sar'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 single 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 Caesar's 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 around 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 at the transverse wall, and drove
the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea. A part
were taken on board by the Roman ships; the most were drowned.
Some 400 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 suffered, it was amply compensated by the recovery
of the lighthouse-island, which along with the mole as far as
the first arch-opening remained in the hands of Caesar.

Relieving Army from Asia Minor

At length the longed-for relief arrived. Mithradates of Pergamus,
an able warrior of the school of Mithradates Eupator, whose natural son
he claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army--
the Ityraeans of the prince of the Libanus,(43) the Bedouins
of Jamblichus, son of Sampsic