Page:The Commentaries of Caesar.djvu/187

 revelled with Cleopatra at Alexandria, and was becoming a monarch.

These were the campaigns of the year 47, and the record of them is made in the Commentary "De Bello Alexandrino."

In the mean time things have not been going altogether smoothly for Cæsar in Italy, although his friends at Rome have made him Dictator. His soldiers have mutinied against their officers, and against his authority; and a great company of Pompeians is collected in that province of Africa in which poor Curio was conquered by Juba,—when Juba had Roman senators walking in his train, and Cæsar's army was destroyed. The province called by the name of Africa lay just opposite to Sicily, and was blessed with that Roman civilisation which belonged to the possessions of the Republic which were nearest to Rome, the great centre of all things. It is now the stronghold of the Republican faction—as being the one spot of Roman ground in which Cæsar had failed of success. Pompey, indeed, is no more, but Pompey's two sons are here,—and Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, whom Pompey had joined with himself in the command at Pharsalus. Labienus is here, who, since he turned from Cæsar, has been more Pompeian than Pompey himself; and Afranius, to whom Cæsar was so kind in Spain; and Petreius and King Juba,—of whom a joint story has yet to be told; and Varus, who held the province against Curio;—and last of all there is that tower of strength, the great Cato, the most virtuous and impracticable of men, who in spite of his virtue, is always in the wrong, and of