Kitap 3
111
Achillas, trusting in these forces and despising the small number of Caesar’s troops, was trying to occupy Alexandria, except that part of the town which Caesar held with his troops, though at the first assault he had endeavoured to burst into his house; but Caesar, placing cohorts about the streets, held his attack in check. And at the same time a battle was fought at the port, and this affair produced by far the most serious fighting. For at one and the same time a battle was going on with scattered forces in several streets and the enemy were attempting in great numbers to seize the warships, of which fifty had been sent to the support of Pompeius and had returned home after the battle in Thessaly, all of them quadriremes and quinqueremes fitted and equipped with everything necessary for navigation, and, besides these, twenty-two which had usually been on duty at Alexandria, all of them decked. And if they had seized these, by robbing Caesar of his fleet they would have the harbour and the whole seaboard in their control and would shut off Caesar from supplies and reinforcements. Consequently the struggle was fought with the intense eagerness that was bound to occur when the one side saw a speedy victory, the other their own safety, depending on the event. But Caesar gained his purpose. He burnt all those ships and the rest that were in the docks, because he could not protect so wide an extent with his small force, and at once he embarked his men and landed them on Pharos.
