back. The order was given for departure; at the head
of his vanguard Caesar crossed the narrow brook which separated
his province from Italy, and which the constitution forbade
the proconsul of Gaul to pass. When after nine years' absence
he trod once more the soil of his native land, he trod at the same time
the path of revolution. "The die was cast."

CHAPTER X

Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus

The Resources on Either Side

Arms were thus to decide which of the two men who had hitherto
jointly ruled Rome was now to be its first sole ruler. Let us see
what were the comparative resources at the disposal of Caesar
and Pompeius for the waging of the impending war.

Caesar's Absolute Power within His Party

Caesar's power rested primarily on the wholly unlimited authority
which he enjoyed within his party. If the ideas of democracy
and of monarchy met together in it, this was not the result
of a coalition which had been accidentally entered into and might be
accidentally dissolved; on the contrary it was involved
in the very essence of a democracy without a representative constitution,
that democracy and monarchy should find in Caesar at once their highest
and ultimate expression. In political as in military matters
throughout the first and the final decision lay with Caesar.
However high the honour in which he held any serviceable instrument,
it remained an instrument still; Caesar stood, in his own party
without confederates, surrounded only by military-political
adjutants, who as a rule had risen from the army and as soldiers
were trained never to ask the reason and purpose of any thing,
but unconditionally to obey. On this account especially,
at the decisive moment when the civil war began, of all the officers
and soldiers of Caesar one alone refused him obedience;
and the circumstance that that one was precisely the foremost
of them all, serves simply to confirm this view of the relation
of Caesar to his adherents.

Labienus

Titus Labienus had shared with Caesar all the troubles of the dark times
of Catilina(1) as well as all the lustre of the Gallic career of victory,
had regularly held independent command, and frequently led half the army;
as he was the oldest, ablest, and most faithful of Caesar's adjutants,
he was beyond question also highest in position and highest in honour.
As late as in 704 Caesar had entrusted to him the supreme command
in Cisalpine Gaul, in order partly t