lost, with his weak band wedged in among the rocks of Epirus between the immense fleet and the three times superior land army of the enemy; and already the winter was drawing to a close.  His sole hope still depended on the transport fleet; that it should steal or fight its way through the blockade was hardly to be hoped for; but after the first voluntary foolhardiness this second venture was enjoined by necessity.  How desperate his situation appeared to Caesar himself, is shown by his resolution—­when the fleet still came not—­to sail alone in a fisherman’s boat across the Adriatic to Brundisium in order to fetch it; which, in reality, was only abandoned because no mariner was found to undertake the daring voyage.

Antonius Proceed to Epirus

But his appearance in person was not needed to induce the faithful officer who commanded in Italy, Marcus Antonius, to make this last effort for the saving of his master.  Once more the transport fleet, with four legions and 800 horsemen on board sailed from the harbour of Brundisium, and fortunately a strong south wind carried it past Libo’s galleys.  But the same wind, which thus saved the fleet, rendered it impossible for it to land as it was directed on the coast of Apollonia, and compelled it to sail past the camps of Caesar and Pompeius and to steer to the north of Dyrrhachium towards Lissus, which town fortunately still adhered to Caesar.(29) When it sailed past the harbour of Dyrrhachium, the Rhodian galleys started in pursuit, and hardly had the ships of Antonius entered the port of Lissus when the enemy’s squadron appeared before it.  But just at this moment the wind suddenly veered, and drove the pursuing galleys back into the open sea and partly on the rocky coast.  Through the most marvellous good fortune the landing of the second freight had also been successful.

Junction of Caesar’s Army

Antonius and Caesar were no doubt still some four days’ march from each other, separated by Dyrrhachium and the whole army of the enemy; but Antonius happily effected the perilous march round about Dyrrhachium through the passes of the Graba Balkan, and was received by Caesar, who had gone to meet him, on the right bank of the Apsus.  Pompeius, after having vainly attempted to prevent the junction of the two armies of the enemy and to force the corps of Antonius to fight by itself, took up a new position at Asparagium on the river Genusus (Skumbi), which flows parallel to the Apsus between the latter and the town of Dyrrhachium, and here remained once more immoveable.  Caesar felt himself now strong enough to give battle; but Pompeius declined it.  On the other hand Caesar succeeded in deceiving his adversary and throwing himself unawares with his better marching troops, just as at Ilerda, between the enemy’s camp and the fortress of Dyrrhachium on which it rested as a basis.  The chain of the Graba Balkan, which stretching in a direction from east to west ends on the Adriatic in the narrow tongue of land at Dyrrhachium, sends off—­fourteen miles to the east of Dyrrhachium—­in a south-westerly direction a lateral branch which likewise turns in the form of a crescent towards the sea, and the main chain and lateral branch of the mountains enclose between themselves a small plain extending round a cliff on the seashore.