military guard, and no advocate dared speak freely. During the next two
years every one saw that Caesar and Pompey must come to blows and that
the resulting war could only lead to autocracy.

The crisis came in January of 49 B.C. when Vergil was twenty years old.
Pompey with the consuls and most of the senators fled southward in
dismay, and in sixty days, hotly pursued by Caesar, was forced to
evacuate Italy. Caesar, eager to make short work of the war, to attack
Spain and Africa while holding the Alpine passes and pressing in pursuit
of Pompey, began to levy new recruits throughout Italy.[4] Vergil also
seems to have been drawn in this draft, since this is apparently the
circumstance mentioned in his thirteenth _Catalepton_. "Draft," however,
may not be the right word, for we do not know whether Caesar at this time
claimed the right to enforce the rules of conscription. In any case, it
is clear from all of Vergil's references to Caesar that the great general
always retained a strong hold upon his imagination. Like most youths who
had beheld Caesar's work in the province close at hand, he was probably
ready to respond to a general appeal for troops, and Labienus' words to
Pompey on the battlefield of Pharsalia make it clear that Caesar's
army was largely composed of Cisalpines. The accounting they gave of
themselves at that battle is evidence enough of the spirit which pervaded
Vergil's fellow provincials. Nor is it unlikely that Vergil himself
took part, for one of the most poignant passages in all his work is the
picture of the dead who lay strewn over the battlefield of Pharsalia.

[Footnote 4: Cic. _Ad Att_. IX. 19, in March.]

It is also probable that Vergil had had some share in the cruises on the
Adriatic conducted by Antony the summer and winter before Pharsalia.
Not only does this poem speak of service on the seas, but his poems