"You ask what Pompey means to do," he wrote to Atticus. "I do not think he
knows himself. Certainly none of us know.--It is all panic and blunder. We
are uncertain whether he will make a stand, or leave Italy. If he stays, I
fear his army is too unreliable. If not, where will he go, and how and
what are his plans? Like you, I am afraid that Caesar will be a Phalaris,
and that we may expect the very worst. The flight of the Senate, the
departure of the magistrates, the closing of the treasury, will not stop
him.--I am broken-hearted; so ill-advisedly, so against all my counsels,
the whole business has been conducted. Shall I turn my coat, and join the
victors? I am ashamed. Duty forbids me; but I am miserable at the thought
of my children." [2]
A gleam of hope came with the arrival of Labienus, but it soon clouded.
"Labienus is a hero," Cicero said. "Never was act more splendid. If
nothing else comes of it, he has at least made Caesar smart.--We have a
civil war on us, not because we have quarrelled among ourselves, but
through one abandoned citizen. But this citizen has a strong army, and a
large party attached to him.--What he will do I cannot say; he cannot even
pretend to do anything constitutionally; but what is to become of us, with
a general that cannot lead?--To say nothing of ten years of blundering,
what could have been worse than this flight from Rome? His next purpose I
know not.
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