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Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson
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Page 7
Perhaps there never was an army which was so perfectly what an army ought to be--a machine able for its ends and willing for its ends, in the hand of a master, who transfers to it his own elasticity. Caesar's soldiers were, and felt themselves, a match for a tenfold superior force; in connection with which it should not be overlooked, that under the Roman tactics--calculated altogether for hand-to-hand conflict and especially for combat with the sword--the practised Roman soldier was superior to the novice in a far higher degree than is now the case under the circumstances of modern times.(3)
3. A centurion of Caesar's tenth legion, taken prisoner, declared to the commander-in-chief of the enemy that he was ready with ten of his men to make head against the best cohort of the enemy (500 men; Dell. Afric. 45). "In the ancient mode of fighting," to quote the opinion of Napoleon I, "a battle consisted simply of duels; what was only correct in the mouth of that centurion, would be mere boasting in the mouth of the modern soldier." Vivid proofs of the soldierly spirit that pervaded Caesar's army are furnished by the Reports--appended to his Memoirs--respecting the African and the second Spanish wars, of which the former appears to have had as its author an officer of the second rank, while the latter is in every respect a subaltern camp-journal.
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/rome/5-10-brundisium-pharsalus-thapsus.asp?pg=7
