Читать книгу Yale Classics - Roman Classical Literature - Луций Анней Сенека - Страница 328

To this, Caesar did not then think proper to make any reply, nor do we now think it worth recording. But Caesar required "that he should be allowed to send commissioners to Pompey, who should suffer no personal injury; and that either they should grant it, or should take his commissioners in charge, and convey them to Pompey. That as to the truce, the war in its present state was so divided, that they by their fleet deprived him of his shipping and auxiliaries; while he prevented them from the use of the land and fresh water; and if they wished that this restraint should be removed from them, they should relinquish their blockade of the seas, but if they retained the one, he in like manner would retain the other; that nevertheless, the treaty of accommodation might still be carried on, though these points were not conceded, and that they need not be an impediment to it." They would neither receive Caesar's commissioners, nor guarantee their safety, but referred the whole to Pompey. They urged and struggled eagerly to gain the one point respecting a truce. But when Caesar perceived that they had proposed the conference merely to avoid present danger and distress, but that they offered no hopes or terms of peace, he applied his thoughts to the prosecution of the war.