Cicero, before he went, applied for protection personally to Piso the Consul, and to Pompey. Gabinius, the other Consul, had already declared his purpose to the Senate, but Piso was bound to him by family ties. He himself relates to us in his oration, spoken after his return, against this Piso, the manner of the meeting between him and Rome's chief officer. Piso told him--so at least Cicero declared in the Senate, and we have heard of no contradiction--that Gabinius was so driven by debts as to be unable to hold up his head without a rich province; that he himself, Piso, could only hope to get a province by taking part with Gabinius; that any application to the Consuls was useless, and that every one must look after himself.[278] Concerning his appeal to Pompey two stories have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true. Plutarch says that when Cicero had travelled out from Rome to Pompey's Alban villa, Pompey ran out of the back-door to avoid meeting him. Plutarch cared more for a good story than for accuracy, and is not worthy of much credit as to details unless when corroborated. The other account is based on Cicero's assertion that he did see Pompey on this occasion. Nine or ten years after the meeting he refers to it in a letter to Atticus, which leaves no doubt as to the fact. The story founded on that letter declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his old friend's feet, and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but told him simply that everything was in Cæsar's hands. This narrative is, I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though it is given by a close translation of them. He is describing Pompey when Cæsar after his Gallic wars had crossed the Rubicon, and the two late Triumvirates--the third having perished miserably in the East--were in arms against each other. "Alter ardet furore et scelere" he says.[279] Cæsar is pressing on unscrupulous in his passion. "Alter is qui nos sibi quondam ad pedes stratos ne sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus voluntatem aiebat facere posse." "That other one," he continues--meaning Pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast--"who in days gone by would not even lift me when I lay at his feet, and told me that he could do nothing but as Cæsar wished it." This little supposed detail of biography has been given, no doubt, from an accurate reading of the words; but in it the spirit of the writer's mind as he wrote it has surely been missed. The prostration of which he spoke, from which Pompey would not raise him, the memory of which was still so bitter to him, was not a prostration of the body. I hold it to have been impossible that Cicero should have assumed such an attitude before Pompey, or that he would so have written to Atticus had he done so. It would have been neither Roman nor Ciceronian, as displayed by Cicero to Pompey. He had gone to his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt