Caesar, after the battle of the Pharsalia, had followed Pompey, but had failed to catch him. When he came upon the scene in the roadstead at Alexandria, the murder had been effected. He then disembarked, and there, as circumstances turned out, was doomed to fight another campaign in which he nearly lost his life. It is not a part of my plan to write the life of Caesar, nor to meddle with it further than I am driven to do in seeking after the sources of Cicero's troubles and aspiration; but the story must be told in a few words. Caesar went from Alexandria into Asia, and, flashing across Syria, beat Pharnaces, and then wrote his famous "Veni, vidi, vici," if those words were ever written. Surely he could not have written them and sent them home! Even the subservience of the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of Caesar have so tarnished itself. He hurried back to Italy, and quelled the mutiny of his men by a masterpiece of stage-acting. Simply by addressing them as "Quirites," instead of "Milites," he appalled them into obedience. On this journey into Italy he came across Cicero. If he could be cruel without a pang--to the arranging the starvation of a townful of women, because they as well as the men must eat--he could be magnificent in his treatment of a Cicero. He had hunted to the death his late colleague in the Triumvirate, and had felt no remorse; though there seems to have been a moment when in Egypt the countenance of him who had so long been his superior had touched him. He had not ordered Pompey's death. On no occasion had he wilfully put to death a Roman whose name was great enough to leave a mark behind. He had followed the convictions of his countrymen, who had ever spared themselves. To him a thousand Gauls, or men of Eastern origin, were as nothing to a single Roman nobleman. Whether there can be said to have been clemency in such a course it is useless now to dispute. To Caesar it was at any rate policy as well. If by clemency he meant that state of mind in which it is an evil to sacrifice the life of men to a spirit of revenge, Caesar was clement. He had moreover that feeling which induces him who wins to make common cause--in little things--with those who lose. We can see Caesar getting down from his chariot when Cicero came to meet him, and, throwing his arms round his neck, walking off with him in pleasant conversation; and we can fancy him talking to Cicero pleasantly of the greatness which, in times yet to come, pursuits such as his would show in comparison with those of Caesar's. "Cedant arma togae; concedat laurea linguae," we can hear Caesar say, with an irony expressed in no tone of his voice, but still vibrating to the core of his heart, as he thought so much of his own undoubted military supremacy, and absolutely nothing of his now undoubted literary excellence. [Sidenote: B.C. 47, aetat. 60.]