[151] Their armies were equally zealous and devoted to both, and in battles they fought with the greatest ferocity, but were often disobedient and mutinous on account of the severity of their tasks. Yet they mourned and longed for their commanders when they were dead, and paid them divine honors. Both were well-formed and handsome in person, and both were descended from Jupiter, Alexander through Æacus and Hercules, Cæsar through Anchises and Venus. Both were as prompt to fight their adversaries as they were ready to make peace and grant pardon to the vanquished, and after pardon to confer benefits; for they desired only to conquer. Thus far let the parallel hold good, although they did not both start toward empire from the same footing; Alexander from the monarchy founded by Philip, Cæsar from a private station, well born and illustrious indeed, but very short of money.
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
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.