THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

V. The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter X - Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus

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Page 109

Course of Things during Caesar's Absence in Alexandria

This Alexandrian insurrection, insignificant as it was in itself and slight as was its intrinsic connection with the events of importance in the world's history which took place at the same time in the Roman state, had nevertheless so far a momentous influence on them that it compelled the man, who was all in all and without whom nothing could be despatched and nothing could be solved, to leave his proper tasks in abeyance from October 706 up to March 707 in order to fight along with Jews and Bedouins against a city rabble. The consequences of personal rule began to make themselves felt. They had the monarchy; but the wildest confusion prevailed everywhere, and the monarch was absent. The Caesarians were for the moment, just like the Pompeians, without superintendence; the ability of the individual officers and, above all, accident decided matters everywhere.

Insubordination of Pharnaces

In Asia Minor there was, at the time of Caesar's departure for Egypt, no enemy. But Caesar's lieutenant there, the able Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, had received orders to take away again from king Pharnaces what he had without instructions wrested from the allies of Pompeius; and, as Pharnaces, an obstinate and arrogant despot like his father, perseveringly refused to evacuate Lesser Armenia, no course remained but to march against him. Calvinus had been obliged to despatch to Egypt two out of the three legions left behind with him and formed out of the Pharsalian prisoners of war; he filled up the gap by one legion hastily gathered from the Romans domiciled in Pontus and two legions of Deiotarus exercised after the Roman manner, and advanced into Lesser Armenia. But the Bosporan army, tried in numerous conflicts with the dwellers on the Black Sea, showed itself more efficient than his own.

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