Kitap 2
9.62
While this remarkable defeat was in progress Caesar brought up other troops from another quarter, but these also fell into a panic even when they beheld Pompey still far distant. Although they were already close to the gates they would neither make a stand, nor enter in good order, nor obey the commands given to them, but all fled pell-mell without shame, without orders, without reason. Caesar ran among them and with reproaches showed them that Pompey was still far distant, yet under his very eye some threw down their standards and fled, while others bent their gaze upon the ground in shame and did nothing; so great consternation had befallen them. One of the standard bearers, with his standard reversed, dared to thrust the end of it at Caesar himself, but the attendants of the latter cut him down. When the soldiers entered the camp they did not station any guards. All precautions were neglected and the fortification was left unprotected, so that it is probable that Pompey might then have captured it and brought the war to an end by that one engagement had not Labienus, misled by a god, persuaded him to pursue the fugitives instead. Moreover Pompey himself hesitated, either because he suspected a stratagem when he saw the gates unguarded or because he considered the war already decided by this battle. So he turned against those outside of the camp and made a heavy slaughter and took twenty-eight standards in the two engagements of this day, but he here missed his second opportunity to give the finishing stroke to the war. It is reported that Caesar said, The war would have been ended to-day in the enemy’s favor if they had had a commander who knew how to make use of a victory.Caesar’s account of the battle of Dyrrachium and of the causes of his defeat is embodied in Sections 59-71, Book iii. Two Allobrogian cavalry officers deserted to Pompey because they had been detected embezzling the pay of their own troops. They informed Pompey that a section of Caesar’s line of circumvallation was still unfinished. It was through this gap that Pompey made his sally at daybreak, taking Caesar’s forces by surprise and throwing them into a panic. The two engagements in one day, to which Appian refers, were the fight which took place at this gap, and the subsequent one when Caesar brought up reinforcements and made a counter attack which ended disastrously by reason of one of those accidents common in war. The ruin of Caesar’s army would have been complete, he says, had not Pompey suspected an ambuscade and therefore desisted from an attack on Caesar’s fortified camp. Caesar acknowledges the loss of 32 military tribunes and centurions and 969 soldiers besides several Roman knights whom he names. Excellent diagrams of these operations and of the fighting around Dyrrachium, as well as of the battle of Pharsalus, are given in the military history of Caesar by Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge.
