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ANCIENT WARFARE
ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY
(continuation)
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PART II-D: Julius Caesar (100 - 44 B.C. )
The Civil War
 "…they [Caesar and Pompey] were both reaching out after the supreme power and were influenced greatly by native ambition and greatly also by acquired rivalry, - since men can least endure to be outdone by their equals and intimates; hence they were not willing to make any concessions to each other…in temper they differed from each other to this extent, that Pompey desired to be second to no man and Caesar to be first of all." Dio's Roman History, Book XLI.
"The Civil War was conclusively over. The human price had been high, for it has been estimated that perhaps 100,000 Roman citizens had lost their lives since the opening of hostilities in 49. No one was left in the field for Caesar to fight. His leading opponents were dead. The Republic was dead too. He had become the state." Everitt, Cicero, 235. Caesar and one legion began the Civil War of 49 BC by defying the Senate, crossing the Rubicon and marching on Rome. The legions of the Republic were now under Pompey's command. Caesar appears to have been aware that, by this act alone, he would forever attach a certain ignominy to his own reputation, which (as he often said) was dearer to him than his life. This decision has been, over the centuries, the single most condemned or extenuated act of Caesar's life. The ensuing Civil War would effectively complete the destruction of the Roman Republic and deliver the state to one-man rule for the next five centuries. For well over a year Caesar had sought every type of political accommodation with the Boni, (what Cicero called the "just men"), that obdurate minority of Roman senators who were determined at almost any cost to strip him of his army in Gaul and prosecute him for perceived crimes against the State. When it became clear in late 50 BC that no accommodation except surrender would serve and when the Consuls gave Pompey command of the Republican armies, Caesar acted with the lightning decisiveness that, had the Gauls been consulted, they could have warned the Pompeians to fear.
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ACROSS THE RUBICON On or before January 7, 49, the Senate voted to demand Caesar's resignation from command. Within days, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and moved into northern Italy with one legion. He had carefully positioned other legions in Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul in case events moved against him and held these in reserve. When word reached him of the Senate's decree he harangued his soldiers with what was to become his standard version of events, telling them that "…They [the hostile senators] have seduced Pompey . . . and led him astray, through jealous belittling of my merits . . . I ask you to defend my reputation and standing against the assaults of my enemies." Caesar, The Civil War, I.8. Throughout the course of the war, Caesar consistently claimed hat he acted merely defensively, to defend his own dignitas (that combination of integrity, reputation, and self-esteem no Roman could live without). Repeatedly he emphasized that the sole cause of the war was a corrupt cabal of Senators who were trying to destroy him solely through personal jealousy and hatred. And, to later historians at least, Caesar's arguments had some merit, however overridden by his own ambition. A letter attributed to the historian Sallust (a supporter of Caesar who was expelled from the Senate in this year) sums up the rage felt by Caesar's supporters at the selective hostility of his enemies: "Either out of a spirit of sheer perversity, or an overriding desire to obstruct you, Pompey has sunk so low as to put weapons into the hands of the enemy; you must therefore use the same methods to restore the government as he has to overthrow it." Quoted in Saaben-Clare, 177.
 Stone marker commemorating Caesar's arrival in Rimini, January, 50 BC. |
The senatorial party had given command to Pompey but, as Pompey slowly gathered his legions, Caesar took city after city in northern Italy, many by peaceful surrender. It appeared that all of northern Italy would fall to Caesar without a serious battle. Within weeks, Rome was in a sufficient state of panic and rumor for Pompey to announce that he and the Republican senators were leaving the city. He is said to have decreed that any Romans who remained thereafter would be considered Caesar's allies and his enemies. Pompey intended to fight Caesar in asia, an area of the Roman world in which he had strong connections and many client-kings. Unfortunately, in the scramble to evacuate Rome, neither Pompey nor the Senators thought to take charge of Rome's treasury, stored under the Temple |
of Saturn. Caesar found it intact when he arrived. He and his bodyguard showed up one morning to impound the entire Roman treasury - 15,000 bars of gold, 30,000 bars of silver, and 30,000,000 sesterces. When a young Tribune, Marcellus, remonstrated with Caesar, saying the funds belonged to the legitimate government of Rome, Caesar noted pleasantly that it would be much easier for him to kill Marcellus than to threaten to do so. He got the money. The move was unpopular but, at a stroke, Caesar's war chest vastly outweighed Pompey's. Cicero, representative of many, metaphorically wrung his hands and vacillated, finally choosing the side of his senatorial colleagues. Every family in Rome had a similar choice to make. When Sulla marched on Rome a generation and more earlier, his triumph had been followed by massive proscriptions, murders, confiscation of his enemies' property; many were sure that the same fate would befall them under Caesar. Instead, Caesar from the first showed a policy of clementia (mercy), which reaped rewards and earned the grudging admiration of his bitterest enemies. This shrewd political move won many nervous Romans to his side of the quarrel. Time and again he pardoned whole cities and armies standing against him, releasing his enemies with pacific words to join Pompey if they wished. It is an irony of history that most of his murderers, save one, were men who had fought against him and been pardoned, in some cases more than once, during the Civil War. Caesar pursued Pompey's army to Brundisium (Brindisi) where he was just too late to prevent Pompey, the Consuls and senatorial followers, and the army from decamping for the Balkans en masse on March 17, As for Caesar, "Finding that the consuls had crossed the sea he returned to the city [Rome], and after rendering to the senate and also to the assembly of the people an account of his motives and of the deplorable necessity of his position, in that he had been driven to arms by others, who had themselves resorted to arms, he resolved to march on Spain." Paterculus, Roman History. Within days of taking forcible possession of the treasury, Caesar left Lepidus and Antony to hold Rome and Italy, and departed to fight Pompey's legions in Spain, fearing to leave them in his rear when following Pompey to the east.
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CICERO AND CAESAR Many in Italy, knowing that Pompey had the resources to gather a vast fleet and that Caesar had no fleet and scant time to build one, put their money on Pompey. Cicero's letters in this period are particularly fascinating, not only for his wonderfully immediate description of the dangers on all sides but because he preserves copies of letters from Caesar to Cicero and others. His personal choices were stark. To leave Italy, following Pompey, would declare him to Caesar as an enemy; bad politics, if Caesar won. To stay behind would lose him all credibility with the ruling Optimates and Pompey, his longtime patron. As Cicero wrote in mid-February, "Pompey alone counts with me, because of what he did for me, not because of the weight of his name. What weight after all would it carry in this cause? When all of us feared Caesar, Pompey was his friend; now that he has started to fear him he expects us all to be Caesar's enemies." Cicero, 64. To Cicero himself, Caesar wrote on March 26 that "You rightly surmise of me (you know me well) that of all things I abhor cruelty...I am not disturbed by the fact that those whom I have released are said to have left the country in order to make war against me once more. Nothing pleases me better than that I should be true to my nature and they to theirs." Cicero, 70. Yet, as Cicero writes Atticus on March 28, Caesar had visited him in Formiae and determinedly sought to bring Cicero to Rome, probably to give respectable color to the rump Senate left behind. Cicero had nervously but determinedly demurred unless Caesar restored the prewar status quo of the republic. Caesar kept his claws sheathed, but Cicero clearly saw them: "But we were wrong in thinking him accommodating; I have never found anybody less so. He said I was passing judgment against him, that the rest would be slower to come if I did not." Worse, "After a long discussion, [Caesar said] 'Come along then and work for peace.' 'At my own discretion?' I asked. "Naturally,' he answered, 'Who am I to lay down rules for you?' 'Well,' I said, 'I shall take the line that the Senate does not approve of an expedition to Spain or of the transport of armies into Greece and,' I added 'I shall have much to say in commiseration of Pompey.' At that he protested that this was not the sort of thing he wanted said.'" Cicero to Atticus, 71.
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THE SPANISH AND HOME FRONTS, 49 BC It took Caesar's augmented legions less than six months - to August, 49 - to break the resistance of the port of Massilia (Marseilles), which had effectively declared for Pompey and to destroy Pompey's armies in Spain. In Rome the depleted Senate had elected Caesar dictator. In only eleven days in Rome in December, 49, Caesar took firm charge of the Roman state. He was lawfully elected as Consul. He filled vacant priesthoods and arranged for the celebration of deferred religious festivals. The chronic sickness of the economy and its disintegration since the Civil War began had led many to call for the immediate abolition of standing debt, which would have exacerbated the economic collapse. Caesar, using dictatorial powers, issued a well-considered edict obliging creditors to accept in settlement land at prewar values (assessed by independent arbitrators) and ensured that interest already be paid would be deducted from all capital debts. He had, throughout 49, used his powers to grant long-deferred citizenship rights to Latin communities and localities in Cisalpine Gaul and Spain. He issued grain to the people of Rome and, in late December, laid down the dictatorship and left to join his armies in Brindusium to go after Pompey. 
The type of sailing/galley vessel which crossed regularly across the Adriatic in Caesar's time.
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DYRRHACHIUM TO PHARSALUS In the major port of Brundisium, the lack of shipping was critical. In spite of six months of canvassing throughout Italy, Caesar had transport only for 15,000 legionaries and 6700 cavalry. Nevertheless, he crossed the Adriatic with part of his army in January, 48, under the noses of Bibulus (Caesar's old enemy and co-consul) and his navy, patrolling the Adriatic in the hopes of preventing Caesar's crossing. Not to be caught a second time, however, Bibulus increased patrols along the whole coast of Epirus-Illyricum so successfully that the balance of the army under Antony could not cross over from Italy until April 10, a three-months' delay. This left Caesar insecurely on the Balkan Peninsula, outnumbered by Pompey's forces by as much as seven to one. Although Caesar's unlooked-for appearance on the coast of Epirus had momentarily panicked Pompey's army, Pompey refused Caesar's peace overtures and succeeded in reaching the fortified and well-supplied city of Dyrrachium before Caesar. Impatiently then desperately waiting for the balance of his legions, Caesar is reported to have attempted to sneak back to Brindusium himself to fetch them on a storm-tossed boat, promising the unhappy captain that he could succeed because he carried "Caesar and Caesar's luck." When Antony and the legions finally rejoined him in April, Caesar's forces totaled about 34,000 infantry and 1,400 cavalry; Gelzer estimates that Pompey's troops probably outnumbered his by 25%. A series of skirmishes and an eventual siege around Dyrrhachium - Caesar attempted to block in Pompey's entire army with fortifications that eventually exceeded 22 square miles - were without military success. Caesar was also operating with diminishing supplies for his army while Pompey could be comfortably resupplied by sea. Pompey broke through Caesar's siege lines in July, and Caesar, with supplies almost exhausted, withdrew southeastward into Thessaly. Pompey followed and, on August 9, 48 BC, the armies met on the plains of Pharsalus described by Paterculus as "…that day of carnage so fatal to the Roman name, when so much blood was shed on either side, the clash of arms between the two heads of the state, the extinction of one of the two luminaries of the Roman world." Velleius Paterculus, 2.52. It seems that both commanders were determined to make Pharsalus the definitive battle of the war. There are hints that Pompey's army was so confident of victory that it had made every preparation for eventual triumph. Cicero writes that there had been much talk at Pompey's headquarters of revenge and proscriptions, once Caesar was disposed of. A major quarrel developed in the last war council about who would be eligible for the praetorship; others of the Boni squabbled about who would take over Caesar's position as Pontifex Maximus. Caesar's forces were outnumbered at Pharsalus but his confidence was apparently unshaken. As he later wrote dryly in The Civil War, "…they all thought only of offices, financial rewards, vengeance on their personal enemies and of how to exploit their victory instead of how to win it." On the morning of August 9, Caesar (who had vainly sought battle for several days) saw the massing of opposing armies and realized that Pompey's reluctance to fight had finally been overcome. By all accounts he was also able, with the prescience of genius, to deduce what Pompey's battle-plan would be and to prepare his own counterstrokes accordingly. When Pompey massed his cavalry on his left wing to destroy Caesar's forces, Caesar placed cohorts of infantry to meet them and held hidden units in reserve. With orders to strike at the faces of the young Pompeians, Caesar's legions panicked Pompey's cavalry, which broke and fled. Caesar then threw in reinforcements and outflanked Pompey's entire army. When night fell on August 9, the bulk of Pompey's allied armies were entirely routed and Pompey and the senators were fleeing for refuge. The balance of his legions surrendered to Caesar the next day. As Caesar inspected the thousands of slain, Suetonius famously quotes him saying "They would have it so. I, Gaius Caesar, should have been condemned despite all my achievements, had I not appealed to my army for help." Following the battle, he sought out and pardoned hundreds of opponents, including Brutus, son of his longtime mistress, Servilia, who would head his assassins in later years.
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CAESAR IN EGYPT
| Pompey and a small party fled by ship to Egypt while Caesar slowly followed by land. On September 28, 48 BC, upon his arrival in Egypt, Pompey was summoned by ministers of Ptolemy XIII and assassinated at the command of the young pharaoh's ministers. Apparently the Egyptians thought that Caesar would be placated if they removed his inconvenient rival. When Caesar reached Alexandria on October 2, he was outwardly horrified and is said to have shed tears when shown Pompey's severed head. He certainly must have been relieved; he had far more pressing political concerns. Hostile Republican forces still remained in parts of Africa and Spain. Caesar's arrangements in and control over Rome were being challenged and he was badly in need of money for his troops. Egypt was the richest country in the ancient world and ripe for persuasion. |
 Purported bust of the Greek queen, Cleopatra, circa 1st century BC. |
Caesar, claiming a large debt owed to him by the Egyptian government (which he badly needed for his own mopping-up operations) stayed in Alexandria and found himself in the middle of a power struggle between young Ptolemy and parties supporting his elder sister, Cleopatra. For a variety of political reasons, not least perhaps because he'd become infatuated with the young Queen, he chose to support Cleopatra. The king's party almost immediately besieged him and his small forces in Alexandria. For roughly five months, hostile forces hemmed Caesar in. During frequent skirmishes Caesar was nearly killed on more than one occasion. Reinforcements finally arrived from Asia Minor in March 47. On March 27, Caesar won a great victory against Ptolemy's forces on the Nile. He installed Cleopatra as sole queen and left Egypt for Asia Minor at the beginning of June. Shortly thereafter, she gave birth to a son she claimed was Caesar's and whom she named after him. The boy was nicknamed Caesarion. Before returning to deal with Rome, Caesar was determined to crush all surviving military resistance and for this he needed money. In Asia Minor were lately-rebellious kings who had raised money for Pompey. Caesar viewed these funds as due to him and intended to get them.
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Continuation of Part II-D Ancient Roman Military: Julius Caesar
Gallic Wars
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