One or the other of them was a traitor and a usurper--an enemy to his country.

The result of a battle would decide which of the two was to stand in this attitude.

Victory would legitimize and confirm the authority of one, and make it supreme over the whole civilized world.

Defeat was to annihilate the power of the other, and make him a fugitive and a vagabond, without friends, without home, without country.

It was a desperate stake; and it is not at all surprising that both parties lingered and hesitated, and postponed the throwing of the die.
[Sidenote: The armies enter Thessaly.] At length Pompey, rendered desperate by the urgency of the destitution and distress into which Caesar had shut him, made a series of rigorous and successful attacks upon Caesar's lines, by which he broke away in his turn from his enemy's grasp, and the two armies moved slowly back into the interior of the country, hovering in the vicinity of each other, like birds of prey contending in the air, each continually striking at the other, and moving onward at the same time to gain some position of advantage, or to circumvent the other in such a design.