38 Frederick Warren San ford 



the arrival of these legions and their transfer to Pompeius. Plu- 

 tarch^^^ and Appian^^^ voice the criticisms passed on Pompeius 

 for failing to make due preparations against Caesar. Pompeius's 

 sense of security is said by them to have been due in part to the 

 statements as to the disaffection of Caesar's soldiers, made by the 

 officers who returned with the first and fifteenth legions. Such 

 criticisms involve the assumption that Pompeius had ample time 

 in which to make preparations, and so favor an early date for the 

 arrival of the legions. Sallustius in the first of his letters to 

 Cicero had evidently expressed the hope that he would be relieved 

 by his successor, Marius, in time to enable him to meet Cicero in 

 Asia. Marius was to accompany the legions from Italy to Syria. ^-^ 

 Cicero in letters to friends in Rome had repeatedly declared his 

 intention of discontinuing his proconsular functions in Cilicia 

 promptly at the end of his year's tenure of office, July 30. He 

 had also been in communication with the members of Bibulus's 

 staff. Sallustius had no apparent reason for thinking that Cicero 

 would tarry long in Asia. In his reply, Cicero makes plain that 

 he regarded Sallustius's hope of meeting him vain, in any case. 

 But the proquaestor could not have conceived such a hope, unless 

 the information which had come to Syria in regard to the two 

 legions led him to think that they would be started on their jour- 

 ney very soon after the passage of the senate's decree; the first 

 legion, if encamped in the Aeduan country, had 1,100 m. p. to 

 Brundisium before it, and to this long march must be added the 

 sea voyage. In like manner, Cicero evidently thought it possible, 

 so far as the time element was concerned, that the two legions 

 should have set sail for Syria before tidings of peace in the present 

 summer could be carried to Rome; cf. Fam. II, 17, 5: Si antea 

 auditum erit otinm esse in Syria. News of the Parthians' retreat 

 might reach Rome by the end of August, possibly earlier. In his 

 description of the battle of Pharsalus Caesar speaks of these 

 legions as having been delivered up by himself initio dissen- 



^ Pomp. 57, Caes. 29. 

 '"5. C, II, 29-30. 

 ''^Fam. II, 17, 5. 



