Julius Caesar (28 page)

The flight of his cavalry spelled the ruin of Pompey. The archers and slingers behind them fell before the advancing Caesarians and the legion on Pompey’s left wing, which had been protected by his cavalry, was completely exposed and began to be thrown back too. The allies, crying “We are lost!” fled in a panic, and Pompey’s whole center began to collapse. Always sensitive to gains available from political warfare, Caesar had the heralds proclaim that the battle against Romans was now over and that only the allies should be pursued. The word passed through the entangled lines and the main action stopped. Pompey who, along with many others of the leaders, was already seeking refuge in the camp, found himself forced to flee yet again.

The battle of Pharsalus was over—or would have been had Caesar been Pompey. But, unlike his enemy, he “knew how to conquer.” He urged on his exhausted troops—the whole battle took place on a plain in the height of Grecian summer—to pursue the Pompeians, who were fleeing to the surrounding hills. It was not until nightfall that the pursuit was abandoned, and at dawn next day those who had man-aged to escape, being cut off from water, came down from the hills and surrendered in their thousands. Pompey and all the leaders had got clean away, only Caesar’s old foe Domitius lay dead on the field. Casualties among the Pompeians were heavy (Caesar says 15,000 but Appian 6,000), while according to Caesar only 200 of his own men were killed (Appian says 1,200), among whom were 30 centurions.

Caesar found Pompey’s tent empty when he and his officers went through the camp, and he ate the meal prepared for his rival. The tents of the other Pompeian leaders are said to have been crowned with myrdes, shiny green with their white and scented flowers—something that must have pleased Caesar since the myrtle was sacred to his ancestress Venus and it was in her name “Venus Victrix” that his troops had advanced to battle. A contrast is deliberately made between the austerity of the Caesarian camp and that of these aristocratic
Optimates,
where precious fabrics hung and goblets and pitchers of wine stood ready for the victory feast. Caesar made a point of burning unread the correspondence between Pompey and his father-in-law Metellus when it was brought to him. Later, walking among the bodies on the battlefield, he said: “It was all their own doing. Despite all my achievements I, Gaius Caesar, would have been condemned if I had not appealed to my army for help.” Pompey and his followers meanwhile were riding hard for the Aegean coast, headed for the East where his star had risen.

28

In the East

UNLIKE the Pompeians, Caesar and his followers did not arrogantly anticipate an ultimate victory. For the moment it was enough to have won at Pharsalus, and Caesar’s troops still had not much more than their pay to show for this long and hard war against their fellow Romans. Furthermore, all the resources of Asia and the eastern provinces remained at Pompey’s disposal—as well as Africa and a fleet which ruled the Mediterranean. Unfortunately for him, he was to find out that the apparent affection and respect which he had enjoyed in the past from the countries of the East was as evanescent as a courtesan’s smile.

Caesar’s determination to make sure that a victory was carried through to its conclusion, which had been shown by his pursuit of Pompey’s troops after Pharsalus and which had resulted in the surrender of nearly all his army, was equally matched by his determination to continue his policy of clemency toward the defeated. The only exception he made to this was that those whom he had spared once were usually, though not always, excluded from any further quarter. He was well aware that he would need many of Pompey’s leading supporters in the reorganization of the Roman world that must follow the Civil War. It was not only their names but their brains that would be essential in dealing with the multitude of problems that the war had created, and the even greater multitude that had led to it. Among those who surrendered to him after Pharsalus was Servilia’s son Marcus Brutus who had not been in the action but who came to see him while he was at Larissa on his way toward the Aegean coast in pursuit of Pompey. Whether Brutus was indeed his son or not, he was the kind of young man that Caesar wanted among his supporters. In any case, his permanent affection for Servilia will have inclined him toward Brutus, and the fact that he was Cato’s nephew and emulated the latter’s conservative views made him a valuable acquisition.

Meanwhile Pompey was reported to have made for Amphipolis, an important town near the Macedonian coast, where it was expected that he would take ship for Asia Minor. Caesar followed at the head of his cavalry but, finding him already flown and having no transports for his troops, made his way up to the Hellespont, where he could feel sure of finding some vessels available and where a short and easy crossing awaited them. Pompey was already finding out the fickleness of fame and the friendship that is so rapidly withdrawn when conquerors became losers. Reaching Lesbos where his wife awaited him (falsely cheered by the news that his friends had brought her after Dyrrachium) he found the Greek inhabitants already asking them to leave, for they naturally had no wish to be the scene of any further battles, nor to provoke the anger of Caesar (who had helped to besiege them all those years ago in his first military posting). Many options seemed open to Pompey—Armenia, Cilicia, scene of his triumph over the pirates, Syria and even Parthia (where Crassus had perished). But on all sides he learned that his presence would be unwelcome, and even Rhodes, his next port of call, while remaining polite was clearly cool toward him. Next he heard that Antioch in Cilicia had come out in favor of Caesar, so he went on to Cyprus
en route
for Egypt, having decided that would be the best place in which to raise money and to secure grain for his troops and further military support. Ptolemy Auletes, the Flute-Player, had partly owed his throne to Pompey and, although he was dead, it was his son Ptolemy XIII who now occupied the throne. In Alexandria Pompey hoped to claim some practical return for his previous help and patronage.

Caesar meanwhile was in Asia with two legions, after an astonishing crossing of the Hellespont in which he was only saved from disaster by that audacity, or supreme self-confidence, which never deserted him. While Caesar’s troops were being ferried across in such lightweight transports and skiffs as were available, a Pompeian squadron often galleys, northward bound to join up with some states in the Black Sea who were favorable to Pompey, came upon them. Caesar himself was in one of these makeshift transports but, far from taking to flight, boldly approached the commander’s galley and demanded his surrender. A squadron of ten warships could easily have sunk Caesar’s straggling armada in the Hellespont, but their commander must have decided that Caesar was going to win the war, for he promptly, as a suppliant, begged him for pardon. Happily reinforced by this useful escort of warships, Caesar proceeded on his way.

Caesar was well aware that for the past years Pompey’s had been the name which represented Roman power and authority throughout Asia and that it was the princes and provinces of Asia which had given him soldiers and ships for the current struggle. He knew also from his youthful experiences in Cilicia and Bithynia something of the temperament of the East and the way in which rulers were regarded in that part of the world. It was not just as a tourist, then, that he now visited the sights of that great land, but as one who was eager to establish his connection with the history not only of Rome but of the East itself. The poet Lucan in his epic
Pharsalia,
written in the reign of the Emperor Nero, points out the many connections between Caesar and the great Homeric past exemplified by the ruins of Troy which he now visited. Troy, after all, was the city of his ancestor Aeneas, son of the goddess Aphrodite, and it was as a son returned to the ancient home of his family that he now stood among its ruins. The pursuit of Pompey could wait while he established his links with the past and with his divine origins. In various temples of Asia, notably Antioch and Pergamum, miracles were said to have occurred at the time of the battle of Pharsalus, and not surprisingly Caesar does not hesitate to report them in his account of the war. The Greeks of Asia Minor, accustomed to paying divine honors to monarchs, were quick to see in Caesar, by reason of his accomplishments and his origins, a new ruler of Rome who could be equated with Alexander the Great. What more natural than that this new Alexander should look toward the city that bore his name—and toward which the defeated Pompey was making his way?

Embarked aboard a large galley in company with his wife Cornelia, Pompey was looking to Alexandria as the place in which to rest and restore his fortunes. What he could not know was the extent of the civil war now raging in Egypt between brother and sister. Civil war, fratricide, patricide and all the variants of murder within a family were not uncommon in the relationships between the incestuous, scorpion-like Ptolemies. On the death of Ptolemy Auletes in 51 the throne had been occupied by his daughter Cleopatra VII and her brother Ptolemy XIII: she was then eighteen and he ten. Despite the discrepancy of age there can be little doubt that they were formally married. To maintain their hold over their Egyptian subjects and the powerful priesthood, the Ptolemies had to practice the traditional royal incest of ancient Egypt, for as gods on earth, it was essential that they, like the Pharaohs, should mate only with one another (or, at any rate, for it to appear so). But by the law of female succession the monarch’s eldest daughter had inherited the Kingdom, and Cleopatra VII had shown from an early age that she had a strong character and was politically intelligent, something which did not please the guardians appointed to look after the interests of her brother while he was still a minor. They wanted an amenable monarch whom they had trained, through whom they would wield power and whom they would marry off to an even younger sister, Arsinoe, in due course. In the year 48 Cleopatra, realizing that there was a plot afoot to have her murdered, fled the country and made her way to Syria where she proceeded to rally an army to relieve her brother and his guardians of the Egyptian throne.

It was into this Ptolemaic spider’s web that Pompey inadvertently blundered when his ship put in at Pelusium, the port to the east of Alexandria at the mouth of the easternmost branch of the Nile. At this very moment the young King Ptolemy with his general Achillas and his army was encamped there, ready to repel the threat of Cleopatra and her army from Syria. When Pompey sent ashore to acquaint the Egyptians with his presence and to ask permission to land in their country there was a furious debate among Ptolemy’s advisers. Should they accord Pompey asylum since he had been Egypt’s patron and had preserved the Ptolemaic dynasty, or send him on his way so as not to provoke the victorious Caesar? But if they told him to go elsewhere, might he not choose Syria, where Cleopatra would certainly make use of Pompey’s formidable military abilities? Best, they decided, to lure him ashore and make away with him, thus also ingratiating themselves with Caesar. “And besides,” they concluded, “dead men don’t bite.”

The three councillors and guardians of the young king were Achillas, commander of the army, Theodotus, a Greek rhetorician in charge of the boy’s education, and Pothinus, a eunuch, who was minister of finance and a typically Alexandrian palace intriguer. Having decided to kill Pompey, Achillas, as army commander, was elected to go out to meet him in a small boat, accompanied by a Roman officer who had once held command under Pompey and a Roman centurion. Designed to reassure him, they intended to murder him. They urged Pompey to come back with them to meet the King, saying that the port was too shallow for his galley to enter. As he stepped ashore, first one and then the other two drew their swords and stabbed him in the back. Drawing his robe over his head (as his enemy Caesar was one day to do) he fell dying. So ended Pompey the Great, the man who had cleared the Mediterranean of pirates, one of the outstanding generals of his time, but who had allowed men more cunning than himself to play upon his vanity. As J. A. Froude puts it: “Unfortunately he had acquired a position by his negative virtues which was above his natural level, and misled him into overrating his capabilities.”

Caesar sailed for Alexandria from Rhodes, not waiting for the bulk of his troops to arrive and taking with him only a few cohorts. He was confident that the knowledge of his victory would be sufficient to put the Egyptians on his side and that Pompey had few enough men with him to present any real resistance. The aim of the three guardians of the young Ptolemy was, above all, to keep the Romans out of Egypt and to try to preserve such independence as was possible in a Mediterranean that was by now almost completely in the hands of Rome. Caesar, therefore, was little more welcome than Pompey, and their hope was that when they showed him evidence of Pompey’s death they would persuade him to proceed happily on his way to Rome.

The production of Pompey’s severed head and his signet ring was conclusive enough, but Caesar, after seeming to be moved to tears by the sight of his dead adversary (and his former son-in-law), sent the ring on to Rome as evidence and showed no sign of wishing to leave. He was in something of a quandary, for the followers of Pompey had dispersed in all directions, Africa was still held by his partisans, and he himself had incurred immense debts—largely to his troops. The Greek campaign had yielded nothing, except for the sack of Gomphi, for he had given strict instructions that the Greek cities should be left alone, and while in Asia, in order to secure the support of people who had been bled white by Roman tax gatherers, he had even been compelled to reduce the taxes. Not only his troops, but even his officers were owed money and if, as seemed likely, further campaigning lay ahead, Caesar needed to see that those who followed him found it worth their while. Egypt now presented him with a justifiable excuse for improving his financial position, for there could be no doubt that Caesar was owed an enormous sum by the heirs of the late Ptolemy. He had backed the Flute-Player’s restoration as king and had secured him his title of “Friend and Ally of the Roman People” to the tune of millions of denarii—still unpaid. Furthermore, the Egyptian government had provided fifty warships for the Pompeian cause (these had just returned) and some indemnity could certainly be exacted for this unfriendly action. Accordingly, Caesar decided to go ashore in Egypt not as a Roman general but in his capacity as consul representing the Republic on a business matter.