The story is from Plutarch, though Suetonius also records it.

Caesar is supposed to have made the communication after the battle of Zela, where he defeated Pharnaces II.

There are various theories why Caesar expressed himself so tersely:- one possibility is that he thought the battle against Pharnaces (a minor king of Pontus) was being given more attention than it deserved.

When Caesar said "Veni, Vidi, Vici", he actually was not fighting Pompey or even Romans. He said it after the battle of Zela, in modern Turkey, where he had defeated Pharnaces II of Pontus, a kingdom on the shores of the Black Sea. Caesar's experienced Roman army beat the Pontic army so quickly that it seemed to Caesar like a pushover. This message was sent to the Roman senate to announce his victory.

Julius Caesar's "veni, vidi, vici" was not associated with a city. It was associated with the kingdom of Pontus (in north-eastern Turkey) rather than a city. When the Romans were fighting the civil war between the forces of Caesar and the senate, Pharnaces II, the king of Pontus, took advantage of this to seize neighbouring Colchis and Lesser Armenia. Caesar undertook a rapid march on Pontus and swiftly defeated Pharnaces at the Battle of Zela (47 BC). His five-day campaign so swift and his victory so complete that Caesar said "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I won).

The sentence was also meant to be a snide remark about Pompey the Great, his enemy in the civil war. Sixteen year earlier, Pompey had struggled to defeat another king of Pontus in the Third Mithridatic War (73-63 BC) whereas he defeated Pontus quickly and easily. Caesar put Pompey's reputation as a great general into question. Caesar had also defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus a year before his defeat of Pharnaces. The ancient historian Suetonius said that these three words were deployed in the triumphal ceremony in Rome which celebrated this victory.

The Battle of Zela took place near Zela, which is now Zile, in the Tokat Province of Turkey.

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