when these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion
that had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian mariners
of Caesar mastered the enemy. Not long afterwards, however, the citizens
captured the lighthouse-island, and from that point totally closed the
narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour for larger ships; so that
Caesar's fleet was compelled to take its station in the open roads before
the east harbour, and his communication with the sea hung only on a
weak thread. Caesar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly by
the superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun the unequal
strife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island closed the inner harbour
against it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss of the roadstead would
have debarred Caesar wholly from the sea. Though the brave legionaries,
supported by the dexterity of the Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto
decided these conflicts in favour of the Romans, the Alexandrians
renewed and augmented their naval armaments with unwearied perseverance;
the besieged had to fight as often as it pleased the besiegers, and,
if the former should be on a signal occasion vanquished, Caesar would be
totally hemmed in and probably lost.

It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover the
lighthouse-island. The double attack, which was made by boats from the
side of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard, in reality
brought not only the island but also the lower part of the mole into
his power; it was only at the second arch-opening of the mole that
Caesar ordered the attack to be stopped, and the mole to be there closed
towards the city by a transverse wall. But while a violent conflict
arose here round the entrenchers, the Roman troops left the lower
part of the mole adjoining the island bare of defenders; a division
of Egyptians landed there unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Roman
soldiers and sailors crowded together on the mole of the transverse
wall, and drove the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea. A part
were taken on board by the Roman ships; but more were drowned. Some
four hundred soldiers and a still greater number of men belonging to the
fleet were sacrificed on this day; the general himself, who had shared
the fate of his men, had been obliged to seek refuge in his ship, and,
when this sank from having been overloaded with men, he had to save
himself by swimming to another. But, severe as was the loss