Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome (22 page)

The victorious troops drank the town dry, with, according to Appian, Caesar’s German cavalrymen in particular ending up disgustingly drunk.

Germans in general, Appian remarked, had no head for drink, especially wine. A similar observation would be made by Tacitus a century later.

Leaving Ghompi a smoking ruin, Caesar marched on to the town of Metropolis. At first it closed its gates to him. Then news reached the townspeople of the fate of Gomphi. Metropolis quickly opened its gates to Caesar. Before long, he moved on.

A little east of Metropolis, Caesar crossed the Enipeus River. Just to the north of the river, on a plain covered with ripening wheat, he made camp. The town of Pharsalus, modern Farsala, was on a hill some way off in the distance. Several miles to the northwest, the plain was fringed by the foothills of Mount Dogandzis. Here Caesar was determined to do two c10.qxd 12/5/01 5:21 PM Page 111

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things: cut down the wheat as soon as it was ripe so his men could get some fresh bread in their bellies again, and then offer Pompey battle.

A few days later, Pompey marched into Thessaly and linked up with Scipio, father of the beautiful young Cornelia, his fifth wife. Cornelia, widow of Publius Crassus, youthful commander of the 7th Legion who had impressed many in Gaul before dying with his father at Carrhae, was waiting on the island of Lesbos to the east with Pompey’s youngest son, nineteen-year-old Sextus Pompey. Already couriers were on their way to Cornelia with news that her husband had achieved a great success at Durrës and he was now in hot pursuit of Caesar. The message-bringers assured Cornelia that Caesar’s ultimate defeat was now just a matter of time.

As the legions of Pompey’s two armies combined with cheers of greeting, and as friendly banter was exchanged between the ranks, Pompey honored Scipio by appointing him his co-commander. Giving up his tent to him and pitching a new one for himself beside it, he also issued orders for the trumpeters who sounded the changes of watch every three hours to do so from outside Scipio’s quarters, as a mark of respect.

The combined army resumed the pursuit of Caesar, finding him on the plain of Farsala. Pompey chose a camp site three miles to the northwest of Caesar with the advantage of higher ground, making his camp in foothills fringing the plain to the west, with Mount Dogandzis rising behind him.

Pompey was still reluctant to commit to a full-scale battle. Despite his success at Durrës, and even though he outnumbered Caesar, he had little confidence in the majority of his infantry. He knew that Caesar had by far the most experienced legionaries, and when it came down to it, experience would win out over numbers. Pompey’s plan now was to avoid a major encounter and wear Caesar down through a war of attrition. Few of the generals and senators with him were of the same view, as they repeatedly informed him. This was the big difference between Pompey and Caesar, and why Pompey had so much popular support—he would listen to others, although for now he put off their demands for a decisive battle by saying the time was not yet right. But, says Caesar, so sure were members of Pompey’s party that victory was just around the corner that they began to argue among themselves about who should receive what official appointment after Caesar had been defeated.

Pompey called a council of war. He told his colleagues to be neither overconfident nor impatient, but assured them that they would indeed do battle with Caesar in due course, and that when the armies met he would defeat Caesar before the two battle lines even came together. The secret, he confided, lay with their cavalry.

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In his memoirs, Caesar disparaged General Labienus, his former deputy and now Pompey’s cavalry commander, claiming that at this war council Labienus assured his fellow Pompeian generals that all Caesar’s best troops were dead and that the bulk of the Caesarian soldiers now were inexperienced, poor-quality levies from Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul. This claim by Caesar is just plain silly. From highly placed deserters such as Roucillus and Egus, Labienus and his fellow commanders knew precisely what the makeup of Caesar’s army was, knew about his four veteran Spanish legions, including the 10th, knew that just two of his legions, the 11th and 12th, were from Cisalpine Gaul, and that they were made up of highly experienced men. Besides, both Pompey’s best legions, the 1st and the 15th, were from Cisalpine Gaul.

From other sources we know what Labienus actually said that day. He did encourage his colleagues, but not by putting down Caesar’s troops. All Romans were highly superstitious and much influenced by omens, and Labienus, probably a member of several priesthoods, assured his fellow commanders that all the omens were auspicious and pointed to a victory for Pompey. General Labienus then led all present in an oath that once they went out to fight they would only return to camp as victors. Pompey’s supporters enthusiastically took the oath, and left the meeting in high spirits.

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XI

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THE BATTLE OF

PHARSALUS

aius Crastinus moved among his men, checking their equipment.

He was no longer chief centurion of the 10th. That role had gone
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to a younger centurion the previous year, on Crastinus’s retirement. But on his recall, Caesar had welcomed Crastinus back to his legion with the rank of first-rank centurion, and for this operation had placed him in charge of 120 volunteers of the 1st Cohort of the 10th Legion, putting them in the front line. Caesar had once more placed the 10th Legion on his extreme right wing, the attacking wing. Much would depend on the 10th today.

Crastinus assured his comrades that they had just this one last battle to face as he moved along the line. He would have noticed a change of attitude among the men of the 10th since his return to its ranks. A lot of them had probably complained that Caesar no longer valued the 10th, that he treated it no better than the new Italian units with their raw, weak-kneed recruits. He’d broken his promise, and used the Germans as his bodyguard, not the 10th.

Now aged between thirty-four and thirty-seven, Crastinus had served Caesar for twelve of his seventeen years with the legions and was fanatically loyal to his general. He would have been quick to remind his comrades that Caesar had chosen the 10th to accompany him in the invasion’s first wave and now given them place of honor on the right wing.

But there were apparently many in the 10th who sympathized with their countrymen in the 7th, 8th, and 9th, who were now eighteen months past their due discharge date and yet, as they complained, Caesar had not said a word about when they could go home.

“Remember what Caesar told us at Brindisi before we embarked,” Crastinus would have been telling his men. “One last campaign, one last battle.”

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Caesar himself records Crastinus saying: “After today, Caesar will regain his position, and we our freedom.”

It was midmorning on August 9, 48 b.c. As Centurion Crastinus took up his position on the extreme left of his front-line detachment, he faced across the field of swaying, ripening wheat to the army of Pompey the Great formed up some 450 yards away. Ever since the two sides had arrived on the plain of Farsala several weeks earlier, each had felt the other out, with cavalry skirmishes bringing a handful of fatalities on both sides, including one of the Allobroges brothers who’d defected to Pompey. More than once, Caesar had formed up his army in battle order in the wheat field, encouraging Pompey to come down off his hilltop and enter into a contest. Each time, Pompey stayed put. And each time, Caesar edged a little closer to the hills.

Then, early this morning, Caesar had broken camp. According to Plutarch, he was planning to march to Scotussa. Caesar himself says he’d decided to keep constantly on the move, seeking supplies for his army and leading Pompey a merry dance until the ideal opportunity for a battle presented itself. Even as his legions’ tents were being folded away and packed onto the baggage train, cavalry scouts came to Caesar to tell him that there was movement at Pompey’s camp. And as the lead elements of Caesar’s column marched out the front gate of his camp, more scouts arrived with the news that Pompey’s troops were beginning to come down from their hill and line up in battle formation—on the plain, giving up the advantage of higher ground. This was an obvious invitation to Caesar, and he accepted it.

“Our spirits are ready for battle,” Caesar says he declared. “We shall not easily find another chance.” He quickly issued orders for his red ensign to be raised as the signal for battle, and for the army to wheel about and form up on the plain opposite Pompey’s troops. According to both Appian and Plutarch, Caesar called out to his men, “The wished-for day has come at last, when you shall fight with men, not with famine and hunger.”

Summoning his senior officers to a brief conference, he’d ordered the same dispositions as the last time the army formed up for battle. Then, turning to General Publius Sulla, who would command the division on the right wing of the battle line, he told him to call for volunteers from the 10th to form the front line and lead the charge, knowing the untried legions in the center would be inspired by the performance of the famous 10th.

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in a total of three battle lines. Beside the 10th, making up the rest of the right division, stood the men of the 11th and 12th Legions. General Sulla had already taken up his position on the right with his staff.

Caesar’s center was commanded by General Domitius Calvinus, who had previously led the screening force in eastern Greece. As was the custom, the weakest troops took the center. In this case the central division was made up of three of the new legions raised in Italy the previous year, the 25th, 26th, and 29th.

The left wing was commanded by Mark Antony, once again holding the post of second-in-command of the army. With him stood the experienced Spanish legions he’d brought over from Brindisi and commanded at Durrës. The 9th was on the extreme outside, with auxiliaries and slingers filling the gap between them and the Enipeus River. The 8th was stationed next to the 9th. Both legions had been so depleted by the flu epidemic and then the casualties at Durrës that Caesar had ordered them to work together during this action and operate as one legion. Next to them stood the men of the 7th Legion, adjacent to the central division. All told, leaving just two cohorts guarding his camp and the baggage, with his 27th and 28th Legions absent in southern Greece, now under General Fufius, and eight assorted cohorts garrisoning three towns on the west coast, he was able to field nine legions in eighty understrength cohorts, totaling twenty-one thousand foot soldiers.

To counter Pompey’s cavalry massing on his right, Caesar deployed his own thousand-man cavalry, Germans and Gauls, supported by auxiliaries, extending from the 10th Legion’s position. His mounted troops and the auxiliaries had cooperated well in skirmishes against Pompey’s cavalry in the week or so leading up to the battle, and Caesar was hoping they would do the same again today to counteract Pompey’s significant superiority in cavalry.

Facing him, at Caesar’s estimation, Pompey had forty thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry. As he came down onto the plain that morning, Pompey left seven cohorts drawn from a number of his least experienced legions to guard his camp, supported by auxiliaries from Thrace and Thessaly. General Afranius, who’d escaped from Spain to join Pompey, had come under severe criticism from Pompey’s other generals for losing seven legions to Caesar in Spain, despite the fact that he’d managed to bring thirty-five hundred men of the 4th and the 6th with him to Greece, and he’d been given the humble job of commanding the defenders of the camp, accompanied by Pompey’s eldest son, Gnaeus, who was probably in his midtwenties at this point.

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Young Gnaeus would have been hugely frustrated at being left in the comparative safety of the camp, with the second-rate troops and thousands of noncombatants. He’d proven his bravery and military skill when he’d commanded the fleet from Egypt that had destroyed Caesar’s shipping along the Adriatic coast during the winter. But his father was obviously anxious to protect his son and heir. This act is indicative of the negative mind-set of Pompey on the day of the battle. Forced to agree to the battle by his impatient supporters at the meeting two days before, he still had little confidence in most of his infantry.

According to both Plutarch and Appian, Pompey had been awakened by a disturbance in his camp in the early hours of that morning: just before the last change of watch, excited sentries had witnessed a fiery-tailed meteor race across the sky from the direction of Caesar’s camp and disappear beyond the hills behind their own. Once awake, Pompey confided to his staff that he’d been dreaming he was adorning the temple of Venus the Victorious at Rome. Julius Caesar’s family claimed descent from the goddess Venus, and Pompey’s supporters were delighted by the dream, seeing it as an omen that Pompey soon would be celebrating the defeat of Caesar. Pompey wasn’t so sure; the dream could also be interpreted that he was saluting Caesar as victor.

Unbeknownst to Pompey, the previous evening Caesar had issued as his army’s watchword, or password, for August 9, “Venus, Bringer of Victory,” quite unaware that Pompey planned to bring on a battle next day.

A new watchword was issued every day in Roman military camps.

Polybius tells us the watchword was issued for the next twenty-four hours by the commanding officer just before sunset. The tribune of the watch then distributed it on wax sheets to his legion’s guard sergeants, who in turn passed it on to the duty sentries in a strictly regulated process that required the prompt return of the wax sheets. Anyone trying to enter a Roman camp without knowing the watchword for the day was in trouble.