.

Caesar's Position at Ruspina

Caesar, whom this day had fully convinced of the difficulty
of the impending war, would not again expose his soldiers untried
and discouraged by the new mode of fighting to any such attack,
but awaited the arrival of his veteran legions. The interval
was employed in providing some sort of compensation against
the crushing superiority of the enemy in the weapons of distant warfare.
The incorporation of the suitable men from the fleet as light horsemen
or archers in the land-army could not be of much avail. The diversions
which Caesar suggested were somewhat more effectual. He succeeded
in bringing into arms against Juba the Gaetulian pastoral tribes
wandering on the southern slope of the great Atlas towards the Sahara;
for the blows of the Marian and Sullan period had reached even to them,
and their indignation against Pompeius, who had at that time made them
subordinate to the Numidian kings,(48) rendered them from the outset
favourably inclined to the heir of the mighty Marius of whose Jugurthine
campaign they had still a lively recollection. The Mauretanian kings,
Bogud in Tingis and Bocchus in Iol, were Juba's natural rivals
and to a certain extent long since in alliance with Caesar.
Further, there still roamed in the border-region between the kingdoms
of Juba and Bocchus the last of the Catilinarians, that Publius Sittius
of Nuceria,(49) who eighteen years before had become converted
from a bankrupt Italian merchant into a Mauretanian leader
of free bands, and since that time had procured for himself
a name and a body of retainers amidst the Libyan quarrels.
Bocchus and Sittius united fell on the Numidian land, and occupied
the important town of Cirta; and their attack, as well as
that of the Gaetulians, compelled king Juba to send a portion
of his troops to his southern and western frontiers.

Caesar's situation, however, continued sufficiently unpleasant.
His army was crowded together within a space of six square miles;
though the fleet conveyed corn, the want of forage was as much felt
by Caesar's cavalry as by those of Pompeius before Dyrrhachium.
The light troops of the enemy remained notwithstanding all the exertions
of Caesar so immeasurably superior to his, that it seemed almost
impossible to carry offensive operations into the interior
even with veterans. If Scipio retired and abandoned the coast towns,
he might perhaps achieve a victory like those which the vizier