At this juncture Caius Curio, tribune of the people, came to Caesar in Ravenna.  Curio had made many energetic struggles in behalf of the republic and Caesar’s cause; but at last, when he perceived that all his efforts were in vain, he fled through fear of his enemies and Caesar’s to Ravenna and told Caesar all that had taken place; and, seeing that war was openly being prepared against Caesar, advised him to bring up his army and to rescue the republic.

Now Caesar was not ignorant of the real state of affairs, but he was perhaps not yet ready to act, or he hoped in fact to save the ancient state; at any rate, he gave it as his opinion that particular regard should be had to the tranquillity of the republic, lest any one should assert that he was the originator of civil war.  Therefore he sent again to his friends, making through them this very moderate request, that two legions and the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum should be left him.  No one could openly quarrel with such a reasonable demand and the patience with which it was more than once put forward; for when Caesar could not obtain a favourable answer from the consuls, he wrote a letter to the senate in which he briefly recounted his exploits and public services, and entreated that he should not be deprived of the favour of the people who had ordered that he, although absent, should be considered a candidate for the consulship at the next election.  He stated also that he would disband his army if the senate and the Roman people desired it, provided that Pompey would do the same.  But he stated also that, as long as Pompey retained the command of his army, there could be no just reason why Caesar should disband his troops and expose himself to the power of his enemies.

This was Caesar’s third offer to his opponents.  He entrusted the letter to Curio, who travelled one hundred and sixty miles in three days and reached the City early in January.  He did not, however, deliver the letter until there was a crowded meeting of the senate and the tribunes of the people were present; for he was afraid lest, if he gave it up without the utmost publicity, the consuls would suppress it.  A sort of debate followed the reading of the letter, but when Scipio, Pompey’s mouthpiece, spoke and declared, among other things, that Pompey was resolved to take up the cause of the senate now or never, and that he would drop it if a decision were delayed, the majority, overawed, decreed that Caesar should “at a definite and not distant day give up Transalpine Gaul to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Cisalpine Gaul to Marcus Servilius Nonianus and should dismiss his army, failing which he should be esteemed a traitor.  When the tribunes, of Caesar’s party, made use of their right of veto against this resolution not only were they, as they at least asserted, threatened in the senate house itself by the swords of Pompeian soldiers and forced, in order to save their lives, to flee in slaves’ clothing from the capital, but the senate, now sufficiently overawed, treated their interference as an attempt at revolution, declared the country in danger, and in the usual form called the burgesses to take up arms, and all the magistrates faithful to the constitution to place themselves at the head of the armed.”