If courtesy to Caesar, if provinces given up here and there to Antonys and Metelluses, if flattery lavished on Pompey could avail anything, he could not afford to dispense with such aids.

It all availed nothing.
From this time forward, for the twenty years which were to run before his death, his life was one always of trouble and doubt, often of despair, and on many occasions of actual misery.

The source of this was that Pompey whom, with divine attributes, he had extolled above all other Romans.
The first extant letter written by Cicero after his Consulship was addressed to Pompey.[214] Pompey was still in the East, but had completed his campaigns against Mithridates successfully.

Cicero begins by congratulating him, as though to do so were the purpose of his letter.

Then he tells the victorious General that there were some in Rome not so well pleased as he was at these victories.