most, and is the strongest of all the winds in those parts,
being generated in wet plains and snow-covered mountains; and at that
time particularly, it being the height of summer, it was strong, and
maintained by the melting of the ice in the sub-arctic regions, and it
blew most pleasantly both on the barbarians and their flocks, and
refreshed them. Now, Sertorius, thinking on all these things, and also
getting information from the country people, ordered his soldiers to
take up some of the light ashy earth, and bringing it right opposite
to the hill to make a heap of it there; which the barbarians thought
to be intended as a mound for the purpose of getting at them, and they
mocked him. Sertorius kept his soldiers thus employed till nightfall,
when he led them away. At daybreak a gentle breeze at first began to
blow, which stirred up the lightest part of the earth that had been
heaped together, and scattered it about like chaff; but when the
caecias began to blow strong, as the sun got higher, and the hills
were all covered with dust, the soldiers got on the heap of earth and
stirred it up to the bottom, and broke the clods; and some also rode
their horses up and down through the earth, kicking up the light
particles and raising them so as to be caught by the wind, which
receiving all the earth that was broken and stirred up, drove it
against the dwellings of the barbarians, whose doors were open to the
caecias. The barbarians, having only the single opening to breathe
through, upon which the wind fell, had their vision quickly obscured,
and they were speedily overpowered by a suffocating difficulty of
breathing, by reason of respiring a thick atmosphere filled with dust.
Accordingly, after holding out with difficulty for two days, they
surrendered on the third, and thus added not so much to the power as
to the reputation of Sertorius, who had taken by stratagem a place
that was impregnable to arms.

XVIII. Now, as long as Sertorius had to oppose Metellus, he was
generally considered to owe his success to the old age and natural
tardiness of Metellus, who was no match for a daring man, at the head
of a force more like a band of robbers than a regular army. But when
Pompeius had crossed the Pyrenees, and Sertorius had met him in the
field, and he and Pompeius had mutually offered one another every
opportunity for a display of generalship, and Sertorius had the
advantage in stratagem and caution, his fame was noised abro