His forlorn condition was a
punishment sufficiently terrible for the vanity which had flung his
country into war. But that it had been his own doing the letters of Cicero
prove with painful clearness; and though he had partially seen his error
at Capua, and would then have possibly drawn back, the passions and hopes
which he had excited had become too strong for him to contend against.
From the day of his flight from Italy he had been as a leaf whirled upon a
winter torrent. Plain enough it had long been to him that he would not be
able to govern the wild forces of a reaction which, if it had prevailed,
would have brought back a more cruel tyranny than Sylla's. He was now
flung as a waif on the shore of a foreign land; and if Providence on each
occasion proportioned the penalties of misdoing to the magnitude of the
fault, it might have been considered that adequate retribution had been
inflicted on him. But the consequences of the actions of men live when the
actions are themselves forgotten, and come to light without regard to the
fitness of the moment. The senators of Rome were responsible for the
exactions which Ptolemy Auletes had been compelled to wring out of his
subjects. Pompey himself had entertained and supported him in Rome when he
was driven from his throne, and had connived at the murder of the
Alexandrians who had been sent to remonstrate against his restoration.
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