Carbo's soldiers are milk smeared recruits." "You really are going to raise your own army?" "I really am." "Magnus, you're only twenty two years old! You can't expect your father's veterans to enlist for you!" "Why not?" asked Pompey, genuinely puzzled. "For one thing, you're eight years too young to qualify for the Senate. You're twenty years away from the consulship. And even if your father's men would enlist under you, to ask them to do so is absolutely illegal. You're a private citizen, and private citizens don't raise armies." "For over three years Rome's government has been illegal," Pompey countered. "Cinna consul four times, Carbo twice, Marcus Gratidianus twice the urban praetor, almost half the Senate outlawed, Appius Claudius banished with his imperium intact, Fimbria running round Asia Minor making deals with King Mithridates the whole thing is a joke!" Varro managed to look like a pompous mule not so very difficult for a Sabine of the rosea rura, where mules abounded. "The matter must be solved constitutionally," he said. That provoked Pompey to outright laughter. "Oh, Varro! I do indeed like you, but you are hopelessly unrealistic! If this matter could be solved constitutionally, why are there one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Italy and Italian Gaul?" Again Varro clawed the air, but this time in defeat. "Oh, very well, then! I'll come with you." Pompey beamed, threw his arm around Varro's shoulders and guided him in the direction of the corridor which led to his rooms. "Splendid, splendid! You'll be able to write the history of my first campaigns you're a better stylist than your friend Sisenna. I am the most important man of our age, I deserve to have my own historian at my side." But Varro had the last word. "You must be important! Why else would you have the gall good pun, that! to call yourself Magnus?" He snorted. "The Great! At twenty two, The Great! The best your father could do was to call himself after his cross eyes!" A sally Pompey ignored, busy now with steward and armorer, issuing a stream of instructions.