When the civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey, it was expected that Brutus would attach himself to the former. Pompey, who had put his father to death, he had no reason to love. But if he was unscrupulous in some things, in politics he had principles which he would not abandon, the strongest of these, perhaps, being that the side of which Cato approved was the side of the right. Pompey received his new adherent with astonishment and delight, rising from his chair to greet him. He spent most of his time in camp in study, being ingrossed on the very eve of the battle in making an epitome of Polybius, the Greek historian of the Second Punic War. He passed through the disastrous day of Pharsalia unhurt, Caesar having given special orders that his life was to be spared. After the battle, the conqueror not only pardoned him but treated him with the greatest kindness, a kindness for which, for a time at least, he seems not to have been ungrateful. But there were influences at work which he could not resist. There was his friendship with Cassius, who had a passionate hatred against usurpers, the remembrance of how Cato had died sooner than submit himself to Caesar, and, not least, the association of his name, which he was not permitted to forget. The statue of the old patriot who had driven out the Tarquins was covered with such inscriptions as, "Brutus, would thou wert alive!" and Brutus' own chair of office--he was praetor at the time--was found covered with papers on which were scribbled, "Brutus, thou sleepest," or, "A true Brutus art thou," and the like. How he slew Caesar I have told already; how he killed himself in despair after the second battle of Philippi may be read elsewhere.