But Zeus the father, throned on high, in Ajax stirred up fear;In such a state of mind he went to his tent and sat down speechless, until many pursuers burst into the camp with the fugitives; then he merely ejaculated: ‘What! even to my quarters?’ and without another word rose up, took clothing suitable to his present fortune, and made his escape. [3] The rest of his legions also fled, and there was a great slaughter in the camp of tent-guards and servants; but only six thousand soldiers fell,2 according to Asinius Pollio, who fought in that battle on the side of Caesar. [4] When Caesar's troops captured the camp, they beheld the vanity and folly of the enemy. For every tent was wreathed with myrtle boughs and decked out with flowered couches and tables loaded with beakers; bowls of wine also were laid out, and preparation and adornment were those of men who had sacrificed and were holding festival rather than of men who were arming themselves for battle. With such infatuated hopes and such a store of foolish confidence did they go forth to war.3
He stood confounded, and behind him cast his shield of seven ox-hides,
And trembled as he peered around upon the throng.
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72.
After his infantry was thus routed, and when, from the cloud of dust which he saw, Pompey conjectured the fate of his cavalry, what thoughts passed through his mind it were difficult to say; but he was most like a man bereft of sense and crazed, who had utterly forgotten that he was Pompey the Great, and without a word to any one, he walked slowly off to his camp, exemplifying those verses of Homer1:
[2]
1 Iliad, xi. 544 ff., where Telamonian Ajax retires before Hector and his Trojans.
2 Caesar says that fifteen thousand of Pompey's soldiers fell, and twenty-four thousand surrendered. His own losses he puts at two hundred soldiers and thirty centurions ( Bell. Civ. iii. 99).
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1917. 5.
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