[History of Julius Caesar by Jacob Abbott]@TWC D-Link book
History of Julius Caesar

CHAPTER VIII
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"What!" said Pompey, "into my tent too!" He had been for more than thirty years a victorious general, accustomed to all the deference and respect which boundless wealth, extended and absolute power, and the highest military rank could afford.

In the encampments which he had made, and in the cities which he had occupied from time to time, he had been the supreme and unquestioned master, and his tent, arranged and furnished, as it had always been, in a style of the utmost magnificence and splendor, had been sacred from all intrusion, and invested with such a dignity that potentates and princes were impressed when they entered, with a feeling of deference and awe.
Now, rude soldiers burst wildly into it, and the air without was filled with an uproar and confusion, drawing every moment nearer and nearer, and warning the fallen hero that there was no longer any protection there against the approaching torrent which was coming on to overwhelm him.
[Sidenote: Pompey disguises himself.] [Sidenote: He escapes from the camp.] Pompey aroused himself from his stupor, threw off the military dress which belonged to his rank and station, and assumed a hasty disguise, in which he hoped he might make his escape from the immediate scene of his calamities.

He mounted a horse and rode out of the camp at the easiest place of egress in the rear, in company with bodies of troops and guards who were also flying in confusion, while Caesar and his forces on the other side were carrying the intrenchments and forcing their way in.

As soon is he had thus made his escape from the immediate scene of danger, he dismounted and left his horse, that he might assume more completely the appearance of a common soldier, and, with a few attendants who were willing to follow his fallen fortunes, he went on to the eastward, directing his weary steps toward the shores of the Aegean Sea.
[Sidenote: The Vale of Tempe.] [Sidenote: Its picturesqueness.] [Sidenote: Pompey's sufferings.] [Sidenote: A drink of water.] The country through which he was traveling was Thessaly.

Thessaly is a vast amphitheater, surrounded by mountains, from whose sides streams descend, which, after watering many fertile valleys and plains, combine to form one great central river that flows to the eastward, and after various meanderings, finds its way into the Aegean Sea through a romantic gap between two mountains, called the Vale of Tempe--a vale which has been famed in all ages for the extreme picturesqueness of its scenery, and in which, in those days, all the charms both of the most alluring beauty and of the sublimest grandeur seemed to be combined.
Pompey followed the roads leading along the banks of this stream, weary in body, and harassed and disconsolate in mind.


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