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ANCIENT WARFARE
ANCIENT ROMAN MILITARY
(Conclusion)
Julius Caesar
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Image, Jean-Leon Gerome's "The Death of Caesar," 1867
”…according to him, our problems are insoluble: ‘for if a man of Caesar’s genius could find no way out, who will find one now?" Cicero to Atticus, April 7, 44 BC In the last five years of his life, Caesar prevailed in Civil Wars in Asia and Spain, conquered Egypt, rose to undreamed-of power in the Roman state, rent the fabric of the mos maiorum, was honored like a god for the first time in Roman history, and murdered by his closest associates when they believed he sought the power in name which he already held in fact. For Caesar, as later said of the murdered “Now he belongs to the ages.” The question of the precise nature of Caesar's contribution to the ages has been debated since his death. He is viewed as the callous destroyer of the Republic; as the far-sighted realist who saw clearly the need for one-man rule to fulfill Rome's Imperial destiny; as the reformer who fought the decay of the status quo; as the megalomaniac who leveled Rome’s foundations for his own glory. He was, to some extent, all of these things. Today, there are those who admire him and those who despise him, but no historian of Roman (and European) history can afford to ignore him. PHARNACES AND THE BATTLE OF ZELA: CAME, SAW, CONQUERED When Caesar left Cleopatra in an Egypt firmly under Rome’s protection in June, 47 BC, he intended to crush all remaining Republican resistance in Asia. Pharnaces, king of the Cimmerian Bosporus (the Crimea), had been a client of Pompey’s. Taking advantage of the confusion of Civil War, Pharnaces had landed on the north coast of Asia Minor to win back his father’s empire, threatening Roman territories in Pontus and Bithynia. Proceeding from Egypt towards Pontus, Caesar met with defeated client-kings who had allied with Pompey during the late Civil War, forgiving the majority for their opposition (most prominently pardoning Gaius Cassius and Marcus Junius Brutus, who would spearhead his assassination). He rewarded those who had sent him assistance in Egypt with citizenship and tax exemptions. Caesar arrived in late July in the vicinity of Pharnaces’ forces near the Pontic town of Zela. Suetonius continues, ” Five days after his arrival [approximately August 1, 47], and four hours after catching site of Pharnaces, Caesar won a crushing victory at Zela; and commented drily on Pompey’s good fortune in having built up his reputation for generalship by victories over such poor stuff as this.” Over a year later, at Caesar’s Pontic triumph, one of the decorated wagons carried only a simple three word inscription, now part of the legend, describing the swift savagery of Caesar’s victory: VENI, VIDI, VICI ("I came, I saw, I conquered"). Leaving Asia under firm control, Caesar took ship for Rome, landing at Tarentum on September 24, 47. Civil unrest had been increasing in the city for months. Caesar had again been appointed dictator when the news of Pharsalus reached the Senate in Rome. He had left (Marc Antony) as his magister equitum (Master of the Horse) to control the city. Antony had permitted conflicts between his followers and Dolabella's to lead to street fighting and riot in which as many as 800 Romans were murdered. Caesar’s stay in Italy was also intended to prepare him for continuing the war in Africa, where a coalition of Pompeian senators, including , still held out. He dropped the inept Antony (who did not serve him again in a significant position for two years), arranged for future elections of consuls and magistrates, and briskly proceeded both to raise money for his African campaign and quell a veterans’ mutiny on the Campus Martius. One of his more controversial measures was to substantially raise the number of Senators, both to fill the depleted ranks after the defeat of Pompey and to add his own supporters. Suddenly, instead of the august patricians of the Senate house, Rome buzzed that centurions, men without name or reputation, even barbarians (supposedly in hairy breeches, although more likely provincial Roman citizens) were sitting in the hallowed halls of the Senate. During this and other brief trips to Rome, Caesar also saw to the massive rebuilding campaign he had begun years before out of his private funds. He restored the Curia Hostilis (the Senate house), completed the great Basilica Julia, and further completed the vast complex of temples, markets, and meeting halls known as the orum Julium, just outside the traditional forum. In it he built a temple to his alleged ancestor, Venus (The Temple of Venus Genetrix) as he had vowed on the morning of his battle with Pompey at Pharsalus. Before leaving for Africa in December, 47, he again resigned the dictatorship and set sail with six legions, five of recruits, and 2,000 cavalry. The remaining Republican senators who had supported Pompey had yet to admit complete defeat. 
Coin minted to pay Caesar's troops during the Civil War. The elephant (of Africa) treads on the serpent
The main force of the Senatorial armies was stationed near Utica in what is now Morocco. Caesar's smaller force was outnumbered by the senatorial armies, commanded by Scipio and Labienus, and in confederacy with Juba, king of Numidia. Caesar’s troops slowly joined him and, at the Battle of Thapsus n April 6, 46 BC, he defeated the Pompeians so effectively that Republican opposition in Africa ceased. Cato committed suicide as soon as he heard of the defeat, partly to deny Caesar the pleasure of triumphing over him. Other commanders and leaders fled and were tracked down and killed with the exception of Pompey’s two sons, Gnaeus and Sextus, who successfully reached Spain.
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RECONSTITUTING ROME The war in Africa was over, and Caesar returned to Rome on July 25, 46 BC. After three years of endless conflict, the Optimate oligarchy had been destroyed in the field and Caesar was now free to make a political settlement. Caesar would have less than two years left to him to redraw the Roman political structure in the face of nearly universal calls to restore the Republic now that the war was over. urged him to return to a system of government in which he probably had little faith. Rome wished a return to its former insularity: an Empire controlled by one city-state. Caesar had spent more than half his adult life in Rome’s provinces. He saw provincial political enfranchisement as a vital necessity for the workable growth of empire. With the power of absolute autocracy (although he always consulted the Senate and followed the usual forms of consular and other offices), Caesar shouldered through his reforms; yet he appeared to grow careless about the honors he chose to accept. Since at least 48, he had given permission to petitioners in Asia Minor to be honored as a god, perhaps understanding that, in the East, it was difficult to separate the ruler from the ruler-cult. All these elements combined to create a man more comfortable with the idea of exercising sole power than of deferring to the remnants of the Senatorial opposition that, in his view, had forced him into war. At the same time, as his fortunes rose, it became less possible to keep men around him who did not grovel in view of his newfound powers. Even Cicero, for twenty years his often bitter opponent, could address him flatteringly in the Senate: ”But in this glory, O Caius Caesar, which you have just earned, you have no partner The whole of this, however great it may be,--and surely it is as great as possible,--the whole of it, I say, is your own. The centurion can claim for himself no share of that praise, neither can the prefect, nor the battalion, nor the squadron. Nay, even that very mistress of all human affairs, Fortune herself, cannot thrust herself into any participation in that glory; she yields to you; she confesses that it is all your own, your peculiar private desert. For rashness is never united with wisdom, nor is chance ever admitted to regulate affairs conducted with prudence.” Cicero, Pro Marcello.
TRIUMPHS OF THE WILL Whatever legislation he enacted and doubts he may have entertained, Caesar was occupied in his first weeks in Rome in preparation for the unprecedented quadruple triumphs he celebrated from September 20 to October 1, 46. It is no exaggeration to say that nothing like them had ever been seen in Rome; the magnificent representation of his victories and the citywide festivities connected with them would be show-stopping demonstrations of the power that he had won. The Triumphs marked the defeats of three continents: Gaul, Egypt, and the kings Pharnaces and Juba (Pontus and Africa). There were remarkable prisoners to be seen; Vercingetorix, Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s sister, and Juba’s four-year-old son. Valleius later estimated that the worth of the crowns, gold and silver talents, and other booty shown in the endless displays totaled more than 300,000,000 sesterces. An astonishing amount of booty was divided between his soldiers; each private soldier received 5,000 denarii, his beloved centurions twice that, and four times as much for each tribune. Every Roman citizen received 300 sesterces, 10 pecks of grain and 10 pounds of oil. Rome had never seen such spectacular or bloodthirsty games. Hundreds of lions were hunted in the Circus; nearly 1,000 war captives and criminals fought to the death as opposing armies; a great naval battle was fought in flooded structures on the Campus Martius. Caesar gave a banquet for tens of thousands of Romans and was later escorted to his house by the crowd and 20 torch-bearing elephants.
 AUTOCRACY AND REFORM In the next months, Caesar attacked intractable social problems that had bedeviled Rome since the time of the Gracchi, including what to do with the landless poor. He declared a general amnesty for all who had taken arms against him in the Civil War. He took an exact census of the city and reorganized and reduced the distribution of free grain, reducing those on the dole from 300,000 to 150,000. He founded dozens of civilian and military colonies overseas, to which eventually 80,000 of the turbulent Roman poor were transported as well as veterans. He granted citizenship (and all its benefits) to doctors and teachers, many of whom were Greek. The owners of large landed estates were required to hire a third of their farm workers from free men, rather than slaves to avoid the problem of forcing landless workers into the overcrowded towns. He passed sumptuary laws and laid down precise instructions about social and financial display, which were largely ignored. He permitted only senators and knights to serve on juries, which showed he rejected popular claims as ruthlessly as he did oligarchic principles. He stepped up criminal penalties and made laws limited the terms of provincial governors. He abolished the private guilds which had become breeding-grounds for the fighting mobs of Milo, Clodius, and other demagogues. He limited the terms of propraetors to one year and of proconsuls to two consecutive years - both to prevent others, perhaps, from acquiring the kind of power he had amassed in Gaul as well as to discourage the wholesale provincial robbery of the past. Perhaps most importantly to the provinces, after decades of rapacious Roman tax-gatherers plundering for their own profit, he abolished the existing tax system. Instead, he returned to the earlier policy of permitting the provinces themselves to collect and pay tribute without middlemen. Somewhere in that long November of 46, Caesar decided hurriedly to go to Spain, where the surviving Pompeian army was becoming increasingly troublesome. It would be his last campaign.
MUNDA: THE FINAL BATTLE, 45 BC It took slightly more than three months for Caesar to annihilate the last Republican forces at the Battle of Munda on March 17, 45. The battle itself was very nearly lost; at a critical point, as he had in the past, Caesar personally rallied his fleeing troops and swung the balance of the battle. Once secured, victory was brutal and complete. Gnaeus Pompeius was later killed, and only Sextus and a few adherents managed to escape. In May, Caesar’s 16-year-old grandnephew, Gaius Octavius (Octavian), joined his staff. Caesar remained in Spain until June, planning the reorganization of the province’s administration and planning a large number of citizen colonies. On the return journey, he traveled through Gaul and northern Italy, founding additional colonies, returning to Rome in October 45. In September, Caesar had made his will, leaving Octavian the bulk of his estates and, on the last page of the will, arranging for his adoption as Caesar's son. Obviously the young man had made a strong impression. It is one of history's most intriguing questions as to the true relationship between the aging world conqueror and the ambitious teenager. Caesar had less than five months to live. His clementia, his wooing of the remaining Optimates, had been largely unsuccessful; they spoke fair to his face and spoke of his tyrannies with disgust among themselves. He had made a start in dealing with the intractable social problems in Rome but, for some months his eyes had turned away from the frustrating realities of administration towards Parthia, where there still existed a viable power opposed to Rome. Even before Munda, the Senate had outdone itself in voting him the most lavish honors ever showered on a Roman. A distasteful sycophancy is apparent in the unending list; Caesar’s victories would be national holidays, he was granted the title “Imperator” as a family name; temples and statues filled Rome sounding his praises, he was named Consul for the next ten years (he had already been named dictator for 10 years). He could wear special robes and the red boots of the Etruscan kings. A statue with the inscription “To the unconquerable god” was to be erected in the temple of Quirinus and another in the Capitol itself, among the statues of the kings and Lucius Brutus. This last was largely unpopular. Coins with Caesar’s image – the first living citizen ever featured on coins while yet alive during the entire history of Rome - were minted, bearing the words “Perpetual Dictator.” In fact, Caesar’s creatures (or Caesar's enemies, justifying his overthrow) had, by their excess, helped create the very resentment that would lead to his murder. It is difficult to know what Caesar thought of this craven flow of honors; he seemed largely indifferent to most but he did not refuse them. When he celebrated his Spanish Triumph in October 45, Romans were dismayed that (for the first time) a Roman celebrated victory over other Romans. In the last months of his life, there were repeated incidents where Caesar is said to have snubbed the Senators, the people, and the traditions of Rome. The fact that much of the history that survived him was written from the anti-Caesarian position may or may not affect its truth. The groundswell of whispers grew that he thought himself – that he intended to be - a king. There is no objective evidence to support this and many reasons why it is unlikely - Caesar was seldom that politically inept. To Caesar, political power was far more important than any title. But his strange lassitude in accepting whatever the Senate bestowed can cause doubt even now as to his true intentions.
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MARCH 15, 44 BC The rest of the tale is well known, thanks to Shakespeare. At the feast of the Lupercal in February, 44, Mark Antony offered Caesar a “crown” (the diadem of the Hellenistic kings). Caesar refused it, but doubts remained that he had personally arranged for the public offer. Some historians think he staged the incident simply to destroy the rumors he desired kingship. As Napoleon noted succinctly, "If Caesar wanted to be king, he would have got his army to acclaim him as such." Doubts lingered. Two tribunes, pulling down diadems placed on his statues around the city, were dismissed from office. By dismissing them, Caesar attacked the inviolable position of Tribune of the plebs, the very point for which he claimed he fought in beginning the Civil War. was sounded out to remove the tyrant; Cassius enjoined; the conspirators grew, including Caesar’s most faithful subordinate, Decimus Brutus. Omens and supernatural portents, remembered later, spoke of danger to come; the dead “did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.” Plutarch gives the responsibility for persuading Brutus to turn against Caesar to Cassius, who had a personal animosity against the Dictator and a "peculiar bitterness" against anyone more powerful than he. In addition, Brutus allegedly was pestered, in the last months of Caesar's life, by anonymous appeals calling upon him to rid the state of the tyrant, as his ancestor had done. Cassius had gathered a conglomerate of senators willing to assassinate Caesar but all agreed that the conspiracy could not succeed without the idealistic glamour that Brutus' participation would bring to it; he was the essential man to give the enterprise political legitimacy. Fuller notes that "The avowed object of the plot was tyrranicide, which in the eyes of both Greeks and Romans was righteous and just...the plotters were well aware that under Caesar's autocracy their opportunities for financial gain and political power would vanish, and the prestige of the Senate would be obliterated... In short, the way of life the senators had been following since the Second Punic War would end. Their struggle against reforms had opened with the murder of the Gracchi, and they fondly imagined it could be closed by the murder of Caesar." Fuller, 302. 
Cassius worked hard to convince Brutus to participate, befriending him in spite of their past contention. In one critical meeting, Cassius claimed that a meeting of the Senate on the Kalends (first day) of March, would declare Caesar a king on those parts of the Empire outside Italy. As Senators, each would either have to vote for kingship or reveal themselves in enmity to Caesar. Brutus then claimed he would be forced to "defend my country and to die for its liberty." With Brutus involved, the conspiracy planning began in earnest. Men were actively sounded to join (Cicero was left out because he was considered too timid by nature to keep the secret). It is astonishing how many of the perhaps 60 conspirators were Caesar's closest associates and friends or those who, fighting for Pompey, had been pardoned by him and raised to the highest officers in the state. Brutus, who was so beloved of Caesar that rumors abounded he was his natural son, who had to keep up the front of being calmly in league with Caesar while planning his murder, began to suffer in private. His wife Porcia, Cato's daughter, knew something was wrong. Eventually, by showing her own courage and ability to keep a secret, she persuaded him to tell her his plans to kill Caesar. A meeting of the Senate was announced for the Ides (15th day) of March in which dispositions for the Parthian campaign and the issue of Caesar's kingship would be discussed. Caesar would leave on March 18 for Parthia to join his legions in the east, picking up his young relative, Octavian, on the way. Brutus rose early in the morning, hid a dagger under his toga, and met the other conspirators at Cassius' house; then hurried to Pompey's great civic megaplex. The Senate was temporarily meeting in a hall near Pompey's theater in which stood a large statue of Pompey. Caesar was late. Unknown to the nervous conspirators, he was contending with the fears of his wife, Calpurnia, that violence would attend his appearance at the Senate. He was finally persuaded to attend by his old comrade-in-arms, Decimus Brutus, who gently mocked Calpurnia's concerns while carrying his own hidden dagger. As praetor, Brutus was forced to meet clients throughout that long morning and judge petitions while he waited to assassinate his friend. He knew that, for possible crowd control after the murder, a party of gladiators had been posted in the adjacent Pompey's Theatre. By all accounts he was outwardly calm, although the conspirators as a whole were so jittery that they nearly fled over small hints that their course of action might have been discovered. Word was brought to Brutus that Porcia, in an agony of suspense, had collapsed and appeared to be dead; even this did not shake him from his purpose, and he remained where he was, awaiting Caesar. Finally, in early afternoon, Caesar arrived to open the Senate. As planned, Gaius Trebonius engaged Antony in a long discussion outside the Senate to keep him out of the way. The conspirators were well-coordinated; gathering immediately about Caesar as he sat in his curule chair, Tullius Cimber pretended to submit a petition. Suddenly Cimber grabbed Caesar's purple robe and wrenched it away from his neck; the signal for attack. Immediately Casca struck the first blow of the most famous assassination in history:
| " When he saw that he was beset on every side by drawn daggers, he muffled his head in his robe, and at the same time drew down its lap to his feet with his left hand, in order to fall more decently, with the lower part of his body also covered. And in this wise he was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he said in Greek, 'You too, my child?' " |
| Suetonius Life , LXXXII. |
"So it began, and those who were not in the conspiracy were so horrorstruck and amazed at what was being done that they were afraid to run away and afraid to come to Caesar's help; they were too afraid even to utter a word. But those who had come prepared for the murder all bared their daggers and hemmed Caesar in on every side. Whichever way he turned he met the blows of daggers and saw the cold steel aimed at his face and at his eyes. So he was driven this way and that, and like a wild beast in the toils, had to suffer from the hands of each of them; for it had been agreed that they must all take part in this sacrifice and all flesh themselves with his blood...Some say that Caesar fought back against all the rest, darting this way and that to avoid the blows and crying out for help, but when he saw that Brutus had drawn his dagger, he covered his head with his toga and sank down to the ground." Plutarch, Life, 66. Caesar's bloodied body lay at the foot of Pompey's giant statue and bathed its base. The conspirators, shouting that they had freed Rome, raced towards the Forum, showing their bloody hands to the stunned populace. Antony, Lepidus, and the rest of the Senate, panic-stricken, were in hiding. The triumphant “liberators,” as even Cicero admitted, had no plans whatever about what to do with Rome, once Caesar was gone.
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"I Have Lived Long Enough" 
Caesar is alleged to have said, in the year before his murder, "It is more important for Rome than for myself that I should survive. I have long been sated with power and glory; but, should anything happen to me, Rome will enjoy no peace. A new Civil War will break out under far worse conditions than the last" (Suetonius). His words were prophetic. Cicero quoted Caesar, in the Pro Marcello, as saying “Satis diu vel naturae vixi, vel gloriae” (I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishment). Although many scholars, including Gelzer, view Caesar as having a master plan to restore postwar order to Roman institutions and create the sort of workable principate his grandnephew Augustus achieved in his 45-year rule, it is just as likely that Caesar was improvising and waiting upon events. He certainly seems to have been content in the end to leave the field of politics and return to his planned invasion of Parthia, to conquer once more and to return to Rome the vanquished Eagles of his dead colleague, Crassus. What he would have accomplished if he had lived was murky even to his contemporaries. No historian credibly suggests, however, that he intended to restore what he viewed as a bankrupt Roman Republic. There is an inexplicable melancholy in reading about the last year of Caesar's life, perhaps summed up best by Sir Ronald Syme:
" That was the nemesis of ambition and glory, to be thwarted in the end. After such wreckage, the task of rebuilding confronted him, stern and thankless. Without the sincere and patriotic co- operation of the governing class, the attempt would be all in vain, the mere creation of arbitrary power, doomed to perish in violence . . . Under these unfavorable auspices, . . . Caesar established his Dictatorship. . . . . In the short time at his disposal he can hardly have made plans for a long future or laid the foundation of a consistent government. Whatever it might be, it would owe more to the needs of the moment than to alien or theoretical models."
Syme, The Roman Revolution
Whatever doubts exist about his political actions, Caesar's military reputation has kept its pristine glory; with Alexander, he is generally accounted one of the greatest commanders of all history. His record of almost unbroken victories was envied by, among others, both Napoleon and Hitler. His lessons of swift, unexpected attack reverberate even now. When a young man in Spain, Caesar allegedly wept when he saw the statue of Alexander, having accomplished, himself, so little by the same age. His death on the Ides of March, 44, occurred when he had conquered the Roman world and finally saw his chance to take that hunger for world conquest to the East, like Alexander. His legions were marshaled, his preparations made, his personal affairs settled. The night before Caesar died, at a dinner at Lepidus’ house, he was heard to answer the question “what death is the best?” with the instant answer, “an unexpected one." So would a soldier expect to die; so he did.
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GOOD MORNING ALL. GOOD MORNING TO OUR AWESOME MILITARY AND OUR ALLIES. I JUST WANTED TO SAY......
AND, PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR NOT BEING HERE MUCH THESE PAST FEW WEEKS. STILL LOTS OF WORK, BOTH AT WORK AND SCHOOL. SEEMS I AM EITHER AT WORK OR ON THE COMPUTER AT HOME TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH MY MATH.
