Book 3
42
Pompeius, being cut off from Dyrrachium, on failing to gain his purpose adopts the next best plan and entrenches a camp on a lofty spot called Petra, which allows a moderately good approach for ships and protects them from certain winds. He gives orders for some of his warships to meet there, and for corn and stores to be brought in from Asia and from all the districts that he held. Caesar, thinking that the war was going to be unduly prolonged, and despairing of his supplies from Italy, because all the shores were being held with such vigilance by the Pompeians, and his own fleets which he had constructed in the winter in Sicily, Gaul, and Italy were slow in coming, sent Q. Tillius and the legate L. Canuleius into Epirus in order to get provisions, and because these districts were some distance off he established granaries in certain places and apportioned the neighbouring communities their respective shares in the carriage of corn. He also gave orders that all the corn that there was should be sought and collected at Lissus, among the Parthini, and in all the fortified posts. This was of very small amount, partly from the nature of the land, because the district is rugged and hilly and the people generally use imported corn, and also because Pompeius had foreseen this and had at an earlier date treated the Parthini as spoils of war, and, hunting for all their corn by ransacking and digging up their houses, had carried it off by means of his horsemen to Petra.
