and get
possession of houses that were suitable for consuls and praetors,
expecting to be elected to magistracies immediately after the war. But
the cavalry showed most impatience for the battle, being sumptuously
equipped with splendid armour, and priding themselves on their
well-fed horses and fine persons, and on their numbers also, for they
were seven thousand against Caesar's thousand. The number of the
infantry also was unequal, there being forty-five thousand matched
against twenty-two thousand.

XLIII. Caesar, calling his soldiers together and telling them that
Corfinius[538] was close at hand with two legions, and that other
cohorts to the number of fifteen under Calenus were encamped near
Megara and Athens, asked if they would wait for them or hazard a
battle by themselves. The soldiers cried out aloud that they did not
wish him to wait, but rather to contrive and so manage his operations
that they might soonest come to a battle with their enemies. While he
was performing a lustration of the army, as soon as he had sacrificed
the first victim, the soothsayer said that within three days there
would be a decisive battle with the enemy. Upon Caesar asking him, if
he saw any favourable sign in the victims as to the result of the
battle also, he replied, "You can answer this better for yourself: the
gods indicate a great change and revolution of the actual state of
things to a contrary state, so that if you think yourself prosperous
in your present condition, expect the worst fortune; but if you do
not, expect the better." As Caesar was taking his round to inspect the
watches the night before the battle about midnight, there was seen in
the heavens a fiery torch, which seemed to pass over Caesar's camp and
assuming a bright and flame-like appearance to fall down upon the camp
of Pompeius. In the morning watch they perceived that there was also a
panic confusion among the enemy. However, as Caesar did not expect that
the enemy would fight on that day, he began to break up his camp with
the intention of marching to Scotussa.

XLIV. The tents were already taken down when the scouts rode up to him
with intelligence that the enemy were coming down to battle, whereupon
Caesar was overjoyed, and after praying to the gods he arranged his
battle in three divisions. He placed Domitius Calvinus in command of
the centre, Antonius had the left wing, and he commanded the right,
intending to fight in the tenth legion. Observin