ded, comparatively speaking,
over only a very limited space. It was based essentially
on the province of Upper Italy. This region was not merely
the most populous of all the districts of Italy, but also devoted
to the cause of the democracy as its own. The feeling
which prevailed there is shown by the conduct of a division of recruits
from Opitergium (Oderzo in the delegation of Treviso), which not long
after the outbreak of the war in the Illyrian waters, surrounded
on a wretched raft by the war-vessels of the enemy, allowed themselves
to be shot at during the whole day down to sunset without surrendering,
and, such of them as had escaped the missiles, put themselves to death
with their own hands during the following night. It is easy to conceive
what might be expected of such a population. As they had already
granted to Caesar the means of more than doubling his original army,
so after the outbreak of the civil war recruits presented themselves
in great numbers for the ample levies that were immediately instituted.

Italy

In Italy proper, on the other hand, the influence of Caesar was not
even remotely to be compared to that of his opponents. Although
he had the skill by dexterous manoeuvres to put the Catonian party
in the wrong, and had sufficiently commended the rectitude
of his cause to all who wished for a pretext with a good conscience
either to remain neutral, like the majority of the senate,
or to embrace his side, like his soldiers and the Transpadanes,
the mass of the burgesses naturally did not allow themselves to be misled
by these things and, when the commandant of Gaul put his legions
in motion against Rome, they beheld--despite all formal explanations
as to law--in Cato and Pompeius the defenders of the legitimate republic,
in Caesar the democratic usurper. People in general moreover
expected from the nephew of Marius, the son-in-law of Cinna,
the ally of Catilina, a repetition of the Marian and Cinnan horrors,
a realization of the saturnalia of anarchy projected by Catilina;
and though Caesar certainly gained allies through this expectation--
so that the political refugees immediately put themselves in a body
at his disposal, the ruined men saw in him their deliverer,
and the lowest ranks of the rabble in the capital and country towns
were thrown into a ferment on the news of his advance,--these belonged
to the class of friends who are more dangerous than foes.

Provinces

In the province