THE BATTLE OF PHARSALIA.

[Sidenote: The gathering armies.]
[Sidenote: Pompey's preparations.]
[Sidenote: Caesar at Brundusium.]

The gathering of the armies of Caesar and Pompey on the opposite shores
of the Adriatic Sea was one of the grandest preparations for conflict
that history has recorded, and the whole world gazed upon the spectacle
at the time with an intense and eager interest, which was heightened by
the awe and terror which the danger inspired. During the year while
Caesar had been completing his work of subduing and arranging all the
western part of the empire, Pompey had been gathering from the eastern
division every possible contribution to swell the military force under
his command, and had been concentrating all these elements of power on
the coasts of Macedon and Greece, opposite to Brundusium, where he knew
that Caesar would attempt to cross the Adriatic Sea, His camps, his
detachments, his troops of archers and slingers, and his squadrons of
horse, filled the land, while every port was guarded, and the line of
the coast was environed by batteries and castles on the rocks, and
fleets of galleys on the water. Caesar advanced with his immense army to
Brundusium, on the opposite shore, in December, so that, in addition to
the formidable resistance prepared for him by his enemy on the coast, he
had to encounter the wild surges of the Adriatic, rolling perpetually in
the dark and gloomy commotion always raised in such wide seas by
wintery storms.

[Sidenote: His address to his army.]