[514] L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, whom Cæsar took in Corfinium, c. 34.
[515] See the Life of Pompeius, c. 52.
[516] Cæsar (Civil War, i. 1) mentions this letter; but it was read in the Senate after great opposition. The consuls of the year B.C. 49 were L. Cornelius Lentulus and C. Claudius Marcellus.
Cæsar, in the first few chapters of the Civil War, has clearly stated all the matters that are referred to in c. 30 and 31. The "letters" mentioned in c. 31 as coming before Curio and Antonius left Rome, are not mentioned by Cæsar. Plutarch might have confounded this with another matter. (Civil War, i. 3.)
[517] Cæsar was at Ravenna when the tribunes fled from Rome, and he first saw them at Ariminum, Rimini, which was not within the limits of Cæsar's province. (Civil War, i. 6; Dion Cassius, 41. c. 3.)
[518] Q. Hortensius Hortalus, a son of the orator Hortensius. He was an unprincipled fellow.
[519] Cæsar says nothing of the passage of the Rubico, but his silence does not disprove the truth of the story as told by Plutarch. The passage of the Rubico was a common topic (locus communis) for rhetoricians. Lucanus (Pharsalia, i. 213) has embellished it:—
"Fonte cadit modico parvisque impellitur undis
Puniceus Rubicon, cum fervida canduit æstas—
Tunc vires præbebat hiems."
This small stream does not appear to be identified with certainty. Some writers make it the Fiumicino.
Ariminum was not in Cæsar's province, and Plutarch must have known that, as appears from his narrative. Kaltwasser thinks that he may mean that it was originally a Gallic town, which was true.