implacable resentment.  Caesar’s soldiers had sworn to put to the sword the whole male population of the perfidious city, and vehemently demanded from the general the signal for plunder.  But Caesar, mindful here also of his great task of establishing Helleno-Italic civilization in the west, was not to be coerced into furnishing a sequel to the destruction of Corinth.  Massilia—­the most remote from the mother-country of all those cities, once so numerous, free, and powerful, that belonged to the old Ionic mariner-nation, and almost the last in which the Hellenic seafaring life had preserved itself fresh and pure, as in fact it was the last Greek city that fought at sea—­Massilia had to surrender its magazines of arms and naval stores to the victor, and lost a portion of its territory and of its privileges; but it retained its freedom and its nationality and continued, though with diminished proportions in a material point of view, to be still as before intellectually the centre of Hellenic culture in that distant Celtic country which at this very time was attaining a new historical significance.

Expeditions of Caesar to the Corn-Provinces

While thus in the western provinces the war after various critical vicissitudes was thoroughly decided at length in favour of Caesar, Spain and Massilia were subdued, and the chief army of the enemy was captured to the last man, the decision of arms had also taken place on the second arena of warfare, on which Caesar had found it necessary immediately after the conquest of Italy to assume the offensive

Sardinia Occupied Sicily Occupied

We have already mentioned that the Pompeians intended to reduce Italy to starvation.  They had the means of doing so in their hands.  They had thorough command of the sea and laboured with great zeal everywhere—­in Gades, Utica, Messana, above all in the east—­to increase their fleet.  They held moreover all the provinces, from which the capital drew its means of subsistence:  Sardinia and Corsica through Marcus Cotta, Sicily through Marcus Cato, Africa through the self-nominated commander-in-chief Titus Attius Varus and their ally Juba king of Numidia It was indispensably needful for Caesar to thwart these plans of the enemy and to wrest from them the corn-provinces.  Quintus Valerius was sent with a legion to Sardinia and compelled the Pompeian governor to evacuate the island.  The more important enterprise of taking Sicily and Africa from the enemy was entrusted to the young Gaius Curio with the assistance of the able Gaius Caninius Rebilus, who possessed experience in war.  Sicily was occupied by him without a blow; Cato, without a proper army and not a man of the sword, evacuated the island, after having in his straightforward manner previously warned the Siceliots not to compromise themselves uselessly by an ineffectual resistance.