Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/169

 STRATAGEMS, II. iii. 22-24

troops, that from this quarter he might envelop the troops of Caesar.

Against these disj)ositions, Gains Caesar also drew up a triple line, placing his legions in front and resting his left flank on marshes in order to avoid envelopment. On the right he placed his cavalry, among whom he distributed the fleetest of his foot- soldiers, men trained in cavalry fighting.^ Then he held in reserve six cohorts for emergencies, placing them obliquely on the right, from which quarter he was expecting an attack of the enemy's cavalry. No circumstance contributed more than this to Caesar's victorv on that dav ; for as soon as Pompey's cavalry poured forth, these cohorts routed it by an unexpected onset, and delivered it up to the rest of the troops for slaughter. -

The Emperor Caesar Augustus Gei'manicus,^ when the Chatti, by fleeing into the forests, again and again interfered with the course of a cavalrj' engage- ment, commanded his men, as soon as they should reach the enemy's baggage-train, to dismount and fight on foot. By this means he made sure that his success s!:ould not be blocked by any difficulties of terrain.^

When Gaius Duellius saw that his own heavy ships were eluded by the mobile fleet of the Cartha- ginians and that the valour of his soldiers was thus brought to naught, he devised a kind of grappling- hook. When this caught hold of an enemy ship, the Romans, laying gangways over the bulwarks, went on board and slew the enemy in hand-to-hand combat on their own vessels.^

5 260 B.C. Cf. Flor. 11. ii, 8-9 ; Polyb. i. 22.

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