The habit of civil war and the rancour left behind
by the mutiny asserted their power in a terrible manner
on the battlefield of Thapsus. If the hydra with which they fought
always put forth new energies, if the army was hurried from Italy
to Spain, from Spain to Macedonia, from Macedonia to Africa, and if
the repose ever more eagerly longed for never came, the soldier sought,
and not wholly without cause, the reason of this state of things
in the unseasonable clemency of Caesar. He had sworn to retrieve
the general's neglect, and remained deaf to the entreaties
of his disarmed fellow-citizens as well as to the commands of Caesar
and the superior officers. The fifty thousand corpses that covered
the battle-field of Thapsus, among whom were several Caesarian officers
known as secret opponents of the new monarchy, and therefore
cut down on this occasion by their own men, showed how the soldier
procures for himself repose. The victorious army on the other hand
numbered no more than fifty dead (6 April 708).

Cato in Utica
His Death

There was as little a continuance of the struggle in Africa
after the battle of Thapsus, as there had been a year and a half before
in the east after the defeat of Pharsalus. Cato as commandant
of Utica convoked the senate, set forth how the means of defence stood,
and submitted it to the decision of those assembled whether
they would yield or defend themselves to the last man--
only adjuring them to resolve and to act not each one for himself,
but all in unison. The more courageous view found several supporters;
it was proposed to manumit on behalf of the state the slaves
capable of arms, which however Cato rejected as an illegal encroachment
on private property, and suggested in its stead a patriotic appeal
to the slave-owners. But soon this fit of resolution in an assembly
consisting in great part of African merchants passed off, and they agreed
to capitulate. Thereupon when Faustus Sulla, son of the regent,
and Lucius Afranius arrived in Utica with a strong division
of cavalry from the field of battle, Cato still made an attempt
to hold the town through them; but he indignantly rejected their demand
to let them first of all put to death the untrustworthy citizens of Utica
en masse, and chose to let the last stronghold of the republicans fall
into the hands of the monarch without resistance rather than to profane
the last moments of the republic by such a massacre. After he had