Book 3
26
Displaying audacity and valour, with M. Antonius and Fufius Calenus directing operations, and the soldiers themselves giving much encouragement and refusing no danger for Caesar’s safety, they weigh anchor with a south wind, and on the second day sail past Apollonia. When they had been seen from the mainland, Coponius, who was at Dyrrachium in command of the Rhodian fleet, leads his ships out of port, and when on the wind falling light he had now approached near our force, the same south wind rose again and served to protect our side. Yet he did not on that account desist from his attempt, but kept hoping that even the violence of the storm could be overcome by the toil and perseverance of the sailors, and though we had been carried past Dyrrachium by the strong force of the wind, he none the less kept pursuing us. Our men, though experiencing the kindness of fortune, nevertheless feared an attack by the fleet in case the wind should drop. Coming to a harbour named Nymphaeum, three miles beyond Lissus, a harbour which was protected from the south-west wind but was not safe from the south, they took their ships in there, reckoning the danger from the storm less than that from the enemy’s fleet. And as soon as they entered there, by an incredible piece of luck the south wind which had blown for two days changed into a south-west wind.
