fight at Dyrrachium had one eye destroyed by an arrow, his shoulder transfixed with one javelin and his thigh with another, and on his shield he had received the blows of one hundred and thirty missiles.  In this plight he called to the enemy as if he designed to surrender himself, and two of them accordingly approached him, but with his sword he lopped off one man’s shoulder and wounding the other in the face, put him to flight, and finally he escaped himself with the aid of his friends.  In Britannia on one occasion the natives had attacked the foremost centurions who had got into a marshy spot full of water, upon which, in the presence of Caesar who was viewing the contest, a soldier rushed into the midst of the enemy, and after performing many conspicuous acts of valour, rescued the centurions from the barbarians, who took to flight.  The soldier, with difficulty attempting to cross after all the rest, plunged into the muddy stream, and with great trouble and the loss of his shield, sometimes swimming, sometimes walking, he got safe over.  While those who were about Caesar were admiring his conduct and coming to receive him with congratulations and shouts, the soldier, with the greatest marks of dejection and tears in his eyes, fell down at Caesar’s feet and begged pardon for the loss of his shield.  Again, in Libya, Scipio’s party having taken one of Caesar’s ships in which was Granius Petro, who had been appointed quaestor, made booty of all the rest, but offered to give the quaestor his life; but he replying that it was the fashion with Caesar’s soldiers to give and not to accept mercy, killed himself with his own sword.

XVII.  This courage and emulation Caesar cherished and created, in the first place by distributing rewards and honours without stint, and thus showing that he did not get wealth from the enemy for his own enjoyment and pleasure, but that it was treasured up with him as the common reward of courage, and that he was rich only in proportion as he rewarded deserving soldiers; and in the next place by readily undergoing every danger and never shrinking from any toil.  Now they did not so much admire Caesar’s courage, knowing his love of glory; but his endurance of labour beyond his body’s apparent power of sustaining it, was a matter of astonishment, for he was of a spare habit, and had a white and soft skin, and was subject to complaints in the head and to epileptic fits, which, as it is said, first attacked him at Corduba;[482] notwithstanding all this, he did not make his feeble health an excuse for indulgence, but he made military service the means of his cure, by unwearied journeying, frugal diet, and by constantly keeping in the open air and enduring fatigue, struggling with his malady and keeping his body proof against its attacks.  He generally slept in chariots or in litters, making even his repose a kind of action; and in the daytime he used to ride in a vehicle to the garrisons, cities and camps, with a slave by his side, one of those