He delayed his answer,
shifted from place to place, and tried to protract the correspondence till
Caesar's impatience to be gone should bring him to agree to a compromise.
Caesar cut short negotiations. Pharnaces was at Zela, a town in the midst
of mountains behind Trebizond, and the scene of a great victory which had
been won by Mithridates over the Romans. Caesar defied auguries. He seized
a position at night on the brow of a hill directly opposite to the
Armenian camp, and divided from it by a narrow valley. As soon as day
broke the legions were busy intrenching with their spades and pickaxes.
Pharnaces, with the rashness which if it fails is madness, and if it
succeeds is the intuition of genius, decided to fall on them at a moment
when no sane person could rationally expect an attack; and Caesar could
not restrain his astonishment when he saw the enemy pouring down the steep
side of the ravine, and breasting the ascent on which he stood. It was
like the battle of Maubeuge over again, with the difference that he had
here to deal with Asiatics, and not with the Nervii. There was some
confusion while the legions were exchanging their digging tools for their
arms. When the exchange had been made, there was no longer a battle, but a
rout. The Armenians were hurled back down the hill, and slaughtered in
masses at the bottom of it.
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