[1] In the meantime a great force was gathered by Pompey. His navy was simply irresistible, since he had five hundred ships of war, while the number of his light galleys and fast cruisers was immense; his cavalry numbered seven thousand, the flower of Rome and Italy, preeminent in lineage, wealth, and courage; and his infantry, which was a mixed multitude and in need of training, he exercised at Beroea, not sitting idly by, but taking part in their exercises himself, as if he had been in the flower of his age.
[2] And indeed it was a great incentive to confidence when they saw Pompey the Great, who was now sixty years of age less two, but who nevertheless competed in full armour as a foot-soldier, and then again, as a horseman, drew his sword without trouble while his horse was at a gallop and put it back in its sheath with ease; while in hurling the javelin he not only displayed accuracy, but also vigour in the length of his cast, which many of the young men could not surpass.
[3] There kept coming to him also kings of nations and potentates, and of the leading men from Rome there were enough about him to form a full senate. Labienus also came, having deserted Caesar, though he had been his friend and had served under him in Gaul; and Brutus, a son of the Brutus who had been put to death by Pompey in Gaul,
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a man of lofty spirit, who had never spoken to Pompey nor even saluted him before, because he held him to be the murderer of his father, but now he put himself under his command, believing him to be a deliverer of Rome.
[4] Cicero, too, although he had advocated other measures in his writings and his speeches in the senate, nevertheless was ashamed not to be of the number of those who risked all for their country. There came also Tidius Sextius, a man of extreme old age and lame of one leg, into Macedonia. The rest laughed and jeered at him, but when Pompey saw him, he rose and ran to meet him, counting it a great testimony that men past the years and past the power of service should choose danger with him in preference to their safety.
Pompey. Plutarch. Bernadotte Perrin (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1917.
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