Book 3
58
To keep the Pompeian cavalry more easily in check at Dyrrachium and to prevent them from foraging, Caesar fortified with large works the two approaches, which, as we have shown, were narrow, and planted forts at these spots. When Pompeius found out that no advantage was gained by the cavalry, after a few days’ interval he fetches them back again by sea to his own quarters within the entrenchments. There was a great scarcity of provisions, so much so that they fed their horses on leaves stripped from the trees and on the soft powdered roots of reeds, for they had used up the crops that had been sown within the entrenchments. They were gradually forced to bring up fodder from Corcyra and Acarnania, with a long sea passage intervening, and as the supply of this was deficient, to supplement it with barley and by these devices to keep their horses alive. But when not only the barley and other fodder and the herbs that had been everywhere cut down began to fail, but even the foliage from the trees, the horses being rendered useless by emaciation, Pompeius thought that he ought to attempt something in the way of a sortie.
