Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/200

170 their private interests and animosities and prejudices to the pursuit of a sane and consistent policy; and Pompey, the leader of Cicero's choice, was by no means equal to the difficult and delicate part which he had to play.

The most obvious and pressing danger to liberty was however for the moment averted. With the outraged tribune in his camp, Pompey was furnished with the same sort of pretext for armed rebellion as that of which Cæsar availed himself, when he crossed the Rubicon thirteen years later. Of the action of Cæsar Plutarch pithily remarks, that Cæsar was far too sensible a man to have gone to war to redress the wrongs of the tribunes, if he had not made up his mind for war on other grounds. The same may be said of Pompey on the earlier occasion. The real question which he had to decide was whether the object of his own policy could be attained by espousing the tribune's quarrel. If the prize for which Pompey was seeking had been the same which Cæsar afterwards won, if Pompey had desired to found a despotism for himself on the ruins of Roman liberty, then unquestionably success was within his grasp. The Republic had an able general in Lucullus, but it had no troops fit to oppose to Pompey's veterans. He was tempted to advance to a field on which victory was certain; but he knew that such a victory would cause the destruction of all the elements of Republican liberty, it would leave him no choice but to rule the Romans by the domination of naked force, and it would imply the renunciation of