of efficient soldiers and capable officers, especially those belonging to the former Spanish army; but the number of those who came to serve and fight was just as small as that of the generals of quality who called themselves proconsuls and imperators with as good title as Pompeius, and of the genteel lords who took part in active military service more or less reluctantly, was alarmingly great.  Through these the mode of life in the capital was introduced into the camp, not at all to the advantage of the army; the tents of such grandees were graceful bowers, the ground elegantly covered with fresh turf, the walls clothed with ivy; silver plate stood on the table, and the wine-cup often circulated there even in broad daylight.  Those fashionable warriors formed a singular contrast with Caesar’s daredevils, who ate coarse bread from which the former recoiled, and who, when that failed, devoured even roots and swore that they would rather chew the bark of trees than desist from the enemy.  While, moreover, the action of Pompeius was hampered by the necessity of having regard to the authority of a collegiate board personally disinclined to him, this embarrassment was singularly increased when the senate of emigrants took up its abode almost in his very headquarters and all the venom of the emigrants now found vent in these senatorial sittings.  Lastly there was nowhere any man of mark, who could have thrown his own weight into the scale against all these preposterous doings.  Pompeius himself was intellectually far too secondary for that purpose, and far too hesitating, awkward, and reserved.  Marcus Cato would have had at least the requisite moral authority, and would not have lacked the good will to support Pompeius with it; but Pompeius, instead of calling him to his assistance, out of distrustful jealousy kept him in the background, and preferred for instance to commit the highly important chief command of the fleet to the in every respect incapable Marcus Bibulus rather than to Cato.

The Legions of Pompeius

While Pompeius thus treated the political aspect of his position with his characteristic perversity, and did his best to make what was already bad in itself still worse, he devoted himself on the other hand with commendable zeal to his duty of giving military organization to the considerable but scattered forces of his party.  The flower of his force was composed of the troops brought with him from Italy, out of which with the supplementary aid of the Illyrian prisoners of war and the Romans domiciled in Greece five legions in all were formed.  Three others came from the east—­the two Syrian legions formed from the remains of the army of Crassus, and one made up out of the two weak legions hitherto stationed in Cilicia.  Nothing stood in the way of the withdrawal of these corps of occupation:  because on the one hand the Pompeians had an understanding with the Parthians,