Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/14

 Cato, who met him with the remark that he would have been much more useful to his country in Italy, and that his joining Pompey's army was quite unnecessary. Cicero must have felt this a mortifying result of what seemed to himself an heroic resolve, arrived at after months of painful indecision. He avenged himself by indulging in bitter epigrams and sarcastic comments, which no doubt amused his hearers, but did not tend to make him agreeable to Pompey, who, however, was forced to borrow a considerable sum of money of him&#8212;-the savings of his provincial government, which he had deposited with some companies of publicani in Asia. Such an obligation does not make it easier to endure caustic wit in a creditor, and there is no doubt that Cicero was a disturbing element in the camp, and made himself thoroughly disagreeable. His defence of himself on this point in the second Philippic (§§ 37-39) is not very convincing. But we are more in sympathy with other reasons for discontent, which he dwelt upon a few years later in letters to his friends. It was not only the hopelessness of the military position and the inferiority of Pompey's miscellaneous army which disgusted him; it was the evident reasons actuating the aristocratic followers of Pompey. Not only did they desire a bloody revenge on the opposite party, and the attainment of offices and honours from which their opponents were to be ousted; but they were for the most part deeply involved in debt, and were looking forward to confiscations on a vast scale to recruit their bankrupt fortunes. It was the old story of the "Lucerian talk" which had revolted Cicero in Italy at the beginning of the war. It became more and more plain to him that there would be little to choose between the victory of either side, as far as the amount of suffering and injustice inflicted on Roman society was concerned. His just criticism on Pompey's mistake after winning the battle of Dyrrachium, in allowing himself to be drawn away from his base of supplies, and with his raw soldiers giving battle to Cæsar's veterans, may very well be a criticism conceived after the event, or gathered from the remarks of others. But it is at least plain that he recognized the decisive nature of the defeat at Pharsalia, and