Book 2
4
After their previous disaster the Massilians had brought out of the docks and repaired an equivalent number of old ships and equipped them with the utmost industry—there was an abundant supply of rowers and helmsmen—and had added to them some fishing-vessels which they had furnished with decks, to protect the rowers from the blows of missiles while they also manned them with archers and catapults. When the fleet was thus equipped, stimulated by the prayers and tears of all the older men, matrons and virgins, beseeching them to succour the state in its extremity, they embark with no less courage and confidence than they had shown in the previous battle. For, by a defect which is common to human nature, we are apt in unusual and unfamiliar circumstances to be too confident or too violently alarmed; and so it happened then. For the arrival of L. Nasidius had filled the community with the utmost hope and goodwill. Finding the wind favourable, they quit the port and reach Nasidius at Taurois, a Massilian fortress, and there get their ships into trim and again make up their minds to the struggle and join in arranging their plans. Operations on the right are assigned to the Massilians, on the left to Nasidius.
