" [12] Cicero had soon to
learn that the second consulship was not so certain. On the 29th he had
another long conversation with Pompey.
"Is there hope of peace?" he wrote, in reporting what had passed. "So far
as I can gather from his very full expressions to me, he does not desire
it. For he thinks thus: If Caesar be made consul, even after he has parted
from his army, the constitution will be at an end. He thinks also that
when Caesar hears of the preparations against him, he will drop the
consulship for this year, to keep his province and his troops. Should he
be so insane as to try extremities, Pompey holds him in utter contempt. I
thought, when he was speaking, of the uncertainties of war; but I was
relieved to hear a man of courage and experience talk like a statesman of
the dangers of an insincere settlement.--Not only he does not seek for
peace, but he seems to fear it.--My own vexation is, that I must pay
Caesar my debt, and spend thus what I had set apart for my triumph. It is
indecent to owe money to a political antagonist." [13]
Events were hurrying on. Cicero entered Rome the first week in January, to
find that the Senate had begun work in earnest. Curio had returned from
Ravenna with a letter from Caesar. He had offered three alternatives.
First, that the agreement already made might stand, and that he might be
nominated, in his absence, for the consulship; or that when he left his
army, Pompey should disband his Italian legions; or, lastly, that he
should hand over Transalpine Gaul to his successor, with eight of his ten
legions, himself keeping the north of Italy and Illyria with two, until
his election.
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