he fleet, and following their antagonist
to the battlefield chosen by himself. They were simply resolved
at any price to fight with Caesar, and therefore to get at him
as soon as possible and by the most convenient way. Cato took up
the command in Dyrrhachium, where a garrison was left behind
of eighteen cohorts, and in Corcyra, where 300 ships of war were left;
Pompeius and Scipio proceeded--the former, apparently, following
the Egnatian way as far as Pella and then striking into the great road
to the south, the latter from the Haliacmon through the passes
of Olympus--to the lower Peneius and met at Larisa.

The Armies at Pharsalus

Caesar lay to the south of Larisa in the plain--which extends
between the hill-country of Cynoscephalae and the chain of Othrys
and is intersected by a tributary of the Peneius, the Enipeus--
on the left bank of the latter stream near the town of Pharsalus;
Pompeius pitched his camp opposite to him on the right bank
of the Enipeus along the slope of the heights of Cynoscephalae.(30)
The entire army of Pompeius was assembled; Caesar on the other hand
still expected the corps of nearly two legions formerly detached
to Aetolia and Thessaly, now stationed under Quintus Fufius Calenus
in Greece, and the two legions of Cornificius which were sent
after him by the land-route from Italy and had already arrived
in Illyria. The army of Pompeius, numbering eleven legions
or 47,000 men and 7000 horse, was more than double that of Caesar
in infantry, and seven times as numerous in cavalry; fatigue
and conflicts had so decimated Caesar's troops, that his eight legions
did not number more than 22,000 men under arms, consequently
not nearly the half of their normal amount. The victorious army
of Pompeius provided with a countless cavalry and good magazines had
provisions in abundance, while the troops of Caesar had difficulty
in keeping themselves alive and only hoped for better supplies
from the corn-harvest not far distant. The Pompeian soldiers,
who had learned in the last campaign to know war and trust their leader,
were in the best of humour. All military reasons on the side
of Pompeius favoured the view, that the decisive battle should not be
long delayed, seeing that they now confronted Caesar in Thessaly;
and the emigrant impatience of the many genteel officers and others
accompanying the army doubtless had more weight than even such reasons
in the council of war. Since the events of Dyrr