, and generally the whole east. In fact Pharnaces
king of the Bosporus pushed his officiousness so far, that on the news
of the Pharsalian battle he took possession not only of the town
of Phanagoria which several years before had been declared free
by Pompeius, and of the dominions of the Colchian princes confirmed
by him, but even of the kingdom of Little Armenia which Pompeius
had conferred on king Deiotarus. Almost the sole exceptions
to this general submission were the little town of Megara
which allowed itself to be besieged and stormed by the Caesarians,
and Juba king of Numidia, who had for long expected, and after the victory
over Curio expected only with all the greater certainty, that his kingdom
would be annexed by Caesar, and was thus obliged for better or for worse
to abide by the defeated party.

The Aristocracy after the Battle of Pharsalus

In the same way as the client communities submitted to the victor
of Pharsalus, the tail of the constitutional party--all who had
joined it with half a heart or had even, like Marcus Cicero
and his congeners, merely danced around the aristocracy like the witches
around the Brocken--approached to make their peace with the new monarch,
a peace accordingly which his contemptuous indulgence readily
and courteously granted to the petitioners. But the flower
of the defeated party made no compromise. All was over
with the aristocracy; but the aristocrats could never become converted
to monarchy. The highest revelations of humanity are perishable;
the religion once true may become a lie,(34) the polity once fraught
with blessing may become a curse; but even the gospel that is past
still finds confessors, and if such a faith cannot remove mountains
like faith in the living truth, it yet remains true to itself
down to its very end, and does not depart from the realm of the living
till it has dragged its last priests and its last partisans
along with it, and a new generation, freed from those shadows of the past
and the perishing, rules over a world that has renewed its youth.
So it was in Rome. Into whatever abyss of degeneracy the aristocratic
rule had now sunk, it had once been a great political system;
the sacred fire, by which Italy had been conquered and Hannibal
had been vanquished, continued to glow--although somewhat dimmed
and dull--in the Roman nobility so long as that nobility existed,
and rendered a cordial understanding between the men of the old regime
a