Iberia, where he had shown himself a bad general), being charged with betraying his army for a bribe, asked why they did not fight with the merchant who had bought the provinces of him.  Pressed by all this importunity, Pompeius pursued Caesar with the intention of fighting, though contrary to his wish.  Caesar accomplished his march with difficulty, as no one would supply him with provisions and he was universally despised on account of his recent defeat; however, after taking Gomphi,[536] a Thessalian city, he had not only provisions for his army, but his men were unexpectedly relieved from their disease.  For they fell in with abundance of wine, of which they drank plentifully, and revelling and rioting on their march, by means of their drunkenness, they threw off and got rid of their complaint in consequence of their bodies being brought into a different habit.

XLII.  When the two armies had entered the plain of Pharsalus and pitched their camps, Pompeius again fell back into his former opinion, and there were also unlucky appearances and a vision in his sleep.[537] He dreamed that he saw himself in the theatre, applauded by the Romans.  But those about him were so confident, and so fully anticipated a victory, that Domitius and Scipio and Spinther were disputing and bestirring themselves against one another about the priesthood of Caesar, and many persons sent to Rome to hire and get possession of houses that were suitable for consuls and praetors, expecting to be elected to magistracies immediately after the war.  But the cavalry showed most impatience for the battle, being sumptuously equipped with splendid armour, and priding themselves on their well-fed horses and fine persons, and on their numbers also, for they were seven thousand against Caesar’s thousand.  The number of the infantry also was unequal, there being forty-five thousand matched against twenty-two thousand.

XLIII.  Caesar, calling his soldiers together and telling them that Corfinius[538] was close at hand with two legions, and that other cohorts to the number of fifteen under Calenus were encamped near Megara and Athens, asked if they would wait for them or hazard a battle by themselves.  The soldiers cried out aloud that they did not wish him to wait, but rather to contrive and so manage his operations that they might soonest come to a battle with their enemies.  While he was performing a lustration of the army, as soon as he had sacrificed the first victim, the soothsayer said that within three days there would be a decisive battle with the enemy.  Upon Caesar asking him, if he saw any favourable sign in the victims as to the result of the battle also, he replied, “You can answer this better for yourself:  the gods indicate a great change and revolution of the actual state of things to a contrary state, so that if you think yourself prosperous in your present condition, expect the worst fortune; but if you do not, expect the better.”  As Caesar was taking