Chapter 3

Highly productive and abundantly supplied as it was, the city furnished equipment of all kinds. The people themselves were clever and very shrewd, and no sooner had they seen what was being done by us than they would reproduce it with such cunning that it seemed it was our men who had copied their works. Much also they invented on their own account, and kept assailing our entrenchments while simultaneously defending their own. In their councils and public meetings the arguments which their leaders kept driving home were as follows: the Roman people were gradually acquiring a habit of seizing that kingdom; a few years earlier Aulus Gabinius had been in Egypt with an army; Pompeius too had resorted thither in his flight Caesar had now come with his forces, and the death of Pompeius had had no effect in dissuading Caesar from staying on among them. If they failed to drive him out, their kingdom would become a Roman province: and this driving out they must do betimes for cut off as he now was by storms owing to the season of the year, he could not receive reinforcements from overseas.