Chapter 61

Such was the manner in which the armies on either side were drawn up, with a distance of no more than three hundred paces separating them—a situation which had never, perhaps, arisen before without leading to an engagement; and there they remained continuously from early morning right until the tenth hour. And now, while Caesar was beginning to lead his army back within his fortifications, suddenly the entire force of cavalry—the more distant one, comprising Numidians and Gaetulians riding without bridles—began a movement on the right and to advance closer to Caesar’s camp on the high ground, while Labienus’ bridled cavalry maintained their positions and distracted the attention of the legions. Whereupon part of Caesar’s cavalry together with the light-armed troops, acting without orders and without discretion, suddenly advanced too far, crossed a marshy tract and found themselves too far outnumbered to be able to contain the enemy. Abandoning the light-armed troops, the cavalry were driven back and fled to their own lines not without casualties—one horseman missing, many horses wounded and twenty-seven light-armed soldiers killed. It was now night when Scipio, delighted with this successful cavalry engagement, withdrew his forces into camp. But in vouchsafing him this triumph the fortunes of war saw fit to make it but short-lived. On the following day, in fact, a detachment of Caesar’s cavalry which he had sent to Leptis on a foraging mission surprised in the course of their march and attacked about a hundred marauding Numidian and Gaetulian horse, killing some of them and taking the rest alive. Meanwhile Caesar made it his constant and daily practice to lead his legions down into the plain, proceed with his field-works, carry his rampart and trench across the middle of the plain, and thereby hinder his opponents’ sallies. Scipio likewise built counter defences, pushing them forward in haste to prevent Caesar from barring him access to the ridge. Thus the generals on both sides were occupied with field-works, but none the less engaged one another daily in cavalry actions.