Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata

When his falling-out with Caesar came to light, one Mareellinus, who was among those reputed to have been advanced by Pompey but had gone over to Caesar, inveighed against him at great length in the Senate. Mareellinus, said Pompey, are you not ashamed to revile me, when it is all owing to me that you, from being inarticulate, have become so fluent, and from being a starveling, are now able to eat and disgorge and eat again ? [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. li. (646 E).)

Cato assailed him bitterly, because when he himself had often foretold that Caesar’s power and his

Speaking frankly about himself, he said that he had attained every office sooner than he had expected, and laid it down sooner than had been expected. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. liv. (647 F).) 15. After the battle of Pharsalus [*](In 48 B.C.) he fled to Egypt, and as he was about to transfer from the trireme to a fishing-boat which the king had sent for him, he turned to his wife and son, and said never a word except the lines of Sophocles:

Whoever comes to traffic with a king Is slave to him, however free he come.[*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Sophocles, no. 789; quoted by Plutarch also in Moralia, 33 D and the Life of Pompey, chap. lxxviii. (661 A). Appian, Civil Wars, ii. 84, and Dio Cassius, xlii. 4, also state that Pompey quoted these verses shortly before his death when he was slain by order of the king’s counselors.)

Cicero, the orator, was often twitted about his name, and his friends urged him to have it changed, but he said that he would make Cicero to be held in higher esteem than the Catos, the Catuli, and the Scauri. [*](Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Cicero, chap. i. (861 C).)

When he dedicated a silver goblet to the gods,

He used to say that those of the orators who are given to violent vociferation rely on noise to carry them through because of weakness, just as lame men mount horses. [*](Ibid. chap. v. (863 C).)