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Updated: June 16, 2025
LVI. He has likewise left Commentaries of his own actions both in the war in Gaul, and in the civil war with Pompey; for the author of the Alexandrian, African, and Spanish wars is not known with any certainty. Some think they are the production of Oppius, and some of Hirtius; the latter of whom composed the last book, which is imperfect, of the Gallic war.
Nothing is more striking than the admirable taste of the highest conversational language at Rome in the seventh century of the Republic. Not only Hirtius, but Matius, Balbus, Sulpicius, Brutus, Cassius and other correspondents of Cicero, write to him in a dialect as pure as his own. It is true they have not his grace, his inimitable freedom and copiousness.
The death of Pansa was so fully believed to have been caused by undue means, that Glyco, his surgeon, was placed in custody, on a suspicion of having poisoned his wound. And to this, Aquilius Niger adds, that he killed Hirtius, the other consul, in the confusion of the battle, with his own hands.
For the rest, if anyone thinks that we have not laid things out as diligently as Julius Caesar and Hirtius Pansa did in the history of the Gauls, Spaniards, Pharsalians, Alexandrians, and Numidians, he should carefully consider the fact that the same people who waged the wars wrote them down. As a result, nothing general or particular that happened is omitted from their accounts.
Are you all uncles to Antony?" Then he goes on to show that war is the only name by which this rebellion can be described. "Has not Hirtius, who has gone away, sick as he is, called it a war? Has not young Cæsar, young as he is, prompted to it by no one, undertaken it as a war?" He repeats the words of a letter from Hirtius which could only have been used in war: "I have taken Claterna.
But when Antony learned that Pansa was coming up, he made a rapid movement southward with two of his veteran legions and attacked him. A sharp conflict followed, in which Pansa's troops were defeated, and the consul himself was carried, mortally wounded, off the field. But Hirtius was on the alert, and assaulted Antony's wearied troops on their way back to their camp, with some advantage.
The new consuls Hirtius and Pansa were much attached to Cicero, had consulted him a great deal, and professed great respect for his opinion; but they were also under great obligations to Julius Caesar and, consequently, connected to some extent with his party and with Antonius, on which account they wished, if possible, to employ moderate measures only against him.
With these twenty cohorts, with no cavalry, while Hirtius himself was bearing the eagle of the fourth legion, and we never heard of a more noble office being assumed by any general, he fought with the three legions of Antonius and with his cavalry, and overthrew, and routed, and put to the sword those impious men who were the real enemies to this temple of the all-good and all-powerful Jupiter, and to the rest of the temples of the immortal gods, and the houses of the city, and the freedom of the Roman people, and our lives and actual existence; so that that chief and leader of robbers fled away with a very few followers, concealed by the darkness of night, and frightened out of all his senses.
According to some, however, he was born the preceding year, in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa; and others say, in the year following, during the consulship of Servilius Isauricus and Antony.
He had not dared to trust the Romans for the following reason: "The year before, in the absence of Caesar, T. Labienus, informed that Commius was conspiring and preparing an insurrection, thought that without accusing him of bad faith," says Hirtius, "he could repress his treason." The most warlike tribes had been vanquished and none of them dreamed of further revolt.
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