Caesar (85 page)

The clang of a knife thrown against precious gold plate set everyone jumping; Pompey slid off his couch and walked from the room without looking back.

On the fifth day of Sextilis, Pompey and his army arrived at Pharsalus to find Caesar occupying the ground on this north side of the river, but to the east.“ Excellent!” said Pompey to Faustus Sulla, who, dear boy, was just about the only one among the legates he could bear to talk to. Never criticized, just did what tata-in-law said. Well, there was Brutus. Another good fellow. But he skulked so! Kept himself out of sight, never wanted to attend the councils or even the dinners. “If we put ourselves here on this nice slope up to the hills, Faustus, we're well above Caesar's lie and between him and Larissa, Tempe and access to Macedonia.”

“Is it going to be a battle?” asked Faustus Sulla.“ I wish not. But I fear so.”

“Why are they so determined on it?”

“Oh,” said Pompey, sighing, “because they're none of them soldiers save Labienus. They don't understand.”

“Labienus is set on fighting too.”

“Labienus wants to pit himself against Caesar. He's dying for the chance. He believes he's the better general.”

“And is he?” Pompey shrugged. “In all honesty, Faustus, I have absolutely no idea. Though Labienus should. He was Caesar's right-hand man for years in Gallia Comata. Therefore I'm inclined to say yes.”

“Is it for tomorrow?” Seeming to shrink, Pompey shook his head. “No, not yet.” The morrow brought Caesar out to deploy. Pompey did not follow suit. After a wait of some hours, Caesar sent his troops back into his camp and put them in the shade. Only spring, yes, but the sun was hot and the air, perhaps because of the swampiness of the river, was suffocatingly humid. That afternoon Pompey called his legates together. “I have decided,” he announced, on his feet and inviting no one to sit. “We will give battle here at Pharsalus.”

“Oh, good!” said Labienus. “I'll start the preparations.”

“No, no, not tomorrow!” cried Pompey, looking horrified. Nor the next day. Thinking to stretch his men's legs, he led them out for a walk—or so his legates assumed, since he put them in places where only a fool would have attacked after a long uphill run. Since Caesar was not a fool, he didn't attack. But on the eighth day of Sextilis, with the sun sliding down behind his camp, Pompey called his legates together again, this time in his command tent and around a large map his cartographers had drawn up for him upon calfskin.“ Tomorrow,” said Pompey tersely, and stepped back. “Labienus, explain the plan.”

“It's to be a cavalry battle,” Labienus began, moving up to the map and beckoning everyone to cluster around. “By that I mean that we'll use our enormous superiority in cavalry as the lever to defeat Caesar, who has only a thousand Germans. Note, by the way, that our skirmish with them revealed that Caesar has armed some of his foot in the same way the Ubii foot fight among the Ubii horse. They're dangerous, but far too few. We'll deploy here, with our long axis positioned between the river and the hills. At nine Roman legions we'll outnumber Caesar, who must keep one of his nine in reserve. That's where we're lucky. We have fifteen thousand foreign auxiliary infantry as our reserve. The ground favors us; we're slightly uphill. For that reason, we'll draw up further away from Caesar's front line than usual. Nor will we charge. Puff his men out before they reach our front line. We're going to pack our infantry tightly because I'm massing six thousand cavalry on the left wing—here, against the hills. A thousand cavalry on our right, against the river—the ground's too swampy for good horse work. A thousand archers and slingers will be interposed between the first legion of foot on the left and my six thousand horse.” Labienus paused, glared at each of the men around him with fierce intensity. “The infantry will be drawn up in three separate blocks each comprising ten ranks. All three blocks will charge at the same moment. We have more weight than Caesar, who I'm very reliably informed has only four thousand men per legion due to his losses over the months in Epirus. Our legions are at full strength. We'll let him charge us with breathless men and roll his front line back. But the real beauty of the plan is in the cavalry. There's no way Caesar can resist six thousand horse charging his right. While the archer-slinger unit bombards the legion on his far right, my cavalry will drive forward like a landslide, repulse Caesar's scant cavalry, then swing behind his lines and take him in the rear.” He stepped back, grinning broadly. “Pompeius, it's all yours.”

“Well, I haven't much more to add,” said Pompey, sweating in the humid air. “Labienus will command the six thousand horse on my left. As to the infantry, I'll put the First and Third Legions on my left wing. Ahenobarbus, you'll command. Then five legions in the center, including the two Syrian. Scipio, you'll command the center. Spinther, you'll command my right, closest to the river. You'll have the eighteen cohorts not in legions. Brutus, you'll second-in-command Spinther. Faustus, you'll second-in-command Scipio. Afranius and Petreius, you'll second-in-command Ahenobarbus. Favonius and Lentulus Crus, you're in charge of the foreign levies drawn up in reserve. Young Marcus Cicero, you can have the cavalry reserve. Torquatus, take the reserve archers and slingers. Labienus, depute someone to command the thousand horse on the river. The rest of you can sort yourselves out among the legions. Understood?” Everyone nodded, weighed down by the solemnity of the moment. Afterward Pompey went off with Faustus Sulla. “There,” he said, “they have what they wanted. I couldn't hold out any longer.”

“Are you well, Magnus?”

“As well as I'll ever be, Faustus.” Pompey patted his son-in-law in much the same affectionate way as he had patted Cicero on leaving Dyrrachium. “Don't worry about me, Faustus, truly. I'm an old man. Fifty-eight in less than two months. There's a time ... It's hollow, all this ripping and clawing for power. Always a dozen men drooling at the prospect of tearing the First Man down.” He laughed wearily. “Fancy finding the energy to quarrel over which one of them will take Caesar's place as Pontifex Maximus! As if it matters, Faustus. It doesn't. They'll all go too.”

“Magnus, don't talk like this!”

“Why not? Tomorrow decides everything. I didn't want it, but I'm not sorry. A decision of any kind is preferable to a continuation of life in my high command.” He dropped an arm about Faustus's shoulders. “Come, it's time to call the army to assembly. I have to tell them that tomorrow is the day.” By the time the army had been summoned and the obligatory pre-battle oration given, darkness had fallen. An augur, Pompey then took the auspices himself. Because no cattle were available, the victim was to be a pure white sheep; a round dozen animals had been herded into a pen, washed, combed, readied for the augur's expert eye to choose the most suitable offering. But when Pompey indicated a placid-looking bi-dentalis ewe and the cultarius and popa opened the gate, all twelve animals bolted for freedom. Only after a chase was the victim, dirtied and distressed, caught and sacrificed. Not a good omen. The army stirred and muttered; Pompey took the trouble to descend from the augural platform after the sacrifice and go among them, speaking reassuringly. The liver had been perfect, all was well, nothing to worry about. Then the worst happened. The men were facing east toward Caesar's camp, still milling and murmuring, when a mighty fireball streaked across the indigo sky like a falling comet of white flames. Down, down, down, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake, not to fall on Caesar's camp— which might have been a good omen—but to disappear into the darkness far beyond. The unrest began all over again; this time Pompey couldn't dispel it. He went to bed in fatalistic mood, convinced that whatever the morrow might bring, it would be to his ultimate good. Why was a fireball a bad omen? What might Nigidius Figulus have made of it, that walking encyclopaedia of ancient Etruscan augural phenomena? Might the Etruscans not have thought it a good omen? Romans went only as far as livers, with the occasional foray into entrails and birds, whereas the Etruscans had catalogued everything. The thunder woke him up several hours before dawn, sitting straight up in bed and wondering if he had leaped as high as the leather ceiling. Because his sleep had been interrupted at the right moment, he could remember his dream as vividly as if it were still going on. The temple of Venus Victrix at the top of his stone theater, where the statue of Venus had Julia's face and slender body. He had been in it and decorating it with trophies of battle, while crowds and crowds in the auditorium applauded in huge delight. Oh, such a good omen! Except that the trophies of battle were trophies from his own side: his best silver armor, unmistakable with its cuirass depicting the victory of the Gods over the Titans; Lentulus Crus's enormous ruby quizzing glass; Faustus Sulla's lock of hair from his father Sulla's bright red-gold tresses; Scipio's helmet, which had belonged to his ancestor Scipio Africanus and still bore the same moth-eaten, faded egret's feathers in its crest; and, most horrifying trophy of all, the glossy-pated head of Ahenobarbus on a German spear. Flower wreathed. Shivering from cold, sweating from heat, Pompey lay down again and closed his eyes upon the flaring white lightning, listened as the thunder rolled away across the hills behind him. When the drumming rain came down in torrents, he drifted back into an uneasy sleep, his mind still going over the details of that awful dream.

Dawn brought a thick fog and windless, enervating air. In Caesar's camp all was stirring; the mules were being loaded up, the wagon teams harnessed, everyone getting into marching mode.“ He won't fight!” Caesar had barked when he came to wake Mark Antony a good hour before first light. “The river's running a banker after this storm, the ground's soggy, the troops are wet, da de da de da... Same old Pompeius, same old list of excuses. We're moving for Scotussa, Antonius, before Pompeius can get up off his arse to stop our slipping by him. Ye Gods, what a slug he is! Will nothing tempt him to fight?” From which exasperated diatribe the sleepy Antony deduced that the old boy was touchy again. In that grey, lustrous pall it was impossible to see as far as the lower ground between his own camp and Pompey's; the pulling of stakes continued unabated. Until an Aeduan scout came galloping up to where Caesar stood watching the beautiful order of nine legions and a thousand horse troopers preparing to move out silently, efficiently.“ General, General!” the man gasped, sliding off his horse. “General, Gnaeus Pompeius is outside his camp and lined up for—for battle! It really looks as if he means to fight!”

“Cacat!”

That exclamation having escaped his lips, no more followed. Caesar started barking orders in a fluent stream.“ Calenus, have the noncombatants get every last animal to the back of the camp! At the double! Sabinus, start the men tearing the front ramparts to pieces and filling in the ditch—I want every man out quicker than the capite censi can fill the bleachers at the circus! Antonius, get the cavalry saddled up for war, not a ride. You—you—you—you—form up the legions as we discussed. We'll fight exactly as planned.” When the fog lifted, Caesar's army waited on the plain as if no march had ever been on the agenda for that morning. Pompey had drawn his lines up facing east—which meant he had the rising sun facing him—on a front a mile and a half long between the line of hills and the river, a huge host of cavalry on his left wing, a much smaller contingent on his right. Caesar, though he had the smaller army, strung his infantry front out a little longer, so that the Tenth, on his right, faced Pompey's archer-slinger detachment and part of Labienus's horse. From right to left he put the Tenth, Seventh, Thirteenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth. The Fourteenth, which he had thinned down from ten to eight cohorts when re-forming his legions at Aeginium, he positioned concealed behind his thousand German horse on the right wing. They were curiously armed; instead of their customary pila the men each carried a long, barbed siege spear. His left, against the river, would have to fend for itself without cavalry to stiffen it. Publius Sulla, a knacky soldier, had command of Caesar's right; his center went to Calvinus; his left was in the charge of Mark Antony. He had nothing in reserve. Positioned on a rise behind those eight cohorts of the Fourteenth armed with siege spears, Caesar sat Toes in his usual fashion, side on, one leg hooked round the two front pommels. Risky for any other horseman, not so for Caesar, who could twist in the tiniest fraction of time fully into the saddle and be off at a gallop. He liked his troops to see, should they cast a glance behind, that the General was absolutely relaxed, totally confident. Oh, Pompeius, you fool! You fool! You've let Labienus general this battle. You've staked your all on three silly, flimsy things—that your horse has the weight to outflank my right and come round behind me to roll me up—that your infantry has the weight to knock my boys back— and that you'll tire my boys out by making them run all the way to you. Caesar's eyes went to where Pompey sat on his big white Public Horse behind his archer-slingers, neatly opposite Caesar. I am sorry for you, Pompeius. You can't win this one, and it's the big one. Every detail had been worked out three days before, gone over each day since. When Labienus's cavalry charged, Pompey's infantry did not, though Caesar's infantry did. But they paused halfway to get their breath back, then punched into Pompey's line like a great hammer. The thousand Germans on Caesar's right fell back before Labienus's charge without truly engaging; rather than waste time pursuing them, Labienus wheeled right the moment he got to the back third of the Tenth. And ran straight into a wall of siege spears the eight cohorts of the Fourteenth—who had practised the technique for three days—jabbed into the faces of Galatians and Cappadocians. Exactly, thought Labienus, mind whirling, like an old Greek phalanx. His cavalry broke, which was the signal for the Germans to fall upon his flank like wolves, and the signal for the Tenth to wheel sideways and slaughter the archer-slinger contingent before wading fearlessly into Labienus's disarrayed cavalry, horses screaming and going down, riders screaming and going down, panic everywhere. Elsewhere the pattern was the same; Pharsalus was more a rout than a battle. It lasted a scant hour. Pompey's foreign auxiliaries held in reserve fled the moment they saw the horse begin to falter. Most of the legions stayed to fight, including the Syrian, the First and the Third, but the eighteen cohorts against the river on Pompey's right scattered everywhere, leaving Antony complete victor along the Enipeus.