Pompey. He was certainly influenced in part by personal attachment: Pompey
seems to have exercised a degree of fascination over his weakness. He knew
Pompey's indecision of character, and confessed that Caesar was "a prodigy
of energy;" but though the former showed little liking for him, he clung
to him nevertheless. He foreboded that, let the contest end which way
it would, "the result would certainly be a despotism". He foresaw that
Pompey's real designs were as dangerous to the liberties of Rome as any of
which Caesar could be suspected. "_Sullaturit animus_", he says of
him in one of his letters, coining a verb to put his idea strongly--"he
wants to be like Sulla". And it was no more than the truth. He found out
afterwards, as he tells Atticus, that proscription-lists of all Caesar's
adherents had been prepared by Pompey and his partisans, and that his old
friend's name figured as one of the victims. Only this makes it possible
to forgive him for the little feeling that he showed when he heard of
Pompey's own miserable end.

Cicero's conduct and motives at this eventful crisis have been discussed
over and over again. It may be questioned whether at this date we are in
any position to pass more than a very cautious and general judgment upon
them. We want all the "state papers" and political correspondence of
the day--not Cicero's letters only, but those of Caesar and Pompey and
Lentulus, and much information besides that was never trusted to pen or
paper--in order to lay down with any accuracy the course which a really
unselfish patriot could have taken. But there seems little reason to
accuse Cicero of double-dealing or trimming in the worst sense. His policy
was unquestionably, from first to last, a policy of expedients. But
expediency is, and must be more or less, the watchword of a statesman. If
he would practically serve his country, he must do to some extent what
Cicero professed to do--make friends with those in power. "_Sic
vivitur_"--"So goes the world;" "_Tempori serviendum est_"--"We