Kitap 1
52
All this served to enhance the price of provisions, a calamity inseparable from present scarcity, and the prospect of filture want. Corn was already at fifty denarii a bushel, the soldiers began to lose their strength, and the evil increased every moment. Nay, so great was the change produced in a few days, and such the alteration of fortune, that while our men were in the utmost want of all kind of necessaries, the enemy had plenty of every thing, and were accounted victorious. Caesar left nothing untried to remove the present scarcity: he dismissed all the useless mouths, and applied to the states that had declared for him, desiring them to send him cattle where they wanted corn.
53
These things were greatly exaggerated by Afranius, Petreius, and their friends, in the letters they sent, upon this occasion, to Rome. Nor was fame backward in adding to the account; insomuch that the war appeared to be almost at an end. These couriers and letters having reached Rome there was a great concourse of people at Afranius’s house, many congratulations passed, and multitudes of the nobility flocked out of Italy to Pompey; some to carry the first accounts of this grateful news; others, that they might not be so late as to subject them to the reproach of having waited for the event of things.
