Pompey

A few days after this, Caesar entered and took possession of Rome. He treated everybody with kindness and calmed their fears, except that when Metellus, one of the tribunes, attempted to prevent him from taking money out of the public treasury, he threatened to kill him, and added to the threat a still harsher speech, namely, that it was easier for him to execute it than to utter it.[*](Cf. the Caesar, xxxv. 4. )

Having thus driven away Metellus, he took what he wanted, and then set out in pursuit of Pompey, being anxious to drive him out of Italy before his forces came back from Spain. But Pompey, having taken possession of Brundisium, where he found plenty of transports, immediately embarked the consuls, and with them thirty cohorts of soldiers, and sent them before him to Dyrrachium; Scipio his father-in-law, however, and Gnaeus his son, he sent to Syria to raise a fleet.

He himself, after barricading the gates and manning the walls with his lightest-armed soldiers, ordered the Brundisians to remain quietly in their houses, and then dug up all the ground inside the city into trenches, and filled the streets with sunken stakes[*](Ditches were dug across the streets, sharpened stakes placed in the ditches, and the whole work lightly covered so as to look undisturbed. Cf. Caesar, Bell. Civ. I. xxvii. ) all except two, by which he himself finally went down to the sea.

Then on the third day, when he had already embarked the rest of his host at his leisure, he suddenly raised a signal for those who were still guarding the walls to run swiftly down to the sea, took them on board, and set them across to Dyrrachium. Caesar, however, when he saw the walls deserted, perceived that Pompey had fled, and in his pursuit of him came near getting entangled in the ditches and stakes; but since the Brundisians told him about them, he avoided the city,[*](He had besieged it for nine days, and had also begun to close up the harbour (Caesar, Bell. Civ. I. xxv.-xxvii.).) and making a circuit round it, found that all the transports had put out to sea except two, which had only a few soldiers aboard.