This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
The manner of fighting was thus: Some light-armed cohorts formed the rearguard, which, in a plain, halted from time to time, and made head against our cavalry. When they fell in with an eminence, the very nature of the ground furnished them with the means of defending themselves, because those who were first could, cover them behind. But when a valley or descent came in the way, the van could give no assistance to the rear, and our cavalry annoyed them with their darts from the higher ground, which put them in imminent danger. In this case, the legions were obliged to halt, and endeavour to drive back the cavalry a good way, after which they ran down the valley precipitately, until they came to the opposite eminence. For their cavalry, of which they had a considerable number, was so terrified by their ill success in former skirmishes, that, far from being of any service, they were forced to place it in the centre to secure it; and if any of them chanced to straggle from the main body, they were immediately taken by Caesar's horse.
C. Julius Caesar. The Commentaries of Caesar. William Duncan. St. Louis. Edwards and Bushnell. 1856.
The chapter breaks in this translation have been changed to align with those in the 1901 Latin edition of the De Bello Civili, ed. Renatus du Pontet.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.