When Gnacus Pompey at Brundisium had planned to leave Italy and to transfer the war to another field, since Caesar was heavy on his heels, just as he was on the point of embarking, he placed obstacles in some roads; others he blocked by constructing walls across them; others he intersected with trenches, setting sharp stakes in the latter, and laying hurdles covered with earth across the openings. Some of the roads leading to the harbour he guarded by throwing beams across and piling them one upon another in a huge heap. After consummating these arrangements, wishing to produce the appearance of intending to retain possession of the city, he left a few archers as a guard on the walls; the remainder of his troops he led out in good order to the ships. Then, when he was under way, the archers also withdrew by familiar roads, and overtook him in small boats.[1]
When the consul Gains Duellius was caught by a chain stretched across the entrance to the harbour of Syracuse, which he had rashly entered, he assembled all his soldiers in the sterns of the boats, and when the boats were thus tilted up, he propelled them forward with the full force of his oarsmen. Thus lifted up over the chain, the prows moved forward. When this part of the boats had been carried over, the soldiers, returning to the prows, depressed these, and the weight thus transferred to them permitted the boats to pass over the chain.[2]
When Lysander, the Spartan, was blockaded in the harbour[3] of the Athenians with his entire fleet, since the ships of the enemy were sunk at the point where the sea flows in through a very narrow
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- ↑ 49 B.C. Cf. Caes. B.C. i. 27–28.
- ↑ 260 B.C. Zonar. viii. 16 makes Hippo, rather than Syracuse, the scene of this stratagem.
- ↑ Piraeus.
