and, as it seemed that he could not possibly gain any long respite
by this means, extensive confiscations were generally anticipated
as the only remaining expedient.

Its Political Results
Fear of Anarchy

More serious difficulties still were created by the political relations
amidst which Caesar found himself placed on the conquest of Italy.
The apprehension of an anarchical revolution was universal
among the propertied classes.  Friends and foes saw in Caesar
a second Catilina; Pompeius believed or affected to believe
that Caesar had been driven to civil war merely by the impossibility
of paying his debts.  This was certainly absurd; but in fact Caesar's
antecedents were anything but reassuring, and still less reassuring
was the aspect of the retinue that now surrounded him.
Individuals of the most broken reputation, notorious personages
like Quintus Hortensius, Gaius Curio, Marcus Antonius,--
the latter the stepson of the Catilinarian Lentulus who was executed
by the orders of Cicero--were the most prominent actors in it;
the highest posts of trust were bestowed on men who had long ceased
even to reckon up their debts; people saw men who held office
under Caesar not merely keeping dancing-girls--which was done
by others also--but appearing publicly in company with them.
Was there any wonder, that even grave and politically impartial men
expected amnesty for all exiled criminals, cancelling
of creditors' claims, comprehensive mandates of confiscation,
proscription, and murder, nay, even a plundering of Rome
by the Gallic soldiery?

Dispelled by Caesar

But in this respect the "monster" deceived the expectations
of his foes as well as of his friends.  As soon even as Caesar occupied
the first Italian town, Ariminum, he prohibited all common soldiers
from appearing armed within the walls; the country towns
were protected from all injury throughout and without distinction,
whether they had given him a friendly or hostile reception.
When the mutinous garrison surrendered Corfinium late in the evening,
he in the face of every military consideration postponed
the occupation of the town till the following morning, solely
that he might not abandon the burgesses to the nocturnal invasion
of his exasperated soldiers.  Of the prisoners the common soldiers,
as presumably indifferent to politics, were incorporated
with his own army, while the officers were not merely spared,
but also freely released without distinction of person and without
the exaction of any promises whatever; and all which they claimed
as private property was frankly given up to them, without even
investigating with any strictness the warrant for their claims.
Lucius Domitius himself was thus treated, and even Labienus had the money
and baggage which he had left behind sent after him to the enemy's camp.
In the most painful financial embarrassment the immense estates
of his opponents whether present or absent were not assailed; indeed
Caesar preferred to borrow from friends, rather than that he should
stir up the possessors of property against him even by exacting
the formally admissible, but practically antiquated, land tax.(17)
The victor regarded only the half, and that not the more difficult half,
of his task as solved with the victory; he saw the security
for its duration, according to his own expression, only
in the unconditional pardon of the vanquished, and had accordingly
during the whole march from Ravenna to Brundisium incessantly
renewed his efforts to bring about a personal conference
with Pompeius and a tolerable accommodation.

Threats of the Emigrants
The Mass of Quiet People Gained for Caesar

But, if the aristocracy had previously refused to listen
to any reconciliation, the unexpected emigration of a kind
so disgraceful had raised their wrath to madness, and the wild vengeance
breathed by the beaten contrasted strangely with the placability
of the victor.  The communications regularly coming from the camp
of the emigrants to their friends left behind in Italy
were full of projects for confiscations and proscriptions,
of plans for purifying the senate and the state, compared with which
the restoration of Sulla was child's play, and which even
the moderate men of their own party heard with horror.
The frantic passion of impotence, the wise moderation of power,
produced their effect.  The whole mass, in whose eyes material interests
were superior to political, threw itself into the arms of Caesar.
The country towns idolized "the uprightness, the moderation,
the prudence" of the victor; and even opponents conceded
that these demonstrations of respect were meant in earnest.
The great capitalists, farmers of the taxes, and jurymen,
showed no special desire, after the severe shipwreck
which had befallen the constitutional party in Italy,
to entrust themselves farther to the same pilots; capital came
once more to the light, and "the rich lords resorted again to their
daily task of writing their rent-rolls."  Even the great majority
of the senate, at least numerically speaking--for certainly but few
of the nobler and more influential members of the senate
were included in it--had notwithstanding the orders of Pompeius
and of the consuls remained behind in Italy, and a portion of them
even in the capital itself; and they acquiesced in Caesar's rule.
The moderation of Caesar, well calculated even in its very semblance
of excess, attained its object: the trembling anxiety of the propertied
classes as to the impending anarchy was in some measure allayed.
This was doubtless an incalculable gain for the future;
the prevention of anarchy, and of the scarcely less dangerous alarm
of anarchy, was the indispensable preliminary condition
to the future reorganization of the commonwealth.

Indignation of the Anarchist Party against Caesar
The Republican Party in Italy

But at the moment this moderation was more dangerous for Caesar
than the renewal of the Cinnan and Catilinarian fury would have been;
it did not convert enemies into friends, and it converted
friends into enemies.  Caesar's Catilinarian adherents
were indignant that murder and pillage remained in abeyance;
these audacious and desperate personages, some of whom
were men of talent, might be expected to prove cross and untractable.
The republicans of all shades, on the other hand, were neither
converted nor propitiated by the leniency of the conqueror.
According to the creed of the Catonian party, duty towards
what they called their fatherland absolved them from every
other consideration; even one who owed freedom and life to Caesar
remained entitled and in duty bound to take up arms or at least
to engage in plots against him.  The less decided sections
of the constitutional party were no doubt found willing to accept peace
and protection from the new monarch; nevertheless they ceased not
to curse the monarchy and the monarch at heart.  The more clearly
the change of the constitution became manifest, the more distinctly
the great majority of the burgesses--both in the capital with its
keener susceptibility of political excitement, and among
the more energetic population of the country and country towns--
awoke to a consciousness of their republican sentiments; so far
the friends of the constitution in Rome reported with truth
to their brethren of kindred views in exile, that at home all classes
and all persons were friendly to Pompeius.  The discontented temper
of all these circles was further increased by the moral pressure,
which the more decided and more notable men who shared such views
exercised from their very position as emigrants over the multitude
of the humbler and more lukewarm.  The conscience of the honourable man
smote him in regard to his remaining in Italy; the half-aristocrat
fancied that he was ranked among the plebeians, if he did not go
into exile with the Domitii and the Metelli, and even if he took his seat
in the Caesarian senate of nobodies.  The victor's special clemency
gave to this silent opposition increased political importance;
seeing that Caesar abstained from terrorism, it seemed as if
his secret opponents could display their disinclination
to his rule without much danger.

Passive Resistance of the Senate to Caesar

Very soon he experienced remarkable treatment in this respect
at the hands of the senate.  Caesar had begun the struggle
to liberate the overawed senate from its oppressors.  This was done;
consequently he wished to obtain from the senate approval
of what had been done, and full powers for the continuance of the war.
for this purpose, when Caesar appeared before the capital (end of March)
the tribunes of the people belonging to his party convoked for him
the senate (1 April).  The meeting was tolerably numerous,
but the more notable of the very senators that remained in Italy
were absent, including even the former leader of the servile majority
Marcus Cicero and Caesar's own father-in-law Lucius Piso;
and, what was worse, those who did appear were not inclined
to enter into Caesar's proposals.  When Caesar spoke of full power
to continue the war, one of the only two consulars present,
Servius Sulpicius Rufus, a very timid man who desired nothing
but a quiet death in his bed, was of opinion that Caesar would deserve
well of his country if he should abandon the thought of carrying
the war to Greece and Spain.  When Caesar thereupon requested the senate
at least to be the medium of transmitting his peace proposals
to Pompeius, they were not indeed opposed to that course in itself,
but the threats of the emigrants against the neutrals had so terrified
the latter, that no one was found to undertake the message of peace.
Through the disinclination of the aristocracy to help the erection
of the monarch's throne, and through the same inertness
of the dignified corporation, by means of which Caesar
had shortly before frustrated the legal nomination of Pompeius
as generalissimo in the civil war, he too was now thwarted when making
a like request.  Other impediments, moreover, occurred.  Caesar desired,
with the view of regulating in some sort of way his position,
to be named as dictator; but his wish was not complied with,
because such a magistrate could only be constitutionally appointed
by one of the consuls, and the attempt of Caesar to buy
the consul Lentulus--of which owing to the disordered condition
of his finances there was a good prospect--nevertheless proved
a failure.  The tribune of the people Lucius Metellus, moreover,
lodged a protest against all the steps of the proconsul, and made signs
as though he would protect with his person the public chest,
when Caesar's men came to empty it.  Caesar could not avoid
in this case ordering that the inviolable person should be pushed aside
as gently as possible; otherwise, he kept by his purpose of abstaining
from all violent steps.  He declared to the senate, just as
the constitutional party had done shortly before, that he had
certainly desired to regulate things in a legal way and with the help
of the supreme authority; but, since this help was refused,
he could dispense with it.

Provisional Arrangement of the Affairs of the Capital
The Provinces

Without further concerning himself about the senate and the formalities
of state law, he handed over the temporary administration
of the capital to the praetor Marcus Aemilius Lepidus as city-prefect,
and made the requisite arrangements for the administration
of the provinces that obeyed him and the continuance of the war.
Even amidst the din of the gigantic struggle, and with all
the alluring sound of Caesar's lavish promises, it still made
a deep impression on the multitude of the capital, when they saw
in their free Rome the monarch for the first time wielding
a monarch's power and breaking open the doors of the treasury
by his soldiers.  But the times had gone by, when the impressions
and feelings of the multitude determined the course of events;
it was with the legions that the decision lay, and a few
painful feelings more or less were of no farther moment.

Pompeians in Spain

Caesar hastened to resume the war.  He owed his successes
hitherto to the offensive, and he intended still to maintain it.
The position of his antagonist was singular.  After the original plan
of carrying on the campaign simultaneously in the two Gauls
by offensive operations from the bases of Italy and Spain had been
frustrated by Caesar's aggressive, Pompeius had intended to go to Spain.
There he had a very strong position.  The army amounted
to seven legions; a large number of Pompeius' veterans served in it,
and several years of conflicts in the Lusitanian mountains
had hardened soldiers and officers.  Among its captains Marcus Varro
indeed was simply a celebrated scholar and a faithful partisan;
but Lucius Afranius had fought with distinction in the east
and in the Alps, and Marcus Petreius, the conqueror of Catilina,
was an officer as dauntless as he was able.  While in the Further
province Caesar had still various adherents from the time
of his governorship there,(18) the more important province
of the Ebrowas attached by all the ties of veneration and gratitude
to the celebrated general, who twenty years before had held the command
in it during the Sertorian war, and after the termination of that war
had organized it anew.  Pompeius could evidently after the Italian
disaster do nothing better than proceed to Spain with the saved remnant
of his army, and then at the head of his whole force advance
to meet Caesar.  But unfortunately he had, in the hope of being able
still to save the troops that were in Corfinium, tarried in Apuli
so long that he was compelled to choose the nearer Brundisium
as his place of embarkation instead of the Campanian ports.
Why, master as he was of the sea and Sicily, he did not
subsequently revert to his original plan, cannot be determined;
whether it was that perhaps the aristocracy after their short-sighted
and distrustful fashion showed no desire to entrust themselves
to the Spanish troops and the Spanish population, it is enough
to say that Pompeius remained in the east, and Caesar had the option
of directing his first attack either against the army which was
being organized in Greece under Pompeius' own command, or against
that which was ready for battle under his lieutenants in Spain.
He had decided in favour of the latter course, and, as soon as
the Italian campaign ended, had taken measures to collect
on the lower Rhone nine of his best legions, as also 6000 cavalry--
partly men individually picked out by Caesar in the Celtic cantons,
partly German mercenaries--and a number of Iberian and Ligurian archers.

Massilia against Caesar

But at this point his opponents also had been active.  Lucius Domitius,
who was nominated by the senate in Caesar's stead as governor
of Transalpine Gaul, had proceeded from Corfinium--as soon as
Caesar had released him--along with his attendants and with Pompeius'
confidant Lucius Vibullius Rufus to Massilia, and actually induced
that city to declare for Pompeius and even to refuse a passage
to Caesar's troops.  Of the Spanish troops the two least trustworthy
legions were left behind under the command of Varro in the Further
province; while the five best, reinforced by 40,000 Spanish infantry--
partly Celtiberian infantry of the line, partly Lusitanian
and other light troops--and by 5000 Spanish cavalry, under Afranius
and Petreius, had, in accordance with the orders of Pompeius
transmitted by Vibullius, set out to close the Pyrenees
against the enemy.

Caesar Occupies the Pyrenees
Position at Ilerda

Meanwhile Caesar himself arrived in Gaul and, as the commencement
of the siege of Massilia still detained him in person,
he immediately despatched the greater part of his troops assembled
on the Rhone--six legions and the cavalry--along the great road
leading by way of Narbo (Narbonne) to Rhode (Rosas) with the view
of anticipating the enemy at the Pyrenees.  The movement was successful;
when Afranius and Petreius arrived at the passes, they found them
already occupied by the Caesarians and the line of the Pyrenees lost.
They then took up a position at Ilerda (Lerida) between the Pyrenees
and the Ebro.  This town lies twenty miles to the north
of the Ebro on the right bank of one of its tributaries,
the Sicoris (Segre), which was crossed by only a single solid bridge
immediately at Ilerda.  To the south of Ilerda the mountains
which adjoin the left bank of the Ebro approach pretty close to the town;
to the northward there stretches on both sides of the Sicoris
a level country which is commanded by the hill on which the town
is built.  For an army, which had to submit to a siege, it was
an excellent position; but the defence of Spain, after the occupation
of the line of the Pyrenees had been neglected, could only be undertaken
in earnest behind the Ebro, and, as no secure communication
was established between Ilerda and the Ebro, and no bridge
existed over the latter stream, the retreat from the temporary
to the true defensive position was not sufficiently secured.
The Caesarians established themselves above Ilerda, in the delta
which the river Sicoris forms with the Cinga (Cinca),
which unites with it below Ilerda; but the attack only began
in earnest after Caesar had arrived in the camp (23 June).
Under the walls of the town the struggle was maintained with equal
exasperation and equal valour on both sides, and with frequent
alternations of success; but the Caesarians did not attain their object--
which was, to establish themselves between the Pompeian camp
and the town and thereby to possess themselves of the stone bridge--
and they consequently remained dependent for their communication
with Gaul solely on two bridges which they had hastily constructed
over the Sicoris, and that indeed, as the river at Ilerda itself
was too considerable to be bridged over, about eighteen
or twenty miles farther up.

Caesar Cut Off

When the floods came on with the melting of the snow,
these temporary bridges were swept away; and, as they had no vessels
for the passage of the highly swollen rivers and under such circumstance
the restoration of the bridges could not for the present be thought of,
the Caesarian army was confined to the narrow space between the Cinca
and the Sicoris, while the left bank of the Sicoris and with it the road,
by which the army communicated with Gaul and Italy, were exposed
almost undefended to the Pompeians, who passed the river partly
by the town-bridge, partly by swimming after the Lusitanian fashion
on skins.  It was the season shortly before harvest; the old produce
was almost used up, the new was not yet gathered, and the narrow stripe
of land between the two streams was soon exhausted.   In the camp
actual famine prevailed--the -modius- of wheat cost 50 -denarii-
(1 pound 16 shillings)--and dangerous diseases broke out; whereas
on the left bank there were accumulated provisions and varied supplies,
as well as troops of all sorts--reinforcements from Gaul of cavalry
and archers, officers and soldiers from furlough, foraging parties
returning--in all a mass of 6000 men, whom the Pompeians attacked
with superior force and drove with great loss to the mountains,
while the Caesarians on the right bank were obliged to remain
passive spectators of the unequal conflict.  The communications
of the army were in the hands of the Pompeians; in Italy the accounts
from Spain suddenly ceased, and the suspicious rumours,
which began to circulate there, were not so very remote from the truth.
Had the Pompeians followed up their advantage with some energy,
they could not have failed either to reduce under their power
or at least to drive back towards Gaul the mass scarcely capable
of resistance which was crowded together on the left bank
of the Sicoris, and to occupy this bank so completely that not a man
could cross the river without their knowledge.  But both points
were neglected; those bands were doubtless pushed aside with loss
but neither destroyed nor completely beaten back, and the prevention
of the crossing of the river was left substantially to the river itself,

Caesar Re-establishes the Communications

Thereupon Caesar formed his plan.  He ordered portable boats
of a light wooden frame and osier work lined with leather,
after the model of those used in the Channel among the Britons
and subsequently by the Saxons, to be prepared in the camp
and transported in waggons to the point where the bridges had stood.
On these frail barks the other bank was reached and, as it was found
unoccupied, the bridge was re-established without much difficulty;
the road in connection with it was thereupon quickly cleared,
and the eagerly-expected supplies were conveyed to the camp.
Caesar's happy idea thus rescued the army from the immense peril
in which it was placed.  Then the cavalry of Caesar which in efficiency
far surpassed that of the enemy began at once to scour the country
on the left bank of the Sicoris; the most considerable
Spanish communities between the Pyrenees and the Ebro--Osca, Tarraco,
Dertosa, and others--nay, even several to the south of the Ebro,
passed over to Caesar's side.

Retreat of the Pompeians from Ilerda

The supplies of the Pompeians were now rendered scarce
through the foraging parties of Caesar and the defection
of the neighbouring communities; they resolved at length to retire
behind the line of the Ebro, and set themselves in all haste to form
a bridge of boats over the Ebro below the mouth of the Sicoris.
Caesar sought to cut off the retreat of his opponents over the Ebro
and to detain them in Ilerda; but so long as the enemy remained
in possession of the bridge at Ilerda and he had control of neither ford
nor bridge there, he could not distribute his army over both banks
of the river and could not invest Ilerda.  His soldiers therefore
worked day and night to lower the depth of the river by means of canals
drawing off the water, so that the infantry could wade through it.
But the preparations of the Pompeians to pass the Ebro were sooner
finished than the arrangements of the Caesarians for investing Ilerda;
when the former after finishing the bridge of boats began their march
towards the Ebro along the left bank of the Sicoris, the canals
of the Caesarians seemed to the general not yet far enough advanced
to make the ford available for the infantry; he ordered
only his cavalry to pass the stream and, by clinging to the rear
of the enemy, at least to detain and harass them.

Caesar Follows

But when Caesar's legions saw in the gray morning the enemy's columns
which had been retiring since midnight, they discerned
with the sure instinct of experienced veterans the strategic importance
of this retreat, which would compel them to follow their antagonists
into distant and impracticable regions filled by hostile troops;
at their own request the general ventured to lead the infantry
also into the river, and although the water reached up
to the shoulders of the men, it was crossed without accident.
It was high time.  If the narrow plain, which separated the town
of Ilerda from the mountains enclosing the Ebro were once traversed
and the army of the Pompeians entered the mountains, their retreat
to the Ebro could no longer be prevented.  Already they had,
notwithstanding the constant attacks of the enemy's cavalry
which greatly delayed their march, approached within five miles
of the mountains, when they, having been on the march since midnight
and unspeakably exhausted, abandoned their original plan of traversing
the whole plain on the same day, and pitched their camp.
Here the infantry of Caesar overtook them and encamped opposite to them
in the evening and during the night, as the nocturnal march
which the Pompeians had at first contemplated was abandoned from fear
of the night-attacks of the cavalry.  On the following day also
both armies remained immoveable, occupied only
in reconnoitering the country.

The Route to the Ebro Closed

Early in the morning of the third day Caesar's infantry set out,
that by a movement through the pathless mountains alongside of the road
they might turn the position of the enemy and bar their route
to the Ebro.  The object of the strange march, which seemed at first
to turn back towards the camp before Ilerda, was not at once
perceived by the Pompeian officers.  When they discerned it,
they sacrificed camp and baggage and advanced by a forced march
along the highway, to gain the crest of the ridge before the Caesarians.
But it was already too late; when they came up, the compact masses
of the enemy were already posted on the highway itself.
a desperate attempt of the Pompeians to discover other routes
to the Ebro over the steep mountains was frustrated by Caesar's cavalry,
which surrounded and cut to pieces the Lusitanian troops sent forth
for that purpose.  Had a battle taken place between the Pompeian army--
which had the enemy's cavalry in its rear and their infantry in front,
and was utterly demoralized--and the Caesarians, the issue
was scarcely doubtful, and the opportunity for fighting
several times presented itself; but Caesar made no use of it,
and, not without difficulty, restrained the impatient eagerness
for the combat in his soldiers sure of victory.  The Pompeian army
was at any rate strategically lost; Caesar avoided weakening his army
and still further envenoming the bitter feud by useless bloodshed.
On the very day after he had succeeded in cutting off the Pompeians
from the Ebro, the soldiers of the two armies had begun to fraternize
and to negotiate respecting surrender; indeed the terms
asked by the Pompeians, especially as to the sparing of their officers,
had been already conceded by Caesar, when Petreius with his escort
consisting of slaves and Spaniards came upon the negotiators
and caused the Caesarians, on whom he could lay hands,
to be put to death.  Caesar nevertheless sent the Pompeians
who had come to his camp back unharmed, and persevered in seeking
a peaceful solution.  Ilerda, where the Pompeians had still
a garrison and considerable magazines, became now the point
which they sought to reach; but with the hostile army in front
and the Sicoris between them and the fortress, they marched
without coming nearer to their object.  Their cavalry became gradually
so afraid that the infantry had to take them into the centre and legions
had to be set as the rearguard; the procuring of water and forage
became more and more difficult; they had already to kill the beasts
of burden, because they could no longer feed them.  At length
the wandering army found itself formally inclosed, with the Sicoris
in its rear and the enemy's force in front, which drew rampart
and trench around it.  It attempted to cross the river, but Caesar's
German horsemen and light infantry anticipated it in the occupation
of the opposite bank.

Capitulation of the Pompeians

No bravery and no fidelity could longer avert the inevitable
capitulation (2 Aug. 705).  Caesar granted to officers and soldiers
their life and liberty, and the possession of the property
which they still retained as well as the restoration of what had been
already taken from them, the full value of which he undertook
personally to make good to his soldiers; and not only so,
but while he had compulsorily enrolled in his army the recruits
captured in Italy, he honoured these old legionaries of Pompeius
by the promise that no one should be compelled against his will
to enter Caesar's army.  He required only that each should give up
his arms and repair to his home.  Accordingly the soldiers
who were natives of Spain, about a third of the army, were disbanded
at once, while the Italian soldiers were discharged on the borders
of Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul.

Further Spain Submits

Hither Spain on the breaking up of this army fell of itself
into the power of the victor.  In Further Spain, where Marcus Varro
held the chief command for Pompeius, it seemed to him, when he learned
the disaster of Ilerda, most advisable that he should throw himself
into the insular town of Gades and should carry thither for safety
the considerable sums which he had collected by confiscating
the treasures of the temples and the property of prominent Caesarians,
the not inconsiderable fleet which he had raised, and the two legions
entrusted to him.  But on the mere rumour of Caesar's arrival
the most notable towns of the province which had been for long
attached to Caesar declared for the latter and drove away
the Pompeian garrisons or induced them to a similar revolt;
such was the case with Corduba, Carmo, and Gades itself.
One of the legions also set out of its own accord for Hispalis,
and passed over along with this town to Caesar's side.  When at length
even Italica closed its gates against Varro, the latter
resolved to capitulate.

Siege of Massilia

About the same time Massilia also submitted.  With rare energy
the Massiliots had not merely sustained a siege, but had also kept
the sea against Caesar; it was their native element, and they might hope
to obtain vigorous support on it from Pompeius, who in fact
had the exclusive command of it.  But Caesar's lieutenant, the able
Decimus Brutus, the same who had achieved the first naval victory
in the Atlantic over the Veneti,(19) managed rapidly to equip a fleet;
and in spite of the brave resistance of the enemy's crews--
consisting partly of Albioecian mercenaries of the Massiliots,
partly of slave-herdsmen of Domitius--he vanquished by means of his brave
marines selected from the legions the stronger Massiliot fleet,
and sank or captured the greater part of their ships.  When therefore
a small Pompeian squadron under Lucius Nasidius arrived
from the east by way of Sicily and Sardinia in the port of Massilia,
the Massiliots once more renewed their naval armament and sailed forth
along with the ships of Nasidius against Brutus.  The engagement
which took place off Tauroeis (La Ciotat to the east of Marseilles)
might probably have had a different result, if the vessels of Nasidius
had fought with the same desperate courage which the Massiliots
displayed on that day; but the flight of the Nasidians
decided the victory in favour of Brutus, and the remains
of the Pompeian fleet fled to Spain.  The besieged were completely
driven from the sea.  On the landward side, where Gaius Trebonius
conducted the siege, the most resolute resistance was still continued;
but in spite of the frequent sallies of the Albioecian mercenaries
and the skilful expenditure of the immense stores of projectiles
accumulated in the city, the works of the besiegers were at length
advanced up to the walls and one of the towers fell.  The Massiliots
declared that they would give up the defence, but desired
to conclude the capitulation with Caesar himself, and entreated
the Roman commander to suspend the siege operations till
Caesar's arrival.  Trebonius had express orders from Caesar
to spare the town as far as possible; he granted the armistice desired.
But when the Massiliots made use of it for an artful sally,
in which they completely burnt the one-half of the almost unguarded
Roman works, the struggle of the siege began anew and with increased
exasperation.  The vigorous commander of the Romans repaired
with surprising rapidity the destroyed towers and the mound;
soon the Massiliots were once more completely invested.

Massilia Capitulates

When Caesar on his return from the conquest of Spain arrived
before their city, he found it reduced to extremities
partly by the enemy's attacks, partly by famine and pestilence,
and ready for the second time--on this occasion in right earnest--
to surrender on any terms.  Domitius alone, remembering the indulgence
of the victor which he had shamefully misused, embarked in a boat
and stole through the Roman fleet, to seek a third battle-field
for his implacable resentment.  Caesar's soldiers had sworn
to put to the sword the whole male population of the perfidious city,
and vehemently demanded from the general the signal for plunder.
But Caesar, mindful here also of his great task of establishing
Helleno-Italic civilization in the west, was not to be coerced
into furnishing a sequel to the destruction of Corinth.
Massilia--the most remote from the mother-country of all those cities,
once so numerous, free, and powerful, that belonged to the old Ionic
mariner-nation, and almost the last in which the Hellenic seafaring life
had preserved itself fresh and pure, as in fact it was the last
Greek city that fought at sea--Massilia had to surrender its magazines
of arms and naval stores to the victor, and lost a portion
of its territory and of its privileges; but it retained its freedom
and its nationality and continued, though with diminished proportions
in a material point of view, to be still as before intellectually
the centre of Hellenic culture in that distant Celtic country
which at this very time was attaining a new historical significance.

Expeditions of Caesar to the Corn-Provinces

While thus in the western provinces the war after various critical
vicissitudes was thoroughly decided at length in favour of Caesar,
Spain and Massilia were subdued, and the chief army of the enemy
was captured to the last man, the decision of arms had also taken place
on the second arena of warfare, on which Caesar had found it necessary
immediately after the conquest of Italy to assume the offensive

Sardinia Occupied
Sicily Occupied

We have already mentioned that the Pompeians intended
to reduce Italy to starvation.  They had the means of doing so
in their hands.  They had thorough command of the sea and laboured
with great zeal everywhere--in Gades, Utica, Messana, above all
in the east--to increase their fleet.  They held moreover
all the provinces, from which the capital drew its means of subsistence:
Sardinia and Corsica through Marcus Cotta, Sicily through Marcus Cato,
Africa through the self-nominated commander-in-chief Titus Attius Varus
and their ally Juba king of Numidia It was indispensably needful
for Caesar to thwart these plans of the enemy and to wrest from them
the corn-provinces.  Quintus Valerius was sent with a legion to Sardinia
and compelled the Pompeian governor to evacuate the island.
The more important enterprise of taking Sicily and Africa from the enemy
was entrusted to the young Gaius Curio with the assistance
of the able Gaius Caninius Rebilus, who possessed experience in war.
Sicily was occupied by him without a blow; Cato, without a proper army
and not a man of the sword, evacuated the island, after having
in his straightforward manner previously warned the Siceliots
not to compromise themselves uselessly by an ineffectual resistance.

Landing of Curio in Africa

Curio left behind half of his troops to protect this island
so important for the capital, and embarked with the other half--
two legions and 500 horsemen--for Africa.  Here he might expect
to encounter more serious resistance; besides the considerable
and in its own fashion efficient army of Juba, the governor Varus
had formed two legions from the Romans settled in Africa
and also fitted out a small squadron of ten sail.  With the aid
of his superior fleet, however, Curio effected without difficulty
a landing between Hadrumetum, where the one legion of the enemy
lay along with their ships of war, and Utica, in front of which town
lay the second legion under Varus himself.  Curio turned against
the latter, and pitched his camp not far from Utica, just where
a century and a half before the elder Scipio had taken up
his first winter-camp in Africa.(20)  Caesar, compelled to keep together
his best troops for the Spanish war, had been obliged to make up
the Sicilo-African army for the most part out of the legions taken over
from the enemy, more especially the war-prisoners of Corfinium;
the officers of the Pompeian army in Africa, some of whom had served
in the very legions that were conquered at Corfinium,
now left no means untried to bring back their old soldiers who were
now fighting against them to their first allegiance.  But Caesar
had not erred in the choice of his lieutenant. Curio knew as well
how to direct the movements of the army and of the fleet,
as how to acquire personal influence over the soldiers;
the supplies were abundant, the conflicts without exception successful.

Curio Conquers at Utica

When Varus, presuming that the troops of Curio wanted opportunity
to pass over to his side, resolved to give battle chiefly for the sake
of affording them this opportunity, the result did not justify
his expectations.  Animated by the fiery appeal of their youthful leader
the cavalry of Curio put to flight the horsemen  of the enemy
and in presence of the two armies cut down also the light infantry
which had accompanied the horsemen; and emboldened by this success
and by Curio's personal example, his legions advanced through
the difficult ravine separating the two lines to the attack,
for which the Pompeians however did not wait, but disgracefully
fled back to their camp and evacuated even this in the ensuing night.
The victory was so complete that Curio at once took steps
to besiege Utica.  When news arrived, however, that king Juba
was advancing with all his forces to its relief, Curio resolved,
just as Scipio had done on the arrival of Syphax, to raise the siege
and to return to Scipio's former camp till reinforcements
should arrive from Sicily.  Soon afterwards came a second report,
that king Juba had been induced by the attacks of neighbouring princes
to turn back with his main force and was sending to the aid
of the besieged merely a moderate corps under Saburra.
Curio, who from his lively temperament had only with great reluctance
made up his mind to rest, now set out again at once to fight with Saburra
before he could enter into communication with the garrison of Utica.

Curio Defeated by Juba on the Bagradas
Death of Curio

His cavalry, which had gone forward in the evening, actually succeeded
in surprising the corps of Saburra on the Bagradas during the night
and inflicting much damage upon it; and on the news of this victory
Curio hastened the march of the infantry, in order by their means
to complete the defeat Soon they perceived on the last slopes
of the heights that sank towards the Bagradas the corps of Saburra,
which was skirmishing with the Roman horsemen; the legions
coming up helped to drive it completely down into the plain.
But here the combat changed its aspect.  Saburra was not,
as they supposed, destitute of support; on the contrary he was
not much more than five miles distant from the Numidian main force.
Already the flower of the Numidian infantry and 2000 Gallic
and Spanish horsemen had arrived on the field of battle
to support Saburra, and the king in person with the bulk of the army
and sixteen elephants was approaching.  After the nocturnal march
and the hot conflict there were at the moment not more than 200
of the Roman cavalry together, and these as well as the infantry,
extremely exhausted by fatigue and fighting, were all surrounded,
in the wide plain into which they had allowed themselves to be allured,
by the continually increasing hosts of the enemy.  Vainly Curio
endeavoured to engage in close combat; the Libyan horsemen retreated,
as they were wont, so soon as a Roman division advanced,
only to pursue it when it turned.  In vain he attempted
to regain the heights; they were occupied and foreclosed
by the enemy's horse.  All was lost.  The infantry was cut down
to the last man.  Of the cavalry a few succeeded in cutting
their way through; Curio too might have probably saved himself,
but he could not bear to appear alone before his master
without the army entrusted to him, and died sword in hand.
Even the force which was collected in the camp before Utica,
and that which guarded the fleet--which might so easily
have escaped to Sicily--surrendered under the impression made
by the fearfully rapid catastrophe on the following day
to Varus (Aug. or Sept. 705).

So ended the expedition arranged by Caesar to Sicily and Africa.
It attained its object so far, since by the occupation of Sicily
in connection with that of Sardinia at least the most urgent wants
of the capital were relieved; the miscarriage of the conquest of Africa--
from which the victorious party drew no farther substantial gain--
and the loss of two untrustworthy legions might be got over.
But the early death of Curio was an irreparable loss for Caesar,
and indeed for Rome.  Not without reason had Caesar entrusted
the most important independent command to this young man, although
he had no military experience and was notorious for his dissolute life;
there was a spark of Caesar's own spirit in the fiery youth.
He resembled Caesar, inasmuch as he too had drained the cup of pleasure
to the dregs; inasmuch as he did not become a statesman
because he was an officer, but on the contrary it was his political
action that placed the sword in his hands; inasmuch as
his eloquence was not that of rounded periods, but the eloquence
of deeply-felt thought; inasmuch as his mode of warfare was based
on rapid action with slight means; inasmuch as his character
was marked by levity and often by frivolity, by pleasant frankness
and thorough life in the moment.  If, as his general says of him,
youthful fire and high courage carried him into incautious acts,
and if he too proudly accepted death that he might not submit
to be pardoned for a pardonable fault, traits of similar imprudence
and similar pride are not wanting in Caesar's history also.
We may regret that this exuberant nature was not permitted to work off
its follies and to preserve itself for the following generation
so miserably poor in talents, and so rapidly falling a prey
to the dreadful rule of mediocrities.

Pompeius' Plan of Campaign for 705

How far these events of the war in 705 interfered with Pompeius'
general plan for the campaign, and particularly what part, in that plan
was assigned after the loss of Italy to the important military corps
in the west, can only be determined by conjecture.  That Pompeius
had the intention of coming by way of Africa and Mauretania
to the aid of his army fighting in Spain, was simply a romantic,
and beyond doubt altogether groundless, rumour circulating
in the camp of Ilerda.  It is much more likely that he still kept
by his earlier plan of attacking Caesar from both sides in Transalpine
and Cisalpine Gaul(21) even after the loss of Italy, and meditated
a combined attack at once from Spain and Macedonia.  It may be presumed
that the Spanish army was meant to remain on the defensive
at the Pyrenees till the Macedonian army in the course of organization
was likewise ready to march; whereupon both would then have started
simultaneously and effected a junction according to circumstances
either on the Rhone or on the Po, while the fleet, it may be conjectured,
would have attempted at the same time to reconquer Italy proper.
On this supposition apparently Caesar had first prepared himself
to meet an attack on Italy. One of the ablest of his officers,
the tribune of the people Marcus Antonius, commanded there
with propraetorian powers.  The southeastern ports--Sipus,
Brundisium, Tarentum--where an attempt at landing was first
to be expected, had received a garrison of three legions.  Besides
this Quintus Hortensius, the degenerate son of the well-known orator,
collected a fleet in the Tyrrhene Sea, and Publius Dolabella
a second fleet in the Adriatic, which were to be employed
partly to support the defence, partly to transport the intended
expedition to Greece.  In the event of Pompeius attempting
to penetrate by land into Italy, Marcus Licinius Crassus,
the eldest son of the old colleague of Caesar, was to conduct
the defence of Cisalpine Gaul, Gaius the younger brother
of Marcus Antonius that of Illyricum.

Caesar's Fleet and Army in Illyricum Destroyed

But the expected attack was long in coming.  It was not
till the height of summer that the conflict began in Illyria.
There Caesar's lieutenant Gaius Antonius with his two legions
lay in the island of Curicta (Veglia in the gulf of Quarnero),
and Caesar's admiral Publius Dolabella with forty ships
lay in the narrow arm of the sea between this island and the mainland.
The admirals of Pompeius in the Adriatic, Marcus Octavius with the Greek,
Lucius Scribonius Libo with the Illyrian division of the fleet,
attacked the squadron of Dolabella, destroyed all his ships,
and cut off Antonius on his island.  To rescue him, a corps under Basilus
and Sallustius came from Italy and the squadron of Hortensius
from the Tyrrhene Sea; but neither the former nor the latter were able
to effect anything in presence of the far superior fleet of the enemy.
The legions of Antonius had to be abandoned to their fate.
Provisions came to an end, the troops became troublesome and mutinous;
with the exception of a few divisions, which succeeded in reaching
the mainland on rafts, the corps, still fifteen cohorts strong, laid down
their arms and were conveyed in the vessels of Libo to Macedonia
to be there incorporated with the Pompeian army, while Octavius was left
to complete the subjugation of the Illyrian coast now denuded of troops.
The Dalmatae, now far the most powerful tribe in these regions,(22)
the important insular town of Issa (Lissa), and other townships,
embraced the party of Pompeius; but the adherents of Caesar
maintained themselves in Salonae (Spalato) and Lissus (Alessio),
and in the former town not merely sustained with courage a siege,
but when they were reduced to extremities, made a sally with such effect
that Octavius raised the siege and sailed off to Dyrrhachium
to pass the winter there.

Result of the Campaign as a Whole

The success achieved in Illyricum by the Pompeian fleet,
although of itself not inconsiderable, had yet but little influence
on the issue of the campaign as a whole; and it appears miserably small,
when we consider that the performances of the land and naval' forces
under the supreme command of Pompeius during the whole eventful year 705
were confined to this single feat of arms, and that from the east,
where the general, the senate, the second great army, the principal fleet,
the immense military and still more extensive financial resources
of the antagonists of Caesar were united, no intervention at all
took place where it was needed in that all-decisive struggle in the west.
The scattered condition of the forces in the eastern half of the empire,
the method of the general never to operate except with superior masses,
his cumbrous and tedious movements, and the discord of the coalition
may perhaps explain in some measure, though not excuse, the inactivity
of the land-force; but that the fleet, which commanded the Mediterranean
without a rival, should have thus done nothing to influence
the course of affairs--nothing for Spain, next to nothing
for the faithful Massiliots, nothing to defend Sardinia, Sicily,
Africa, or, if not to reoccupy Italy, at least to obstruct its supplies--
this makes demands on our ideas of the confusion and perversity
prevailing in the Pompeian camp, which we can only with difficulty meet.

The aggregate result of this campaign was corresponding.
Caesar's double aggressive movement, against Spain and against Sicily
and Africa, was successful, in the former case completely,
in the latter at least partially; while Pompeius' plan
of starving Italy was thwarted in the main by the taking away
of Sicily, and his general plan of campaign was frustrated completely
by the destruction of the Spanish army; and in Italy only
a very small portion of Caesar's defensive arrangements
had come to be applied.  Notwithstanding the painfully-felt losses
in Africa and Illyria, Caesar came forth from this first year
of the war in the most decided and most decisive manner as victor.

Organizations in Macedonia
The Emigrants

If, however, nothing material was done from the east to obstruct Caesar
in the subjugation of the west, efforts at least were made towards
securing political and military consolidation there during the respite
so ignominiously obtained.  The great rendezvous of the opponents
of Caesar was Macedonia.  Thither Pompeius himself and the mass
of the emigrants from Brundisium resorted; thither came
the other refugees from the west: Marcus Cato from Sicily,
Lucius Domitius from Massilia but more especially a number
of the best officers and soldiers of the broken-up army of Spain,
with its generals Afranius and Varro at their head.  In Italy
emigration gradually became among the aristocrats a question
not of honour merely but almost of fashion, and it obtained
a fresh impulse through the unfavourable accounts which arrived
regarding Caesar's position before Ilerda; not a few of the more
lukewarm partisans and the political trimmers went over by degrees,
and even Marcus Cicero at last persuaded himself that he did not
adequately discharge his duty as a citizen by writing a dissertatio
on concord.  The senate of emigrants at Thessalonica, where the official
Rome pitched its interim abode, numbered nearly 200 members
including many venerable old men and almost all the consulars.
But emigrants indeed they were.  This Roman Coblentz displayed
a pitiful spectacle in the high pretensions and paltry performances
of the genteel world of Rome, their unseasonable reminiscences
and still more unseasonable recriminations, their political
perversities and financial embarrassments.  It was a matter
of comparatively slight moment that, while the old structure
was falling to pieces, they were with the most painstaking gravity
watching over every old ornamental scroll and every speck of rust
in the constitution; after all it was simply ridiculous,
when the genteel lords had scruples of conscience as to calling
their deliberative assembly beyond the sacred soil of the city
the senate, and cautiously gave it the title of the "three hundred";(23)
or when they instituted tedious investigations in state law
as to whether and how a curiate law could be legitimately enacted
elsewhere than within the ring-wall of Rome.

The Lukewarm

Far worse traits were the indifference of the lukewarm
and the narrow-minded stubbornness of the ultras.  The former
could not be brought to act or even to keep silence.  If they were asked
to exert themselves in some definite way for the common good,
with the inconsistency characteristic of weak people they regarded
any such suggestion as a malicious attempt to compromise them
still further, and either did not do what they were ordered at all
or did it with half heart.  At the same time of course,
with their affectation of knowing better when it was too late
and their over-wise impracticabilities, they proved a perpetual clog
to those who were acting; their daily work consisted in criticizing,
ridiculing, and bemoaning every occurrence great and small,
and in unnerving and discouraging the multitude by their own
sluggishness and hopelessness.

The Ultras

While these displayed the utter prostration of weakness, the ultras
on the other hand exhibited in full display its exaggerated action.
With them there was no attempt to conceal that the preliminary
to any negotiation for peace was the bringing over of Caesar's head;
every one of the attempts towards peace, which Caesar repeatedly made
even now, was tossed aside without being examined, or employed
only to cover insidious attempts on the lives of the commissioners
of their opponent.  That the declared partisans of Caesar
had jointly and severally forfeited life and property, was a matter
of course; but it fared little better with those more or less neutral.
Lucius Domitius, the hero of Corfinium, gravely proposed
in the council of war that those senators who had fought in the army
of Pompeius should come to a vote on all who had either remained neutral
or had emigrated but not entered the army, and should according
to their own pleasure individually acquit them or punish them
by fine or even by the forfeiture of life and property.
Another of these ultras formally lodged with Pompeius a charge
of corruption and treason against Lucius Afranius for his defective
defence of Spain.  Among these deep-dyed republicans their
political theory assumed almost the character of a confession
of religious faith; they accordingly hated their own more lukewarm
partisans and Pompeius with his personal adherents, if possible,
still more than their open opponents, and that with all the dull
obstinacy of hatred which is wont to characterize orthodox theologians;
and they were mainly to blame for the numberless and bitter
separate quarrels which distracted the emigrant army and emigrant senate.
But they did not confine themselves to words. Marcus Bibulus,
Titus Labienus, and others of this coterie carried out their theory
in practice, and caused such officers or soldiers of Caesar's army
as fell into their hands to be executed en masse; which,
as may well be conceived, did not tend to make Caesar's troops
fight with less energy.  If the counterrevolution in favour
of the friends of the constitution, for which all the elements
were in existence,(24) did not break out in Italy during
Caesar's absence, the reason, according to the assurance
of discerning opponents of Caesar, lay chiefly in the general dread
of the unbridled fury of the republican ultras after the restoration
should have taken place.  The better men in the Pompeian camp
were in despair over this frantic behaviour.  Pompeius, himself
a brave soldier, spared the prisoners as far as he might and could;
but he was too pusillanimous and in too awkward a position to prevent
or even to punish all atrocities of this sort, as it became him
as commander-in-chief to do.  Marcus Cato, the only man who at least
carried moral consistency into the struggle, attempted with more energy
to check such proceedings; he induced the emigrant senate
to prohibit by a special decree the pillage of subject towns
and the putting to death of a burgess otherwise than in battle.
The able Marcus Marcellus had similar views.  No one, indeed,
knew better than Cato and Marcellus that the extreme party
would carry out their saving deeds, if necessary, in defiance
of all decrees of the senate.  But if even now, when they had still
to regard considerations of prudence, the rage of the ultras
could not be tamed, people might prepare themselves after the victory
for a reign of terror from which Marius and Sulla themselves
would have turned away with horror; and we can understand why Cato,
according to his own confession, was more afraid of the victory
than of the defeat of his own party.

The Preparations for War

The management of the military preparations in the Macedonian camp
was in the hands of Pompeius the commander-in-chief.  His position,
always troublesome and galling, had become still worse through
the unfortunate events of 705.  In the eyes of his partisans he was
mainly to blame for this result.  This judgment was in various respects
not just.  A considerable part of the misfortunes endured
was to be laid to the account of the perversity and insubordination
of the lieutenant-generals, especially of the consul Lentulus
and Lucius Domitius; from the moment when Pompeius took the head
of the army, he had led it with skill and courage, and had saved
at least very considerable forces from the shipwreck; that he was
not a match for Caesar's altogether superior genius, which was now
recognized by all, could not be fairly made matter of reproach to him.
But the result alone decided men's judgment.  Trusting to the general
Pompeius, the constitutional party had broken with Caesar; the pernicious
consequences of this breach recoiled upon the general Pompeius;
and, though owing to the notorious military incapacity
of all the other chiefs no attempt was made to change the supreme
command yet confidence at any rate in the commander-in-chief
was paralyzed.  To these painful consequences of the defeats endured
were added the injurious influences of the emigration.
Among the refugees who arrived there were certainly a number
of efficient soldiers and capable officers, especially those
belonging to the former Spanish army; but the number of those
who came to serve and fight was just as small as that of the generals
of quality who called themselves proconsuls and imperators
with as good title as Pompeius, and of the genteel lords
who took part in active military service more or less reluctantly,
was alarmingly great.  Through these the mode of life in the capital
was introduced into the camp, not at all to the advantage of the army;
the tents of such grandees were graceful bowers, the ground
elegantly covered with fresh turf, the walls clothed with ivy;
silver plate stood on the table, and the wine-cup often circulated
there even in broad daylight.  Those fashionable warriors formed
a singular contrast with Caesar's daredevils, who ate coarse bread
from which the former recoiled, and who, when that failed, devoured
even roots and swore that they would rather chew the bark of trees
than desist from the enemy.  While, moreover, the action
of Pompeius was hampered by the necessity of having regard
to the authority of a collegiate board personally disinclined to him,
this embarrassment was singularly increased when the senate of emigrants
took up its abode almost in his very headquarters and all the venom
of the emigrants now found vent in these senatorial sittings.
Lastly there was nowhere any man of mark, who could have thrown
his own weight into the scale against all these preposterous doings.
Pompeius himself was intellectually far too secondary for that purpose,
and far too hesitating, awkward, and reserved.  Marcus Cato
would have had at least the requisite moral authority, and would not
have lacked the good will to support Pompeius with it; but Pompeius,
instead of calling him to his assistance, out of distrustful
jealousy kept him in the background, and preferred for instance
to commit the highly important chief command of the fleet
to the in every respect incapable Marcus Bibulus rather than to Cato.

The Legions of Pompeius

While Pompeius thus treated the political aspect of his position
with his characteristic perversity, and did his best to make
what was already bad in itself still worse, he devoted himself
on the other hand with commendable zeal to his duty of giving military
organization to the considerable but scattered forces of his party.
The flower of his force was composed of the troops brought with him
from Italy, out of which with the supplementary aid of the Illyrian
prisoners of war and the Romans domiciled in Greece five legions
in all were formed.  Three others came from the east--the two Syrian
legions formed from the remains of the army of Crassus, and one made up
out of the two weak legions hitherto stationed in Cilicia.
Nothing stood in the way of the withdrawal of these corps of occupation:
because on the one hand the Pompeians had an understanding
with the Parthians, and might even have had an alliance with them
if Pompeius had not indignantly refused to pay them the price
which they demanded for it--the cession of the Syrian province
added by himself to the empire; and on the other hand
Caesar's plan of despatching two legions to Syria, and inducing
the Jews once more to take up arms by means of the prince Aristobulus
kept a prisoner in Rome, was frustrated partly by other causes,
partly by the death of Aristobulus.  New legions were moreover raised--
one from the veteran soldiers settled in Crete and Macedonia,
two from the Romans of Asia Minor.  To all these fell to be added
2000 volunteers, who were derived from the remains of the Spanish
select corps and other similar sources; and, lastly, the contingents
of the subjects.  Pompeius like Caesar had disdained to make
requisitions of infantry from them; only the Epirot, Aetolian,
and Thracian militia were called out to guard the coast, and moreover
3000 archers from Greece and Asia Minor and 1200 slingers
were taken up as light troops.

His Cavalry

The cavalry on the other hand--with the exception of a noble guard,
more respectable than militarily important, formed from the young
aristocracy of Rome, and of the Apulian slave-herdsmen whom Pompeius
had mounted (25)--consisted exclusively of the contingents
of the subjects and clients of Rome.  The flower of it consisted
of the Celts, partly from the garrison of Alexandria,(26)
partly the contingents of king Deiotarus who in spite of his great age
had appeared in person at the head of his troops, and of the other
Galatian dynasts.  With them were associated the excellent Thracian
horsemen, who were partly brought up by their princes Sadala
and Rhascuporis, partly enlisted by Pompeius in the Macedonian province;
the Cappadocian cavalry; the mounted archers sent by Antiochus
king of Commagene; the contingents of the Armenians from the west side
of the Euphrates under Taxiles, and from the other side under Megabates,
and the Numidian bands sent by king Juba--the whole body amounted
to 7000 horsemen.

Fleet

Lastly the fleet of Pompeius was very considerable.  It was formed
partly of the Roman transports brought from Brundisium
or subsequently built, partly of the war vessels of the king of Egypt,
of the Colchian princes, of the Cilician dynast Tarcondimotus,
of the cities of Tyre, Rhodes, Athens, Corcyra, and generally
of all the Asiatic and Greek maritime states; and it numbered nearly
500 sail, of which the Roman vessels formed a fifth.  Immense magazines
of corn and military stores were accumulated in Dyrrhachium.
The war-chest was well filled, for the Pompeians found themselves
in possession of the principal sources of the public revenue
and turned to their own account the moneyed resources of the client-
princes, of the senators of distinction, of the farmers of the taxes,
and generally of the whole Roman and non-Roman population
within their reach.  Every appliance that the reputation
of the legitimate government and the much-renowned protectorship
of Pompeius over kings and peoples could move in Africa, Egypt,
Macedonia, Greece, Western Asia and Syria, had been put in motion
for the protection of the Roman republic; the report which circulated
in Italy that Pompeius was arming the Getae, Colchians,
and Armenians against Rome, and the designation of "king of kings"
given to Pompeius in the camp, could hardly be called exaggerations.
On the whole he had command over an army of 7000 cavalry
and eleven legions, of which it is true, but five at the most
could be described as accustomed to war, and over a fleet of 500 sail.
The temper of the soldiers, for whose provisioning and pay Pompeius
manifested adequate care, and to whom in the event of victory the most
abundant rewards were promised, was throughout good, in several--
and these precisely the most efficient--divisions even excellent
but a great part of the army consisted of newly-raised troops,
the formation and training of which, however zealously it was prosecuted,
necessarily required time.  The force altogether was imposing,
but at the same time of a somewhat motley character.

Junction of the Pompeians on the Coast of Epirus

According to the design of the commander-in-chief the army and fleet
were to be in substance completely united by the winter of 705-706
along the coast and in the waters of Epirus.  The admiral Bibulus
had already arrived with no ships at his new headquarters, Corcyra.
On the other hand the land-army, the headquarters of which had been
during the summer at Berrhoea on the Haliacmon, had not yet come up;
the mass of it was moving slowly along the great highway
from Thessalonica towards the west coast to the future headquarters
Dyrrhachium; the two legions, which Metellus Scipio was bringing up
from Syria, remained at Pergamus in Asia for winter quarters
and were expected in Europe only towards spring.  They were taking time
in fact for their movements. For the moment the ports of Epirus
were guarded, over and above the fleet, merely by their own
civic defences and the levies of the adjoining districts.

Caesar against Pompeius

It thus remained possible for Caesar, notwithstanding the intervention
of the Spanish war, to assume the offensive also in Macedonia;
and he at least was not slow to act.  He had long ago ordered
the collection of vessels of war and transports in Brundisium,
and after the capitulation of the Spanish army and the fall
of Massilia had directed the greater portion of the select troops
employed there to proceed to that destination. The unparalleled
exertions no doubt, which were thus required by Caesar
from his soldiers, thinned the ranks more than their conflicts had done
and the mutiny of one of the four oldest legions, the ninth
on its march through Placentia was a dangerous indication
of the temper prevailing in the army; but Caesar's presence of mind
and personal authority gained the mastery, and from this quarter
nothing impeded the embarkation.  But the want of ships, through which
the pursuit of Pompeius had failed in March 705, threatened also
to frustrate this expedition.  The war-vessels, which Caesar
had given orders to build in the Gallic, Sicilian, and Italian ports,
were not yet ready or at any rate not on the spot; his squadron
in the Adriatic had been in the previous year destroyed at Curicta;(27)
he found at Brundisium not more than twelve ships of war
and scarcely transports enough to convey over at once the third part
of his army--of twelve legions and 10,000 cavalry--destined for Greece.
The considerable fleet of the enemy exclusively commanded
the Adriatic and especially all the harbours of the mainland
and islands on its eastern coast.  Under such circumstances
the question presents itself, why Caesar did not instead
of the maritime route choose the land route through Illyria,
which relieved him from all the perils threatened by the fleet
and besides was shorter for his troops, who mostly came from Gaul,
than the route by Brundisium.  It is true that the regions
of Illyria were rugged and poor beyond description; but they
were traversed by other armies not long afterwards, and this obstacle
can hardly have appeared insurmountable to the conqueror of Gaul.
Perhaps he apprehended that during the troublesome march
through Illyria Pompeius might convey his whole force over the Adriatic,
whereby their parts might come at once to be changed--with Caesar
in Macedonia, and Pompeius in Italy; although such a rapid change
was scarcely to be expected from his slow-moving antagonist.
Perhaps Caesar had decided for the maritime route on the supposition
that his fleet would meanwhile be brought into a condition
to command respect, and, when after his return from Spain
he became aware of the true state of things in the Adriatic,
it might be too late to change the plan of campaign.  Perhaps--
and, in accordance with Caesar's quick temperament always urging him
to decision, we may even say in all probability--he found himself
irresistibly tempted by the circumstance that the Epirot coast
was still at the moment unoccupied but would certainly be covered
in a few days by the enemy, to thwart once more by a bold stroke
the whole plan of his antagonist.

Caesar Lands in Epirus
First Successes

However this may be, on the 4th Jan. 706(28) Caesar set sail
with six legions greatly thinned by toil and sickness and 600 horsemen
from Brundisium for the coast of Epirus.  It was a counterpart
to the foolhardy Britannic expedition; but at least the first throw
was fortunate.  The coast was reached in the middle of the Acroceraunian
(Chimara) cliffs, at the little-frequented  roadstead of Paleassa
(Paljassa).  The transports were seen both from the harbour of Oricum
(creek of Avlona) where a Pompeian squadron of eighteen sail was lying,
and from the headquarters of the hostile fleet at Corcyra;
but in the one quarter they deemed themselves too weak,
in the other they were not ready to sail, so that the first freight
was landed without hindrance.  While the vessels at once returned
to bring over the second, Caesar on that same evening scaled
the Acroceraunian mountains.  His first successes were as great
as the surprise of his enemies.  The Epirot militia nowhere
offered resistance; the important seaport towns of Oricum
and Apollonia along with a number of smaller townships were taken,
and Dyrrhachium, selected by the Pompeians as their chief arsenal
and filled with stores of all sorts, but only feebly garrisoned,
was in the utmost danger.

Caesar Cut Off from Italy

But the further course of the campaign did not correspond
to this brilliant beginning.  Bibulus subsequently made up in some measure
for the negligence, of which he had allowed himself to be guilty,
by redoubling his exertions.  He not only captured nearly thirty
of the transports returning home, and caused them with every living
thing on board to be burnt, but he also established along
the whole district of coast occupied by Caesar, from the island Sason
(Saseno) as far as the ports of Corcyra, a most careful watch,
however troublesome it was rendered by the inclement season
of the year and the necessity of bringing everything necessary
for the guard-ships, even wood and water, from Corcyra; in fact
his successor Libo--for he himself soon succumbed to the unwonted
fatigues--even blockaded for a time the port of Brundisium,
till the want of water again dislodged him from the little island
in front of it on which he had established himself.  It was
not possible for Caesar's officers to convey the second portion
of the army over to their general.  As little did he himself
succeed in the capture of Dyrrhachium.  Pompeius learned through
one of Caesar's peace envoys as to his preparations for the voyage
to the Epirot coast, and, thereupon accelerating his march,
threw himself just at the right time into that important arsenal.
The situation of Caesar was critical.  Although he extended his range
in Epirus as far as with his slight strength was at all possible,
the subsistence of his army remained difficult and precarious,
while the enemy, in possession of the magazines of Dyrrhachium
and masters of the sea, had abundance of everything.  With his army
presumably little above 20,000 strong he could not offer battle
to that of Pompeius at least twice as numerous, but had to deem himself
fortunate that Pompeius went methodically to work and, instead
of immediately forcing a battle, took up his winter quarters
between Dyrrhachium and Apollonia on the right bank of the Apsus,
facing Caesar on the left, in order that after the arrival
of the legions from Pergamus in the spring he might annihilate
the enemy with an irresistibly superior force.  Thus months passed.
If the arrival of the better season, which brought to the enemy
a strong additional force and the free use of his fleet, found Caesar
still in the same position, he was to all appearance lost,
with his weak band wedged in among the rocks of Epirus between
the immense fleet and the three times superior land army of the enemy;
and already the winter was drawing to a close.  His sole hope
still depended on the transport fleet; that it should steal
or fight its way through the blockade was hardly to be hoped for;
but after the first voluntary foolhardiness this second venture
was enjoined by necessity.  How desperate his situation appeared
to Caesar himself, is shown by his resolution--when the fleet
still came not--to sail alone in a fisherman's boat across the Adriatic
to Brundisium in order to fetch it; which, in reality, was only abandoned
because no mariner was found to undertake the daring voyage.

Antonius Proceed to Epirus

But his appearance in person was not needed to induce
the faithful officer who commanded in Italy, Marcus Antonius,
to make this last effort for the saving of his master. Once more
the transport fleet, with four legions and 800 horsemen on board
sailed from the harbour of Brundisium, and fortunately a strong
south wind carried it past Libo's galleys.  But the same wind,
which thus saved the fleet, rendered it impossible for it to land
as it was directed on the coast of Apollonia, and compelled it
to sail past the camps of Caesar and Pompeius and to steer
to the north of Dyrrhachium towards Lissus, which town
fortunately still adhered to Caesar.(29)  When it sailed
past the harbour of Dyrrhachium, the Rhodian galleys started
in pursuit, and hardly had the ships of Antonius entered
the port of Lissus when the enemy's squadron appeared before it.
But just at this moment the wind suddenly veered, and drove
the pursuing galleys back into the open sea and partly
on the rocky coast.  Through the most marvellous good fortune
the landing of the second freight had also been successful.

Junction of Caesar's Army

Antonius and Caesar were no doubt still some four days' march
from each other, separated by Dyrrhachium and the whole army
of the enemy; but Antonius happily effected the perilous march
round about Dyrrhachium through the passes of the Graba Balkan,
and was received by Caesar, who had gone to meet him, on the right bank
of the Apsus.  Pompeius, after having vainly attempted to prevent
the junction of the two armies of the enemy and to force the corps
of Antonius to fight by itself, took up a new position at Asparagium
on the river Genusus (Skumbi), which flows parallel to the Apsus
between the latter and the town of Dyrrhachium, and here remained
once more immoveable.  Caesar felt himself now strong enough
to give battle; but Pompeius declined it.  On the other hand Caesar
succeeded in deceiving his adversary and throwing himself unawares
with his better marching troops, just as at Ilerda, between
the enemy's camp and the fortress of Dyrrhachium on which it rested
as a basis.  The chain of the Graba Balkan, which stretching
in a direction from east to west ends on the Adriatic
in the narrow tongue of land at Dyrrhachium, sends off--fourteen miles
to the east of Dyrrhachium--in a south-westerly direction a lateral
branch which likewise turns in the form of a crescent towards the sea,
and the main chain and lateral branch of the mountains enclose
between themselves a small plain extending round a cliff on the seashore.

Pompeius now took up his camp, and, although Caesar's army kept
the land route to Dyrrhachium closed against him, he yet with the aid
of his fleet remained constantly in communication with the town
and was amply and easily provided from it with everything needful;
while among the Caesarians, notwithstanding strong detachments
to the country lying behind, and notwithstanding all the exertions
of the general to bring about an organized system of conveyance
and thereby a regular supply, there was more than scarcity, and flesh,
barley, nay even roots had very frequently to take the place
of the wheat to which they were accustomed.

Caesar Invests the Camp of Pompeius

As his phlegmatic opponent persevered in his inaction, Caesar
undertook to occupy the circle of heights which enclosed the plain
on the shore held by Pompeius, with the view of being able at least
to arrest the movements of the superior cavalry of the enemy
and to operate with more freedom against Dyrrhachium, and if possible
to compel his opponent either to battle or to embarkation.  Nearly
the half of Caesar's troops was detached to the interior;
it seemed almost Quixotic to propose with the rest virtually
to besiege an army perhaps twice as strong, concentrated in position,
and resting on the sea and the fleet.  Yet Caesar's veterans by infinite
exertions invested the Pompeian camp with a chain of posts
sixteen miles long, and afterwards added, just as before Alesia,
to this inner line a second outer one, to protect themselves
against attacks from Dyrrhachium and against attempts to turn
their position which could so easily be executed with the aid
of the fleet.  Pompeius attacked more than once portions
of these entrenchments with a view to break if possible the enemy's line,
but he did not attempt to prevent the investment by a battle;
he preferred to construct in his turn a number of entrenchments
around his camp, and to connect them with one another by lines.
Both sides exerted themselves to push forward their trenches
as far as possible, and the earthworks advanced but slowly amidst
constant conflicts.  At the same time skirmishing went on
on the opposite side of Caesar's camp with the garrison of Dyrrhachium;
Caesar hoped to get the fortress into his power by means
of an understanding with some of its inmates, but was prevented
by the enemy's fleet.  There was incessant fighting at very different
points--on one of the hottest days at six places simultaneously--
and, as a rule, the tried valour of the Caesarians had the advantage
in these skirmishes; once, for instance, a single cohort
maintained itself in its entrenchments against four legions
for several hours, till support came up.  No prominent success
was attained on either side; yet the effects of the investment came
by degrees to be oppressively felt by the Pompeians.  The stopping
of the rivulets flowing from the heights into the plain compelled them
to be content with scanty and bad well-water.  Still more severely felt
was the want of fodder for the beasts of burden and the horses,
which the fleet was unable adequately to remedy; numbers of them died,
and it was of but little avail that the horses were conveyed by the fleet
to Dyrrhachium, because there also they did not find sufficient fodder.

Caesar's Lines Broken
Caesar Once More Defeated

Pompeius could not much longer delay to free himself
from his disagreeable position by a blow struck against the enemy.
He was informed by Celtic deserters that the enemy had neglected
to secure the beach between his two chains of entrenchments
600 feet distant from each other by a cross-wall, and on this
he formed his plan.  While he caused the inner line of Caesar's
entrenchments to be attacked by the legions from the camp,
and the outer line by the light troops placed in vessels
and landed beyond the enemy's entrenchments, a third division
landed in the space left between the two lines and attacked
in the rear their already sufficiently occupied defenders.
The entrenchment next to the sea was taken, and the garrison fled
in wild confusion; with difficulty the commander of the next trench
Marcus Antonius succeeded in maintaining it and in setting
a limit for the moment to the advance of the Pompeians; but;
apart from the considerable loss, the outermost entrenchment
along the sea remained in the hands of the Pompeians and the lin
was broken through.  Caesar the more  eagerly seized the opportunity,
which soon after presented itself, of attacking a Pompeian legion,
which had incautiously become isolated, with the bulk
of his infantry.  But the attacked offered valiant resistance,
and, as the ground on which the fight took place had been several times
employed for the encampment of larger and lesser divisions
and was intersected in various directions by mounds and ditches,
Caesar's right wing along with the cavalry entirely missed its way;
instead of supporting the left in attacking the Pompeian legion,
it got into a narrow trench that led from one of the old camps
towards the river.  So Pompeius, who came up in all haste
with five legions to the aid of his troops, found the two wings
of the enemy separated from each other, and one of them
in an utterly forlorn position.  When the Caesarians saw him advance,
a panic seized them; the whole plunged into disorderly flight;
and, if the matter ended with the loss of 1000 of the best soldiers
and Caesar's army did not sustain a complete defeat, this was due
simply to the circumstance that Pompeius also could not freely
develop his force on the broken ground, and to the further fact that,
fearing a stratagem, he at first held back his troops.

Consequences of Caesar's Defeats

But, even as it was, these days were fraught with mischief.
Not only had Caesar endured the most serious losses and forfeited
at a blow his entrenchments, the result of four months of gigantic
labour; he was by the recent engagements thrown back again exactly
to the point from which he had set out.  From the sea he was
more completely driven than ever, since Pompeius' elder son Gnaeus
had by a bold attack partly burnt, partly carried off, Caesar's
few ships of war lying in the port of Oricum, and had soon afterwards
also set fire to the transport fleet that was left behind in Lissus;
all possibility of bringing up fresh reinforcements to Caesar
by sea from Brundisium was thus lost.  The numerous Pompeian cavalry,
now released from their confinement, poured themselves over
the adjacent country and threatened to render the provisioning
of Caesar's army, which had always been difficult, utterly impossible.
Caesar's daring enterprise of carrying on offensive operations
without ships against an enemy in command of the sea and resting
on his fleet had totally failed.  On what had hitherto been
the theatre of war he found himself in presence of an impregnable
defensive position, and unable to strike a serious blow either
against Dyrrhachium or against the hostile army; on the other hand
it depended now solely on Pompeius whether he should proceed
to attack under the most favourable circumstances an antagonist
already in grave danger as to his means of subsistence.  The war
had arrived at a crisis.  Hitherto Pompeius had, to all appearance,
played the game of war without special plan, and only adjusted
his defence according to the exigencies of each attack; and this was
not to be censured, for the protraction of the war gave him opportunity
of making his recruits capable of fighting, of bringing up his reserves,
and of bringing more fully into play the superiority of his fleet
in the Adriatic.  Caesar was beaten not merely in tactics
but also in strategy.  This defeat had not, it is true,
that effect which Pompeius not without reason expected; the eminent
soldierly energy of Caesar's veterans did not allow matters
to come to an immediate and total breaking up of the army
by hunger and mutiny.  But yet it seemed as if it depended solely
on his opponent by judiciously following up his victory
to reap its full fruits.

War Prospects of Pompeius
Scipio and Calvinus

It was for Pompeius to assume the aggressive; and he was resolved
to do so.  Three different ways of rendering his victory fruitful
presented themselves to him.  The first and simplest was not to desist
from assailing the vanquished army, and, if it departed,
to pursue it.  Secondly, Pompeius might leave Caesar himself
and his best troops in Greece, and might cross in person, as he had
long been making preparations for doing, with the main army to Italy,
where the feeling was decidedly antimonarchical and the forces
of Caesar, after the despatch of the best troops and their brave
and trustworthy commandant to the Greek army, would not be
of very much moment.  Lastly, the victor might turn inland,
effect a junction with the legions of Metellus Scipio, and attempt
to capture the troops of Caesar stationed in the interior.
The latter forsooth had, immediately after the arrival of the second
freight from Italy, on the one hand despatched strong detachments
to Aetolia and Thessaly to procure means of subsistence for his army,
and on the other had ordered a corps of two legions under Gnaeus
Domitius Calvinus to advance on the Egnatian highway towards Macedonia,
with the view of intercepting and if possible defeating in detail
the corps of Scipio advancing on the same road from Thessalonica.
Calvinus and Scipio had already approached within a few miles
of each other, when Scipio suddenly turned southward and, rapidly
crossing the Haliacmon (Inje Karasu) and leaving his baggage there
under Marcus Favonius, penetrated into Thessaly, in order to attack
with superior force Caesar's legion of recruits employed
in the reduction of the country under Lucius Cassius Longinus.
But Longinus retired over the mountains towards Ambracia to join
the detachment under Gnaeus Calvisius Sabinus sent by Caesar
to Aetolia, and Scipio could only cause him to be pursued
by his Thracian cavalry, for Calvinus threatened his reserve
left behind under Favonius on the Haliacmon with the same fate
which he had himself destined for Longinus.  So Calvinus and Scipio
met again on the Haliacmon, and encamped there for a considerable time
opposite to each other.

Caesar's Retreat from Dyrrachium to Thessaly

Pompeius might choose among these plans; no choice was left to Caesar.
After that unfortunate engagement he entered on his retreat to Apollonia.
Pompeius followed.  The march from Dyrrhachium to Apollonia
along a difficult road crossed by several rivers was no easy task
for a defeated army pursued by the enemy; but the dexterous leadership
of their general and the indestructible marching energy of the soldiers
compelled Pompeius after four days' pursuit to suspend it as useless.
He had now to decide between the Italian expedition and the march
into the interior.  However advisable and attractive the former
might seem, and though various voices were raised in its favour,
he preferred not to abandon the corps of Scipio, the more especially
as he hoped by this march to get the corps of Calvinus into his hands.
Calvinus lay at the moment on the Egnatian road at Heraclea Lyncestis,
between Pompeius and Scipio, and, after Caesar had retreated
to Apollonia, farther distant from the latter than from the great army
of Pompeius; without knowledge, moreover, of the events at Dyrrhachium
and of his hazardous position, since after the successes achieved
at Dyrrhachium the whole country inclined to Pompeius and the messengers
of Caesar were everywhere seized.   It was not till the enemy's
main force had approached within a few hours of him that Calvinus
learned from the accounts of the enemy's advanced posts themselves
the state of things.  A quick departure in a southerly direction
towards Thessaly withdrew him at the last moment from imminent
destruction; Pompeius had to content himself with having
liberated Scipio from his position of peril.  Caesar had meanwhile
arrived unmolested at Apollonia.  Immediately after the disaster
of Dyrrhachium he had resolved if possible to transfer the struggle
from the coast away into the interior, with the view of getting beyond
the reach of the enemy's fleet--the ultimate cause of the failure
of his previous exertions.  The march to Apollonia had only been intended
to place his wounded in safety and to pay his soldiers there,
where his depots were stationed; as soon as this was done,
he set out for Thessaly, leaving behind garrisons in Apollonia,
Oricum, and Lissus.  The corps of Calvinus had also put itself
in motion towards Thessaly; and Caesar could effect a junction
with the reinforcements coming up from Italy, this time by the land-route
through Illyria--two legions under Quintus Cornificius--still more easily
in Thessaly than in Epirus.  Ascending by difficult paths in the valley
of the Aous and crossing the mountain-chain which separates Epirus
from Thessaly, he arrived at the Peneius; Calvinus was likewise
directed thither, and the junction of the two armies was thus accomplished
by the shortest route and that which was least exposed to the enemy.
It took place at Aeginium not far from the source of the Peneius.
The first Thessalian town before which the now united army appeared,
Gomphi, closed its gates against it; it was quickly stormed and given up
to pillage, and the other towns of Thessaly terrified by this example
submitted, so soon as Caesar's legions merely appeared before the walls.
Amidst these marches and conflicts, and with the help of the supplies--
albeit not too ample--which the region on the Peneius afforded,
the traces and recollections of the calamitous days through which
they had passed gradually vanished.

The victories of Dyrrhachium had thus borne not much immediate fruit
for the victors.  Pompeius with his unwieldy army and his numerous
cavalry had not been able to follow his versatile enemy
into the mountains; Caesar like Calvinus had escaped from pursuit,
and the two stood united and in full security in Thessaly.
Perhaps it would have been the best course, if Pompeius had now
without delay embarked with his main force for Italy, where success
was scarcely doubtful.  But in the meantime only a division
of the fleet departed for Sicily and Italy.  In the camp of the coalition
the contest with Caesar was looked on as so completely decided
by the battles of Dyrrhachium that it only remained to reap the fruits
of victory, in other words, to seek out and capture the defeated army.
Their former over-cautious reserve was succeeded by an arrogance
still less justified by the circumstances; they gave no heed
to the facts, that they had, strictly speaking, failed in the pursuit,
that they had to hold themselves in readiness to  encounter
a completely refreshed and reorganized army in Thessaly,
and that there was no small risk in moving away from the sea,
renouncing the support of the fleet, and following their antagonist
to the battlefield chosen by himself.  They were simply resolved
at any price to fight with Caesar, and therefore to get at him
as soon as possible and by the most convenient way.  Cato took up
the command in Dyrrhachium, where a garrison was left behind
of eighteen cohorts, and in Corcyra, where 300 ships of war were left;
Pompeius and Scipio proceeded--the former, apparently, following
the Egnatian way as far as Pella and then striking into the great road
to the south, the latter from the Haliacmon through the passes
of Olympus--to the lower Peneius and met at Larisa.

The Armies at Pharsalus

Caesar lay to the south of Larisa in the plain--which extends
between the hill-country of Cynoscephalae and the chain of Othrys
and is intersected by a tributary of the Peneius, the Enipeus--
on the left bank of the latter stream near the town of Pharsalus;
Pompeius pitched his camp opposite to him on the right bank
of the Enipeus along the slope of the heights of Cynoscephalae.(30)
The entire army of Pompeius was assembled; Caesar on the other hand
still expected the corps of nearly two legions formerly detached
to Aetolia and Thessaly, now stationed under Quintus Fufius Calenus
in Greece, and the two legions of Cornificius which were sent
after him by the land-route from Italy and had already arrived
in Illyria.  The army of Pompeius, numbering eleven legions
or 47,000 men and 7000 horse, was more than double that of Caesar
in infantry, and seven times as numerous in cavalry; fatigue
and conflicts had so decimated Caesar's troops, that his eight legions
did not number more than 22,000 men under arms, consequently
not nearly the half of their normal amount.  The victorious army
of Pompeius provided with a countless cavalry and good magazines had
provisions in abundance, while the troops of Caesar had difficulty
in keeping themselves alive and only hoped for better supplies
from the corn-harvest not far distant.  The Pompeian soldiers,
who had learned in the last campaign to know war and trust their leader,
were in the best of humour.  All military reasons on the side
of Pompeius favoured the view, that the decisive battle should not be
long delayed, seeing that they now confronted Caesar in Thessaly;
and the emigrant impatience of the many genteel officers and others
accompanying the army doubtless had more weight than even such reasons
in the council of war.  Since the events of Dyrrhachium
these lords regarded the triumph of their party as an ascertained fact;
already there was eager strife as to the filling up of Caesar's
supreme pontificate, and instructions were sent to Rome
to hire houses at the Forum for the next elections.  When Pompeius
hesitated on his part to cross the rivulet which separated
the two armies, and which Caesar with his much weaker army
did not venture to pass, this excited great indignation; Pompeius,
it was alleged, only delayed the battle in order to rule somewhat longer
over so many consulars and praetorians and to perpetuate his part
of Agamemnon.  Pompeius yielded; and Caesar, who under the impression
that matters would not come to a battle, had just projected
a mode of turning the enemy's army and for that purpose was on the point
of setting out towards Scotussa, likewise arrayed his legions for battle,
when he saw the Pompeians preparing to offer it to him on his bank.

The Battle

Thus the battle of Pharsalus was fought on the 9th August 706,
almost on the same field where a hundred and fifty years before
the Romans had laid the foundation of their dominion in the east.(31)
Pompeius rested his right wing on the Enipeus; Caesar opposite
to him rested his left on the broken ground stretching in front
of the Enipeus; the two other wings were stationed out in the plain,
covered in each case by the cavalry and the light troops.
The intention of Pompeius was to keep his infantry on the defensive,
but with his cavalry to scatter the weak band of horsemen which,
mixed after the German fashion with light infantry, confronted him,
and then to take Caesar's right wing in rear.  His infantry
courageously sustained the first charge of that of the enemy,
and the engagement there came to a stand.  Labienus likewise dispersed
the enemy's cavalry after a brave but short resistance,
and deployed his force to the left with the view of turning
the infantry.  But Caesar, foreseeing the defeat of his cavalry,
had stationed behind it on the threatened flank of his right wing
some 2000 of his best legionaries.  As the enemy's horsemen,
driving those of Caesar before them, galloped along and around the line,
they suddenly came upon this select corps advancing intrepidly
against them and, rapidly thrown into confusion by the unexpected
and unusual infantry attack,(32) they galloped at full speed
from the field of battle.  The victorious legionaries cut to pieces
the enemy's archers now unprotected, then rushed at the left wing
of the enemy, and began now on their part to turn it.  At the same time
Caesar's third division hitherto reserved advanced along
the whole line to the attack.  The unexpected defeat of the best arm
of the Pompeian army, as it raised the courage of their opponents,
broke that of the army and above all that of the general.  When Pompeius,
who from the outset did not trust his infantry, saw the horsemen
gallop off, he rode back at once from the field of battle to the camp,
without even awaiting the issue of the general attack ordered by Caesar.
His legions began to waver and soon to retire over the brook
into the camp, which was not accomplished without severe loss.

Its Issue
Flight of Pompeius

The day was thus lost and many an able soldier had fallen,
but the army was still substantially intact, and the situation
of Pompeius was far less perilous than that of Caesar after the defeat
of Dyrrhachium.  But while Caesar in the vicissitudes of his destiny
had learned that fortune loves to withdraw herself at certain moments
even from her favourites in order to be once more won back
through their perseverance, Pompeius knew fortune hitherto
only as the constant goddess, and despaired of himself and of her
when she withdrew from him; and, while in Caesar's grander nature
despair only developed yet mightier energies, the inferior soul
of Pompeius under similar pressure sank into the infinite abyss
of despondency.  As once in the war with Sertorius he had been
on the point of abandoning the office entrusted to him in presence
of his superior opponent and of departing,(33) so now, when he saw
the legions retire over the stream, he threw from him the fatal
general's scarf, and rode off by the nearest route to the sea,
to find means of embarking there.  His army discouraged and leaderless--
for Scipio, although recognized by Pompeius as colleague in supreme
command, was yet general-in-chief only in name--hoped to find protection
behind the camp-walls; but Caesar allowed it no rest; the obstinate
resistance of the Roman and Thracian guard of the camp was speedily
overcome, and the mass was compelled to withdraw in disorder
to the heights of Crannon and Scotussa, at the foot of which
the camp was pitched.  It attempted by moving forward along these hills
to regain Larisa; but the troops of Caesar, heeding neither
booty nor fatigue and advancing by better paths in the plain,
intercepted the route of the fugitives; in fact, when  late
in the evening the Pompeians suspended their march, their pursuers
were able even to draw an entrenched line which precluded
the fugitives from access to the only rivulet to be found
in the neighbourhood.  So ended the day of Pharsalus.  The enemy's army
was not only defeated, but annihilated; 15,000 of the enemy
lay dead or wounded on the field of battle, while the Caesarians missed
only 200 men; the body which remained together, amounting still
to nearly 20,000 men, laid down their arms on the morning after
the battle only isolated troops, including, it is true, the officers
of most note, sought a refuge in the mountains; of the eleven eagles
of the enemy nine were handed over to Caesar.  Caesar,
who on the very day of the battle had reminded the soldiers
that they should not forget the fellow-citizen in the foe,
did not treat the captives as did Bibulus and Labienus;
nevertheless he too found it necessary now to exercise some severity.
The common soldiers were incorporated in the army, fines
or confiscations of property were inflicted on the men of better rank;
the senators and equites of note who were taken, with few exceptions,
suffered death.  The time for clemency was past; the longer
the civil war lasted, the more remorseless and implacable it became.

The Political Effects of the Battle of Pharsalus
The East Submits

Some time elapsed, before the consequences of the 9th of August 706
could be fully discerned.  What admitted of least doubt,
was the passing over to the side of Caesar of all those
who had attached themselves to the party vanquished at Pharsalus
merely as to the more powerful; the defeat was so thoroughly
decisive, that the victor was joined by all who were not willing
or were not obliged to fight for a lost cause.  All the kings,
peoples, and cities, which had hitherto been the clients of Pompeius,
now recalled their naval and military contingents and declined
to receive the refugees of the beaten party; such as Egypt, Cyrene,
the communities of Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia and Asia Minor, Rhodes,
Athens, and generally the whole east.  In fact Pharnaces
king of the Bosporus pushed his officiousness so far, that on the news
of the Pharsalian battle he took possession not only of the town
of Phanagoria which several years before had been declared free
by Pompeius, and of the dominions of the Colchian princes confirmed
by him, but even of the kingdom of Little Armenia which Pompeius
had conferred on king Deiotarus.  Almost the sole exceptions
to this general submission were the little town of Megara
which allowed itself to be besieged and stormed by the Caesarians,
and Juba king of Numidia, who had for long expected, and after the victory
over Curio expected only with all the greater certainty, that his kingdom
would be annexed by Caesar, and was thus obliged for better or for worse
to abide by the defeated party.

The Aristocracy after the Battle of Pharsalus

In the same way as the client communities submitted to the victor
of Pharsalus, the tail of the constitutional party--all who had
joined it with half a heart or had even, like Marcus Cicero
and his congeners, merely danced around the aristocracy like the witches
around the Brocken--approached to make their peace with the new monarch,
a peace accordingly which his contemptuous indulgence readily
and courteously granted to the petitioners.  But the flower
of the defeated party made no compromise.  All was over
with the aristocracy; but the aristocrats could never become converted
to monarchy.  The highest revelations of humanity are perishable;
the religion once true may become a lie,(34) the polity once fraught
with blessing may become a curse; but even the gospel that is past
still finds confessors, and if such a faith cannot remove mountains
like faith in the living truth, it yet remains true to itself
down to its very end, and does not depart from the realm of the living
till it has dragged its last priests and its last partisans
along with it, and a new generation, freed from those shadows of the past
and the perishing, rules over a world that has renewed its youth.
So it was in Rome.  Into whatever abyss of degeneracy the aristocratic
rule had now sunk, it had once been a great political system;
the sacred fire, by which Italy had been conquered and Hannibal
had been vanquished, continued to glow--although somewhat dimmed
and dull--in the Roman nobility so long as that nobility existed,
and rendered a cordial understanding between the men of the old regime
and the new monarch impossible.  A large portion of the constitutional
party submitted at least outwardly, and recognized the monarchy
so far as to accept pardon from Caesar and to retire as much as possible
into private life; which, however, ordinarily was not done
without the mental reservation of thereby preserving themselves
for a future change of things.  This course was chiefly followed
by the partisans of lesser note; but the able Marcus Marcellus,
the same who had brought about the rupture with Caesar,(35)
was to be found among these judicious persons and voluntarily
banished himself to Lesbos.  In the majority, however, of the genuine
aristocracy passion was more powerful than cool reflection;
along with which, no doubt, self-deceptions as to success
being still possible and apprehensions of the inevitable
vengeance of the victor variously co-operated.

Cato

No one probably formed a judgment as to the situation of affairs
with so painful a clearness, and so free from fear or hope
on his own account, as Marcus Cato.  Completely convinced
that after the days of Ilerda and Pharsalus the monarchy was inevitable,
and morally firm enough to confess to himself this bitter truth
and to act in accordance with it, he hesitated for a moment whether
the constitutional party ought at all to continue a war, which would
necessarily require sacrifices for a lost cause on the part of many
who did not know why they offered them.  And when he resolved
to fight against the monarchy not for victory, but for a speedier
and more honourable fall, he yet sought as far as possible to draw
no one into this war, who chose to survive the fall of the republic
and to be reconciled to monarchy.  He conceived that, so long
as the republic had been merely threatened, it was a right and a duty
to compel the lukewarm and bad citizen to take part in the struggle;
but that now it was senseless and cruel to compel the individual
to share the ruin of the lost republic.  Not only did he himself
discharge every one who desired to return to Italy; but when the wildest
of the wild partisans, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger, insisted
on the execution of these people and of Cicero in particular:
it was Cato alone who by his moral authority prevented it.

Pompeius

Pompeius also had no desire for peace.  Had he been a man
who deserved to hold the position which he occupied, we might suppose
him to have perceived that he who aspires to a crown cannot return
to the beaten track of ordinary existence, and that there is
accordingly no place left on earth for one who has failed.
But Pompeius was hardly too noble-minded to ask a favour,
which the victor would have been perhaps magnanimous enough
not to refuse to him; on the contrary, he was probably too mean
to do so.  Whether it was that he could not make up his mind
to trust himself to Caesar, or that in his usual vague
and undecided way, after the first immediate impression of the disaster
of Pharsalus had vanished, be began again to cherish hope, Pompeius
was resolved to continue the struggle against Caesar and to seek
for himself yet another battle-field after that of Pharsalus.

Military Effects of the Battle
The Leaders Scattered

Thus, however much Caesar had striven by prudence and moderation
to appease the fury of his opponents and to lessen their number,
the struggle nevertheless went on without alteration.  But the leading
men had almost all taken part in the fight at Pharsalus;
and, although they all escaped with the exception of Lucius Domitius
Ahenobarbus, who was killed in the flight, they were yet scattered
in all directions, so that they were unable to concert a common plan
for the continuance of the campaign.  Most of them found their way,
partly through the desolate mountains of Macedonia and Illyria,
partly by the aid of the fleet, to Corcyra, where Marcus Cato
commanded the reserve left behind.  Here a sort of council
of war took place under the presidency of Cato, at which Metellus Scipio,
Titus Labienus, Lucius Afranius, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger
and others were present; but the absence of the commander-in-chief
and the painful uncertainty as to his fate, as well as the internal
dissensions of the party, prevented the adoption of any common
resolution, and ultimately each took the course which seemed to him
the most suitable for himself or for the common cause.  It was in fact
in a high degree difficult to say among the many straws
to which they might possibly cling which was the one
that would keep longest above water.

Macedonia and Greece
Italy
The East
Egypt
Spain
Africa

Macedonia and Greece were lost by the battle of Pharsalus.
It is true that Cato, who had immediately on the news of the defeat
evacuated Dyrrhachium, still held Corcyra, and Rutilius Lupus
the Peloponnesus, during a time for the constitutional party.
For a moment it seemed also as if the Pompeians would make a stand
at Patrae in the Peloponnesus; but the accounts of the advance
of Calenus sufficed to frighten them from that quarter.  As little
was there any attempt to maintain Corcyra.  On the Italian
and Sicilian coasts the Pompeian squadrons despatched thither
after the victories of Dyrrhachium(36) had achieved not unimportant
successes against the ports of Brundisium, Messana and Vibo,
and at Messana especially had burnt the whole fleet in course
of being fitted out for Caesar; but the ships that were thus active,
mostly from Asia Minor and Syria, were recalled by their communities
in consequence of the Pharsalian battle, so that the expedition
came to an end of itself.  In Asia Minor and Syria there were
at the moment no troops of either party, with the exception
of the Bosporan army of Pharnaces which had taken possession,
ostensibly on Caesar's account, of different regions belonging
to his opponents.  In Egypt there was still indeed a considerable
Roman army, formed of the troops left behind there by Gabinius(37)
and thereafter recruited from Italian vagrants and Syrian
or Cilician banditti; but it was self-evident and was soon
officially confirmed by the recall of the Egyptian vessels,
that the court of Alexandria by no means had the intention
of holding firmly by the defeated party or of even placing
its force of troops at their disposal.  Somewhat more favourable
prospects presented themselves to the vanquished in the west.
In Spain Pompeian sympathies were so strong among the population,
that the Caesarians had on that account to give up the attack
which they contemplated from this quarter against Africa,
and an insurrection seemed inevitable, so soon as a leader of note
should appear in the peninsula.  In Africa moreover the coalition,
or rather Juba king of Numidia, who was the true regent there,
had been arming unmolested since the autumn of 705.  While the whole
east was consequently lost to the coalition by the battle
of Pharsalus, it might on the other hand continue the war
after an honourable manner probably in Spain, and certainly in Africa;
for to claim the aid of the king of Numidia, who had for a long time
been subject to the Roman community, against revolutionary fellow-
burgesses was for Romans a painful humiliation doubtless, but by no means
an act of treason.  Those again who in this conflict of despair
had no further regard for right or honour, might declare themselves
beyond the pale of the law, and commence hostilities as robbers;
or might enter into alliance with independent neighbouring states,
and introduce the public foe into the intestine strife; or, lastly,
might profess monarchy with the lips and prosecute the restoration
of the legitimate republic with the dagger of the assassin.

Hostilities of Robbers and Pirates

That the vanquished should withdraw and renounce the new monarchy,
was at least the natural and so far the truest expression of their
desperate position.  The mountains and above all the sea had been
in those times ever since the memory of man the asylum not only
of all crime, but also of intolerable misery and of oppressed right;
it was natural for Pompeians and republicans to wage a defiant war
against the monarchy of Caesar, which had ejected them,
in the mountains and on the seas, and especially natural for them
to take up piracy on a greater scale, with more compact organization,
and with more definite aims.  Even after the recall of the squadrons
that had come from the east they still possessed a very considerable
fleet of their own, while Caesar was as yet virtually without
vessels of war; and their connection with the Dalmatae who had risen
in their own interest against Caesar,(38) and their control
over the most important seas and seaports, presented the most
advantageous prospects for a naval war, especially on a small scale.
As formerly Sulla's hunting out of the democrats had ended
in the Sertorian insurrection, which was a conflict first waged
by pirates and then by robbers and ultimately became a very serious war,
so possibly, if there was in the Catonian aristocracy or among
the adherents of Pompeius as much spirit and fire as in the Marian
democracy, and if there was found among them a true sea-king,
a commonwealth independent of the monarchy of Caesar and perhaps a match
for it might arise on the still unconquered sea.

Parthian Alliance

Far more serious disapproval in every respect is due to the idea
of dragging an independent neighbouring state into the Roman civil war
and of bringing about by its means a counter-revolution;
law and conscience condemn the deserter more severely than the robber,
and a victorious band of robbers finds its way back to a free
and well-ordered commonwealth more easily than the emigrants who are
conducted back by the public foe.  Besides it was scarcely probable
that the beaten party would be able to effect a restoration in this way.
The only state, from which they could attempt to seek support,
was that of the Parthians; and as to this it was at least doubtful
whether it would make their cause its own, and very improbable
that it would fight out that cause against Caesar.

The time for republican conspiracies had not yet come.

Caesar Pursues Pompeius to Egypt

While the remnant of the defeated party thus allowed themselves
to be helplessly driven about by fate, and even those
who had determined to continue the struggle knew not how or where
to do so, Caesar, quickly as ever resolving and quickly acting,
laid everything aside to pursue Pompeius--the only one of his opponents
whom he respected as an officer, and the one whose personal capture
would have probably paralyzed a half, and that perhaps
the more dangerous half, of his opponents.  With a few men
he crossed the Hellespont--his single bark encountered in it a fleet
of the enemy destined for the Black Sea, and took the whole crews,
struck as with stupefaction by the news of the battle of Pharsalus,
prisoners--and as soon as the most necessary preparations were made,
hastened in pursuit of Pompeius to the east.  The latter had gone
from the Pharsalian battlefield to Lesbos, whence he brought away
his wife and his second son Sextus, and had sailed onward round
Asia Minor to Cilicia and thence to Cyprus.  He might have joined
his partisans at Corcyra or Africa; but repugnance toward his
aristocratic allies and the thought of the reception which awaited him
there after the day of Pharsalus and above all after his disgraceful
flight, appear to have induced him to take his own course
and rather to resort to the protection of the Parthian king
than to that of Cato.  While he was employed in collecting money
and slaves from the Roman revenue-farmers and merchants in Cyprus,
and in arming a band of 2000 slaves, he received news that Antioch
had declared for Caesar and that the route to the Parthians
was no longer open.  So he altered his plan and sailed to Egypt,
where a number of his old soldiers served in the army and the situation
and rich resources of the country allowed him time and opportunity
to reorganize the war.

In Egypt, after the death of Ptolemaeus Auletes (May 703)
his children, Cleopatra about sixteen years of age and Ptolemaeus Dionysus
about ten, had ascended the throne according to their father's will
jointly, and as consorts; but soon the brother or rather his guardian
Pothinus had driven the sister from the kingdom and compelled her
to seek a refuge in Syria, whence she made preparations
to get back to her paternal kingdom.  Ptolemaeus and Pothinus
lay with the whole Egyptian army at Pelusium for the sake
of protecting the eastern frontier against her, just when Pompeius
cast anchor at the Casian promontory and sent a request to the king
to allow him to land.  The Egyptian court, long informed of the disaster
at Pharsalus, was on the point of refusing to receive Pompeius;
but the king's tutor Theodotus pointed out that, in that case
Pompeius would probably employ his connections in the Egyptian army
to instigate rebellion; and that it would be safer, and also preferable
with regard to Caesar, if they embraced the opportunity of making away
with Pompeius.  Political reasonings of this sort did not readily fail
of their effect among the statesmen of the Hellenic world.

Death of Pompeius

Achillas the general of the royal troops and some of the former soldiers
of Pompeius went off in a boat to his vessel; and invited him
to come to the king and, as the water was shallow, to enter their barge.
As he was stepping ashore, the military tribune Lucius Septimius
stabbed him from behind, under the eyes of his wife and son
who were compelled to be spectators of the murder from the deck
of their vessel, without being able to rescue or revenge
(28 Sept. 706).  On the same day, on which thirteen years before
he had entered the capital in triumph over Mithradates,(39)
the man, who for a generation had been called the Great and for years
had ruled Rome, died on the desert sands of the inhospitable
Casian shore by the hand of one of his old soldiers.  A good officer
but otherwise of mediocre gifts of intellect and of heart,
fate had with superhuman constancy for thirty years allowed him
to solve all brilliant and toilless tasks; had permitted him to pluck
all laurels planted and fostered by others; had brought him
face to face with all the conditions requisite for obtaining
the supreme power--only in order to exhibit in his person an example
of spurious greatness, to which history knows no parallel.
Of all pitiful parts there is none more pitiful than that of passing
for more than one really is; and it is the fate of monarchy
that this misfortune inevitably clings to it, for barely once
in a thousand years does there arise among the people a man
who is a king not merely in name, but in reality.  If this disproportion
between semblance and reality has never perhaps been so abruptly marked
as in Pompeius, the fact may well excite grave reflection that it was
precisely he who in a certain sense opened the series of Roman monarchs.

Arrival of Caesar

When Caesar following the track of Pompeius arrived in the roadstead
of Alexandria, all was already over.  With deep  agitation
he turned away when the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man,
who had been his son-in-law and for long years his colleague
in rule, and to get whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt.
The dagger of the rash assassin precluded an answer to the question,
how Caesar would have dealt with the captive Pompeius; but, while
the humane sympathy, which still found a place in the great soul
of Caesar side by side with ambition, enjoined that he should
spare his former friend, his interest also required that he should
annihilate Pompeius otherwise than by the executioner.
Pompeius had been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler
of Rome; a dominion so deeply rooted does not perish
with the ruler's death.  The death of Pompeius did not break up
the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged, incapable,
and worn-out chief in his sons Gnaeus and Sextus two leaders,
both of whom were young and active and the second was a man
of decided capacity.  To the newly-founded hereditary monarchy
hereditary pretendership attached itself at once like a parasite,
and it was very doubtful whether by this change of persons Caesar
did not lose more than he gained.

Caesar Regulates Egypt

Meanwhile in Egypt Caesar had now nothing further to do,
and the Romans and the Egyptians expected that he would
immediately set sail and apply himself to the subjugation of Africa,
and to the huge task of organization which awaited him after the victory.
But Caesar faithful to his custom--wherever he found himself
in the wide empire--of finally regulating matters at once and in person,
and firmly convinced that no resistance was to be expected
either from the Roman garrison or from the court, being, moreover,
in urgent pecuniary embarrassment, landed in Alexandria
with the two amalgamated legions accompanying him to the number
of 3200 men and 800 Celtic and German cavalry, took up his quarters
in the royal palace, and proceeded to collect the necessary sums of money
and to regulate the Egyptian succession, without allowing himself
to be disturbed by the saucy remark of Pothinus that Caesar
should not for such petty matters neglect his own so important affairs.
In his dealing with the Egyptians he was just and even indulgent.
Although the aid which they had given to Pompeius justified
the imposing of a war contribution, the exhausted land was spared
from this; and, while the arrears of the sum stipulated for in 695(40)
and since then only about half paid were remitted, there was required
merely a final payment of 10,000,000 -denarii- (400,000 pounds).
The belligerent brother and sister were enjoined immediately
to suspend hostilities, and were invited to have their dispute
investigated and decided before the arbiter.  They submitted;
the royal boy was already in the palace and Cleopatra also presented
herself there.  Caesar adjudged the kingdom of Egypt, agreeably
to the testament of Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister
Cleopatra and Ptolemaeus Dionysus, and further gave unasked
the kingdom of Cyprus--cancelling the earlier act of annexation(41)--
as the appanageof the second-born of Egypt to the younger children
of Auletes, Arsinoe and Ptolemaeus the younger.

Insurrection in Alexandria

But a storm was secretly preparing.  Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city
as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian capital in the number
of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring commercial spirit,
in skill of handicraft, in taste for science and art: in the citizens
there was a lively sense of their own national importance,
and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any rate
a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their
street riots as regularly and as heartily as the Parisians
of the present day: one may conceive their feelings, when they saw
the Roman general ruling in the palace of the Lagids and their kings
accepting the award of his tribunal.  Pothinus and the boy-king,
both as may be conceived very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory
requisition of old debts and with the intervention in the throne-
dispute which could only issue, as it did, in favour of Cleopatra,
sent--in order to pacify the Roman demands--the treasures
of the temples and the gold plate of the king with intentional
ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing
indignation the Egyptians--who were pious even to superstition,
and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence of their court
as if it were a possession of their own--beheld the bare walls
of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their king.
The Roman army of occupation also, which had been essentially
denationalized by its long abode in Egypt and the many intermarriages
between the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which moreover
numbered a multitude of the old soldiers of Pompeius and runaway
Italian criminals and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Caesar,
by whose orders it had been obliged to suspend its action
on the Syrian frontier, and at his handful of haughty legionaries.
The tumult even at the landing, when the multitude saw the Roman axes
carried into the old palace, and the numerous cases in which
his soldiers were assassinated in the city, had taught Caesar
the immense danger in which he was placed with his small force
in presence of that exasperated multitude.  But it was difficult
to return on account of the north-west winds prevailing at this season
of the year, and the attempt at embarkation might easily become
a signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not
the nature of Caesar to take his departure without having accomplished
his work.  He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements
from Asia, and meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show
of the utmost self-possession.  Never was there greater gaiety
in his camp than during this rest at Alexandria; and while
the beautiful and clever Cleopatra was not sparing of her charms
in general and least of all towards her judge, Caesar also appeared
among all his victories to value most those won over beautiful women.
It was a merry prelude to graver scenes.  Under the leadership
of Achillas and, as was afterwards proved, by the secret orders
of the king and his guardian, the Roman army of occupation
stationed in Egypt appeared unexpectedly in Alexandria; and as soon as
the citizens saw that it had come to attack Caesar, they made
common cause with the soldiers.

Caesar in Alexandria

With a presence of mind, which in some measure justifies
his earlier foolhardiness, Caesar hastily collected his scattered men;
seized the persons of the king and his ministers; entrenched himself
in the royal residence and the adjoining theatre; and gave orders,
as there was no time to place in safety the war-fleet stationed
in the principal harbour immediately in front of the theatre,
that it should be set on fire and that Pharos, the island
with the light-tower commanding the harbour, should be occupied
by means of boats.  Thus at least a restricted position for defence
was secured, and the way was kept open to procure supplies
and reinforcements.  At the same time orders were issued
to the commandant of Asia Minor as well as to the nearest
subject countries, the Syrians and Nabataeans, the Cretans
and the Rhodians, to send troops and ships in all haste to Egypt.
The insurrection at the head of which the princess Arsinoe
and her confidant the eunuch Ganymedes had placed themselves,
meanwhilehad free course in all Egypt and in the greater part
of the capital.  In the streets of the latter there was daily fighting,
but without success either on the part of Caesar in gaining freer scope
and breaking through to the fresh water lake of Marea which lay behind
the town, where he could have provided himself with water and forage,
or on the part of the Alexandrians in acquiring superiority
over the besieged and depriving them of all drinking water; for,
when the Nile canals in Caesar's part of the town had been spoiled
by the introduction of salt water, drinkable water was unexpectedly found
in wells dug on the beach.

As Caesar was not to be overcome from the landward side,
the exertions of the besiegers were directed to destroy his fleet
and cut him off from the sea by which supplies reached him.
The island with the lighthouse and the mole by which this was connected
with the mainland divided the harbour into a western and an eastern half,
which were in communication with each other through two arched openings
in the mole.  Caesar commanded the island and the east harbour,
while the mole and the west harbour were in possession
of the citizens; and, as the Alexandrian fleet was burnt,
his vessels sailed in and out without hindrance. The Alexandrians,
after having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships from the western
into the eastern harbour, equipped with the remnant of their arsenal
a small squadron and with this blocked up the way of Caesar's vessels,
when these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion
that had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian mariners
of Caesar mastered the enemy.  Not  long afterwards, however,
the citizens captured the lighthouse- island,(42) and from that point
totally closed the narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour
for larger ships; so that Caesar's fleet was compelled
to take its station in the open roads before the east harbour,
and his communication with the sea hung only on a weak thread.
Caesar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly
by the superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun
the unequal strife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island
closed the inner harbour against it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss
of the roadstead would have debarred Caesar wholly from the sea.
Though the brave legionaries, supported by the dexterity
of the Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto decided these conflicts
in favour of the Romans, the Alexandrians renewed and augmented
their naval armaments with unwearied perseverance; the besieged
had to fight as often as it pleased the besiegers, and if the former
should be on a single occasion vanquished, Caesar would be
totally hemmed in and probably lost.

It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover
the lighthouse island.  The double attack, which was made by boats
from the side of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard,
in reality brought not only the island but also the lower part
of the mole into Caesar's power; it was only at the second arch-
opening of the mole that Caesar ordered the attack to be stopped,
and the mole to be there closed towards the city by a transverse wall.
But while a violent conflict arose here around the entrenchers,
the Roman troops left the lower part of the mole adjoining
the island bare of defenders; a division of Egyptians landed there
unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Roman soldiers and sailors
crowded together on the mole at the transverse wall, and drove
the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea.  A part
were taken on board by the Roman ships; the most were drowned.
Some 400 soldiers and a still greater number of men belonging
to the fleet were sacrificed on this day; the general himself,
who had shared the fate of his men, had been obliged to seek refuge,
in his ship, and when this sank from having been overloaded with men,
he  had to save himself by swimming to another.  But, severe as was
the loss suffered, it was amply compensated by the recovery
of the lighthouse-island, which along with the mole as far as