705), in the very depth of winter the most eminent men of the aristocracy set out to the different districts, to hasten the calling up of recruits and the preparation of arms.

The want of cavalry was much felt, as for this arm they had been accustomed to rely wholly on the provinces and especially on the Celtic contingents; to make at least a beginning, three hundred gladiators belonging to Caesar were taken from the fencing-schools of Capua and mounted--a step which however met with so general disapproval, that Pompeius again broke up this troop and levied in room of it 300 horsemen from the mounted slave-herdmen of Apulia.
The state-treasury was at a low ebb as usual; they busied themselves in supplementing the inadequate amount of cash out of the local treasuries and even from the temple-treasures of the -municipia-.
Caesar Takes the Offensive Under these circumstances the war opened at the beginning of January 705.

Of troops capable of marching Caesar had not more than a legion--5000 infantry and 300 cavalry--at Ravenna, which was by the highway some 240 miles distant from Rome; Pompeius had two weak legions--7000 infantry and a small squadron of cavalry-- under the orders of Appius Claudius at Luceria, from which, likewise by the highway, the distance was just about as great to the capital.

The other troops of Caesar, leaving out of account the raw divisions of recruits still in course of formation, were stationed, one half on the Saone and Loire, the other half in Belgica, while Pompeius' Italian reserves were already arriving from all sides at their rendezvous; long before even the first of the Transalpine divisions of Caesar could arrive in Italy, a far superior army could not but be ready to receive it there.
It seemed folly, with a band of the strength of that of Catilina and for the moment without any effective reserve, to assume the aggressive against a superior and hourly-increasing army under an able general; but it was a folly in the spirit of Hannibal.
If the beginning of the struggle were postponed till spring, the Spanish troops of Pompeius would assume the offensive in Transalpine, and his Italian troops in Cisalpine, Gaul, and Pompeius, a match for Caesar in tactics and superior to him in experience, was a formidable antagonist in such a campaign running its regular course.

Now perhaps, accustomed as he was to operate slowly and surely with superior masses, he might be disconcerted by a wholly improvised attack; and that which could not greatly discompose Caesar's thirteenth legion after the severe trial of the Gallic surprise and the January campaign in the land of the Bellovaci,( 14)--the suddenness of the war and the toil of a winter campaign--could not but disorganize the Pompeian corps consisting of old soldiers of Caesar or of ill-trained recruits, and still only in the course of formation.
Caesar's Advance Accordingly Caesar advanced into Italy.( 15) Two highways led at that time from the Romagna to the south; the Aemilio-Cassian which led from Bononia over the Apennines to Arretium and Rome, and the Popillio-Flaminian, which led from Ravenna along the coast of the Adriatic to Fanum and was there divided, one branch running westward through the Furlo pass to Rome, another southward to Ancona and thence onward to Apulia.