Caesar's daredevils, who ate coarse bread
from which the former recoiled, and who, when that failed, devoured
even roots and swore that they would rather chew the bark of trees
than desist from the enemy. While, moreover, the action
of Pompeius was hampered by the necessity of having regard
to the authority of a collegiate board personally disinclined to him,
this embarrassment was singularly increased when the senate of emigrants
took up its abode almost in his very headquarters and all the venom
of the emigrants now found vent in these senatorial sittings.
Lastly there was nowhere any man of mark, who could have thrown
his own weight into the scale against all these preposterous doings.
Pompeius himself was intellectually far too secondary for that purpose,
and far too hesitating, awkward, and reserved. Marcus Cato
would have had at least the requisite moral authority, and would not
have lacked the good will to support Pompeius with it; but Pompeius,
instead of calling him to his assistance, out of distrustful
jealousy kept him in the background, and preferred for instance
to commit the highly important chief command of the fleet
to the in every respect incapable Marcus Bibulus rather than to Cato.

The Legions of Pompeius

While Pompeius thus treated the political aspect of his position
with his characteristic perversity, and did his best to make
what was already bad in itself still worse, he devoted himself
on the other hand with commendable zeal to his duty of giving military
organization to the considerable but scattered forces of his party.
The flower of his force was composed of the troops brought with him
from Italy, out of which with the supplementary aid of the Illyrian
prisoners of war and the Romans domiciled in Greece five legions
in all were formed. Three others came from the east--the two Syrian
legions formed from the remains of the army of Crassus, and one made up
out of the two weak legions hitherto stationed in Cilicia.
Nothing stood in the way of the withdrawal of these corps of occupation:
because on the one hand the Pompeians had an understanding
with the Parthians, and might even have had an alliance with them
if Pompeius had not indignantly refused to pay them the price
which they demanded for it--the cession of the Syrian province
added by himself to the empire; and on the other hand
Caesar's plan of despatching two legions to Syria, and inducing
the Jews once more to take up arms by m