Julius Caesar (26 page)

He moved with great circumspection through this minefield. He fully realized that, if he listened to the demagogues who were calling for the abolition of all debts, he would automatically antagonize those with money and power. At the same time he could not ignore altogether those many debtors whose votes were one of his sources of political strength. By a dictatorial edict, with the force of law, he came down against abolition but declared that the real estate offered by debtors, which creditors were obliged to accept in settlement, was to be assessed by specially appointed commissioners at its pre-war values. This was the best that he could do but it made no one happy, for the debtors had hoped to escape without payment and the creditors were bitter at receiving less than they felt was their due. In order to promote the liquidity of money he now limited the amount that anyone might hold in cash to 15,000 denarii. Naturally, this was difficult to enforce, but Caesar totally rejected the suggestion made in plebeian circles that slaves should be rewarded for denouncing masters whom they knew to be hoarding money. Rich men were uneasy enough as it was, and Caesar’s measures, though they could hardly be popular, were felt to be far less severe than many of the wealthy had expected. Gradually confidence began to be restored on both sides and the movement of money began once again throughout the land.

Caesar now turned to the vexed questions of legislation which had been left in abeyance, first of all seeing to it that many friends who had been condemned to exile were allowed to return to Rome. Juba, the King of Numidia, who had defeated and killed Curio in his North African campaign and who staunchly supported Pompey, was declared an enemy of the Roman people. The people of Gades, in Spain, who had been promised their citizenship for their support of Caesar, were rewarded and the long-promised citizenship rights were awarded in Cisalpine Gaul. The descendants of all the victims of Sulla’s rule were also recalled from exile.

These measures, to restore the economic stability of the state and to secure the support of many who now owed their return to his favor, were carried out, with his usual capacity for hard work and high speed, in ten days. He was named consul on the eleventh and, laying down the dictatorship, immediately left Rome for Brundisium. It is recorded that the people everywhere indicated that they wanted peace rather than a victory, but Caesar knew that he had done all that was possible to come to terms with Pompey. Peace would only be attained by his defeat.
 

26

War in Greece

ALTHOUGH it was the depth of winter Caesar determined to cross the Adriatic as soon as possible. Undoubtedly he knew that Pompey was still in eastern Greece, and Pompey will equally have heard of Caesar’s arrival at Brundisium from his agents in the port. But Pompey was unlikely to believe that his enemy would dream of crossing the stormy Adriatic—harassed by the dreaded northerly (the modern
Bora)
and guarded also by his fleet under Caesar’s long-term enemy and one-time fellow consul, Bibulus.

However Caesar was disappointed to find that there were not enough ships available to transport all the men he needed, and dismayed to find the low morale and poor health of the troops. The epic marches down the length of Italy, short rations, and ill health had reduced his army by many thousands (there had been desertions as well). They were also daunted by the thought of a dangerous sea-crossing, followed by further campaigning—once more against their fellow Romans, so with little chance of profit. Arms and equipment were short and the commissariat was a far call from that which had operated in Gaul. Caesar’s instinct (almost invariably right in such matters) was to act, to move at once before poor morale should weaken into indiscipline and shortage of food turn into actual privation. The answer, it seemed to him, was to sail as soon as possible, seize the ports and towns in Epirus, the eastern coast of Greece, and rearm and revictual at Pompey’s expense before the latter could move back across Greece to check him. A week in Brundisium was enough to tell him that Pompey’s fleet was not keeping a tight blockade of the coast, being confident that no invading army would try to cross at that time of the year. But although the weather was often bad, Caesar knew that even in December/January calms intervened long enough to make the seventy-mile crossing feasible. He had hoped for more ships and more men, but all that he could muster was some 15,000 legionaries and 600 cavalry. As he was fond of saying, “Luck is the greatest power in all things and especially in war,” adding, “Luck can be given a helping hand.” It was here that in character he scored over Pompey, for the latter, a master planner and organizer, was accustomed to the deliberate, almost “set-piece” battles of the East and not to the rough-and-tumble impromptus with which Caesar had grown familiar in Gaul. An enforced delay due to bad weather held up the first invasion fleet and, while the troops were waiting aboard in harbor, two more depleted legions arrived, so that it was with about 20,000 men that he finally set sail early in January 48.

Landing unopposed on the coast of Epirus, and undetected by any ships of Pompey’s fleet, he moved rapidly toward Apollonia, a number of almost undefended small towns automatically coming over to what was, for the moment at least, the strongest side. Bibulus, waiting with the bulk of the Pompeian fleet at Corfu to guard the coast of Greece, flew into a rage when he learned of the landing and put to sea at once, determined to catch the invaders on the beachhead. He failed in this, but managed to fall in with the empty ships as they headed back to Italy to collect further troops. For the first time in his life he had some small revenge on Caesar—capturing thirty of the ships and killing all their crews. Ashamed at having failed in his main duty of preventing the invasion, he determined to see that no more ships got through and that the coast was tightly blockaded. In this he was successful, isolating Caesar from Mark Antony and his other lieutenants in Italy, preventing the, much-needed reinforcements from arriving, and sowing some doubt in Caesar’s mind as to whether he had been abandoned by his supporters in the homeland. It was three months before Antony was able to join him, bringing a further three legions and 800 cavalry.

Being master of Apollonia and another major town, Oricum, Caesar now turned to the politics of peace. He had been enjoined by both senate and popular assembly, and indeed all the people of Italy, to bring the matter to a conclusion without any further bloodshed. Civil war, they had clearly indicated, was not wanted and peace was desired by all. As bearer of his proposals to Pompey he sent the latter’s former adjutant, Vibullius Rufus, who had been taken prisoner first of all at Corfinium, released and then captured once again in Spain. Caesar’s proposals were that both sides should disarm, their respective generals taking an oath to do so in front of their assembled troops, and that the operation should be concluded within three days. Since neither he nor Pompey had been able to reach an agreement, the whole matter should next be referred to the senate and the popular assembly. In this way the public interest would be served and both leaders must accept their decision.

There can be no doubt that Caesar was accurately expressing the wishes of the people in these simple proposals, which also conformed exactly to his own wishes. Having eliminated Pompey’s power in Spain, having all Italy behind him (including the city of Rome and its magistrates), and himself holding the rank of consul, Caesar was politically in so superior a position that he could hardly be challenged. Pompey, on the other hand, was faced with the fact that his army and his supporters were seriously disturbed by Caesar’s unexpected arrival in Greece, and that if he refused the proposals it would be tantamount to accepting the blame for the continuation of the war. Nevertheless, on receiving the message as he was making for Dyrrachium (Durazzo), he was compelled to turn them down. For the first time since Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, Pompey was now technically and morally in the wrong.

Dyrrachium, the main seaport on the Greek mainland looking toward Corfu, and almost impregnable by reason of the broad marshlands that surrounded it, was the favorite debarkation port for Roman armies and the starting point of the Via Egnatia, the road that ran across Greece to Thessalonica. Caesar well knew that this was Pompey’s main base and commissariat center, and he was eager to reach it before his opponent. The conflict now turned into what amounted to a race to get to Dyrrachium first, both armies traveling by forced marches night and day, the men hardly pausing to eat, stragglers falling behind to die in the harsh wintry weather, and both sides destroying the country through which they passed in order to deny it to the other. “If he or Caesar,” wrote Appian, “saw dust or smoke in the distance each reckoned that this marked the passage of their foe, and urged on their troops even faster.”

It was Pompey who just managed to reach Dyrrachium first, thus fending Caesar away from his main store and supply base and preserving for himself the port from which he hoped ultimately to launch his attack on Italy. Caesar was forced to take up his stance on the north bank of the Apsus near Apollonia, while Pompey advanced against him as far as the river; and thus the two sides lay for several weeks facing each other without any major move being made. Caesar for his part was still waiting for his reinforcements from Italy, and Pompey was training his recruits up to a condition where he hoped they would match Caesar’s battle-hardened veterans. By March Caesar was deeply worried by the lack of word from Italy, let alone the long-expected reinforcements, and began to wonder if he had been betrayed. He decided, as so often, that no one but himself could deal with an unknown and somewhat intangible situation. He remembered his earlier crossing of the Adriatic in a small boat and decided to repeat it. Plutarch tells the story:

At last he resolved upon a most hazardous experiment, and embarked, without anyone’s knowledge, in a boat of twelve oars to cross over to Brundisium, though the sea was at that time covered with a vast fleet of the enemies. He got on board in the night time, in the dress of a slave, and throwing himself down like a person of no consequence, lay along the bottom of the vessel. The river Anius was to carry them down to sea, and there used to blow a gentle gale every morning from the land, which made it calm at the mouth of the river by driving the waves forward: but this night there had blown a strong wind from the sea, which overpowered that from the land, so that where the river met the influx of the seawater and the opposition of the waves, it was extremely rough and angry; and the current was beaten back with such a violent swell that the master of the boat could not make good his passage, but ordered his sailors to tack about and return. Caesar, upon this, discovers himself, and taking the man by the hand, who was surprised to see him there, said “Go on, my friend, and fear nothing: you carry Caesar and his fortune in your boat.” The mariners, when they heard that, forgot the storm, and laying all their strength to their oars, did what they could to force their way down the river. But when it was to no purpose, and the vessel now took in much water, Caesar finding himself in such danger in the very mouth of the river, much against his will permitted the master to turn back. When he was come to land, his soldiers ran to him in a multitude, reproaching him for what he had done, and indignant that he should think himself not strong enough to get a victory by their sole assistance, but must disturb himself, and expose his life for those who were absent, as if he could not trust those who were with him.

Approaches were made to Caesar by members of Pompey’s party suggesting to him that they might be prepared to lift the blockade of the coastline, although they could still hold out no prospects of a positive response by Pompey to his peace proposals. But Caesar realized that, although the blockade was preventing his reinforcements from crossing the Adriatic, it was causing great hardship and difficulty to the blockading fleet. Pompey’s men could not get ashore either for stores or water so long as he maintained his grasp on the coast, and he decided to make no concession, since they themselves had little to offer him. (He had already managed to get a staff officer across with a message to Antony stressing the urgent need for reinforcements, and the latter was preparing to leave with a convoy while his legate Gabinius, mistrusting the sea crossing, was marching his troops round from Italy through Illyria.)

Remembering the mood of the Pompeian soldiers in Spain, Caesar used the long period of inaction to try and undermine the morale of his enemy. Before Ilerda there had been informal talks between individual soldiers and centurions, and here in Greece these were soon followed by discussions between members of Caesar’s staff and their opposite numbers in Pompey’s army. The latter’s staff, however, finally realized the danger and decided to prevent any further fraternization; a rain of missiles was directed at some of Caesar’s officers as they were attempting to address some Pompeian troops. Labienus, Caesar’s former right-hand man, finally broke up this informal meeting by shouting out: “Stop talking about any agreement! There can be no peace as far as we’re concerned until the head of Caesar has been brought to us!”

Bibulus, worn out by his exertions on the wintry Adriatic, died of illness—but the blockade still continued. And then there came a day when the fleet of Antony was seen off the Illyrian coast, driven by the wind past Dyrrachium to fetch up some thirty miles to the north of Caesar, safe from the enemy. A few days later their forces were united and Caesar now had at his disposal some 34,000 soldiers and 1,400 cavalry—sufficient to enable him to initiate some action, even though still considerably outnumbered by Pompey’s forces. Pompey however, true to his nature, had no intention of moving out to give battle, but was content to stay within his long fortifications, hoping that sickness and shortage of food would gradually wear down Caesar’s troops until they could be dispatched with ease or forced to surrender. He saw the treacherous marshlands around Apollonia as his greatest ally.