dug
wells, but they obtained only very insufficient supplies. Great numbers
of beasts of burden died, and their decaying bodies so tainted the air
as to produce epidemic diseases, which destroyed many of the troops, and
depressed and disheartened those whom they did not destroy.

[Sidenote: Nature of the contest between Caesar and Pompey.]
[Sidenote: Both hesitate.]

During all these operations there was no decisive general battle. Each
one of the great rivals knew very well that his defeat in one general
battle would be his utter and irretrievable ruin. In a war between two
independent nations, a single victory, however complete, seldom
terminates the struggle, for the defeated party has the resources of a
whole realm to fall back upon, which are sometimes called forth with
renewed vigor after experiencing such reverses; and then defeat in such
cases, even if it be final, does not necessarily involve the ruin of the
unsuccessful commander. He may negotiate an honorable peace, and return
to his own land in safety; and, if his misfortunes are considered by his
countrymen as owing not to any dereliction from his duty as a soldier,
but to the influence of adverse circumstances which no human skill or
resolution could have controlled, he may spend the remainder of his days
in prosperity and honor. The contest, however, between Caesar and Pompey
was not of this character. One or the other of them was a traitor and a
usurper--an enemy to his country. The result of a battle would decide
which of the two was to stand in this attitude. Victory would legitimize
and confirm the authority of one, and make it supreme over the whole
civilized world. Defeat was to annihilate the power of the other, and
make him a fugitive and a vagabond, without friends, without home,
without country. It was a desperate stake; and it is not at all
surprising that both parties lingered and hesitated, and postponed the
throwing of the die.

[Sidenote: The armies enter Thessaly.]

At length Pompey, rendered desperate by the urgency of the destitution
and distress into which Caesar had shut him, made a series of rigorous
and successful attacks upon Caesar's lines, by which he broke away in
his turn from his enemy's grasp, and the two armies moved slowly back
into the interior of the country, hovering in the vicinity of each
other, like birds of prey contending in the air, each continually
striking at the other, and moving onward at the same time to ga