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He gives the honor of its real conquest to his own father-in-law, Agricola. Pharsalia is a district of Thessaly in Greece. It was founded by colonies from Corfu about 625 B.C. and became important afterward as a terminus of one of the great Roman roads. It was for years the third city of the world in beauty, size, and population.
Thus, the Homeric poems, the Argonautica, the Aeneid, the Pharsalia, and the later Latin epics, form one series: the Aeneid would be the climax of the series, which thence declines, were it not that the whole originates with the incomparable genius of Homer a fact which makes it seem to decline from start to finish.
The plains of Pharsalia were watered by the precious blood of the elect of the earth. The battle there marked an epoch like no other in the history of the world. For some days the two armies had watched each other's movements. Caesar, to give his men confidence, had again offered Pompey an opportunity of fighting. But Pompey had kept to positions where he could not be attacked.
He remained another year in Gaul, but did nothing to retrieve this mistake. In military affairs fortune rarely forgives. In politics he seems to have contented himself generally with saying ditto to his brother. And this continued to be the case up to Pharsalia.
Up to this moment there had been nothing mean, except that Roman flattery which was simply Roman good manners. He had opposed him at Pharsalia or rather in Macedonia. He had gone across the water not to fight, for he was no fighting man but to show on which side he had placed himself.
But on this subject, I shall perhaps speak more fully in another letter, after I have seen the Trophaea Augusti, now called Tourbia, and the town of Monaco, which last is about three leagues from Nice. Here I cannot help taking notice of the following elegant description from the Pharsalia, which seems to have been intended for this very harbour.
C. ii. 22; takes Oricum, iii. 8; marches to Dyrrhachium to cut off Pompey's communication with that place, 41; sends Canuleius into Epirus for corn, 42; besieges Pompey in his camp, his reasons for it, 43; encloses Pompey's works within his fortifications: a skirmish between them, 45; his army reduced to great straits for want of provisions, 47; offers Pompey battle, which he declines, 56; sends Clodius to Scipio, to treat about a peace, whose endeavours prove ineffectual, 57; joins Domitius, storms and takes the town of Gomphis in Thessaly, in four hours' time, 80; gains a complete victory over Pompey in the battle of Pharsalia, 93; summons Ptolemy and Cleopatra to attend him, 107; burns the Alexandrian fleet, 111
No man was more inclined than he to lift his hand against monarchy, but he was withheld by the honors and favors he had received from Cæsar, who had not only given him his life after the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia, and pardoned many of his friends at his request, but continued to honor him with his confidence.
I know no declamation in the world, not even Cicero's best, which equals some passages in the Pharsalia. As to what were meant for bold poetical flights, the sea-fight at Marseilles, the Centurion who is covered with wounds, the snakes in the Libyan desert, it is all as detestable as Cibber's Birthday Odes.
With these he sailed for Alexandria. Together, so much had they been thinned by hard service, these legions mustered between them little over 3,000 men. The force was small, but Caesar considered that, after Pharsalia, there could be no danger for him anywhere in the Mediterranean.
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