When the result of the battle was
known, the leading citizen, who had headed the revolt against Caesar,
gathered all that belonged to him into a heap, poured turpentine over it,
and, after a last feast with his family, burnt himself, his house, his
children, and servants. In the midst of the tumult the walls were stormed.
Cordova was given up to plunder and massacre, and twenty-two thousand
miserable people--most of them, it may be hoped, the fugitives from
Munda--were killed. The example sufficed. Every town opened its gates, and
Spain was once more submissive. Sextus Pompey successfully concealed
himself. Cnaeus reached Gibraltar, but to find that most of the ships
which he looked for had been taken by Caesar's fleet. He tried to cross to
the African coast, but was driven back by bad weather, and search parties
were instantly on his track. He had been wounded; he had sprained his
ankle in his flight. Strength and hope were gone. He was carried on a
litter to a cave on a mountain side, where his pursuers found him, cut off
his head, and spared Cicero from further anxiety.
Thus bloodily ended the Civil War, which the Senate of Rome had undertaken
against Caesar, to escape the reforms which were threatened by his second
consulship. They had involuntarily rendered their country the best service
which they were capable of conferring upon it, for the attempts which
Caesar would have made to amend a system too decayed to benefit by the
process had been rendered forever impossible by their persistence.
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