Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/359

50 B.C.] or even while he sits quiet, if only his health be spared." The first dear statement that Civil War is impending comes in the month of September from Cicero's keen-witted correspondent Cælius. "Unless," he writes, one or other of them is shipped off to the Parthian war, I see that a mighty conflict is at hand, which must be decided by cold steel. Both the champions are full of determination and amply equipped. If we were not the stake which is being played for, this would be a grand and delicious spectacle that Fortune is preparing for us."

Men were slowly ranging themselves on the one side or the other, under the influence of motives as various as their characters. "Pompey," writes Cælius, "will have the Senate and the jurors, Cæsar all who are in peril or whose outlook is bad." Suetonius tells us that Cæsar had spared no money and no pains to provide himself with partisans against the day of conflict. "All those who were in his suite, and a large portion of the Senate besides, were bound to him by loans without interest, or at very light charges. Men of other ranks who visited him, either with or without invitation, at his headquarters, were gratified by handsome donations, which were extended even to the freedmen and slaves of each, according as they had influence with their patron or master. Further he was the sole resort of debtors and persons threatened with prosecution and of spendthrift youths; only to those who