Book 3
63
There was in that place a ditch fifteen feet wide and a rampart ten feet high facing the enemy, and the earthwork of this rampart was also ten feet in breadth. And at an interval of six hundred feet from this there was a second stockade facing in the other direction, with a rampart of rather lower elevation. For on the preceding days Caesar, fearing lest our men should be hemmed in by the fleet, had constructed a double stockade in this spot, so that in case of an attack on both sides it might be possible to hold out. But the magnitude of the works and the continuous toil of every day, since he had taken in entrenchments of seventeen miles circuit, did not allow opportunity of completion. And so he had not yet completed the cross stockade facing the sea to join these two lines. This fact was known to Pompeius, who had been informed of it by the Allobrogian deserters, and it had caused our men great inconvenience. For two cohorts of the Ninth Legion being on sentry duty by the sea, the Pompeians suddenly approached at early dawn; at the same time soldiers conveyed round on shipboard began to hurl javelins at the outer stockade, the ditches were being filled up with earth, the Pompeian legionaries, having brought up ladders, were terrifying the defenders of the inner line with engines of every kind and missiles, and a great multitude of archers were being thrown around them on every side. But the osier coverings placed on their helmets protected them to a great extent from the blows of stones, which were the only weapon our men had. And so when our men were being hard pressed in every way and with difficulty holding their ground, the defect, mentioned above, of the line of entrenchment became observable, and between the two stockades, where the work was not yet finished, the Pompeians, disembarking, took our men in the rear on both sides and, dislodging them from each line, compelled them to take to flight.
