Chapter 56

Caesar had now completed his lines of fortification and extended them right up to a point so as to be just out of range of spear-cast from the town. He then fortified a camp, ranging catapults and scorpions at close intervals in front of it and training them upon the town, and harrying without respite the defenders of its walls; he also detached five legions from his former camp and brought them down to the new one. Making use of the opportunity thus offered, certain more distinguished persons and those of the widest acquaintance kept demanding to see their friends and relations, and conversations ensued between them. Caesar was not blind to the expediency of this turn of events; and in fact some of the nobler Gaetulians among the royal cavalry, including captains of horse, whose fathers had previously served with Marius and had, by his good offices, been presented with farms and lands, but later on after Sulla’s victory had been handed over as subjects to king Hiempsal, seized their chance and deserted, when it was night and the lamps were now lit, and came with their horses and grooms—roughly a thousand of them—to Caesar’s camp which was situated in the plain close to Uzitta.