lay under accusations too serious or a weight of embarassment and profligacy too great for him to be able to assist them, he would say outright, 'The only thing for you is a Civil War.'" Some, such as Curio and Paullus, who were able to give really valuable assistance, sold their services for enormous sums of money. Cælius too, it is hinted,[1] was found to be in possession of unlikely resources at this moment of crisis. He was not the man to serve any cause for nothing, if he could see his way to be paid for following it; but even apart from money, the creed which he professes with signal effrontery to Cicero would naturally carry Cælius into Caesar's camp. "One consideration," he says,[2] "will not, I think, escape you; namely, that in civil strife, so long as the contest is waged with the weapons of peace, we ought to follow the more honourable cause, but when it comes to camps and armies, then the stronger, and one should esteem that the better side which is the safer." As he adds immediately afterwards that Cæsar's army is incomparably the better of the two, there can be little doubt to which side he is inclined to give or sell his services.
The name of Marcus Cælius Rufus calls up the image of strange and striking personalities, and of all the pleasures and the passions in which Roman society revelled on the brink of the Civil War. It reminds us of his stormy loves with Clodia, the "Juno of the great eyes," the glorious "Lesbia" who broke the heart of Catullus, while she inspired
