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Updated: June 14, 2025
It was just on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus, and the balance in the great contest seemed to incline to the side of the Pompeians; Rufus entered into communication with the old senatorian band-leader Milo, and the two contrived a counter-revolution, which inscribed on its banner partly the republican constitution, partly the cancelling of creditors' claims and the manumission of slaves.
V. The Struggle of Parties during the Absence of Pompeius VI. Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders VII. The Subjugation of the West VIII. The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar IX. Death of Crassus Rupture between the Joint Rulers X. Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus XI. The Old Republic and the New Monarchy XII. Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art
These Pelopidas sent to Thebes; but he himself, being vexed at the treachery of the mercenaries, and understanding that most of their goods, their wives and children, lay at Pharsalus, so that if he could take them, the injury would be sufficiently revenged, got together some of the Thessalians, and marched to Pharsalus.
Caesar took it up at first after his return from Spain in 705, but laid it down again after a few days, and waged the decisive campaign of 706 simply as consul this was the office his tenure of which was the primary occasion for the outbreak of the civil war. but in the autumn of this year after the battle of Pharsalus he reverted to the dictatorship and had it repeatedly entrusted to him, at first for an undefined period, but from the 1st January 709 as an annual office, and then in January or February 710 for the duration of his life, so that he in the end expressly dropped the earlier reservation as to his laying down the office and gave formal expression to its tenure for life in the new title of -dictator perpetuus-. This dictatorship, both in its first ephemeral and in its second enduring tenure, was not that of the old constitution, but what was coincident with this merely in the name the supreme exceptional office as arranged by Sulla; an office, the functions of which were fixed, not by the constitutional ordinances regarding the supreme single magistracy, but by special decree of the people, to such an effect that the holder received, in the commission to project laws and to regulate the commonwealth, an official prerogative de jure unlimited which superseded the republican partition of powers.
He had indeed become lieutenant to his brother when in Cilicia, having left Cæsar for the purpose. He afterward went with his brother to the Pharsalus, assuring the elder Cicero that they two would still be of the same party. Then the great catastrophe had come, when Cicero returned from that wretched campaign to Brundisium, and remained there in despair as at some penal settlement.
For the fulfilment of these conditions he gave as hostages his own son Philoxenus and fifty of his companions, whom Pelopidas sent to Thebes, but as he was angry at the desertion of his mercenaries, and learned that their property, wives and children were for the most part placed in Pharsalus, so that by capturing that place he could make them pay the penalty of their crime, he got together a force of Thessalians and came to Pharsalus.
It was customary among good troops to have a clash, but not the blind and headlong onset of the mass; the preoccupation of the rank was very great, as the behavior of Caesar's troops at Pharsalus shows in their slow march, timed by the flutes of Lacedaemonian battalions.
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.
That he consented to restore to Attalus his ships, and the seamen taken with them; and to the Rhodians the tract which they call Peraea. That he refused to evacuate Iassus and Bargylii. To the Aetolians he was ready to restore Pharsalus and Larissa; Thebes he would not restore: and that he would give back to the Achaeans the possession, not only of Argos, but of Corinth also."
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.
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