Then began the great exodus.

Hardly a man had done more than gather a few valuables together: property, children, wives--all these were left to the avenger.

Down the Via Appia, toward Campania, where was their only safety, poured the panic-stricken company.

Every carriage, every horse, was in service.
The hard-driven chariots of the consuls were the tokens merely of the swiftest flight.

Lentulus Crus fled; Caius Marcellus, his colleague, was close behind; Domitius fled, with his sons; Cato fled, ironically exclaiming that they would have to leave everything to Pompeius now, "for those who can raise up great evils can best allay them." Favonius fled, whose first words, when he met the Magnus, were to command him to "stamp on the ground for the legions so sorely needed." Piso, Scipio, and many another fled--their guilty hearts adding wings to their goings.