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He therefore left Afranius and Juba in two distinct bodies not far distant, and marched himself towards Thapsus, where he proceeded to build a fortified camp above a lake, to serve as a center-point for their operations, and also as a place of refuge.
While the naval force of the Athenians threw a stockade across the isthmus and remained quiet at Thapsus, the land army immediately went on at a run to Epipolae, and succeeded in getting up by Euryelus before the Syracusans perceived them, or could come up from the meadow and the review.
It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in the East, Cæsar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda.
They were the men who had stayed at home, like Cicero, from the fields of Thapsus and Munda, and had pretended penitence and submission that they might take an easier road to rid themselves of their enemy.
The fifty thousand corpses that covered the battle-field of Thapsus, among whom were several Caesarian officers known as secret opponents of the new monarchy, and therefore cut down on this occasion by their own men, showed how the soldier procures for himself repose. Cato in Utica His Death
The Leaders of the Republicans Put to Death Of the other fugitive leaders only a few escaped. The cavalry that fled from Thapsus encountered the bands of Sittius, and were cut down or captured by them; their leaders Afranius and Faustus were delivered up to Caesar, and, when the latter did not order their immediate execution, they were slain in a tumult by his veterans.
Finding horses in readiness at a spot where he had ordered, he traversed by night a district which the Africans denominated Byzacium, and arrived, in the morning of the following day, at a castle of his own between Acholla and Thapsus. There a ship, ready fitted out and furnished with rowers, took him on board.
The army of refugees under the fugitive Hasdrubal which was in possession of the whole Carthaginian territory with the exception of the towns on the east coast occupied by the Romans, viz. Hadrumetum, Little Leptis, Thapsus and Achulla, and the city of Utica, and offered an invaluable support for the defence was entreated not to refuse its aid to the commonwealth in this dire emergency.
After the defeat of Thapsus Cato retreated to Utica, where he deliberately put an end to his life after occupying several hours in reading Plato's Phædo, a dialogue on the immortality of the soul. From the place of his death he is known in history as Cato of Utica.
But what Cato had looked for, fell out sooner than he expected. Late in the evening came one from the army, whence he had been three days coming, who brought word there had been a great battle near Thapsus; that all was utterly lost; Caesar had taken the camps, Scipio and Juba were fled with a few only, and all the rest of the army was lost.
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