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Updated: June 14, 2025
For the truth of all which, humanity has a sure instinct. When there is a crisis we say, Look for the Man. If this phoenix and phenomenon in time, now with no competitor above the horizons, could not settle affairs, only Omnipotence could. Pompey, the only possible alternative, was dead; Caesar was lord of all things. Pharsalus, the deciding battle, was fought in 48; he returned home in 46.
The instruments of battle are valuable only if one knows how to use them, and Pompey, we shall see, was beaten at Pharsalus precisely because he had a cavalry superior to that of Caesar. If Hannibal was vanquished at Zuma, it was because genius cannot accomplish the impossible. Zuma proved again the perfect knowledge of men that Hannibal possessed and his influence over the troops.
Down to the battle of Pharsalus king Juba had, properly speaking, borne rule there; he had vanquished Curio, and his flying horsemen and his numberless archers were the main strength of the army; the Pompeian governor Varus played by his side so subordinate a part that he even had to deliver those soldiers of Curio, who had surrendered to him, over to the king, and had to look on while they were executed or carried away into the interior of Numidia.
King Juba was not disinclined still to maintain the position which he had held in Africa up to the battle of Pharsalus; indeed he bore himself no longer as a client of the Romans but as an equal ally or even as a protector, and took it upon him, for example, to coin Roman silver money with his name and device; nay, he even raised a claim to be the sole wearer of purple in the camp, and suggested to the Roman commanders that they should lay aside their purple mantle of office.
The mass of the defeated army threw away their arms and sued for quarter; but Caesar's soldiers were no longer the same who had readily refrained from battle before Ilerda and honourably spared the defenceless at Pharsalus. The habit of civil war and the rancour left behind by the mutiny asserted their power in a terrible manner on the battlefield of Thapsus.
XXXII. When he had come to Pharsalus and collected his army there, he marched straight to attack Alexander. But he, seeing that Pelopidas's force of Thebans was small, while he had more than double his numbers of Thessalian hoplites, met him near the shrine of Thetis. When some one said to Pelopidas that the tyrant was coming on with a great force, he answered.
The honours and favours which Brutus had received from Cæsar dulled him towards attempting of his own proper motion the overthrow of the monarchical power; for not only was his life saved at the battle of Pharsalus after the rout of Pompeius, and many of his friends also at his entreaty, but besides this he had great credit with Cæsar.
When the defeat at Pharsalus took place, Cato resolved that if Pompeius were dead, he would take over to Italy those who were with him, and himself would live an exile as far from the tyranny as possible; but if Pompeius were alive, that he would by all means keep together the force for him.
No doubt the monarchy was not established for the first time on the battle-fields of Pharsalus and Thapsus; it might already be dated from the moment when Pompeius and Caesar in league had established their joint rule and overthrown the previous aristocratic constitution.
No doubt the monarchy was not established for the first time on the battle-fields of Pharsalus and Thapsus; it might already be dated from the moment when Pompeius and Caesar in league had established their joint rule and overthrown the previous aristocratic constitution.
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