After some time the tide of fortune turned Caesar contrived, by a succession of adroit maneuvers and movements, to escape from his toils, and to circumvent and surround Pompey’s forces so as soon to make them suffer destitution and distress in their turn.  He cut off all communication between them and the country at large, and turned away the brooks and streams from flowing through the ground they occupied.  An army of forty or fifty thousand men, with the immense number of horses and beasts of burden which accompany them, require very large supplies of water, and any destitution or even scarcity of water leads immediately to the most dreadful consequences.  Pompey’s troops dug wells, but they obtained only very insufficient supplies.  Great numbers of beasts of burden died, and their decaying bodies so tainted the air as to produce epidemic diseases, which destroyed many of the troops, and depressed and disheartened those whom they did not destroy.

[Sidenote:  Nature of the contest between Caesar and Pompey.] [Sidenote:  Both hesitate.]

During all these operations there was no decisive general battle.  Each one of the great rivals knew very well that his defeat in one general battle would be his utter and irretrievable ruin.  In a war between two independent nations, a single victory, however complete, seldom terminates the struggle, for the defeated party has the resources of a whole realm to fall back upon, which are sometimes called forth with renewed vigor after experiencing such reverses; and then defeat in such cases, even if it be final, does not necessarily involve the ruin of the unsuccessful commander.  He may negotiate an honorable peace, and return to his own land in safety; and, if his misfortunes are considered by his countrymen as owing not to any dereliction from his duty as a soldier, but to the influence of adverse circumstances which no human skill or resolution could have controlled, he may spend the remainder of his days in prosperity and honor.  The contest, however, between Caesar and Pompey was not of this character.  One or the other of them was a traitor and a usurper—­an enemy to his country.  The result of a battle would decide which of the two was to stand in this attitude.  Victory would legitimize and confirm the authority of one, and make it supreme over the whole civilized world.  Defeat was to annihilate the power of the other, and make him a fugitive and a vagabond, without friends, without home, without country.  It was a desperate stake; and it is not at all surprising that both parties lingered and hesitated, and postponed the throwing of the die.

[Sidenote:  The armies enter Thessaly.]