During the whole of the last year he must have been tortured by various turns of mind. Had he done well in joining himself to Pompey? and having done so, had he done well in severing himself, immediately on Pompey's death, from the Pompeians? Looking at the matter as from a stand-point quite removed from it, we are inclined to say that he had done well in both. He could not without treachery have gone over to Caesar when Caesar had come to the gate of Italy, and, as it were with a blast of his trumpet, had demanded the Consulship, a triumph, the use of his legions, and the continuance of his military power. "Let Pompey put down his, and I will put down mine," he had said. Had Pompey put down his, Pompey and Cicero, Cato and Brutus, and Bibulus would all have had to walk at the heels of Caesar. When Pompey declared that he would contest the point, he declared for them all. Cicero was bound to go to Pharsalia. But when, by Pompey's incompetence, Caesar was the victor; when Pompey had fallen at the Nile, and all the lovers of the fish-ponds, and the intractable oligarchs, and the cutthroats of the Empire, such as young Pompey had become, had scattered themselves far and wide, some to Asia, some to Illyricum, some to Spain, and more to Africa--as a herd of deer shall be seen to do when a vast hound has appeared among them, with his jaws already dripping with blood--was Cicero then to take his part with any of them? I hold that he did what dignity required, and courage also. He went back to Italy, and there he waited till the conqueror should come.