to flow? Naturally
the mere merits of the competition were decisive of the public opinion,
although the petty aristocracy of the provincial boroughs availed
locally to stifle those tumultuous acclamations which would else have
gathered about the name of Caesar. But enough transpired to show which
way the current was setting. Cicero does not dissemble that. He
acknowledges that all men's hopes turned towards Caesar. And Pompey, who
was much more forced into towns and public scenes, had even less
opportunity for deceiving himself. He, who had fancied all Campania
streaming with incense to heaven on his own personal account, now made
the misanthropical discovery--not only that all was hollow, and that his
own name was held in no esteem--but absolutely that the barrier to any
hope of popularity for himself was that very man whom, on other and
previous grounds, he had for some time viewed as his own capital
antagonist.

Here then, in this schism of the public affections, and in the
mortifying discovery so abruptly made by Pompey, lay the bitter affront
which he could not digest--the injury which he purposed to avenge. What
barbed this injury to his feelings, what prepared him for exhausting
its bitterness, was the profound delusion in which he had been
previously laid asleep by flattering friends--the perfect faith in his
own uniform popularity. And now, in the very teeth of all current
representations, we advance this proposition: That the quality of his
meditated revenge and its horrid extent were what originally unveiled to
Cicero's eyes the true character of Pompey and his partisans.

* * * * *

The last letter of the sixth book is written from Athens, which city,
after a voyage of about a fortnight, Cicero reached precisely in the
middle of October, having sailed out of Ephesus on the 1st. He there
found a letter from Atticus, dated from Rome on the 18th of September;
and his answer, which was 'by return of post,' closes with these words:
'Mind that you keep your promise of writing to me fully about my darling
Tullia,' which means of course about her new husband Dolabella; next
about the Commonwealth, which by this time I calculate must be entering
upon its agony; and then about the Censors, etc. Hearken: 'This letter
is dated on the 16th of October; that day on which, by your account,
Caesar is to reach Placentia with four legions. What, I ask myself for
ever, is to become of us? My ow