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Updated: June 12, 2025
What is more, one could, perhaps, meet the stoutest historian on his own ground, and argue with him; showing that sham histories were much truer than real histories; which are, in fact, mere contemptible catalogues of names and places, that can have no moral effect upon the reader. As thus: Julius Caesar beat Pompey, at Pharsalia. The Duke of Marlborough beat Marshal Tallard at Blenheim.
This conjecture is rendered highly probable by Asinius Pollio, who informs us that Caesar, upon viewing the vanquished and slaughtered enemy in the field of Pharsalia, expressed himself in these very words: "This was their intention: I, Caius Caesar, after all the great achievements I had performed, must have been condemned, had I not summoned the army to my aid!"
Is it true?" "The young patricians," Decoud began suddenly in his precise English, "have indeed been dancing before they started off to the war with the Great Pompey." Young Scarfe stared, astounded. "You haven't met before," Mrs. Gould intervened. "Mr. Decoud Mr. Scarfe." "Ah! But we are not going to Pharsalia," protested Don Jose, with nervous haste, also in English.
After the battle of Pharsalia, when he had sent his army away before him into Asia, and was passing in one single vessel the strait of the Hellespont, he met Lucius Cassius at sea with ten tall men-of-war, when he had the courage not only to stay his coming, but to sail up to him and summon him to yield, which he did.
There is no period in Cicero's life so touching, I think, as that during which he was hesitating whether, in the service of the Republic, it did or did not behoove him to join Pompey before the battle of Pharsalia.
And it must have often struck him as a remarkable circumstance, which by good luck had turned out entirely to the advantage of his own family, but which might as readily have had an opposite result, that the three decisive battles of Pharsalia, of Thapsus, and of Munda, in which the empire of the world was three times over staked as the prize, had severally brought upon the defeated leaders a ruin which was total, absolute, and final.
Having already translated some parts of Lucan's "Pharsalia," which had been published in the Miscellanies, and doubtless received many praises, he undertook a version of the whole work, which he lived to finish, but not to publish. It seems to have been printed under the care of Dr. Welwood, who prefixed the author's life, in which is contained the following character:
Scelera ipsa nefasque Hac mercede placent!" The Pharsalia, then, is the outcome of a prosperous rhetorical career on the one hand, and of a bitter disappointment which finds its solace in patriotic feeling on the other. It is difficult to see how such a poem could have failed to ruin him, even if he had not been doomed before.
They were still the more formidable, as the generality of them were of his own party; and, having been raised above other citizens, felt more strongly the weight of a single superior. At the head of this conspiracy were Brutus, whose life Cæsar had spared after the battle of Pharsalia, and Cassius, who was pardoned soon after; both prætors for the present year. 5.
The Constable of Bourbon beat Francis the First, at Pavia. And what have we here? so many names, simply. Suppose Pharsalia had been, at that mysterious period when names were given, called Pavia; and that Julius Caesar's family name had been John Churchill; the fact would have stood in history, thus: "Pompey ran away from the Duke of Marlborough at Pavia."
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