Chapter 74

On suddenly observing this situation at dawn, Pharnaces drew up all his forces in front of his camp. In view of the highly uneven character of the intervening ground Caesar supposed that it was the king’s normal military practice more than anything that occasioned this deployment; or else his object was to delay Caesar’s own work of fortification, through the necessity of keeping more men standing to arms or again it might be intended as a display of confidence on the king’s part, to shew that it was not on fortification so much as on armed force that Pharnaces relied to defend his position. Accordingly, Caesar was not deterred from keeping the remainder of his army engaged on the work of fortification, deploying only the front line in front of the palisade. Pharnaces, however, took it into his head to engage. Whether it was the lucky associations of the spot that drove him to take this course, or whether it was his scrupulous observance of omens, to which, as we afterwards heard, he gave careful heed, that so prompted him; or maybe it was the small number of our troops which, according to his information, were standing to arms (for he had supposed that that vast gang of slaves which transported the material for the rampart, as though it was their daily employment, was in fact composed of troops); or maybe even it was his confidence in that veteran army of his, which, as his envoys boasted, had fought and conquered upon two and twenty battle-fields, coupled with a contempt for our army, which he knew had been routed by himself when Domitius led it: anyway, having decided to engage, he began the descent down the steep ravine. For some little time Caesar laughed contemptuously at this empty bravado on the part of the king, and at his troops packed closely on ground which no enemy in his senses would be likely to set foot on; while in the meantime Pharnaces with his forces in battle array proceeded to climb the steep hill-side confronting him at the same steady pace at which he had descended the sheer ravine.