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Updated: June 16, 2025
Hirtius and Pansa were constrained to take the part of the Republic by Cicero's eloquence, and by the action of those Senators who felt themselves compelled to obey Cicero. But they did not object to send the Consuls away, and the Consular legions, under the plea of saving the provinces.
One party is defeated, the other is the heart of Caius Caesar's party. Unless, indeed, we believe that the party of Caesar is attacked by Pansa and Hirtius the consuls, and by Caius Caesar's son.
Hirtius delivers his opinion of these Commentaries in the following terms: "So great is the approbation with which they are universally perused, that, instead of rousing, he seems to have precluded, the efforts of any future historian.
Dolabella, his son-in-law, and Hirtius, the future consul, were among them. 'Tis all very well for you to swear that you cannot entertain me in such grand fashion as I am used to, but it is of use.... Better be victimised by your friend than by your debtors, as you have been.
That they shall institute a separate inquiry about the Campanian district, and devise a plan for increasing the advantages enjoyed by these veteran soldiers; and with respect to the Martial legion, and to the fourth legion, and to those soldiers of the second and thirty-fifth legions who have come over to Caius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius the consuls, and have given in their names, because the authority of the senate and the liberty of the Roman people is and always has been most dear to them, the senate decrees that they and their children shall have exemption from military service, except in the case of any Gallic and Italian sedition; and decrees further, that those legions shall have their discharge when this war is terminated; and that whatever sum of money Caius Caesar, pontiff and propraetor, has promised to the soldiers of those legions individually, shall be paid to them.
In answer to all this, it was urged, that "his filial piety, and the unhappy situation of the Republic, were pure pretences; but the ardent lust of reigning, his true and only motive: with this spirit he had solicited into his service, by bribery, a body of veteran soldiers: and though a private youth, without post or magistracy, but, in defiance of law, levied an army: with this spirit he had debauched and bought the Roman legions under the Consuls, while he was falsely feigning a coalition with Pompey's republican party: that soon after, when he had procured from the Senate, or rather usurped the honours and authority of the Praetorship; and when Hirtius and Pansa, the two Consuls, were slain, he seized both their armies: that it was doubted whether the Consuls fell by the enemy, or whether Pansa was not killed by pouring poison into his wounds; and Hirtius slain by his own soldiers; and whether the young Caesar was not the black contriver of this bloody treason: that by terror he had extorted the Consulship in spite of the Senate; and turned against the Commonwealth the very arms with which the Commonwealth had trusted him for her defence against Anthony.
Caesar, says Hirtius, considered that it would be more respectable to be fighting with a king than with a gang of ruffians. Young Ptolemy was released, and joined his countrymen, and the war went on more fiercely than before. Pompey's murderers were brought to justice in the course of it. Pothinus fell into Caesar's hands, and was executed.
But who can be made Consuls in the place of Pansa and Hirtius? Octavian, who had not left Italy after the battle of Mutina, was determined to be one; but the Senate, probably under the guidance of Cicero, for a time would not have him. There was a rumor that Cicero had been elected or is said to have been such a rumor.
Hirtius, who, at Caesar's request, appended an eighth book to the Gallic War, tells us in a letter to Balbus, how rapidly he wrote. "I wish that those who will read my book could know how unwillingly I took it in hand, that I might acquit myself of folly and arrogance in completing what Caesar had begun.
As chief of the proscription, as the betrayer of Cicero, as the suspected murderer of the consul Hirtius, as the pitiless destroyer of Cleopatra's children, he must have found it no easy task to act the mild ruler; as a man of profligate conduct he must have found it still less easy to come forward as the champion of decency and morals.
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