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332 confidential agents, were constantly urging Cicero to this course, and protesting that Cæsar would be only too happy to put an end to the war; they likewise enclose letters of Cæsar, appealing to the clemency he has shown as an evidence of his desire for reconciliation. Cicero wrote and published an elaborate letter to Cæsar which he hoped might pave the way for peace; and in the meantime he preserved, so far as might be, the neutral attitude proper to a possible mediator between the parties. "I have refused," he writes, "to be a leader in a civil war, so long as any negotiations for peace are afoot. . . . If there is war, as I think there will be, I shall not be found wanting in my duty."

These last words give a faithful presentation of Cicero's deliberate resolve, and his action never really swerves from the path thus marked out; but in his constant exchange of letters with Atticus, only consolation in this dreary time, we find his mind working over every possible topic of hesitation and anxiety. He criticises Pompey's strategy in a way which reveals his own plentiful ignorance of the art of war. Cicero seems to have thought that military movements could be conducted in obedience to sentimental considerations. He first urged Pompey not to abandon the city of Rome, "his country for which and in which it would have been a noble deed to die." Next he blames him bitterly for not going