found that Italy was already preparing for her great civil war. [Sidenote: B.C. 50, aetat. 57.] Early in this year it had been again proposed in the Senate that Caesar should give up his command. At this time the two Consuls, L. AEmilius Paulus and C. Claudius Marcellus, were opposed to Caesar, as was also Curio, who had been one of Cicero's young friends, and was now Tribune. But two of these Caesar managed to buy by the payment of enormous bribes. Curio was the more important of the two, and required the larger bribe. The story comes to us from Appian,[119] but the modern reader will find it efficiently told by Mommsen.[120] The Consul had fifteen hundred talents, or about L500,000! The sum named as that given by Caesar to Curio was something greater, because he was so deeply in debt! Bribes to the amount of above a million of money, such as money is to us now, bestowed upon two men for their support in the Senate! It was worth a man's while to be a Consul or a Tribune in those days. But the money was well earned--plunder, no doubt, extracted from Gaul. The Senate decided that both Pompey and Caesar should be required to abandon their commands--or rather they adopted a proposal to that effect without any absolute decree. But this sufficed for Caesar, who was only anxious to be relieved from the necessity of obeying any order from the Senate by the knowledge that Pompey also was ordered, and also was disobedient. Then it was--in the summer of this year--that the two commanders were desired by the Senate to surrender each of them a legion, or about three thousand men, under the pretence that the forces were wanted for the Parthian war. The historians tell us that Pompey had lent a legion to Caesar, thus giving us an indication of the singular terms on which legions were held by the proconsular officers who commanded them. Caesar nobly sends up to Rome two legions, the one as having been ordered to be restored by himself, and the other as belonging to Pompey. He felt, no doubt, that a show of nobleness in this respect would do him better service than the withholding of the soldiers. The men were stationed at Capua, instead of being sent to the East, and no doubt drifted back into Caesar's hands. The men who had served under Caesar would not willingly find themselves transferred to Pompey. Caesar in the summer came across the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul, which as yet had not been legally taken from him, and in the autumn sat himself down at Ravenna, which was still within his province. It was there that he had to meditate the crossing of the Rubicon and the manifestation of absolute rebellion. Matters were in this condition when Cicero returned to Italy, and heard the corroboration of the news as to the civil war which had reached him at Athens.