Now when Caesar had attained such decision of every advantage he desired in Rome as satisfied his mind, he brought his countless army out of the City to march across the snowy ancient peaks of the Alps westward forthright to Spain. This is the cause of his taking that course. Two viceroys (legates) of Pompey's people, named Petreius and Afranius, were in possession of it, with vast troops of Roman warriors along with them, and this was Caesar's desire, to expel them from the whole of Spain, unless they would submit to him.
Every town and every fortress by which he came throughout Italy used to give him pledges and hostages, through fear and dread of him, until he reached the city of the Massilians at the end and edge of the land. Of the Greeks by origin were the folk of that city. Phocis was the name of their city so long as they were in Greece, and that city was sacked, and then they came into Italy, and therein a city was built by them on the edge of the land on the brink of the sea. Massilia was its name.
There was a ‘knot of friendship’ between them and Pompey, that neither of them would forsake the other so long as they existed. Well was that friendship maintained by them: for, though Caesar with his armies came to them, they clave
This was the plan they then formed: to send to Caesar messengers bearing branches of palm in sign of peace, to find out whether they could, by guile or by fair speaking, abate the fury of his wrath and his spirit, and escape without giving him hostages.
So those messengers came and sat down before Caesar, and this they said to him: ‘O Caesar, it will be found in your own books of history and annals that the folk of this city take part with you against every (foreign) nation in the world that shall rise against you. That is what we have hitherto boasted of, but not to help you to make internal war amongst yourselves.’
‘For sake of thy righteousness, do not enjoin us by force (to do) what you have not hitherto been accustomed to enjoin: for without us thou hast troops enough; and we have not the same mind about civil war as have the other nations of the whole world. That indeed were not fortunate (for thee), for if we all had the same desire, never would the civil war be waged.’
‘This is our errand to thee: if thou desire to make peace and good-will, leave thy troops in their camp, and do thou thyself come with us that we may attend thee and minister to thee. And when Pompey shall arrive he will come to us in like manner. And leave the city in that wise as a common dwelling-place between you.’
‘If it be thy purpose to pass into the countries of Spain, it is not on account of persons like us that thou shouldst interrupt thy hosting. We have here neither gold nor silver nor wealth, and it is not easy to ourselves to carry on war. It is the worse for him with whom we shall go to battle, for he will be defeated if we are together with him, and we have no wealth in the world save only fulfilment of friendship.’
‘However, if thou art determined to capture us perforce, and to scale our ramparts, and to break the gates of our city, the proceeding will be unprofitable to thee; for though our houses be burnt, and though it should befall us, from drought and thirst, to be sucking at the clay and drinking our own blood, and from hunger, to be devouring our children and our wives, we would accept that rather than contravene the word we gave to Pompey, and deliver hostages perforce to thee.’
Then a vast flaming heat and a great reddening mounted up in Caesar's face and countenance, from the boiling of the rugged wrath that arose in his mind from that answer which the Massilians made to him.
This then he said: ‘Vain for the Greek exiles is the matter that deceives them; for though I am in haste to Spain, not from them will I go until I sack their city. 'Tis right for you, my gallant followers’, says Caesar to his troops, ‘to rejoice at this godsend of war that your own success has cast upon your road. For as the tempestuous wind when alone becomes still and silent unless it meet resistance, and as the glow of great
‘Hateful to me’, he says, ‘is what they tell me to do, to leave my troops and go alone into their city. What they come to avoid is that which they shall get, namely, war. I have pledged my princely word that on this occasion we shall not part until they are sure and certain that in my time there is no prince or chieftain more successful in battle than I.’
With that answer the envoys went home. Caesar, however, diverted his troops from the course on which they were, and came to the city of the Massilians. As to them, then, the preparation which they made awaiting the troops was neither timid nor fearful, neither gentle nor friendly, neither tender nor courteous. That was not the attendance of a friend on a friend, or of a household on a master, but the attendance of an enemy on an enemy and of a foe on a foe, the attendance and ministry which they bestowed upon them. The gates of the city were closed and firmly strengthened with beams and bars, with wedges and locks, with ropes and cords and chains, so that in the whole wall there was no place that was stronger or more impregnable than those gates. They filled their fighting-places and their strong firm towers with broad blue lances, and sharp-sided spears, and fair, gilded arrows, and sharp, iron sickles, and front-attacking stones, and rough-headed rocks.
The striplings and the youths went up in their crowds and multitudes on the galleries of the town, and they made
When Caesar beheld them thus arrayed, he did this: he established a station and camp on a high hill that was near the town and had on its top a roomy camping-ground. There was another hill equally high on the side nearest to the city. This was Caesar's desire, to fill up with clay and sods (the space) between those two hills, so that his troops might pass with him into the city across its walls. However, that he did not do, but when he had finished arranging his camp, and when his tents were pitched and huts were built by the troops, he made a vast fosse round the city on the land side, so that that fosse extended from the edge of the camp down to the seaport. The wells and springs and streams of fresh water of the whole plain were (then) let by him into that fosse, so that they all flowed past the city into the sea, and the citizens did not get enough water to quench their thirst or their drought. Even though they should attempt to flee, they could not go any other way but against the camp. Caesar made two fortified dykes along the two sides of the fosse from the camp to the sea, and he raised towers and fighting-mounds of clay and sods over the
Even if the Massilians had never done any good thing save compelling Caesar's forces to labour so great, this was enough to raise their renown and honour to the edge of Doom; for in all Italy the folk of not a single city, save the Massilians alone, delayed in submitting to Caesar.
This is the project which Caesar formed, to build him a siegetower to breach the walls and from it to overcome the city. So he sent his troops to the woods and forests that were near them to cut the material of that siege-tower, wattling and boards, stakes, beams and joists. They felled the forests, and their vast yewtrees were put on the ground and dragged and delivered to the camp on the forearms of warriors, and on the shoulders of soldiers, and by the strengths of oxen and asses.
And yet Caesar did not deem what they brought enough. A dense, dark sacred grove stood before him beside the camp; and no one dared to visit it or to fell one of its trees, because it was a sacred grove, consecrated to the adored gods from the beginning of the world. The horror and loathsomeness of it were very great. On every single tree therein was the colour of human blood. No bird nor winged thing durst make its nest or dwelling in the top of one of its trees. No fire used to burn them, nor wind lay them low. Dragons and serpents and venomous beasts (were) at every point and at every end of it.
Caesar ordered his people to cut down that sacred grove, for it was very near to them. Howbeit the troops durst not go to cut it down, since they expected that every blow that each of would give to the tree would alight on his own limbs.
When Caesar saw that great fear on his troops, he himself grasped a large axe and began to fell the oak which he deemed the highest he saw in that grove, and he desisted not till he cast it lying on the ground, and then he said: ‘Get ye gone to the grove, my lads; let the gods (take) vengeance on me if the felling thereof displeases them.’
Thereat they all arose at the high-king's orders; and yet the fear of the gods did not leave them, but greater was their fear of Caesar, and less did they dare to delay his word. The grove was laid low by them at once. Such was the closeness and density with which the trees tumbled, that, after being felled from its butt, a tree would remain aloft owing to the closeness and abundance of the other trees at every point beneath it.
That Caesar had done that deed seemed good to the Massilians, for they deemed that the gods would at once avenge the doing of that deed. But not for that was his trouble, but only that what he had taken in hand should succeed.
The wagons and oxen and asses of the neighbouring districts were gathered unto him that the siege-tower might be moved from the camp to the city, for it was not possible to build it near the town.
When Caesar had finished collecting and gathering all those materials, a propraetor of his people, Decius Brutus by name,
Then Brutus caused that siege-tower to be built, as Caesar had ordered, and all the wheels and wagons were collected into one place; and upon them from above boards and beams and huge yewtrees were arranged in rows equally high. And a vast mound of clay and sods was also built upon them, with a work of boards and wattling on every side around it, so that no part of it might separate or scatter from another. Many windows and portholes (were) on it. A concealed place in the midst of it for the asses and the oxen which were moving the wagons and the engines beneath it, and for the soldiers who were urging them on. Above that great mound they built two strong towers of sods, from which to skirmish on behalf of the people who were along the lower part.
Now when Brutus saw the completion of that work, it was filled and arranged with chosen heroes and warriors under arms. His asses and oxen were yoked to drag and to move the wagons and the engines which were beneath it, and men to drive them were brought beside them, and then, at one time and with one movement, they were all urged on.
With that they gave the siege-tower a valiant shove, and a savage, frantic haul, and a fierce, destructive drag from the edge of the camp to the neighbourhood of the wall of the city.
The Massilians beheld the semblance of a huge hill moving to them over the green; and when they heard the rumbling of the wheels, and the creaking of the hurdles and the thunderous clash of the boards a-shaking, and the noise of the wagons a-moving, and the shouts of the champions, and the smiting of the rods and horsewhips in the hands of the warriors vehemently inciting and urging and exhorting the oxen and the horses and the asses; when, too, they heard the snorting and panting of the irrational animals, and the smiting of their hoofs against the surface of the plain as they approached, tremulous fear and terror seized them. They supposed that an universal earthquake had come into the sods and paths of the whole earth. Marvelling and great wonder they had that the ramparts of the city were not laid low thereby.
However, that siege-tower came to the end of the green, and it was not stopped until it was set, side by side, against the walls of the town. So much higher was it than the ramparts that the darts fell down on the men who were on the higher places on the gallery of the town. So then Caesar's people and the Massilians fought manfully, strongly. Howbeit, more powerful was the hurling of the Massilian forces than that of Caesar's followers; for stronger and firmer were the fighting-places in which the former were, and moreover they had in addition their balistas ready. The half-javelin that was hurled from one of these balistas used to make a path for itself through the battle-hurdle of weapons that was in front of Caesar's followers.
When Caesar's people saw that the folk of the city did not abide their casting, they resorted to the strong centres of their thick straight spears, and to the hard hilts of their swords, and moved near the Massilians. Thus they came, with a dense circle of shields around them, and a battle-hurdle of their spears above their heads, and each of them guarding another, that is, he who had a shield protecting him who had no shield. The balistas of the citizens then became useless, for their missiles did not strike Caesar's people at all, but used to fall behind their backs because of their nearness to the combatants.
So the Massilians left off (working) their balistas, and took to waiting on their enemies with front-attacking stones and broad-blue lances, and their own fists and forearms. Yet it was not easy for Caesar's people, for at the hurlings the powers of their engines departed, and the stones and the weapons burst forth on the hoods of the corslets and the bosses of the shields, and the crests of the helmets, and the galleries of the siege-tower, and the battle-hurdles of spears, even as showers of hailstones burst forth on works of stone or buildings of boards.
Some of Caesar's people put great hurdles of wattling above their heads, with layers of sods over them outside, and began to undermine the wall with battering-rams and iron
Thereafter the arms of Caesar's people are wearied, and their vast battle-hurdles give way, and their labour goes for nought. They leave the city and repair, gloomily, sadly, to their camp. Though at first the citizens deemed it success enough to protect their town and guard its walls, yet, when they beheld the other army leaving the place of battle and seeking their camp, they came straightway out of the city, and brought fiery torches and blazing lamps, and kindled a fire at every point and end of the siege-tower, so that one flame of fire was made of it, both boards and wattling and stone, and so that its smoke was not higher than its blaze. And that blaze was swept by the blast of the wind to the camp of Caesar's people, so that a large part of it was burnt. The Massilians returned to their city cheerfully and spiritedly; and on that night pleasant was their sleep.
Caesar's people then lost hope of success in fighting on land; and this is the plan they formed, to try their luck at sea and ascertain whether their success in naval warfare would not be greater. So they prepared, swiftly and speedily, their ships to come from the sea-side to sack the city. The shaping
When they had finished building that huge fleet, they let their ships go with the wave of the river Rhone to the great sea, till they took harbour on that night in the haven of the city.
As to the warriors of the Massilians on that night, there was no silence for them; for their new ships were equipped for sailing, and their old ships were strengthened, and they were furnished and filled with the chosen soldiers of the town, both old and young, so that they were waiting and ready in the same harbour.
When the twilight of the early morning ended on the morrow, and when they beheld the radiance and lightnings of the clear bright sun with his beams broken against the billows of the sea, and when the shower-storms of the night retreated, and the sea became a smooth, silent, calm surface before the battle, the soldiers fiercely strong and valiant, and the heroic crews of the fleet arose and began to attack the capacious vessels and the wide-bellied barques and the long blue galleys from near the land. And they sat down on the rowing-benches, and they gave a regular oarstroke to the cnatur-barques of the fleet
After coming forth out of the harbour Caesar's people arranged their fleet. They put their galleys and their small vessels in the centre of their fleet, and their larger vessels, which had three, or four, or five ranks of oars, they put around it, inside and outside, towards the open sea, and at the edge of the battle.
The chosen leader whom they had, namely, Brutus, commanded his own ship to be in the forefront of the fleet against his foes. Vast was the size of that ship, loftier than all the ships of the fleet: great towers with fighting-castles above them: six ranks of oars it bore: great and vast was the distance from the upper rank of them to the sea.
Thereafter when the fleets drew so near (each other) that there was only one oarstroke between them, the soldiers and champions of each fleet began to urge and hearten their troops so that they might be bold against their enemies.
With that they gave great shouts on high. Though vast was the rumbling of the rowing and the noises of the oars, nought thereof was heard at the mighty shout which arose from them into the air. So then that impulse was given by them, eagerly and willingly, and they ceased not from it until the one fleet crashed into the side of the other. Such was
So then the crews arose from the benches, and they let fly between them murderous swarms and virulent showers of arrows from bows, and of pointed javelins, and of long-broad lances, so that the air was not seen past them when they were aloft, and the sea was not seen through them when they fell into the space between the two fleets.
Another impulse was then given to the fleets, so that some of the ships on each side went round others in turns. It made a perverse mixture of the sea and a confusion under them. The waves that the ships of Caesar's people used to cast from them would turn at once from the ships of the Massilians, so that the sea under them was like nothing save the full sea when it shall happen to be racing (?) in its strong burst of a springtide against the wind. But yet there is something: it was easier for the Massilians to fight the battle there than for Caesar's people; for their ships were active and light, and it was easy to steer them and to direct them and to turn them, and it was facile to approach and to avoid enemies. But the ships of Caesar's people, they were heavy, new, tardy, and it was not easier to direct them than to turn them. Nevertheless, fighting on dry land was not more stable than (fighting) from them.
When the chosen chieftain, Brutus, saw the manner in which the ships of the Massilians were (coming) to him and (retreating) from him, he began to hold speech with his helmsman, and told him to lay the side of his ship against the prows of
A multitude of them fell there in sorrows and in gore-beds and in the holds of their own ships; and the streams and rivers of red blood poured out of the bodies of the heroes and the points of the tooth-hilted swords, so that they were as thick clots and foams of gore on the summit of the billows of the sea. And then the slaughter increased, and the headless bodies fell into the sea between the ships, so that the iron chains could not unite them, from the density and the abundance of the mangled corpses and the bodies red with blood. And the warriors half-dead used to fall into the deep, so that some of them were drinking their own blood mingled with the bitter brine of the green sea, while others were at their last gasp and sinking till they found their deaths from the benches and boards of the
Then did the heroes and champions of either fleet urge the hosts to upraise their effort of battle and to multiply deeds of valour. Then two of the Massilian ships approached and hemmed in the ship of a warrior of Caesar's force, named Tagus, and Tagus divided his crew in two, each half-crew against each of the two ships. He himself stood up in his own place, namely, on the poop of his vessel, and began attending the two steersmen on his right and on his left. He put his taffrail upon the helm of one of the two ships, and began to hold it strongly and bravely. But the two steersmen simultaneously drove their two spears into him, so that one pierced the edge of his back, and the other the top of his breast opposite his heart. In the hollow of his chest the two blades met. He remained standing, and knew not by which wound his (life-)blood would first pour out. He closed his mouth and swelled his breath: the two darts sprang together out of him, and in their track two jets of red blood broke forth; so thus he died.
Gelon, a soldier of the Massilians, directed his ship to Caesar's people. Good in sooth was that man; no
Then Gyareus, (another) soldier of the Massilians, to escape from drowning, raised himself up from the sea, and seized the rail of Gelon's ship so that his breast was at the edge. Then one of the Caesarians drove a spear through him, and thereby pinned him to his ship, so that he was hanging out of it, supported by the spear.
Two noble warriors of the Massilians were in the battle, two own brothers, who had been born at one birth. There was neither difference nor distinction of form between them. Such was their resemblance that no man recognised one from the other until death had severed them. To look on the one of them while he was alive when the other had died was a reminder of grief to their friends. As that pair was there, ship of Caesar's force came side by side with the ship in which they were, and made a mingling of the oars. One of the two men stretched his right hand out of the poop on which he stood, so that his grasp closed on the edge of his enemy's ship. A warrior of Caesar's force bared a hero's hand-length of his
Thereafter his ship was filled with clots of blood and corpses of heroes, and its bolts separated, and it was filled with the bitter brine of the green sea. Its timbers were pierced and swallowed together with its crew into the depth and very bottom of the ocean. In its place after it the mighty outburst of the springtide ran in like a whirlpool.
Many kinds of wondrous premature deaths did the nobles find on that day.
Once upon a time one of Caesar's people threw a grappling-iron to fasten a Massilian vessel, and it fell on Lycidas,
A certain champion was overwhelmed there, and that man was swimming the waves, boldly and bravely, on from one ridge-mound over another. The path on which his ill-luck brought him was the place in which two full-swift vessels met together at one impulse of rowing in the fleet. He chanced to be on the crest of the wave between the two prows of those two vessels, so that they made between them bone-fragments and separate heaps. of his bones and all his entrails, and these did not prevent
Moreover, a large crew of Massilians were shipwrecked, and they rushed together to the nearest Massilian vessel and stretched their arms simultaneously to the gunwale. Thereat the vessel began to tremble and swing to and fro, and then her crew go and with their swords begin to cut off the arms (of the shipwrecked sailors), so that their hands clave to the edge of the vessel and their truncated bodies fell opposite them into the deep of the sea.
And at that time there was a great lack of weapons. Their lances and spears broke in their fittings. Their pikes and edged javelins broke in the hollows of their thongs (amenta): Their swords broke in their hilts, and their sickles in their bendings.
Howbeit their champions' valour and their heroes' fury ministered other weapons to them: for each of them plied on another the oars and the benches and the rudders of the vessels, and the ships themselves were broken up by them in order to hurl the planks at their enemies.
The entrails and the mangled bodies which were in the ships or on the surface of the sea near them, they used to sever and afterwards hurl. Many of them used to wrench out
Then a strange invention and cunning science was discovered by Caesar's people, to wit, waxed torches and lights of pine were kindled by them, and were flung, red-flaming, along the sides and prows and poops of the Massilians' vessels. At once the old ships blazed, aflame with pitch and tallow and wax. Sad indeed was it in the fleet thereafter. One of the men, to avoid being burnt, would plunge into the sea, to drown: while another, to avoid being drowned, would board the blazing ship, to burn; and none had fear of any death save the death by which he had begun to perish.
Even those who were drowning, made no feeble effort in that fight; for some of them were gathering the weapons of the vessels that were next them, while others were waging battle against the foes with whom they were struggling in the water. And when they could get no other arms, they were cleaving the brine between them (and their foes); and then one would clasp his arms over his foe, so that they went together to the depth of the sea. Glad was he to be drowned, provided he drowned his enemy along with him.
At that time, in that conflict, Phoceus had a mighty hand. He was a wondrous warrior of the Massilians, a wondrous and famous diver, one who searched and sought for every thing that was drowned at sea, one who used to go and move the anchor whenever it happened to stick in the bottom of the ocean. That man used to clasp his forearms round one of the Caesarians, carry him down to the sand of the
Another troop, when they were drowning, used to seize the oars of the hostile ships, so that they let them neither retreat nor advance; and they would come to protect their own ships, so that the blow or the cast inflicted on the side or the prow of the ship might strike into their own bodies.
Then Tyrrhenus, a Caesarian champion, arose at the prow of his vessel, and began to display his deeds of valour and to act bravely in the battle. Lygdamus, a Massilian champion and a choice slinger, beheld that, put a round leaden ball into his sling, and hurled it at Tyrrhenus so that the ball came into the hollow of his forehead, shattered it from one temple to the other, and cast forth each of his eyes. Tyrrhenus was silent after being deprived of his sight: it seemed to him that the darkness of death had come to him, and yet he felt that the forces of life existed in his limbs. He said to the Caesarians: ‘Set my face against my foes that I may hurl (darts) even as they are hurling, and that I may spend the remains of the life that is in me in killing my enemies and defending my friends. Henceforward my mind does not regard my life.’
When he had finished speaking, he set his face towards the Massilians, and hurled a doubtful cast upon them. Howbeit
Then the old man, Argus' father, was at the prow of the same vessel— and no Massilian was a stronger soldier than he had been in the time of his youth. When he saw his son falling he came towards him, tripping over ropes and stumbling over the benches of the lengthy vessel, to the poop where his son was, and he found him at his last gasp. He made no wailing or lamentation over him, but he stretched his arms by his sides. His body grew hard and stiff, and gloom and darkness came upon his eyes. When Argus saw his father near him he raised his head and breast feebly and weakly from the edge of the vessel to ask a kiss, for he was unable to speak to him, and drew his right hand to him to close his eyes. ‘No, by no means’, exclaims the father, ‘it shall not be so, my son; but it is I that will sooner go to death!’ Thus he spoke, and he gave a thrust of a sword into his own chest, so that the point went through him, and he leapt at once after this into the sea. Such was his haste to die before his son that one way of death was not enough for him.
Hardily and strongly was that battle of the Caesarians and Pompeians fought in the absence of both their lords; howbeit
Enough of wretchedness it was to listen thereafter to the folk of the city, with the greatness of their wailing and their lamentation, and with the abundance of their cries of sorrow and sound of weeping, at seeing their troops fleeing towards them. Good reason indeed they had, for at that time there was many a fatherless son, and sonless father and brotherless sister, and wife without her dear husband. And their women and old men, in their bands and crowds on the shore, began to recognise the bodies and heads of the friends and comrades which the billows of the great sea were casting to them on land. Unshapely were the countenances (of the dead), and it was hard to recognise them; and the (Massilian) wife was
But Decius Brutus, the admiral of Caesar's fleet, sound and strong was his spirit after routing the Massilians, for he was the first to gain a naval battle on Caesar's behalf. His people however, were sighing and mournful as they parted from the Massilians, and that was not a ‘mourning without cause’, for with them were many bodies hacked, and sides pierced, and bold warriors mangled, and youths severely wounded; and many were the bleeding hurts and incurable gashes upon them. However ‘with men battle is not companionship’. They cared little for that, since they had the victory.
They brought their fleet into the haven and harbour of the Massilians, and their vessels were equipped and cleansed, and they flung their enemies' corpses and bodies and clots of gore and particles of blood and masses of bones over the edges of their ships into the sea. The city was seized by them, and they let no one else into it or out of it until Caesar came to them from Spain; and after his arrival the whole city was laid low.
That night they spent easefully, having put from them the anxiety of battle, and their foes having fallen by them in the time of conflict.
So far is one of the foretales of the Great Battle of Thessaly. The Sack of the City of Massilia is the name of that story.