the temple-treasures of the -municipia-.

Caesar Takes the Offensive

Under these circumstances the war opened at the beginning
of January 705. Of troops capable of marching Caesar had not
more than a legion--5000 infantry and 300 cavalry--at Ravenna,
which was by the highway some 240 miles distant from Rome; Pompeius
had two weak legions--7000 infantry and a small squadron of cavalry--
under the orders of Appius Claudius at Luceria, from which,
likewise by the highway, the distance was just about as great
to the capital. The other troops of Caesar, leaving out of account
the raw divisions of recruits still in course of formation,
were stationed, one half on the Saone and Loire, the other half
in Belgica, while Pompeius' Italian reserves were already arriving
from all sides at their rendezvous; long before even the first
of the Transalpine divisions of Caesar could arrive in Italy,
a far superior army could not but be ready to receive it there.
It seemed folly, with a band of the strength of that of Catilina
and for the moment without any effective reserve, to assume
the aggressive against a superior and hourly-increasing army
under an able general; but it was a folly in the spirit of Hannibal.
If the beginning of the struggle were postponed till spring,
the Spanish troops of Pompeius would assume the offensive
in Transalpine, and his Italian troops in Cisalpine, Gaul,
and Pompeius, a match for Caesar in tactics and superior to him
in experience, was a formidable antagonist in such a campaign
running its regular course. Now perhaps, accustomed as he was
to operate slowly and surely with superior masses, he might
be disconcerted by a wholly improvised attack; and that which
could not greatly discompose Caesar's thirteenth legion
after the severe trial of the Gallic surprise and the January campaign
in the land of the Bellovaci,(14)--the suddenness of the war and the toil
of a winter campaign--could not but disorganize the Pompeian corps
consisting of old soldiers of Caesar or of ill-trained recruits,
and still only in the course of formation.

Caesar's Advance

Accordingly Caesar advanced into Italy.(15) Two highways led
at that time from the Romagna to the south; the Aemilio-Cassian
which led from Bononia over the Apennines to Arretium and Rome,
and the Popillio-Flaminian, which led from Ravenna along the coast
of the Adriatic to Fanum and was there divided, one branch running
westward through the Furlo pass t