This course was chiefly followed by the partisans of lesser note; but the able Marcus Marcellus, the same who had brought about the rupture with Caesar,( 35) was to be found among these judicious persons and voluntarily banished himself to Lesbos.

In the majority, however, of the genuine aristocracy passion was more powerful than cool reflection; along with which, no doubt, self-deceptions as to success being still possible and apprehensions of the inevitable vengeance of the victor variously co-operated.
Cato No one probably formed a judgment as to the situation of affairs with so painful a clearness, and so free from fear or hope on his own account, as Marcus Cato.

Completely convinced that after the days of Ilerda and Pharsalus the monarchy was inevitable, and morally firm enough to confess to himself this bitter truth and to act in accordance with it, he hesitated for a moment whether the constitutional party ought at all to continue a war, which would necessarily require sacrifices for a lost cause on the part of many who did not know why they offered them.

And when he resolved to fight against the monarchy not for victory, but for a speedier and more honourable fall, he yet sought as far as possible to draw no one into this war, who chose to survive the fall of the republic and to be reconciled to monarchy.

He conceived that, so long as the republic had been merely threatened, it was a right and a duty to compel the lukewarm and bad citizen to take part in the struggle; but that now it was senseless and cruel to compel the individual to share the ruin of the lost republic.