They will turn and flee if their handsome faces are likely to be bruised." And a grim chuckle went down the line, relieving the tension that was making the oldest warriors nervous.
Caesar galloped back to his position on his own right wing.

The legions were growing restive, and there was no longer cause for delay.

The officers were shouting the battle-cry down the lines.

The Imperator nodded to his trumpeter, and a single sharp, long peal cut the air.
The note was drowned in the rush of twenty thousand feet, the howl of myriads of voices.
"_Venus victrix!_" The battle-cry was tossed from mouth to mouth, louder and louder, as the mighty mass of men in iron swept on.
"Venus victrix!" And the shout itself was dimmed in the crash of mortal battle, when the foremost Caesarians sent their pila dashing in upon the enemy, and closed with the short sword, while their comrades piled in upon them.

Crash after crash, as cohort struck cohort; and so the battle joined.
* * * * * Why was the battle of Pharsalus more to the world than fifty other stricken fields where armies of strength equal to those engaged there joined in conflict?
Why can these other battles be passed over as dates and names to the historian, while he assigns to this a position beside Marathon and Arbela and Tours and the Defeat of the Armada and Waterloo and Gettysburg?
What was at stake--that Caesar or Pompeius and his satellites should rule the world?
Infinitely more--the struggle was for the very existence of civilization, to determine whether or not the fabric of ordered society was to be flung back into chaos.