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We must not omit a picture so characteristic of Roman life as the story of his last hours. The last army of the republic had been destroyed at Thapsus, and Caesar was undisputed master of the world. Cato vainly endeavored to stir up the people of Utica, a town near Carthage, in which he had taken up his quarters; when they refused, he resolved to put an end to his life.
Only the maritime towns of Utica, Hadrumetum, Little Leptis, Thapsus, Achulla, and Usalis, and the inland town of Theudalis retained their territory and became free cities; which was also the case with the newly-founded community of deserters.
The ancient city, in its most prosperous times, was chiefly built on the knob of land which projects into the sea on the eastern coast of Sicily, between two bays; one of which, to the north, was called the Bay of Thapsus, while the southern one formed the great harbor of the city of Syracuse itself.
The sites of towns were commonly eminences, and the line of the walls followed the irregularities of the ground, crowning the slopes where they were steepest. Sometimes, as at Carthage and Thapsus, where the wall had to be carried across a flat space, the wall of defence was doubled, or even tripled.
But they cannot stand alone, and they fall from having been put into a position other than that for which they were intended when written. The battle of Thapsus, in Africa, took place in the spring of this year, and Cato destroyed himself with true stoical tranquillity, determined not to live under Cæsar's rule.
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.
Snakes, hatched in vast number under the warm stones, show you their progress, by the motion they impart to the thin light grass; and an endless variety of new lizards present themselves in a soil not untenanted, though barren. A little bay bears the great name of Thapsus; and, opposite, a small mass of nearly undistinguishable houses, the ambitious distinction of Port Augusta.
We have already noticed the etymological meaning of the word Cothon: that this meaning is accurate may be inferred from the word being applied to several artificial harbours in the Carthaginian dominion, besides that of Cartilage itself: it was applied to the port of Adrumetum, a large city built on a promontory, and to the port of Thapsus, a maritime town, situated on a kind of isthmus, between the sea and a lake.
Scipio had, as we have said, strongly garrisoned this town, and thereby committed the blunder of presenting to his opponent an object of attack easy to be seized; to this first error he soon added the second still less excusable blunder of now for the rescue of Thapsus giving the battle, which Caesar had wished and Scipio had hitherto rightly refused, on ground which placed the decision in the hands of the infantry of the line.
The order was given for departure; at the head of his vanguard Caesar crossed the narrow brook which separated his province from Italy, and which the constitution forbade the proconsul of Gaul to pass. When after nine years' absence he trod once more the soil of his native land, he trod at the same time the path of revolution. "The die was cast." Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus
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