After
having often been exposed to risk in his own person from ambuscades,
and with his army chiefly from want of provisions, he never gave up
pursuing, challenging to battle and hemming in the enemy with his
lines, till he had made himself master of their camps and forces. The
generals escaped to Pompeius.
XXXVII. On his return to Rome, Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar,
advised that they should send commissioners to Pompeius to treat of
terms, but Isauricus opposed the measure to please Caesar. Being chosen
Dictator by the Senate, he restored the exiles, and the children of
those who had suffered in the times of Sulla,[531] he reinstated in
their civil rights, and he relieved the debtors by a certain abatement
of the interest, and took in hand other measures of the like kind, not
many in number; but in eleven days, he abdicated the monarchy, and
declaring himself and Servilius Isauricus consuls[532] set out on his
expedition. The rest of his forces he passed by on his hurried march,
and with six hundred picked horsemen and five legions, the time being
the winter solstice and the commencement of January (and this pretty
nearly corresponds to the Poseideon of the Athenians), he put to sea,
and crossing the Ionian gulf he took Oricum and Apollonia; but he sent
back his ships to Brundisium for the soldiers whom he had left behind
on his march. But while the men were still on the road, as they were
already passed the vigour of their age and worn out by the number of
their campaigns, they murmured against Caesar, "Whither now will he
lead us and where will this man at last carry us to, hurrying us
about and treating us as if we could never be worn out and as if we
were inanimate things? even the sword is at last exhausted by blows,
and shield and breastplate need to be spared a little after so long
use.
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