[Sidenote:  Debates in the Senate.] [Sidenote:  Tumult and confusion.] [Sidenote:  Panic at Rome.]

It would require a volume to contain a full account of the disputes and tumults, the maneuvers and debates, the votes and decrees which marked the successive stages of this quarrel.  Pompey himself was all the time without the city.  He was in command of an army there, and no general, while in command, was allowed to come within the gates.  At last an exciting debate was broken up in the Senate by one of the consuls rising to depart, saying that he would hear the subject discussed no longer.  The time had arrived for action, and he should send a commander, with an armed force, to defend the country from Caesar’s threatened invasion.  Caesar’s leading friends, two tribunes of the people, disguised themselves as slaves, and fled to the north to join their master.  The country was filled with commotion and panic.  The Commonwealth had obviously more fear of Caesar than confidence in Pompey.  The country was full of rumors in respect to Caesar’s power, and the threatening attitude which he was assuming, while they who had insisted on resistance seemed, after all, to have provided very inadequate means with which to resist.  A thousand plans were formed, and clamorously insisted upon by their respective advocates, for averting the danger.  This only added to the confusion, and the city became at length pervaded with a universal terror.

[Sidenote:  Caesar at Ravenna.]

While this was the state of things at Rome, Caesar was quietly established at Ravenna; thirty or forty miles from the frontier.  He was erecting a building for a fencing school there and his mind seemed to be occupied very busily with the plans and models of the edifice which the architects had formed.  Of course, in his intended march to Rome, his reliance was not to be so much on the force which he should take with him, as on the co-operation and support which he expected to find there.  It was his policy, therefore, to move as quietly and privately as possible, and with as little display of violence, and to avoid every thing which might indicate his intended march to any spies which might be around him, or to any other person! who might be disposed to report what they observed at Rome.  Accordingly, on the very eve of his departure, he busied himself with his fencing school, and assumed with his officers and soldiers a careless and unconcerned air, which prevented any one from suspecting his design.

[Sidenote:  Caesar’s midnight march.] [Sidenote:  He loses his way.]

In the course of the day he privately sent forward some cohorts to the southward, with orders for them to encamp on the banks of the Rubicon.  When night came he sat down to supper as usual, and conversed with his friends in his ordinary manner, and went with them afterward to a public entertainment.  As soon as it was dark and the streets were still, he set off secretly from the city, accompanied by