Chapter 28

While these dispositions were being made at Ruspina by the leaders on either side, the ex-praetor C. Vergilius, who was in charge of the coastal town of Thapsus, observed that ships carrying Caesar’s troops were sailing singly on no set course, due to their uncertain knowledge of the locality and of the position of his camp. He therefore seized the opportunity and manned with soldiers and archers a fast boat which he had there, to which he added some ship’s pinnaces, and with these he set about the pursuit of Caesar’s ships one by one. He had attacked several, only to be beaten off, put to flight and forced to quit the area, but even so was still persisting in his hazardous tactics, when chance led him to fall in with a ship which had on board two young Spaniards of the name of Titius—tribunes of the Fifth legion, whose father Caesar had caused to be elected to the Senate—as well as T. Salienus, a centurion of the same legion, who had laid siege to the house of M. Messalla, Caesar’s lieutenant, at Messana, employing in his presence the language of downright mutiny. This man had also been responsible for withholding under guard some money and trappings belonging to Caesar’s triumph, and for these reasons viewed his own prospects with misgiving. His own guilty conscience led him to persuade the young men to put up no resistance, but to surrender to Vergilius. Accordingly they were escorted by Vergilius to Scipio, put under guard, and two days later put to death. As they were being led to execution, the elder Titius, it is said, besought the centurions to put him to death before his brother and was readily granted that request, and they were put to death in that order.