on while the horsemen of Caesar were amusing themselves with a
Libyan, who was exhibiting to them his skill in dancing and playing on
a flute at the same time in a surprising manner, and the men, pleased
with the sight, were sitting on the ground and the boys holding their
horses, the enemy suddenly coming round and falling upon them killed
some, and entered the camp together with the rest, who fled in
disorderly haste. And if Caesar himself and Asinius Pollio had not come
out of the camp to help the men, and checked the pursuit, the war
would have been at an end. In another battle, also, the enemy had the
advantage in the encounter, on which occasion it is said that Caesar,
seizing by the neck the man who bore the eagle and was running away,
turned him round, and said, "There is the enemy!"

LIII. However Scipio[564] was encouraged by these advantages to hazard
a decisive battle; and leaving Afranius and Juba[565] encamped each
separately at a short distance, he commenced making a fortified camp
above a lake near the city Thapsus, intending it as a place for the
whole army to sally forth from to battle and a place of refuge also.
While he was thus employed, Caesar with incredible speed making his way
through woody grounds which contained certain approaches that had not
been observed, surrounded part of the enemy and attacked others in
front. Having put these to flight he availed himself of the critical
moment and the career of fortune, by means of which he captured the
camp of Afranius on the first assault, and at the first assault also
he broke into the camp of the Numidians from which Juba fled; and in a
small part of a single day he made himself master of three camps and
destroyed fifty thousand of the enemy without losing as many as fifty
of his own men. This is the account that some writers give of that
battle; but others say that Caesar was not in the action himself, but
that as he was marshalling and arranging his forces, he was attacked
by his usual complaint, and that perceiving it as soon as it came on,
and before his senses were completely confounded and overpowered by
the malady, just as he was beginning to be convulsed, he was carried
to one of the neighbouring towers and stayed there quietly. Of the men
of consular and praetorian rank who escaped from the battle, some
killed themselves when they were being taken, and Caesar put many to
death who were captured.

LIV. Being ambitious to take Cato[566] aliv