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Updated: June 15, 2025
Caesar came back to Rome to resume the suspended work of practical reform. His first care was to remove the fears which the final spasm of rebellion had again provoked. He had already granted an amnesty. But the optimates were conscious that they had desired and hoped that the Pompeys might be victorious in Spain.
Yet Cæsar did resist, and triumphed; and, judging from their after-lives, we should say that the Young Pompeys would have had small hesitation in raising their sticks against their august governor, had he proved too disobedient. A few years earlier, according to Sallust, a Roman, one Fulvius, had caused his son to be put to death, because he had sought to join Catiline.
The proudest self-confidence could not have allowed him at his time of life to calculate on returning to Rome to take up again the work of reformation. But Cesar had conquered. He had made a name for himself as a soldier before which the Scipios and the Luculluses, the Syllas and Pompeys paled their glory.
Caesar's long detention in the East gave the confederates time. The young Pompeys were strong at sea. From Italy there was an easy passage for adventurous disaffection. The shadow of a Pompeian Senate sat once more, passing resolutions, at Utica; while Cato was busy organizing an army, and had collected as many as thirteen legions out of the miscellaneous elements which drifted in to him.
"How many Cæsars and Pompeys, by mere inspirations of the names, have been rendered worthy of them? And how many are there, who might have done exceeding well in the world, had not their characters and spirits been totally depressed and Nicodemus'd into nothing?" "Tristram Shandy," vol. i. chap. xix. Such were the views of the late Walter Shandy, Esq., Turkey merchant.
Caesar on arriving seized and fortified a defensible spot at Ruspinum. The other legions dropped in slowly, and before a third of them had arrived the enemy were swarming about the camp, while the Pompeys were alert on the water to seize stray transports or provision ships. There was skirmishing every day in front of Caesar's lines.
Attius Varus was killed also, who had been with Juba when he destroyed Curio. The tragedy was being knitted up in the deaths of the last actors in it. The eagles of the thirteen legions were all taken. The two Pompeys escaped on their horses, Sextus disappearing in the mountains of Grenada or the Sierra Morena; Cnaeus flying for Gibraltar, where he hoped to find a friendly squadron.
The leaders escaped for the time by the speed of their horses. They scattered with a general purpose of making for Spain. Labienus reached it, but few besides him. Afranius and Faustus Sylla with a party of cavalry galloped to Utica, which they expected to hold till one of the Pompeys could bring vessels to take them off. The Utican towns-people had from the first shown an inclination for Caesar.
I sawe there also Pharaos needle, which is a thing in height almost equall with Pompeys pillar, and is in compasse fiue fadome, and a halfe, and all of one stone. I was brought also to a most braue and daintie Bath, where we washed our selues: the Bath being of marble, and of very curious workemanship.
He solemnly maintained the opinion "that there was a strange kind of magic bias which good or bad names, as he called them, irresistibly impressed upon our character and conduct." How many Caesars and Pompeys, he would say, by mere inspiration of their names have been rendered worthy of them!
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