Strange things,
however, had yet to happen before he was gone.
[Sidenote: B. C. 58.]
It is easy to conceive how the Senate felt at these transactions, how ill
they bore to find themselves superseded and the State managed over their
heads. Fashionable society was equally furious, and the three allies went
by the name of Dynasts, or "Reges Superbi." After resistance had been
abandoned, Cicero came back to Rome to make cynical remarks from which all
parties suffered equally. His special grievance was the want of
consideration which he conceived to have been shown for himself. He mocked
at the Senate; he mocked at Bibulus, whom he particularly abominated; he
mocked at Pompey and the agrarian law. Mockery turned to indignation when
he thought of the ingratitude of the Senate, and his chief consolation in
their discomfiture was that it had fallen on them through the neglect of
their most distinguished member. "I could have saved them if they would
have let me," he said. "I could save them still if I were to try; but I
will go study philosophy in my own family." [2] "Freedom is gone," he
wrote to Atticus; "and if we are to be worse enslaved, we shall bear it.
Our lives and properties are more to us than liberty. We sigh, and we do
not even remonstrate." [3]
Cato, in the desperation of passion, called Pompey a dictator in the
assembly, and barely escaped being killed for his pains.
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