as to the reception
which his proposals had met with in the capital, he called together
the soldiers of the thirteenth legion, which had meanwhile arrived
from its cantonments near Tergeste (Trieste) at Ravenna,
and unfolded before them the state of things. It was not merely
the man of genius versed in the knowledge and skilled in the control
of men's hearts, whose brilliant eloquence shone forth and glowed
in this agitating crisis of his own and the world's destiny;
nor merely the