The opponents of Caesarism have not been silent, and it would be neither uninteresting nor unprofitable, did time permit, to show how well they have disposed of most of the arguments of their foes. The question is not the old one, whether the party of Caesar or that of Pompeius was the better one, for at bottom the two were very much the same, the struggle being for supremacy over the whole Roman dominion; and it is certain that there would have been no essential change of political procedure, had the decision at Pharsalia been reversed. On that field Caesar was the nominal champion of the liberal faction, and Pompeius was the nominal champion of the _optimates_. Had Caesar lost the day, the plebeian Pompeian house would have furnished an imperial line, instead of that line proceeding from the patrician Julii. Pompeius would have been as little inclined to abandon the fruits of his victory to the aristocrats as Caesar showed himself to set up the rule of the Forum-populace, to whose support he owed so much. It was to free himself from the weight of his equals that Pompeius selected the East for the seat of war, when there were so many strong military reasons why he should have proceeded to the West, to Romanized Spain, where he had veteran legions that might under his lead have been found the equals of Caesar's small, but most efficient army. He wished to get out of the Republican atmosphere, and into a country where "the one-man power" was the recognized idea of rule. He acted as a politician, not as a soldier, when he sailed from Brundisium to the East, and the nobility were not blind to the fact, and were not long in getting their revenge; for it was through their political influence that Pompeius was forced to deliver battle at Pharsalia, when there were strong military reasons for refusing to fight. That they were involved in their chief's fall was only in accordance with the usual course of things, there being nothing to equal the besotted blindness of faction, as our current history but too clearly proves.