Julius Caesar (27 page)

Caesar was well aware that time was on the side of his enemy, and that Pompey could wait as long as he pleased, with his supplies to hand and his fleet in command of the sea, while his own troops, already short of provisions and without the comfort of a garrison town behind them would gradually disintegrate. Action suited his nature, but it was clear in any case that it was up to him to make a move. Pompey had advanced a little north of the Apsus and Caesar followed suit, offering battle—which was refused. He now decided on a bold stroke and took his army round behind Pompey’s lines, suddenly interposing himself between Pompey and his base of Dyrrachium. The latter, outgeneraled, realized Caesar’s intentions too late. He was forced to move his army onto a rocky plateau south of Caesar, whence he maintained his connection with Dyrrachium by sea. Despite the magnitude of the task, Caesar called on his veterans to surround the enemy with encircling fortifications (such as veterans from Gaul will have well remembered), while Pompey, in order to extend his already overextended enemy, built a semicircle of fourteen miles of fortification around his own troops. Throughout the spring and well into the summer the long chess game between the two masters carried on with move and countermove, Caesar seeking to complete the encirclement of his enemy while the latter blocked him wherever possible. The old master showed that he had lost none of his cunning in this positional warfare and, as events were to show, could even turn the tables on his younger opponent.

In the middle of July, when Caesar’s investing forces were stretched to their utmost capacity, and when he was planning to arrange a break into Dyrrachium with the aid of traitors in the city, Pompey suddenly struck at the southernmost point of Caesar’s line where it hinged upon the sea. He burst through, driving the Caesarians in flight, and set about consolidating his position and establishing a new camp on the spot. At a single blow the months of work that had gone into investing the Pompeian army were nullified. In a desperate attempt to conceal the gravity of this defeat from his troops Caesar attacked a legion that had become isolated in the enemy’s camp. He was on the point of taking possession of it when the sudden appearance of Pompey, coming up in support with some five legions, caused a panic among Caesar’s forces. They turned and fled, at least one thousand men were lost and—that gauge of morale—thirty-two standards. Coming at such a moment, when Caesar’s main strategy had been smashed, this flight and these losses suggested that the end might be in sight.

From within his interior lines of communication Pompey looked set to lash out and destroy the whole Caesarian army. It may be that he did not realize the full gravity of what had happened, or it may be that his nature was always to “Hasten slowly,” but Pompey failed to take immediate advantage of the day’s events. Caesar regrouped and the success was not followed up. After a desolate night, in which Caesar felt that he had entirely mishandled the campaign and that he should have marched deep into Greece rather than linger by the sea where Pompey had all the advantages, he roused himself next morning. He then gave his troops one of those speeches which, although we have his quoted words, can only be imagined in terms of its effect upon his hearers. The previous night he had privately said to his staff, “The war would have been won today if the enemy had a man who knew how to conquer.” Now he reminded his troops of their successes throughout the long campaign, with Italy rid of the enemy and Pompey’s forces in Spain completely worsted; the hostile sea was safely crossed, and all that they had now suffered was but one reversal of fortune. “If things do not always fall right, Luck can be given a helping hand.” Discipline was quickly restored when the runaway standard bearers were simply demoted (rather than executed) and no one else was blamed. Appian tells us that “his army was so moved by his moderation that they asked to march immediately against the enemy.”

Caesar had other plans for them. He had thought things out in the night, and was not going to waste any further time on trying to patch up an operation that had gone wrong. He was not a believer in that “Consistency which,” as Bernard Berenson observed, “requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago” and had changed his whole plan of campaign. He urged his men to restrain their eagerness for battle until such time as he should call on them to show it. During the night he had the whole of his army move out quietly by various routes deep into Greece. At dawn next day Pompey was left to contemplate the ravaged entrenchments surrounding him and the empty land where his enemy had previously been.

27

Pharsalus

AFTER a brief visit to Apollonia in order to hospitalize the more seriously wounded, as well as raise money for the future pay of his troops, Caesar took the route for Thessaly where he hoped to find the people well disposed toward him. But bad news travels fast and, particularly in a country like Greece that had suffered so much from the Romans, the word was that in this civil war Pompey was winning. Caesar’s defeat at Dyrrachium, even though he had managed to turn it into a planned withdrawal, had been magnified by messengers from the Pompeian forces into a major defeat followed by the flight of Caesar and his army. (Indeed, several friends of Pompey, eager to curry favor, had already left for the island of Lesbos, where his wife was living, to tell her that her husband had won and the war was over.) The Greeks, therefore, whom Caesar had hoped to find friendly because of his previous favors to their country, adopted a hostile attitude and at Gomphi, the first town they came to in Thessaly, he found the gates of the city closed against him. Caesar knew that an example must at once be made in order to restore his prestige with the Greeks, and it was not difficult to induce his half-starved soldiers to attack the city once he promised to give it over to them to plunder—something they had seen nothing of for many months. Gomphi fell before the assault of these veterans and the rest of Thessaly trembled—and changed its mind about the attitude to be adopted toward Caesar. Revived by food, laden with loot, and flown with wine (particularly the Germans, Plutarch remarks) the “defeated” army passed on, “reveling on their march in Bacchanalian fashion” and their morale completely restored. After seven days of forced marches they reached the plain of Pharsalus where they pitched camp. It was high midsummer and the crops everywhere were ripening—one reason for Caesar’s decision to call a halt. The Pompeians meanwhile, most of them convinced that Caesar’s army was disheartened and disintegrating, had marched to Larissa north of Pharsalus, where they had joined up with his father-in-law, Metellus Scipio and the troops he had been raising in the East. Pompey’s army now numbered in the region of 50,000 as well as 7,000 cavalry, an arm upon which he greatly relied for he knew that Caesar was short of horsemen. Meanwhile, encamped in the plain not far from the town of Pharsalus on the north bank of the river Enipeus, Caesar awaited him with his veterans—not more than 22,000 of them and only 1,000 cavalry.

Pompey’s army, as it marched down from the north, was outwardly full of confidence but inwardly riven by dissension. Pompey himself seems to have mistrusted the feeling prevalent among his staff and the senators and young nobles who surrounded him that Caesar was a spent force. He had had months to take stock of his enemy’s troops and he may well have suspected that his own men, and particularly the allies from the East who had just joined, were not of the same caliber. Having at least twice as many men as Caesar, he seems to have favored a war of attrition, just as at Dyrrachium where it had finally paid off. His followers, on the other hand, were eager for battle, eager to conclude this war that they felt was already nearly over, and to proceed to the distribution of the spoils. So confident were they that they were already arguing as to who should have which office in the immediate future, who should be consul and when, who should take over which particular property of which Caesarian, and who should administer the various rich lands of the empire. Pompey’s wise plan to wear Caesar down, and to use the weight of his numbers to cut Caesar’s communications and gradually starve him out, was interpreted by them as the delaying tactics of an aging man. Pompey, they reckoned, was enjoying his moment of power and was procrastinating because he did not want to become once more only a senior senator and citizen among his fellows. Labienus, eager for whatever motives to see his former chief defeated, was among those who pressed most eagerly for action.

On 9 August 48 BC the encounter at long last took place between the two men, the two factions and the two armies who were disputing the leadership of the Roman world. Pharsalus was obscure, even the exact location of the battlefield is still disputed, but the result was to influence the history of the Western world and—like a great stone dropped into a lake—the ripples from it spread out almost endlessly.

Caesar had been trying to provoke a battle ever since Pompey’s forces arrived at Pharsalus and set up camp on slightly higher ground. Everything seemed in their favor: more men, younger men, a superior position, and some seven times the number of cavalry, and at last Pompey was provoked, more by his own supporters one suspects than by Caesar’s openly displayed readiness to put the matter to the test. When Pompey finally deployed his troops for battle, everything was organized according to the kind of carefully-prepared plan that had always suited him well, whereas there was initially some confusion on Caesar’s side. Despairing that Pompey would ever attack, and ever conscious that his troops had almost exhausted their supplies, he was on the point of withdrawing to some other area where the land was still untouched and fresh food was available. But the moment that news was brought to him of activity in the enemy camp, soldiers drawing up in formation, cavalry massing, eagles and standards moving into position, Caesar gave the order to run up the signal for battle. The men who had begged to be allowed to engage the enemy again after the failure at Dyrrachium “all wanted to get to grips with the enemy,” writes Dio Cassius, “for they felt that after their ten-year-long experience of war they were more than a match for green troops.” They felt also that they did not have the stamina to continue the long business of fetching and carrying, preparing encampments and digging fortifications. Let them get it over and done with now—once and for all.

Caesar quickly appraised Pompey’s carefully thought out dispositions. His right wing was anchored on the Enipeus river and held by some of the cohorts who had been brought back from Spain before the general capitulation in that province; the center by two legions of recruits from Italy; and the left wing, under Domitius whom Caesar had defeated at Corfinium, by the two seasoned legions which Caesar had sent back to Italy on orders from the senate in the year 50. Here also was Labienus in command of all the cavalry, as well as the archers and slingers. It was noticeable that Pompey’s command post was also established at this point: clearly Pompey had packed all his punch on the left. He intended to roll up Caesar’s right wing, while holding in the center and his own right, then cut the Caesarians to pieces as his cavalry outflanked and surrounded them.

Caesar accordingly put Antony on his own left wing, with the other ex-tribune Cassius Longinus in the center, while he himself took the right wing facing Pompey with his favorite Tenth Legion. Caesar’s troops were drawn up in the usual Roman formation of battle, a triple line, but with one notable exception. As soon as he had observed Pompey’s dispositions, he had taken one cohort from the third line of each of the legions to make a reserve force of six cohorts. This he stationed on the right flank, immediately behind his own cavalry, and inclined at an angle to the right. Since it was to be anticipated that his 1,000 horsemen would soon be driven back by Pompey’s 7,000, this reserve was designed to attack the enemy cavalry if they burst through. They were given special orders to “strike the enemy in the face” whereas normally a soldier would go for a mounted man’s legs and thighs. “These young dandies,” he said, knowing that the cavalrymen would be nobles and knights, “unused to battles and wounds, bedecked with flowers and wearing their hair long, will be anxious to protect their handsome faces, and will not like the glint of steel shining in their eyes.” His other instructions were for the third line of legionaries not to engage until he himself gave the order, for he wished them to be a fresh reserve. As for Pompey’s allies in the center, he said, they were easterners and slaves and could almost be ignored since they would run. He also gave his officers a list of those among the enemy who were to be spared if encountered during the battle, among whom was Marcus Brutus, Servilia’s son and possibly his own.

The attack was begun by Caesar’s troops, one veteran centurion Gaius Crastinus (to whom a monument was later dedicated) leading the way, while Pompey’s men stood their ground under orders to let the enemy make the running. Caesar’s experienced legionaries, javelins leveled, having run half the distance between the armies and seeing they were not being met, halted to catch their breath, carefully dis-charged their javelins, and then took up the charge again. The behavior of Pompey’s allied troops was as Caesar had anticipated, and it was only where Roman met Roman (sometimes tragically calling one to another by name) that the battle was bitterly contested. As expected Pompey’s cavalry attack was too much for Caesar’s horsemen to withstand and they gave ground. Now was the decisive moment, and the reserve cohorts “made such a vigorous charge,” as Caesar writes, “that not one of them resisted.” Pompey’s cavalry was overwhelmed by the unexpected attack. Plutarch confirms that the tactics which Caesar had commended to these legionaries proved irresistible:

Unwilling to endure the blows aimed at their faces—a danger for the present, a blemish for the future—they [Pompey’s cavalrymen] could not bear the sight of the javelins, but turned their heads and covered their faces to protect themselves.