Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/363

50 B.C.] with Pompey, than to conquer with Cæsar; but what of the questions which I shall find open on my arrival? Whether Cæsar is to be allowed to stand for the consulship in his absence? And whether he must dismiss his army?"

On all the questions at issue Cicero feels that gross blunders have been made. It is too late now to think of defending the commonwealth against Cæsar in his strength. "That cause," he writes, "has nothing wanting to it except a cause." Since it has come to this, he feels that "there is no ship for him, except that one which has Pompey at the helm," but that he will privately use his influence with Pompey for peace. This resolution is recorded on the 6th of December. In a letter to Tiro six weeks later Cicero sums up his proceedings. "For my own part, since I drew near to the city, I have been incessantly planning and speaking and acting for peace; but a strange madness has possessed not only bad men, but even those who are esteemed good, so that all desire to fight, while I cry out in vain that nothing is more wretched than a civil war."

Thus by a strange irony of fate that union of Pompey and the Optimates, which had been the dream of Cicero's politics, realised itself now, when it was too late, and under circumstances which moved him to despair.

After stormy discussions during the first days of the new year, the Senate on the 7th of January met