[40] A portion of Pompey's forces had crossed to Dyrrachium with the consuls. Pompey led the remainder to Brundusium, where he awaited the return of the ships that had carried the others over. Here Cæsar advanced against him, and he defended himself by walls and dug trenches in the city1 until his fleet came back. Then he took his departure in the early evening, leaving the bravest of his troops on the walls. These also sailed away after nightfall, with a favorable wind. Thus Pompey and his whole army abandoned Italy and passed over to Epirus. Cæsar, seeing the general drift of public opinion toward Pompey, was at a loss which way to turn or from what point to begin the war. As he had apprehensions of Pompey's army in Spain, which was large and well disciplined by long service (lest while he was pursuing Pompey it should fall upon his rear), he decided to march to Spain and destroy that army first. He now divided his forces into five parts, one of which he left at Brundusium, another at Hydrus,2 and another at Tarentum to guard Italy. Another he sent under command of Quintus Valerius to take possession of the grain-producing island of Sardinia, which he did. He sent Asinius Pollio to Sicily, which was then under the command of Cato. When Cato asked him whether he had brought the order of the Senate, or that of the people, to take possession of a government that had been assigned to another, Pollio replied, "The master of Italy has sent me on this business." Cato answered that in order to spare the lives of those under his command he would not make resistance there. He then sailed away to Corcyra and from Corcyra to Pompey.3
1 Cæsar says that " Pompey, either alarmed at Cæsar's works, or because he had decided from the beginning to leave Italy, began to prepare for his departure as soon as his ships should return, and in order the more effectually to delay Cæsar's onset, lest the soldiers should break in while he was on the point of embarking, he blocked up the gates, built walls in the streets and avenues, dug ditches across the ways and drove sharpened stakes and branches of trees in them." (Civil War, i. 27.)
2 The modern Otranto.
3 Asinius Pollio wrote a history of the civil wars from the year 60 to the battle of Philippi, which is lost. It is the subject of eulogy in one of the Odes of Horace (Lib. ii. Carm. I). Mendelssohn and G. Thouret are of the opinion that both Appian and Plutarch drew from some Greek author who drew from Pollio. Appian refers to Pollio's history in Sec. 82 infra.
The Civil Wars. Appian. Horace White. London. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. 1899.
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