LXX.[374] And now, when the signal was given on both sides, and the trumpet was beginning to urge them on to the conflict, every man of this great mass was busy in looking after himself; but a few of the Romans, the best, and some Greeks who were present, and not engaged in the battle, as the conflict drew near, began to reflect to what a condition ambition and rivalry had brought the Roman State. For kindred arms and brotherly battalions and common standards,[375] and the manhood and the might of a single state in such numbers, were closing in battle, self-matched against self, an example of the blindness of human nature and its madness, under the influence of passion. For if they had now been satisfied quietly to govern and enjoy what they had got, there was the largest and the best portion of the earth and of the sea subject to them; and if they still wished to gratify their love of trophies and of triumphs, and their thirst for them, they might have their fill of Parthian or German wars. Scythia, too, and the Indians were a labour in reserve, and ambition had a reasonable pretext for such undertaking, the civilization of barbaric nations. And what Scythian horse, or Parthian arrows, or Indian wealth could have checked seventy thousand Romans advancing in arms under Pompeius and Cæsar, whose name these nations heard of long before they heard of the name of Rome? Such unsociable, and various, and savage nations had they invaded and conquered. But now they engaged with one another in battle, without even feeling any compunction about their own glory, for which they spared not their native country, up to this day having always borne the name of invincible. For the relationship that had been made between them, and the charms of Julia, and that marriage, were from the very first only deceitful and suspected pledges of an alliance formed from interested motives, in which there was not a particle of true friendship.