of Rome became
excited by prodigies. There was a wolf seen in the city, and a pig that
save for its feet resembled an elephant was brought forth. In Africa,
too, Petreius and Labienus who had observed that Caesar had gone out to
villages after grain, by means of the Nomads drove his cavalry, that had
not yet thoroughly recovered strength from its sea-voyage, in upon the
infantry; and while as a result the force was in utter confusion, they
killed many of the soldiers at close quarters. They would have cut down
all the rest besides, who had crowded together on a bit of high ground,
had they not been severely wounded. Even as it was, by this deed they
alarmed Caesar considerably. When he stopped to consider how he had been
tripped by a few, while expecting, too, that Scipio and Juba would
arrive directly with all their powers, as they had been reported, he was
decidedly in a dilemma, and did not know what course to adopt. He was
not yet able to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion; he saw,
furthermore, that to stay in the same place was difficult because of the
lack of subsistence even if the foe should keep away from his troops,
and that to retire was impossible, with the enemy pressing upon him both
by land and by sea. Consequently he was in a state of dejection.

[-3-] He was still in this situation when one Publius Sittius (if we
ought to call it him, and not the Divine Power) brought at one stroke
salvation and victory. This man had been exiled from Italy, and had
taken along some fellow-exiles: after crossing over into Mauritania he
collected a band and was general under Bocchus. Though he had no benefit
from Caesar to start with, and although in general he was not known to
him, he undertook to share in the war and to help him to overcome the
existing difficulty. Accordingly he bore no direct aid to Caesar himself,
for he heard that the latter was at a distance and thought that his own
assistance (for he had no large body of troops) would prove of small
value to him. It was Juba whom he watched start out on his expedition,
and then he invaded Numidia, which along with Gaetulia (likewise a part
of Juba's dominion) he harried so completely that the king gave up the
project before him and turned back in the midst of his journey with most
of his army; some of it he had sent off to Scipio. This fact made it as
evident as one could wish that if Juba had also come up, Caesar would
never have withstood the two. He did