[-35-] The capture of that city did not fail of its influence upon the other peoples, but many themselves after sending envoys espoused Caesar's cause, and many received him on his approach or his lieutenants. Pompey, in consequence, at a loss which way to turn, at first made frequent changes of base, wandering about now in one and now in another part of the country: later on he became afraid that as a result of this very behavior the rest of his adherents would also leave him in the lurch, and chose to hazard all, although Heaven beforehand indicated his defeat very clearly. To be sure, the drops of sweat that fell from sacred statues and the confused noises of the legions, and the many animals born which proved to be perversions of the proper type, and the torches darting from sunrise to the sunset region—(all these signs then met together in Spain at one time)—gave no clear manifestation to which of the two combatants they were revealing the future. But the eagles of his legions shook their wings and cast forth the golden thunderbolts which some of them held in their talons: thus they would hurl disaster directly at Pompey before flying off to Caesar…. For a different force … Heaven, and he held it in slight esteem, and so into war … settled down to battle.[97]
[-36-] Both had in addition to their citizen and mercenary troops many of the natives and many Moors. For Bocchus[98] had sent his sons to Pompey and Bogud in person accompanied Caesar's force. Still, the contest turned out to be like a struggle of the Romans themselves, not of any other nations. Caesar's soldiers derived courage from their numbers and experience and above all from their leader's presence and so were anxious to be done with the war and its attendant miseries. Pompey's men were inferior in these respects, but, strong through their despair of safety, should they fail to conquer, continued zealous.[99] Inasmuch as the majority of them had been captured with Afranius and Varro, had been spared, and delivered afterward to Longinus, from whom they had revolted, they had no hope of safety if they were beaten, and as a result of this were drawn toward desperation, feeling that they needed to be of good cheer at that particular time or else perish utterly. So the armies came together and began the battle. They had no longer any dread of each other, since they had been so many times opposed in arms, and for that reason required no urging. [-37-] In the course of the engagement the allied forces on both sides quickly were routed and fled; but the main bodies struggled in close combat to the utmost in their resistance of each other. Not a man of them would yield. They remained in position, wreaking slaughter and being slain, as if each separate man was to be responsible to all the rest as well for the outcome of victory or defeat. Consequently they were not concerned to see how their allies were battling but set to work as if they alone were engaged. Neither sound of paean nor groan was to be heard from any one of them: both sides limited their shouts to "Strike! Kill!", while their acts easily outran their speech. Caesar and Pompey, who saw this from horseback on certain elevated positions, felt little inclination to either hope or despair, but torn with doubts were equally distressed by confidence and fear. The battle was so nearly balanced that they suffered tortures at the sight, straining to spy out some advantage, and quivering lest they descry some setback. Their souls were filled with prayers for success and against misfortune, and with alternating strength and fear. In fact, not being able to endure it long, they leaped from their horses and joined the combat. Apparently they preferred a participation involving personal exertion and danger rather than tension of spirit, and each hoped by associating in the fight to turn the scale somehow in favor of his own soldiers. Or, if they failed of that, they were content to meet death, side by side with them.
[-38-] The generals, then, took part in the battle themselves. This movement, however, resulted in no advantage to either army. On the contrary,—when the men saw their chiefs sharing their danger, a far greater disregard for their own death and eagerness for the destruction of their opponents seized both alike. Accordingly neither side for the moment turned to flight: matched in determination, they found their persons matched in power. All would have perished, or else at nightfall they would have parted with honors even, had not Bogud, who was somewhere outside the press, made an advance upon Pompey's camp, whereupon Labienus, seeing it, left his station to proceed against him. Pompey's men, interpreting this as flight, lost heart. Later they doubtless learned the truth but could no longer retrieve their position. Some escaped to the city, some to the fortification. The latter body vigorously fought off attacks and fell only when surrounded, while the former for a long time kept the wall safe, so that it was not captured till all of them had perished in sallies. So great was the total loss of Romans on both sides that the victors, at a loss how to wall in the city to prevent any running away in the night, actually heaped up the bodies of the dead around it.
[-39-] Caesar, having thus conquered, took Corduba at once. Sextus had retired from his path, and the natives, although their slaves, who had purposely been made free, offered resistance, came over to his side. He slew those under arms and obtained money by the sale of the rest. The same course he adopted with those that held Hispalis, who at first, pretending to be willing, had accepted a garrison from him, but later massacred the soldiers that had come there, and entered upon a course of warfare. In his expedition against them his rather careless conduct of the siege caused them some hope of being able to escape. So then he allowed them to come outside the wall, where he ambushed and destroyed them, and in this way captured the town, which was soon destitute of male defenders. Next he acquired and levied money upon Munda and the other places, some that were unwilling with great slaughter and others of their own accord. He did not even spare the offerings to Hercules, consecrated in Gades, and he detached special precincts from some towns and laid an added tribute upon others. This was his course toward those who had opposed him; but to those who displayed any good-will toward him he granted lands and freedom from taxation, to some, moreover, citizenship, and to others the right to be considered Roman colonies; he did not, however, grant these favors for nothing.
[-40-] While Caesar was thus occupied, Pompey, who had escaped in the rout, reached the sea, intending to use the fleet that lay at anchor in Carteia, but found that it had espoused the victor's cause. He endeavored to embark in a boat, expecting to obtain safety thereby. In the course of the attempt, however, he was roughly handled and in dejection came to land again, where, taking some men that had assembled, he set out for the interior. Pompey himself met defeat at the hands, of Caesennius[100] Lento, with whom he fell in: he took refuge in a wood, and was there killed. Didius, ignorant of the event, while wandering about to join him met some other enemies and perished.
[-41-] Caesar, too, would doubtless have chosen to fall there, at the hands of those who were still resisting and in the glory of war, in preference to the fate he met not long after, to be cut down in his own land and in the senate, at the hands of his best friends. For this was the last war he carried through successfully, and this the last victory that he won in spite of the fact that there was no project so great that he did not hope to accomplish it. In this belief he was strengthened not only by other reasons but most of all because from a palm that stood on the site of the battle a shoot grew out immediately after the victory.
And I will not assert that this had no bearing in some direction; it was, however, no longer for him, but for his sister's grandson, Octavius: the latter made the expedition with him, and was destined to shine forth brightly from his toils and dangers. As Caesar did not know this, hoping that many great additional successes would fall to his own lot he acted in no moderate fashion, but was filled with loftiness as if immortal. [-42-] Though it was no foreign nation he had conquered, but a great mass of citizens that he had destroyed, he not only personally directed the triumph, incidentally regaling the entire populace again, as if in honor of some common blessing, but also allowed Quintus Fabius and Quintus Pedius to hold a festival. [101] Yet they had merely been his lieutenants and had achieved no individual success. Naturally some laughter was caused by this, as well as by the fact that he used wooden instead of ivory instruments, and representations of certain actions, and other such triumphal apparatus. Nevertheless, most brilliant triple fêtes and triple processions of the Romans were held in connection with those very things, and furthermore a hallowed period of fifty days was observed. The Parilia[102] was honored by a perpetual horse-race, yet not at all because the city had been founded on that day, but because the news of Caesar's victory had arrived the day before, toward evening.
[-43-] Such was his gift to Rome. For himself he wore the triumphal garb, by decree, in all assemblages and was adorned with the laurel crown always and every-where alike. The excuse that he gave for it was that his forehead was bald; and this had some show of reason from the very fact that at the time, though well past youth, he still bestowed attention on his appearance. He showed among all men his pride in rather foppish clothing, and the footwear which he used later on was sometimes high and of a reddish color, after the style of the kings who had once lived in Alba, for he assumed that he was related to them on account of Iulus. To Venus he was, in general, devoted body and soul and he was anxious to persuade everybody that he had received from her a kind of bloom of youth. Accordingly he used also to carry about a carven image of her in full armor and he made her name his watchword in almost all the greatest dangers. The looseness of his girdle[103] Sulla had looked askance at, insomuch that he wished to kill him, and declared to those who begged him off: "Well, I will grant him to you, but do you be on your guard, without fail, against this ill-girt fellow." Cicero could not comprehend it, but even in the moment of defeat said: "I should never have expected one so ill-girt to conquer Pompey."
[-44-] This I have written by way of digression from story, so that no one might be ignorant of the stories about Caesar.—In honor of the victory the senate passed all of those decrees that I have mentioned, and further called him "liberator", inscribed it in the records, and publicly voted for a temple of Liberty. To him first and for the first time, they then, applied, as a term of special significance, the title "imperator,"—not merely according to ancient custom any longer, as others besides Caesar had often been saluted as a result of wars, nor even as those who have received some independent command or other authority were called, but, in short, it was this title which is now granted to those who hold successively the supreme power. And so great an excess of flattery did they employ as even to vote that his children and grandchildren should be so called, though he had no child and was already an old man. From him this title has come down to all subsequent imperatores, as something peculiar to their office, even as in Caesar's case. The ancient custom has not, however, been thereby overthrown. Each of the two titles exists. Consequently they are invested with it a second time, when they gain some such victory as has been mentioned. Those who are imperatores in the limited sense use the appellation once, as they do others, and indeed before others: whatever rulers in addition accomplish in war any deed worthy of it acquire also the name handed down by ancient custom, so that a man is termed imperator a second and a third time, and oftener, as frequently as he can bestow it upon himself.
These privileges they granted then to Caesar, as well as a house, so that he might live in state-property, and a special period of festival whenever any victory took place and whenever there were sacrifices for it, even if he had not been with the expedition nor in general had any hand in the achievement.[104] [-45-] Still, those measures, even if they seemed to them immoderate and out of the usual order, were not, so far, undemocratic. But they passed the following decrees besides, by which they declared him sovereign out and out. They offered him the magistracies, even those belonging to the people, and elected him consul for ten years, as they previously had dictator. They ordered that he alone should have soldiers, and alone administer the public funds, so that no one else was allowed to employ either of them, save whom he might permit. And they commanded at that time that an ivory statue of him, but later that a whole chariot should be escorted at the horse-races along with the likenesses of the gods. Another image they set up in the temple of Quirinus with the inscription: "to the invincible god", and another on the Capitol beside the former kings of Rome. It occurs to me really to marvel at the coincidence: there were eight such images—seven to the kings, and an eighth to the Brutus that overthrew the Tarquins—besides this one, when they set up the statue of Caesar; and it was from this cause chiefly that Marcus Brutus was stirred to conspire against him.