LXVII. Having come to this decision, Pompeius pursued Cæsar, resolved to avoid a battle, but by following close up to hem him in and wear him out by privation. He had other reasons for thinking this to be the best plan, and it also reached his ears that it was a subject of common conversation among the cavalry that they ought to defeat Cæsar as soon as they could and then put down Pompeius also. Some say that this was also the reason why Pompeius employed Cato[363] in no matter of importance, but even when he was marching against Cæsar left him on the coast to look after the stores, through fear that if Cæsar were destroyed, Cato might forthwith compel him also to lay down his command. Accordingly as he followed the enemy leisurely he was much censured and there was a clamour against him, that his object was not to defeat Cæsar by his generalship, but his native country and the Senate, that he might always keep the command and never give over having as his attendants and guards those who considered themselves the masters of the world. Domitius Ahenobarbus also by always calling him Agamemnon and King of Kings made him odious. Favonius too made himself no less disagreeable by his scoffing manner than others by the unseasonable freedom of their language, calling out, "Men, we shall not eat figs in Tusculum[364] even this year!" Lucius Afranius who had lost his forces in Iberia and on that account had fallen under the imputation of treachery, now seeing that Pompeius avoided a battle, said he was surprised that those who accused him did not advance and fight against the trafficker in provinces. By these and like expressions often repeated they at last prevailed over Pompeius, a man who was a slave to public fame and the opinion of his friends, and drew him on to follow their own hopes and impetuosity and to give up the best considered plans, a thing which would have been unbefitting even in the master of a vessel, to say nothing of the commander-in-chief of so many nations and forces. Pompeius approved of the physician who never gratifies the desires of his patients, and yet he yielded to military advisers who were in a diseased state, through fear of offending if he adopted healing measures. And how can one say those men were in a healthy state, some of whom were going about among the troops and already canvassing for consulships and prætorships, and Spinther and Domitius[365] and Scipio were disputing and quarrelling about the priesthood of Cæsar and canvassing, just as if Tigranes the Armenian were encamped by them or the King of the Nabathæans, and not that Cæsar and that force with which he had taken a thousand cities by storm, and subdued above three hundred nations, and had fought with Germans and Gauls unvanquished in more battles than could be counted, and had taken a hundred times ten thousand prisoners, and had slaughtered as many after routing them in pitched battles.