Appian of Alexandria Civil Wars 2.9.62

Horace White (Translator)

View: By Chapter

Civil Wars. Appian of Alexandria. Horace White (Translator). New York. 1899.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Current edition Perseus

The Roman History: The Civil Wars (English) (Appianus. The Roman History of Appian of Alexandria, Volume 2: The Civil Wars. White, Horace, translator. New York: The Macmillan Company. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. 1899.)

Editions (1)
Ἐμφυλίων Πρώτη Perseus (Appianus. Appiani Historia Romana, Volume 2. Mendelssohn, Ludwig, editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1881.) — 2.9.62 focus

Notes on the current edition

Civil Wars

1. Caesar’s account of the battle of Dyrrachium and of the causes of his defeat is embodied in Sections 59-71, Book iii. Two Allobrogian cavalry officers deserted to Pompey because they had been detected embezzling the pay of their own troops. They informed Pompey that a section of Caesar’s line of circumvallation was still unfinished. It was through this gap that Pompey made his sally at daybreak, taking Caesar’s forces by surprise and throwing them into a panic. The two engagements in one day, to which Appian refers, were the fight which took place at this gap, and the subsequent one when Caesar brought up reinforcements and made a counter attack which ended disastrously by reason of one of those accidents common in war. The ruin of Caesar’s army would have been complete, he says, had not Pompey suspected an ambuscade and therefore desisted from an attack on Caesar’s fortified camp. Caesar acknowledges the loss of 32 military tribunes and centurions and 969 soldiers besides several Roman knights whom he names. Excellent diagrams of these operations and of the fighting around Dyrrachium, as well as of the battle of Pharsalus, are given in the military history of Caesar by Col. Theodore Ayrault Dodge.