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Being acquainted with the nature of the country, he left behind him six cohorts to guard the bridge, the camp, and all his baggage, and the next day set off in person for Ilerda, with all his forces drawn up in three lines, and halted just before the camp of Afranius, and having remained there a short time under arms, he offered him battle on equal terms.
Caesar Occupies the Pyrenees Position at Ilerda The movement was successful; when Afranius and Petreius arrived at the passes, they found them already occupied by the Caesarians and the line of the Pyrenees lost.
Caesar Occupies the Pyrenees Position at Ilerda The movement was successful; when Afranius and Petreius arrived at the passes, they found them already occupied by the Caesarians and the line of the Pyrenees lost.
Caesar nevertheless sent the Pompeians who had come to his camp back unharmed, and persevered in seeking a peaceful solution. Ilerda, where the Pompeians had still a garrison and considerable magazines, became now the point which they sought to reach; but with the hostile army in front and the Sicoris between them and the fortress, they marched without coming nearer to their object.
For an army, which had to submit to a siege, it was an excellent position; but the defence of Spain, after the occupation of the line of the Pyrenees had been neglected, could only be undertaken in earnest behind the Ebro, and, as no secure communication was established between Ilerda and the Ebro, and no bridge existed over the latter stream, the retreat from the temporary to the true defensive position was not sufficiently secured.
XLIIL-Between the town of Ilerda and the next hill, on which Afranius and Petreius were encamped, there was a plain about three hundred paces broad, and near the middle of it an eminence somewhat raised above the level: Caesar hoped that if he could get possession of this and fortify it, he should be able to cut off the enemy from the town, the bridge, and all the stores which they had laid up in the town.
LIX. When news of this battle was brought to Caesar at Ilerda, the bridge being completed at the same time, fortune soon took a turn.
In Further Spain, where Marcus Varro held the chief command for Pompeius, it seemed to him, when he learned the disaster of Ilerda, most advisable that he should throw himself into the insular town of Gades and should carry thither for safety the considerable sums which he had collected by confiscating the treasures of the temples and the property of prominent Caesarians, the not inconsiderable fleet which he had raised, and the two legions entrusted to him.
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.
In Italy emigration gradually became among the aristocrats a question not of honour merely but almost of fashion, and it obtained a fresh impulse through the unfavourable accounts which arrived regarding Caesar's position before Ilerda; not a few of the more lukewarm partisans and the political trimmers went over by degrees, and even Marcus Cicero at last persuaded himself that he did not adequately discharge his duty as a citizen by writing a dissertatio on concord.
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