not introduced the lex curiata), and they employed those
same officials as formerly, only changing their names and calling some
proconsuls, others propraetors, and others pro-quaestors. For they were
very careful about ancestral customs even though they had raised their
arms against their country and abandoned their native shores, and were
anxious to perform all necessary acts not merely with a view to
temporary demands or contrary to the exact wording of the ordinances. It
is quite time that nominally these officials ruled the two parties, but
in reality it was Pompey and Caesar who were supreme, bearing, for the
sake of good repute, the legal titles,--one that of consul and the other
that of proconsul,--and doing not what the magistrates allowed but
whatever they themselves pleased.

[-44-] Under these conditions, with the government divided in twain,
Pompey wintered in Thessalonica and did not keep a very careful guard of
the coast. He did not think that Caesar had yet arrived in Italy from
Spain, and even if he were there he did not suspect that his rival, in
winter, at least, would venture to cross the Ionian sea. Caesar was in
Brundusium, waiting for spring, but when he ascertained that Pompey was
some distance off and that Epirus just opposite was rather heedlessly
guarded, he seized the opportunity of the war to attack him while in a
state of relaxation. When the winter was about half gone he set out with
a portion of his army,--there were not enough ships to carry them all
across at once,--escaped the attention of Marcus Bibulus to whom the
guarding of the sea had been committed, and crossed to the so-called
Ceraunian Headlands, a point in the confines of Epirus, near the opening
of the Ionian gulf. Having reached there before it became noised abroad
that he would sail at all, he despatched the ships to Brundusium for the
rest: but Bibulus damaged them on the return voyage and actually took
some in tow, so that Caesar learned by experience that he had enjoyed a
more fortunate than prudent voyage.

[-45-]During this delay, therefore, he acquired Oricum and Apollonia and
other points there which had been abandoned by Pompey's garrisons. This
"Corinthian Apollonia" is well situated as regards the land and as
regards the sea, and excellently in respect to rivers. What I have
remarked, however, above all else is that a huge fire issues from the
ground near the Aoeus river and neither spreads to any extent over the