ome from situation; and probably
therefore to the ancient city from the same cause. Pompey, beyond all
doubt, was a wreck when he commenced the struggle.

Struggle, conflict, for a man who needed to be in his bed! And struggle
with whom? With that man whom his very enemies viewed as a monster
([Greek: teras] is Cicero's own word), as preternaturally endowed, in
this quality of working power. But how then is it consistent with our
view of Roman dinners, that Caesar should have escaped the universal
scourge? We reply, that one man is often stronger than another; every
man is stronger in some one organ; and secondly, Caesar had lived away
from Rome through the major part of the last ten years; and thirdly, the
fact that Caesar _had_ escaped the contagion of dinner luxury, however it
may be accounted for, is attested in the way of an exception to the
general order of experience, and with such a degree of astonishment, as
at once to prove the general maxim we have asserted, and the special
exemption in favour of Caesar. He _only_, said Cato, he, as a
contradiction to all precedents--to the Gracchi, to Marius, to Cinna, to
Sylla, to Catiline--had come in a state of temperance (_sobrius_) to the
destruction of the state; not meaning to indicate mere superiority to
wine, but to _all_ modes of voluptuous enjoyment. Caesar practised, it is
true, a refined epicureanism under the guidance of Greek physicians, as
in the case of his emetics; but this was by way of evading any gross
effects from a day of inevitable indulgence, not by way of aiding them.
Besides, Pompey and Cicero were about seven years older than Caesar. They
stood upon the threshold of their sixtieth year at the _opening_ of the
struggle; Caesar was a hale young man of fifty-two. And we all know that
Napoleon at forty-two was incapacitated for Borodino by incipient
disease of the stomach; so that from that day he, though junior by
seventeen years to Pompey, yet from Pompey's self-indulgence (not
certainly in splendid sensuality, but in the gross modes belonging to
his obscure youth) was pronounced by all the judicious, superannuated as
regarded the indispensable activity of martial habits. If he cannot face
the toils of military command, said his officers, why does he not
retire? Why does he not make room for others? Neither was the campaign
of 1813 or 1814 any refutation of this. Infinite are the cases in which
the interests of nations or of armies have suffered thro