live: when, however, some similar persons had associated themselves with
him and he had attracted to his enterprise various soldiers of Sextus
who at various times came there to garrison the city, and likewise many
alarming reports kept coming in from Africa about Caesar, he was no longer
pleased with existing circumstances but raised a rebellion, his aim being
either to help the followers of Scipio and Cato and the Pompeians or to
clothe himself in some authority. Sextus discovered him before he had
finished his preparations, but he explained that he was collecting this
body as an auxiliary force for Mithridates of Pergamum against Bosporus;
his story was believed, and he was released. So after this he forged an
epistle, which he pretended had been sent to him by Scipio, in which he
announced that Caesar had been defeated and had perished in Africa and
stated that the governorship of Syria had been assigned to him. His next
step was to use the forces he had in readiness for occupying Tyre and
from there he approached the camp of Sextus. In the attack on the latter
which followed Bassus was defeated and wounded. Consequently, after this
experience, he no longer employed violent tactics, but sent messages to
his opponent's soldiers, and in some way or other so prevailed over some
of them that they took upon themselves the murder of Sextus.

[-27-] The latter out of the way the usurper gained possession of all his
army except some few. The soldiers wintering in Apamea withdrew before
he reached them toward Cilicia, and were pursued but were not won over.
Bassus returned to Syria, where he was named commander, and he conquered
Apamea so as to have it as a base for warfare. He enlisted not only the
free but the slave fighting population, gathered money, and accumulated
arms. While he was thus engaged one Gaius Antistius invested the position
he was holding, and the two had a nearly even struggle in which neither
party succeeded in gaining any great advantage. Thereupon they parted,
without any definite truce, to await the bringing up of allies. The