Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/203

 STRATAGEMS, II. v. 32-34

wlien the <)pi)ortiine moment arrived^ wheeling about, lie shuightcrcd the foe in front and on both flanks, and likewise captured their general, Perperna.^

The same Pompey, in Armenia, when Mithridates was superior to him in the number and quality of his cavalry, stationed three thousand light-armed men and five hundred cavalry by night in a valley under cover of bushes lying between the two camps. Then at daybreak he sent forth his cavalry against the position of the enemy, planning that, as soon as the full force of the enemy, cavalry and infantry, became engaged in battle, the Romans should gradually fall back, still keeping I'anks, until they should afford room to those who had been stationed for the purpose of attacking from the rear to arise and do so. When this design turned out successfully, those who had seemed to flee turned about, enabling Pompey to cut to pieces the enemy thus caught in panic between his two lines. Our infantry also, engaging in hand-to-hand encounter, stabbed the horses of the enemy. That battle destroyed the faith which the king had reposed in his cavalry.^

In the Slave War, Crassus fortified two camps close beside the camp of the enemy, near Mt. Cantenna. Then, one night, he moved his forces, leading them all out and posting them at the base of tiie mountain above mentioned, leaving his headquarters tent in the larger camp in order to deceive the enemy. Dividing the cavalry into two detachments, he directed Lucius Quintius to oppose Spartacus with one division and fool him with a mock encounter ; with the other to lure to combat the Germans and Gauls, of the faction of Castus and Cannicus, and, by feigning flight, to draw them on to the spot

157