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On the other hand the land-army, the headquarters of which had been during the summer at Berrhoea on the Haliacmon, had not yet come up; the mass of it was moving slowly along the great highway from Thessalonica towards the west coast to the future headquarters Dyrrhachium; the two legions, which Metellus Scipio was bringing up from Syria, remained at Pergamus in Asia for winter quarters and were expected in Europe only towards spring.
The Epirot militia nowhere offered resistance; the important seaport towns of Oricum and Apollonia along with a number of smaller townships were taken, and Dyrrhachium, selected by the Pompeians as their chief arsenal and filled with stores of all sorts, but only feebly garrisoned, was in the utmost danger. Caesar Cut Off from Italy
His march was very difficult, through rugged places and in a great snow, but so swift that he left those that were to bring his provisions for the morning meal a great way behind. And now, being very near to Dyrrhachium, with fatigue and cold he fell into the distemper called Bulimia.
For before one of the battles at Dyrrhachium, when Pompey himself, we are told, made an address to the soldiers and bade the officers do the like, the men listened to them but coldly, and with silence, until Cato, last of all, came forward, and in the language of philosophy, spoke to them, as the occasion required, concerning liberty, manly virtue, death, and a good name; upon all which he delivered himself with strong natural passion, and concluded with calling in the aid of the gods, to whom he directed his speech, as if they were present to behold them fight for their country.
In Illyria also, while Caesar was in Egypt, incidents of a very grave nature had occurred. The Dalmatian coast had been for centuries a sore blemish on the Roman rule, and its inhabitants had been at open feud with Caesar since the conflicts around Dyrrhachium; while the interior also since the time of the Thessalian war, swarmed with dispersed Pompeians.
The march from Dyrrhachium to Apollonia along a difficult road crossed by several rivers was no easy task for a defeated army pursued by the enemy; but the dexterous leadership of their general and the indestructible marching energy of the soldiers compelled Pompeius after four days' pursuit to suspend it as useless.
Since the events of Dyrrhachium these lords regarded the triumph of their party as an ascertained fact; already there was eager strife as to the filling up of Caesar's supreme pontificate, and instructions were sent to Rome to hire houses at the Forum for the next elections.
His army was crowded together within a space of six square miles; though the fleet conveyed corn, the want of forage was as much felt by Caesar's cavalry as by those of Pompeius before Dyrrhachium.
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
On the whole, as Carthage coined only to a very limited extent, there existed not a single important mint in addition to that of Rome in the region of the western Mediterranean, with the exception of that of Massilia and perhaps also those of the Illyrian Greeks in Apollonia and Dyrrhachium.