334
The Civil War.
[49 B.C.
gathered by personal intercourse fuller knowledge of the doings and intentions of his associates, he was careful to correct these hasty judgments; he acknowledges Pompey to have been "loyal and stainless and of faith unshaken,"[1] and he expressly exempts him from the charges of savagery which he records against the mass of his party.[2] But for the moment, these doubts and suspicions added painfully to Cicero's embarrassments.
The blacker the fortunes of the Republicans look, the more Cicero is determined to throw in his lot with them. When Cæsar is swooping down on Brundisium, and Pompey's life seems in danger, he breaks out[3] in the bitter self-reproach of Achilles: "Let me die at once, since it was not mine to help my friend in death; far from his fatherland he fell, and found not me beside him to ward off woe."[4] A few days later he writes:[5] "I seem March 11.to myself to have lost my wits from the first; and one thing torments me, that I did not follow Pompey, when he was falling or rather rushing headlong to ruin, like any private soldier in the ranks. Now my affection for him re-awakens, now I cannot bear the loss of him, now neither books nor letters nor philosophy give me any relief. Day and night, like the caged bird, I look towards