The province

declares in favour of Cæsar.

Varro is

deserted by his soldiers, and surrenders.

general whom he so insolently disparaged. When the actual result of the contest in the north was disclosed, he proposed to shut himself up with his two legions in the insular fortress of Gades, where, supported by a naval force, and well supplied with stores and provisions, his position, he deemed, would be impregnable till the proconsul should come to his relief. Cæsar was already advancing towards Corduba; he had pushed forward Q. Cassius, with two legions, upon Hispalis, while the fame of his victories had gone before him, and penetrated to the remotest quarters of the Pompeians. His mandate for the assembling at Corduba of the Iberian deputies had been received with respect and obeyed with alacrity. The Gaditanes, indignant at the desecration of their temple, had already tampered with the tribunes of the cohorts in garrison among them, and expelled Gallonius from their walls. Varro was on his march from Hispalis, the seat of his government, to the more secure retreat of Gades, when the result of this intrigue was announced to him. Immediately one of his legions wheeled about before his face, and returned to the city from which it had just departed. Without a general, and without quarters or provisions, the soldiers abstained from any act of violence, and quietly rested in the forum and under the colonnades in the streets, until the inhabitants, admiring their boldness and perhaps sympathizing in their preference for the expected conqueror, received and entertained them in their own houses. Varro now paused and attempted, as a last resource, to gain the walls of Italica; but this city also had suddenly declared itself against the senate, and refused to admit him. No other course now remained but to acknowledge the ascendency of the victor of the Sicoris, and proffer a timely surrender; the unfortunate general sought to make a merit of his submission, by offering to bring over the legion which, in fact, he could no longer retain.' Caressed and flattered on all sides, Cæsar received the submission of his baffled opponent at Corduba. He pre

1 Cæs. B. C. ii. 20.

Cæsar arranges

the affairs of Spain, and repairs to Mas

silia.

scribed complete reparation of the wrongs inflicted upon his own adherents, remitted the contributions which had been levied upon the provincials, and commanded at least to be restored the treasure and ornaments which had been carried off from the temple at Gades. Nor in the midst of all this liberality did he hesitate to pardon the double-dealing of Varro, and to treat him with the courtesy due to his character as a scholar rather than as a statesman or soldier. The three provinces were combined under the sole government of Q. Cassius, who had formed a thorough acquaintance with them at an earlier period, while serving in the peninsula as quæstor to Pompeius. Four legions were left behind to maintain the authority of the conqueror in the west. The inhabitants of Gades he attached to himself by the stronger tie of gratitude; for the Roman franchise, which he now bestowed upon them, more than counterbalanced the pecuniary contributions which, notwithstanding his lavish bounty in restoring his opponents' plunder, he was constrained to demand for the support of his armies.' In their noble haven Cæsar took possession of the ships his predecessor had summoned thither, and embarked with a portion of his troops for Tarraco; from whence he pursued his journey by land through Narbo, and arrived, finally, at Massilia at the moment when that city, as has been seen, was about to fall into his hands.

.

2

But while the arms of Cæsar, wherever he was personally engaged, were crowned with unalloyed success, the enterprizes he was obliged to entrust to his lieutenants were

1 Cæs. B. C. ii. 21.; Liv. Epit. cx.: Appian, B. C. ii. 43.; Dion, xli. 24., who tells a frivolous story, which I cannot quote, to account for Cæsar's liberality to the Gaditanes.

" In crossing the Pyrenees, Cæsar passed the spot where Pompeius, who had constructed the military road of communication between Gaul and Spain, had erected a trophy to commemorate his achievements in those regions. It need not be said that he abstained from destroying it, as a man of coarser mind would certainly have done: he contented himself with the indirect satire of placing in its vicinity a much simpler and more modest memorial of himself. Dion, l. c.

State of the province of Africa.

less uniformly prosperous. The obstinate and perfidious resistance of the Massilians, indeed, had been brought to a close by the perseverance of Brutus and Trebonius, and both the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, so important from their proximity to Rome and the resources with which they abounded, had been evacuated by the garrisons of the senate rather than conquered by Valerius and Curio. Thus the whole of the western half of the empire had fallen from the hands of the oligarchy, excepting only the province of Africa, destined to give the first decided check to Cæsar's triumphant progress, and to become, at a later period, the last stronghold of the commonwealth and its genuine defenders. This province occupied but a small portion of the coast of the Mediterranean, comprising the region of which Carthage had formerly been the metropolis. The more distant regions of Mauretania and Numidia, over which the Punic republic had extended its influence rather than its rule, had been acknowledged by the Romans as independent kingdoms; and Juba, the sovereign of the latter country, was attached to the interests of Pompeius, and hostile to those of Cæsar, on distinct personal grounds. To the former he Hostility of owed his throne, having received at his hands the Juba, king of succession to his father Hiempsal; from the latter Numidia, to Cæsar. he had experienced, as we have seen, an egregious insult on presenting himself as a suitor before the Roman senate. It happened, moreover, that Curio, the appointed bearer of the Cæsarian banner to the shore of Africa, had attempted to injure him in proposing, as tribune of the people, to deprive him of his sovereignty and dispose of his possessions by public sale.' There could be no doubt, therefore, that the fierce and vindictive Numidian would burn to avenge this ill-treatment by taking part with Pompeius against their common enemy. But it was at least possible that prudence might interpose to check the appetite for revenge; it might be presumed that, with the faithlessness attributed to his race, he would hesitate to compromise his interests on the

1 Dion, xli. 41.; Lucan, iv. 690.

score of ancient obligations; while, at the same time, the unsettled state of his frontiers, harassed as they constantly were by the marauding tribes of the interior, might paralyse his efforts, or at least retard his advance.

1

tains some suc

Such were probably the anticipations of Curio when he crossed over from Sicily, with only two of the four legions under his orders, to expel the Pompeian general Curio invades Attius Varus, who commanded a force in Africa Africa, and obcertainly not inferior in numbers to his own. The cesses over the Pompeians and capital of the Roman province was the famous their allies. city of Utica, which had succeeded, upon the destruction of Carthage, to as large a share of the military and commercial importance of the elder metropolis as was deemed consistent with a state of dependence and subjection to Rome. Varus was posted before the walls of this city, from whence it was hardly possible for so small a force as his adversary possessed to dislodge him. But he was deceived by the idea that Curio's legions, composed of the fickle cohorts of Domitius, were not disposed to stand staunchly by him; he was irritated also at some trifling successes which the enemy had gained, and with these feelings he was induced to offer battle in another position, though still retaining a great advantage of ground. The charge of Curio's columns across a deep ravine and up an acclivity so steep that the soldiers required mutual assistance to mount it, spirited and brilliant as it was, could not have been executed in the face of a resolute enemy. But Varus acted with little skill or bravery, and suffered himself to be deprived of all the advantage of his new position. His troops were routed with little resistance, and fled with precipitation to their original entrenchments. Curio pursued them, and confidently resolved to undertake the siege of Utica, and to draw lines of circumvallation, after the example of his great master, round both the city and the legions encamped in front of it. A successful affair in which he had been engaged with a Numidian squadron encouraged him to underrate the power of his enemy's ally, while he had reason

1 Cæs. B. C. ii. 28.; Lucan, iv. 695.

to believe that there was a Cæsarian party in Utica which would actively co-operate with him for its reduction.

On the ad

Curio en

trenches him

self in the Cornelian camp.

Indeed, it would appear that Varus was already so severely pressed by the clamours and threats of the hostile faction within the city, that he was on the point of capitvance of Juba, ulating, when information was conveyed to him that Juba was advancing in person at the head of all his forces to his succour. The Numidian prince had adjusted a recent quarrel with the state of Leptis, and was now at leisure to indulge himself with taking vengeance upon his ancient enemies. No sooner was Curio apprised of this formidable diversion on his rear, than he broke up from his lines before Utica, and hastened to occupy a well-known military position on the coast hard by, rendered famous and, as he deemed, auspicious by the encampment there of Scipio Africanus. From thence he sent pressing orders to Sicily for the embarkation of the two legions which he had left behind. But, in the meanwhile, he felt secure in the strength of his position, as well as in the good fortune which had so conspicuously attended it.

He is entrapped into fighting, defeated and slain.

The crafty Numidian employed a stratagem to wile the enemy from his entrenchments. The appearance of a slender detachment of the barbarians in the plain beneath, and the rumour industriously spread that Juba had intrusted the relief of Utica to his vizir Sabura, and withdrawn from a personal share in the campaign, sufficed to impose on the rash and high-spirited Roman. But Juba, meanwhile, was lurking at a distance of only six miles, to support the advanced posts, upon which Curio launched himself in full confidence of an easy victory. Sabura adopted the common feint of retiring before the ene

1 Cæs. B. C. ii. 24. : "Castra Corneliana." Lucan, iv. 661.: "Curio lætatus, tanquam fortuna locorum

Bella gerat, servetque ducum sibi fata priorum," &c.

Cæsar himself, on a later occasion, humoured the superstitious feelings of his soldiers, and perhaps indulged his own, in attaching great importance to the mere name of Cornelius in Africa. See below.