Dio's Rome, Volume 3: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English FormCassius Dio Cocceianus
History
Dio's Rome, Volume 3: An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus and Alexander Severus: and Now Presented in English Form
Cassius Dio Cocceianus
Rome -- History
their swimming well and being lightly equipped succeeded easily in
climbing upon others, the attackers were at a corresponding disadvantage.
Meantime the rapidity with which the ships of the one party could sail
proved an offset to the solidity of those on the other side, and the
heaviness of the latter counterbalanced the agility of the former. [-4-]
Late in the day, near nightfall, Caesar's party finally conquered,
but instituted no pursuit: the reason as it appears to me and may be
conjectured from probability was that they could not overtake the fleeing
ships and were afraid of running aground in the shallows, with which they
were unacquainted, near the coast. Some say that Agrippa because he was
battling for Caesar and not for himself thought it sufficient merely to
rout his adversaries. For he had been in the habit of saying to his most
intimate associates that the majority of those holding sovereign power
wish no one to display more ability than themselves; and that they
attended personally to nearly all such matters as afford them a conquest
without effort, but assign the less favorable and more complicated
business to others. And if they ever are forced to entrust some choice
enterprise to their assistants, they are irritated and displeased at the
latter's renown. They do not pray that these subordinates may be defeated
and fare badly, yet they do not choose to have them win a complete
success and secure glory from it. His advice therefore was that the
man who intended to survive must relieve his masters of the annoyance
incident to such undertakings and still reserve for them the successful
completion of the work. As for me, I know that the above is regularly
true and that Agrippa paid attention to it, but I am not setting down
that on that particular occasion this was the cause of his failure to
pursue. For he was not able, no matter how much he might have desired it,
to follow up the foe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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