telling them in advance that whoever remained behind he should regard as equal and alike to those were working against him.  Furthermore he enjoined them to vote that all the public moneys and the votive offerings in the city be removed, hoping that from this source he could gather a vast number of soldiers.  For practically all the cities of Italy felt such friendliness for him that when a short time before they had heard he was dangerously ill, they vowed they would offer public sacrifices for his preservation.  That this was a great and brilliant honor which they bestowed upon him no one could gainsay; there is no one in whose behalf such a vote has been passed, except those who later assumed absolute sovereignty:  nevertheless he had not a sure ground of confidence that they would not abandon him under the influence of fear of a stronger power.  The recommendation about the moneys and the votive offerings was allowed, but neither of them was touched; for having ascertained meanwhile that Caesar’s answer to the envoys had been anything but peaceful and that he also reproached them with having made some false statements about him, that his soldiers were many and bold and liable to do any kind of mischief (such reports, tending to greater terror, as are usually made about such matters), the senators became frightened and hastily took their departure before they could lay a finger on any of the objects.

[-7-] For reason their removal was equally in all other respects of a tumultuous and confused appearance.  The departing citizens, practically all of whom were the foremost men of the senate and of the knights and of the populace, nominally were setting out for war, but really were undergoing the experiences of captives.  They were terribly distressed at being compelled to abandon their country and their pursuits there, and to consider foreign walls more native than their own.  Such as removed with their entire household said farewell to the temples and their houses and their paternal threshold with the feeling that these would straightway become the property of their opponents:  they themselves, not being ignorant of Pompey’s intention, had the purpose, in case they should survive, of establishing themselves in Macedonia or Thrace.  And those who left behind on the spot their children and wives and their other most valued possessions appeared to have some little hope of their country but really fared much worse than the others, since being sundered from their dearest treasures they exposed themselves to a double and most hostile fortune.  For in delivering their closest interests to the power of their bitterest foes they were destined to play the coward and yet themselves encounter danger, to show zeal and yet to be deprived of what they prized:  moreover they would find a friend in neither rival, but an enemy in both,—­in Caesar because they themselves did not remain behind, and in Pompey because they did not take the others with them.  Hence they assumed a twofold attitude in their decisions, in their prayers, and in their hopes:  with their bodies they were being drawn away from those nearest to them, and their souls they found cleft in twain.