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CAE most influential of the body, reproduced in Thessalonica the image of the Roman curia. They elected the officers of state, and drew abundant resources of men and money from all the eastern provinces of the empire. Meanwhile, Cæsar concentrated his army of twelve legions and 1000 horse at Brundisium; and as, with all his exertions, he had not been able to procure sufficient transports, he crossed the sea with half his forces during the worst season of the year, when his enemies felt sure that he would not venture to sail. He seized rapidly the seaport towns of Oricum and Apollonia, and advanced upon Dyrrhachium. This bold stroke had succeeded; but until the remainder of his troops had joined Cæsar, he was not only unable to take the offensive against Pompey, but was in a very precarious position. He had left his faithful friend, M. Antony, in charge of the troops at Brundisium, but the Pompeian fleet was now on the alert, and kept a close watch of the coasts of Italy and Greece. Time wore on. Pompey had approached, and threatened to crush Cæsar. So dangerous was his position, that he would have crossed the stormy Adriatic to put himself at the head of his army, if he had found a fisherman bold enough to take him across. At length, however, M. Antony succeeded in stealing through the hostile cruisers. Soon after landing he effected a juncture with Cæsar. Now Cæsar resumed the offensive, endeavoured to cut Pompey off from his magazines in Dyrrhachium, and conceived even the strange idea of besieging him in his camp, which he tried to surround on the land side with two semicircular concentric trenches. It was an undertaking in which the strategy of Cæsar appears inferior to that of his rival. Pompey profited by Cæsar's mistake. He ordered an attack upon the trenches near the sea the circumvallation was broken through; Cæsar was obliged to raise the siege, and he retired, fortunately unpursued, directing his retreat towards Thessaly. Near the ever memorable town of Pharsalus the two armies met on the 9th August,. 48. Pompey had a force of eleven legions, or 47,000 foot and 7000 horse, to which Cæsar could only oppose eight very diminished legions, counting in all 22,000 men and 1000 horse. The senatorial party resolved upon giving battle. Their splendid cavalry advanced, dispersed the cavalry of Cæsar, and threatened to outflank his position. But they came suddenly and unexpectedly upon a reserve, consisting of Cæsar's best veterans. They were driven back, and in their wild retreat threw their own infantry into confusion. The Cæsarians now advanced in a body, and the fate of the day was decided. Pompey at once gave up everything for lost, and fled ignominiously from the field. His troops made a stand to defend their camp, but they were overpowered, and 15,000 were wounded or slain; 20,000 were made prisoners; their chief officers fled in every direction; the whole army was annihilated with one blow, and the whole war seemed terminated. Pompey fled to the nearest coast, took ship, and after wandering about for some time among the coasts and islands of the Ægean, sailed to Egypt, where he was treacherously murdered. Soon after Cæsar appeared before Alexandria at the head of only 3700 foot and 800 horse. We can understand that he should have wished to bring the war to a close by a relentless pursuit of his chief antagonist. But it seems hardly in keeping with his general conduct, that after ascertaining Pompey's death, he stopped in Egypt to settle a purely domestic squabble of the claimants to the Egyptian crown. He landed in Alexandria, and soon found himself involved in a most tedious, harassing, and dangerous conflict. The populace of that large and wealthy emporium, supported by the regular army of King Ptolemy Dionysus, besieged Cæsar and his small army in a quarter of the city; at length, upon the arrival of reinforcements from Asia, he prevailed over the obstinate resistance of the Egyptians. Cæsar regulated the succession in favour of Cleopatra and her younger brother. He was captivated by the charms of that artful beauty, who then stood just in the first bloom of youth. In her company he spent some precious time, which his opponents well knew how to make use of. In Italy he had not been heard of for many months. His friends began to despair, to blunder, or to waver, and his enemies looked up once more. After their great overthrow at Pharsalus, when the chief actors, Cæsar and Pompey, had so suddenly disappeared from the stage, the relics of the Pompeian army, and the secondary officers, had been rallied at Corcyra under the protection of the still intact Pompeian fleet. Thence they had proceeded to Africa, where their friend and ally, King Juba of Numidia, had annihilated the Cæsarian corps under Curio, and seemed able to give such an accession of strength to the senatorial party, that victory might still be hoped for. Here the preparations for a second campaign were carried on with great vigour, especially under the indefatigable Cato. The command-in-chief was given to Metellus Scipio. Arms and supplies were accumulated. A strong Numidian cavalry, elephants, and light-armed slingers and spearmen under Juba, were added to the heavy Roman legions. At Utica a new senate was formed, to assist with its counsel the "legitimate" government. The civil war once more raised its hideous head. Meanwhile Cæsar leisurely ascended the Nile in company with the lovely Cleopatra, to explore the wonders of a bygone age: for Romans and Greeks looked up at the pyramids with hardly less of awe and admiration than does the modern traveller of our own day. Taking leave at length of Egypt and Egypt's queen, Cæsar, still regardless of the threatening danger in the west, undertook, as a sort of by-play, a campaign into Armenia against Pharnaces, the son of the great Mithridates. Cæsar plunged into this unnecessary war, and, with his usual good fortune, terminated it by the decisive victory at Zela in Pontus, which he reported to Rome in the celebrated bulletin—"I came, saw, and conquered." Whatever may have been the defects in Cæsar's plans, they were crowned with success; and he was at length enabled, after an absence of twenty months, to return to Rome in September, . 47, and to finish at leisure the work that remained to be done. It was time, indeed, that he returned. Agitation and riot had begun to reappear in the capital, and what was more ominous by far, a mutiny had broken out in the army. Cæsar, indeed, soon reasserted his mastery, but these untoward circumstances delayed and partly weakened his expedition to Africa. At length, again in the season of storms, he crossed from Lilybæum in Sicily with an army of six legions, into the neighbourhood of Carthage. There was fought the sanguinary battle of Thapsus, 4th April,. 46, in which Cæsar's furious soldiery, brutalized by the long continuance of the civil war, slaughtered 50,000 enemies, cutting down all their prisoners without mercy, in spite of Cæsar's commands, remonstrances, and entreaties. The senatorial party was now lost indeed. Metellus, Scipio, Afranius, Petreius, Juba, and Cato, fell by their own hands. At Utica the loss of the republic was sealed and ratified by the voluntary death of the last republican.

The African campaign had lasted about six months. Cæsar returned to Rome on the 26th of July, to celebrate his triumph. On four successive days he exhibited to the wondering gaze of the populace his trophies and prisoners from Gaul, Egypt, Asia, and Africa. His enemies were officially represented as foreign kings and nations—the Gauls, Ptolemy, Pharnaces, Juba. The triumph over Roman citizens was veiled under barbaric names. Lavish rewards to his veterans, and rich presents and feasts to the whole population of Rome, completed the satisfaction created by the great show. In addition to a large donative, the soldiers obtained allotments of land. By the two sons of Pompey, Cnæus and Sextus, Cæsar was interrupted in the midst of his most important legislative measures. He hastened to Spain, towards the end of. 46; and with his usual impetuosity, and more than his usual courage, brought the war to a victorious issue in the most hard-fought of his battles, at Munda. With the battle of Thapsus the object of Cæsar, so far as it was destructive, was accomplished. This corrupt oligarchy which for a long time had been the curse of Rome, was completely and hopelessly crushed. The insurrection in Spain was merely a personal and local opposition, not based on any broad principles of conflicting political parties. But the work of destruction was only the preliminary part of the task which Cæsar had undertaken. The far more important and arduous duty remained—the gigantic work of reorganization. Cæsar could hardly hope to accomplish it entirely, even if his life should be prolonged to the extremest limit of human existence; for whereas destruction may be the work of a moment, organic growth is the result of time. The position of Cæsar had become difficult from the moment that victory in the field enabled him to drop the party leader, and to rise into the monarch. Like other rulers who have obtained power through a political convulsion, he found his own partisans hardly less troublesome than his old opponents. A great number of those who had followed the political heir of Marius were eager for confiscation, and for abolition of debts. Not a few were of the Catilinarian stamp, men ruined in purse and character, who would have hailed a bloody proscription. With such men Cæsar