Chronicles of Caesar's Wars: The First-Ever Translation by Napoleon I

Author:Napoleon I [Napoleon I]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clio Books
Published: 2017-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX.

Civil War. Italian Campaign, 49 BC.

I. Civil War. — II. Caesar Takes Italy. — III. Observations.

I.

​ On January 16 (that is to say October 26 in our calendar), the Senate carried the decree that the consuls, praetors, Tribunes of the Plebs, and proconsuls who were near Rome would see to it that no harm would be done to the Republic. Lentulus was consul: Antony and Cassius were tribunes. After the publication of this decree the citizens donned war clothing; the consuls mobilized troops to create an army for Pompey, who already had two legions in Italy. He had six others in Spain; he gave them the order to go to Rome. But Caesar, informed of all these circumstances in Ravenna, where he was—although he had with him only the 13th legion—took his own course of action; he harangued them, found them devoted to his interests, left at once, and crossed the Rubicon, a small stream that formed the border of the Gallic provinces; he surprised Rimini, where Antony and Cassius, the Tribunes of the Plebs, who had fled from Rome, came to ask him for refuge in his camp. In crossing the Rubicon, Caesar declared civil war and defied the anathemas pronounced against generals who crossed the Rubicon under arms: they were doomed to infernal gods. Pompey left Rome and withdrew to Capua, fifty leagues away, although he then had two legions and thirty thousand men near Rome; there he was joined by the Senate and the principal authorities of the Republic. Caesar left three legions in Gaul to watch over the Pyrenees, and was joined by six others. He seized Pesaro, Fano, Ancona, and Urbino; he sent Antony to Arezzo with five cohorts, to take the road to Etruria. All the people were favorably disposed toward him; Osimo and Ascoli opened their gates. The consul Lentulus abandoned Rome and met up with Pompey.

​ Domitius Ahenobarbus had taken position in Corfinium with thirty cohorts. Caesar camped under the walls of this city, which is located at the intersection of many roads, six miles from the present town of Salmons. It was urgent that Pompey, who was in Capua, fifty leagues away, help this important place; but he did not wish to commit himself with a new army against the old bands of Gaul. As soon as the garrison was told that it was abandoned, it mutinied, stopped Domitius, and aligned with Caesar’s party. At this news, Pompey resolved to abandon Italy; he withdrew to Brindisi; the consuls, with a part of the army, set off there, crossed the Adriatic, and landed in Durrës, in Epirus. Caesar invested Brindisi with six legions; he built a sea wall to close the port, and, in the place where the waters were too high, he established rafts moored by anchors, and covered with soil, to cover his troops; but on the ninth day after the great work had begun, Pompey’s ships arrived; he had set sail with his twenty cohorts and met up with his army in Epirus.

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