The story founded on that letter declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his old friend's feet, and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but told him simply that everything was in Caesar's hands.

This narrative is, I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though it is given by a close translation of them.

He is describing Pompey when Caesar after his Gallic wars had crossed the Rubicon, and the two late Triumvirates--the third having perished miserably in the East--were in arms against each other.

"Alter ardet furore et scelere" he says.[279] Caesar is pressing on unscrupulous in his passion.

"Alter is qui nos sibi quondam ad pedes stratos ne sublevabat quidem, qui se nihil contra hujus voluntatem aiebat facere posse." "That other one," he continues--meaning Pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast--"who in days gone by would not even lift me when I lay at his feet, and told me that he could do nothing but as Caesar wished it." This little supposed detail of biography has been given, no doubt, from an accurate reading of the words; but in it the spirit of the writer's mind as he wrote it has surely been missed.