Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome (34 page)

According to Suetonius, the astonished Caesar exclaimed, “This is violence!”

At the same moment, at Cimber’s side, Senator Publius Servilius Casca produced a dagger. He struck at Caesar’s neck. The blow was not well aimed and caused only a superficial wound. Caesar looked around at Casca in astonishment.

“Vile Casca!” Plutarch says Caesar cried, as he shook himself free of Cimber’s restraining grasp and grabbed at the knife to prevent Casca from striking a second time, and adding, “What’s the meaning of this?”

Casca, panicking, looked around for his brother, a fellow senator.

“Brother, help!”

Casca’s brother and a score of others were drawing weapons from under their garments. They came at Caesar with blades raised, each determined c16.qxd 12/5/01 5:32 PM Page 178

178

C A E S A R ’ S

l e g i o n

to fulfill a vow to strike a blow against the Dictator. Twenty-three conspirators plunged swords or daggers into Caesar. Among them was Marcus Brutus, the young man Caesar had treated like a son and whose life he had spared after the Battle of Pharsalus.

Suetonius writes of some authorities claiming that as Brutus struck, Caesar gasped in Greek, “You, too, my child?” A line that would inspire Shakespeare.

In their frenzy, several of the assassins wounded each other. Caesar rose, staggering as he tried to escape the blows, attempting to strike back with his writing stylus, a mere pen-knife, according to Suetonius. At a later autopsy, Suetonius tells us, the physician Antistius concluded that a blow to the chest had been the fatal one—a blow by Brutus, Suetonius says, although Appian records that Brutus struck Caesar in the leg.

According to Plutarch and Appian, as the meeting hall emptied in a panic-stricken rush, Caesar fell at the foot of a statue of Pompey. And, like Pompey, he tried to cover his face with his cloak in his last moments.

There, in his fifty-fifth year, and almost seventeen years to the day since he’d raised the 10th Legion and commenced his march to power, Gaius Julius Caesar, Dictator of Rome, perished.

c17.qxd 12/5/01 5:33 PM Page 179

XVII

:

MARK ANTONY’S MEN

he father of the legion was dead. The 10th had been created by Caesar, and had marched for him throughout its entire seventeen-

T
year existence. Suddenly its leader, and in many ways its reason for being, had gone. The men of the legion would have been stunned by their leader’s murder, but as Rome’s premier legion, Caesar’s finest, it would be expected to play a prime role in the tumultuous events that followed Caesar’s bloody end.

In the months after Caesar’s assassination his murderers advocated a return to the old republican system, where Rome was governed by the Senate. But other men felt that the day of the autocrat was there to stay, and several factions emerged as leading men of the state jockeyed for position.

Mark Antony now saw himself as a legitimate successor to Caesar. In the division of the postwar empire, he’d been given the governorship of Macedonia, and allocated five legions to police the province.

The 5th Legion, we know, was sent from Spain to Macedonia to join this force of Antony’s. Just as Caesar’s legions due for discharge had their ranks filled with new recruits, so the former Pompeian legions in Spain were also reenlisted. The 4th, finally defeated by Caesar at Thapsus in Tunisia, had been reenlisted in Spain, and it marched with the famous 5th to Macedonia. Of the other legions in Spain as the civil war came to an end, the 7th soon marched to Italy and was at Rome at the time of Caesar’s murder,
en route
to join the Parthian expedition. But for the time being the 10th was one of the legions that remained in Spain.

Within a few months of Caesar’s death, Antony was feeling too far from the action, and asked the Senate to give him another province, Cisalpine Gaul, on Rome’s northern doorstep. It was then being governed by Marcus Decimus Brutus Albinus, one of the assassination conspirators, and Antony suggested that the Senate swap their provinces. Albinus didn’t want to make the transfer. So, late in the summer of 44 b.c., with things
179

c17.qxd 12/5/01 5:33 PM Page 180

180

C A E S A R ’ S

l e g i o n

moving too slowly for him, Antony took the initiative, shipping four of his legions back to Italy via Brindisi. The fifth was to follow shortly after.

Technically this was an act of war against the Senate, in the same way that Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon had been five years earlier.

:

Brutus and Gaius Cassius, another leader of the assassination plot and a onetime admiral, had been serving as praetors, and in the new year they were due to take up provincial governorships previously allotted to them by Caesar—Macedonia for Brutus, Syria for Cassius. But since Caesar’s death Antony had convinced the Senate to take these appointments away from the pair and give them lesser posts, to their great dissatisfaction. In September they fled Rome in fear of Antony. Reaching Macedonia, they claimed their former appointments given to them by Caesar, and summoned the six legions stationed in Syria by Caesar in the buildup for his planned Parthian campaign. In the face of this military muscle, by the following February the Senate would appoint them to jointly command all Rome’s eastern possessions, from the Adriatic to Syria.

In November, as Antony marched his army up through Italy to the Po to take Cisalpine Gaul from Albinus by force, and with the Senate having met at Rome and declared him an enemy of the state for his precipitous and illegal action, two of his legions deserted him—the 4th and the Martia, the latter, it seems, being the legion left by Pompey in Cilicia in 49 b.c. when he created the Gemina from two existing units. Shrugging off this setback, Antony pushed on with his three remaining legions and lay siege to Albinus and his four legions at the city of Mutina, modern Modena, just north of the Po River on the Aemilian Way.

With Antony pushing his luck too far, a coalition quickly formed against him. An unexpected key player in this coalition was Caesar’s eighteen-year-old great-nephew Gaius Octavius, who, according to the terms of Caesar’s will, had become his adopted son and heir on his death and who was now legally known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, or as we know him, Octavian. He had hurried back to Italy from Apollonia in Greece, where he’d been studying for the past six months in preparation for joining Caesar on his eastern military expedition. The youth proved a surprisingly able political performer, attracting many of Caesar’s former followers to him. By the spring of 43 b.c., empowered by the Senate and supported by the two current consuls, Generals Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa, and with a force of five legions, including the 7th as well as the recently defected 4th and Martia Legions under General Sulpicius c17.qxd 12/5/01 5:33 PM Page 181

M A R K A N T O N Y ’ S M E N

181

Galba, Octavian marched from Rome to Albinus’s relief. At the same time, Marcus Lepidus marched from Spain into southern France to occupy Transalpine Gaul and so deny it to Antony, leading the legions then based in Spain, including the 10th, across the Pyrenees.

On April 14 and 21 of 43 b.c., in successive battles near Modena, Antony was defeated by Octavian’s legions, suffering 50 percent casualties.

Among the fatalities on the other side were the two consuls, General Hirtius, Caesar’s aide for so many years and editor of his writings, and General Pansa, who died a lingering death. Antony, taking his surviving troops, retreated west across the Alps into Transalpine Gaul. As he did, Lepidus marched east to confront him with seven legions—units he’d brought from Spain plus at least one of the legions then based in Transalpine Gaul.

The two armies came together at a river, almost certainly the Var, border between Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, and camped on opposite banks. To indicate a lack of aggressive intent, Antony purposely didn’t build the normal fortifications around his camp, instructing the substantially outnumbered men of his three legions to merely set up their tents in the open. Before long the men of the two armies began to fraternize, and on their own initiative built a bridge of boats to link their camps.

In Lepidus’s camp, the men of the 10th Legion, who’d been commanded by Antony several times during the civil war, began speaking favorably of him to their fellow legionaries. This caused Lepidus to fret that his men might desert him, so, according to Appian, that night he divided his legions into three divisions and sent them on tasks that were designed to test their loyalty. The plan backfired, with the men of the last watch opening his camp gates and admitting Antony and his troops. Lepidus, by all accounts a weak man both physically and emotionally, quickly came to an accommodation with Antony, with the result that the 10th and his six other legions transferred their allegiance to Antony, although nominally Lepidus was still in command.

Antony’s force was also soon reinforced by three legions led by Publius Ventidius, one of the new consuls for the year, which came over to him with their commander, so that he now had a formidable force of thirteen legions. By November the astute young Octavian had drawn Antony and Lepidus into a three-way pact. Their junta, called by latter-day writers the Second Triumvirate, took the official title Board of Three for the Ordering of State. At a meeting at Bononia, modern Bologna, they decreed death sentences on numerous opponents, including the orator Cicero, and divided the empire among them. Antony was to take the East as his personal fiefdom. But there was a small problem: Brutus and Cassius controlled the East, and, determined to resist the Triumvirate and restore the c17.qxd 12/5/01 5:33 PM Page 182

182

C A E S A R ’ S

l e g i o n

Republic, they had assembled a formidable army of twenty legions in Macedonia—the six from Syria; two more that Brutus raised in Macedonia; and another twelve brought together from their bases throughout the East by Cassius, including the four left by Caesar in Egypt to support Cleopatra’s reign since his departure in 47 b.c.

By the summer of 42 b.c., leaving Lepidus, now bestowed with Caesar’s former lifelong post of
pontifex maximus,
and a consulship, in charge at Rome, Antony and Octavian set off to invade Greece. Jointly they would take their legions, including Antony’s 10th, against Brutus and Cassius, who had based themselves in Macedonia at a town on the military highway between Durrës and the eastern provinces. A town called Philippi.

c18.qxd 12/5/01 5:38 PM Page 183

XVIII

:

PHILIPPI AND ACTIUM

hilippi, the modern Filippoi, was probably already several hundred years old when King Philip II of Macedon fortified the town
P
in 356 b.c. to protect neighboring gold mines. The town lay about eight miles from the port of Neapolis, present-day Kavala, where Brutus and Cassius established their supply base in 43 b.c. The two renegade generals built separate camps for their legions two miles west of Philippi township, each on a hill about a mile apart. They had chosen their positions so they could straddle the Egnatian Way, the military highway from Thessalonika in the east to Durrës on the Albanian coast in the west, with their positions partly protected by marshland. Once the camps were completed, they built fortifications from hill to hill that linked the two. And there they waited for the triumvirs and their armies.

In the midsummer of 42 b.c., Antony and Octavian sent an advance force of eight legions across the Adriatic from Italy. Led by Generals Lucius Decidius Saxa and Gaius Norbanus Flaccus, this force skirted around Philippi and occupied the passes east of Brutus and Cassius, cutting them off from reinforcement and overland supply by their supporters in the East.

Now, in the last days of summer, Antony and young Octavian chanced their arms against their opponents’ powerful fleet of 240 warships, and, driven by strong winds, successfully brought a second convoy to Greece’s shores and landed a further 20 legions.

Octavian, who would turn twenty-one on September 23, was frequently unwell in his youth, and during the voyage to Greece he fell seriously ill. So, leaving the feverish young man at Epidamnus to recover, Antony took control of their joint forces, including the 10th Legion, and advanced into Macedonia to confront their enemies. Finding the town of Amphipolis occupied by friendly local forces, Antony left one legion there with his heavy baggage, then continued to advance toward Philippi.

183

c18.qxd 12/5/01 5:38 PM Page 184

184

C A E S A R ’ S

l e g i o n

In mid-September, Antony came marching up to Philippi, and, to the surprise of his opponents, built a camp on unfavorable ground on the dusty plain not far from their position. The ailing Octavian joined his army ten days later, arriving on a litter, too weak to walk. In the meantime, the two armies had begun facing off, lining up daily to confront each other across the plain. Each day, both sides formed up nineteen legions and twenty thousand cavalry in battle order. Many of the legions confronting each other on the plain at Philippi had until recently fought on the same side. For Antony and Octavian, legions including the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th faced legions such as the 27th, 28th, 36th, and 37th fighting for Brutus and Cassius.

Brutus and Cassius were reluctant to join battle, hoping instead that their opponents would run out of supplies, so they kept their troops on higher ground and refused to let them come down onto the plain. For ten days this went on, and all the while Antony had a detachment secretly building a path through the tall reeds of the marsh toward Cassius’s fortifications.

Once the path was complete, Antony sent a unit along it on a commando raid that seized several opposition outposts, to the surprise of Brutus and Cassius. To counter and outflank this pathway they started building a line of entrenchments. Then, one day in early October, close to noon, as their troops were on the verge of cutting off the commando force with their creeping trench line, Antony unexpectedly led his legions forward in a charge at the defenses below the hill occupied by Cassius’s camp. Antony not only surprised the opposition; he also surprised Octavian’s legions, which were lined up in battle order in front of their camp at the time. They stood and gaped as their comrades of Antony’s nine legions charged the enemy.