eld of battle is difficult.
Appian (ii. 75) expressly places it between (New) Pharsalus (now
Fersala) and the Enipeus. Of the two streams, which alone are of
any importance in the question, and are undoubtedly the Apidanus
and Enipeus of the ancients--the Sofadhitiko and the Fersaliti--the
former has its sources in the mountains of Thaumaci (Dhomoko) and
the Dolopian heights, the latter in mount Othrys, and the Fersaliti
alone flows past Pharsalus; now as the Enipeus according to Strabo
(ix. p. 432) springs from mount Othrys and flows past Pharsalus,
the Fersaliti has been most justly pronounced by Leake (Northern
Greece, iv. 320) to be the Enipeus, and the hypothesis followed by
Goler that the Fersaliti is the Apidanus is untenable. With this
all the other statements of the ancients as to the two rivers
agree. Only we must doubtless assume with Leake, that the river of
Vlokho formed by the union of the Fersaliti and the Sofadhitiko and
going to the Peneius was called by the ancients Apidanus as well as
the Sofadhitiko; which, however, is the more natural, as while
the Sofadhitiko probably has, the Fersaliti has not, constantly water
(Leake, iv. 321). Old Pharsalus, from which the battle takes its
name, must therefore have been situated between Fersala and
the Fersaliti. Accordingly the battle was fought on the left bank of
the Fersaliti, and in such a way that the Pompeians, standing with
their faces towards Pharsalus, leaned their right wing on the river
(Caesar, B. C. iii. 83; Frontinus, Strat. ii. 3, 22). The camp of
the Pompeians, however, cannot have stood here, but only on
the slope of the heights of Cynoscephalae, on the right bank of
the Enipeus, partly because they barred the route of Caesar to
Scotussa, partly because their line of retreat evidently went over
the mountains that were to be found above the camp towards Larisa;
if they had, according to Leake's hypothesis (iv. 482), encamped to
the east of Pharsalus on the left bank of the Enipeus, they could
never have got to the northward through this stream, which at this
very point has a deeply cut bed (Leake, iv. 469), and Pompeius must
have fled to Lamia instead of Larisa. Probably therefore
the Pompeians pitched their camp on the right bank of the Fersaliti,
and passed the river both in order to fight and in order, after
the battle, to regain their camp, whence they then moved up the slopes
of Crannon and Scotussa, which culminate above the latter