should be more delay, they would abandon the camp and disperse; and at
this the leaders, though against their will, went to meet the foe.

[-39-] You might not unnaturally guess that this struggle proved
tremendous and surpassed all previous civil conflicts of the Romans.
This was not because these contestants excelled those of the old days in
either the number or the valor of the warriors, for far larger masses
and braver men than they had fought on many fields, but because on this
occasion they contended for liberty and for democracy as never before.
And they came to blows with one another again later just as they had
previously. But the subsequent struggles they carried on to see to whom
they should belong: on this occasion the one side was trying to bring
them into subjection to sovereignty, the other side into a state of
autonomy. Hence the people never attained again to the absolute right
of free speech, in spite of being vanquished by no foreign nation (the
subject population and the allied nations then present on both sides were
merely a kind of complement of the citizen army): but the people at once
gained the mastery over and fell into subjection to itself; it defeated
itself and was defeated; and in that effort it exhausted the democratic
element and strengthened the monarchical. I do not say that the people's
defeat at that time was not beneficial. (What else can one say regarding
those who fought on both sides than that the Romans were conquered and
Caesar was victorious?) They were no longer capable of concord in the
established form of government; for it is impossible for an unadulterated
democracy that has grown to acquire domains of such vast size to have
the faculty of moderation. After undertaking many similar conflicts
repeatedly, one after another, they would certainly some day have been
either enslaved or ruined.

[-40-] We may infer also from the portents which appeared to them on that