The history of Rome. Book V

by Theodor Mommsen

  Curio, who from his lively temperament had only with great reluctance made up his mind to rest, now set out again at once to fight with Saburra before he could enter into communication with the garrison of Utica. Curio Defeated by Juba on the Bagradas.

  Death of Curio

  His cavalry, which had gone forward in the evening, actually succeeded in surprising the corps of Saburra on the Bagradas during the night and inflicting much damage upon it; and on the news of this victory Curio hastened the march of the infantry, in order by their means to complete the defeat Soon they perceived on the last slopes of the heights that sank towards the Bagradas the corps of Saburra, which was skirmishing with the Roman horsemen; the legions coming up helped to drive it completely down into the plain.

  But here the combat changed its aspect. Saburra was not, as they supposed, destitute of support; on the contrary he was not much more than five miles distant from the Numidian main force. Already the flower of the Numidian infantry and 2000 Gallic and Spanish horsemen had arrived on the field of battle to support Saburra, and the king in person with the bulk of the army and sixteen elephants was approaching. After the nocturnal march and the hot conflict there were at the moment not more than 200 of the Roman cavalry together, and these as well as the infantry, extremely exhausted by fatigue and fighting, were all surrounded, in the wide plain into which they had allowed themselves to be allured, by the continually increasing hosts of the enemy. Vainly Curio endeavoured to engage in close combat; the Libyan horsemen retreated, as they were wont, so soon as a Roman division advanced, only to pursue it when it turned. In vain he attempted to regain the heights; they were occupied and foreclosed by the enemy's horse. All was lost. The infantry was cut down to the last man. Of the cavalry a few succeeded in cutting their way through; Curio too might have probably saved himself, but he could not bear to appear alone before his master without the army entrusted to him, and died sword in hand.

  Even the force which was collected in the camp before Utica, and that which guarded the fleet - which might so easily have escaped to Sicily - surrendered under the impression made by the fearfully rapid catastrophe on the following day to Varus (Aug. or Sept. 705).

  So ended the expedition arranged by Caesar to Sicily and Africa. It attained its object so far, since by the occupation of Sicily in connection with that of Sardinia at least the most urgent wants of the capital were relieved; the miscarriage of the conquest of Africa - from which the victorious party drew no farther substantial gain - and the loss of two untrustworthy legions might be got over.

  But the early death of Curio was an irreparable loss for Caesar, and indeed for Rome. Not without reason had Caesar entrusted the most important independent command to this young man, although he had no military experience and was notorious for his dissolute life; there was a spark of Caesar's own spirit in the fiery youth.

  He resembled Caesar, inasmuch as he too had drained the cup of pleasure to the dregs; inasmuch as he did not become a statesman because he was an officer, but on the contrary it was his political action that placed the sword in his hands; inasmuch as his eloquence was not that of rounded periods, but the eloquence of deeply-felt thought; inasmuch as his mode of warfare was based on rapid action with slight means; inasmuch as his character was marked by levity and often by frivolity, by pleasant frankness and thorough life in the moment. If, as his general says of him, youthful fire and high courage carried him into incautious acts, and if he too proudly accepted death that he might not submit to be pardoned for a pardonable fault, traits of similar imprudence and similar pride are not wanting in Caesar's history also. We may regret that this exuberant nature was not permitted to work off its follies and to preserve itself for the following generation so miserably poor in talents, and so rapidly falling a prey to the dreadful rule of mediocrities.

  Pompeius' Plan of Campaign for 705

  How far these events of the war in 705 interfered with Pompeius' general plan for the campaign, and particularly what part, in that plan was assigned after the loss of Italy to the important military corps in the west, can only be determined by conjecture. That Pompeius had the intention of coming by way of Africa and Mauretania to the aid of his army fighting in Spain, was simply a romantic, and beyond doubt altogether groundless, rumour circulating in the camp of Ilerda. It is much more likely that he still kept by his earlier plan of attacking Caesar from both sides in Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul[21] even after the loss of Italy, and meditated a combined attack at once from Spain and Macedonia. It may be presumed that the Spanish army was meant to remain on the defensive at the Pyrenees till the Macedonian army in the course of organization was likewise ready to march; whereupon both would then have started simultaneously and effected a junction according to circumstances either on the Rhone or on the Po, while the fleet, it may be conjectured, would have attempted at the same time to reconquer Italy proper.

  On this supposition apparently Caesar had first prepared himself to meet an attack on Italy. One of the ablest of his officers, the tribune of the people Marcus Antonius, commanded there with propraetorian powers. The southeastern ports - Sipus, Brundisium, Tarentum - where an attempt at landing was first to be expected, had received a garrison of three legions. Besides this Quintus Hortensius, the degenerate son of the well-known orator, collected a fleet in the Tyrrhene Sea, and Publius Dolabella a second fleet in the Adriatic, which were to be employed partly to support the defence, partly to transport the intended expedition to Greece. In the event of Pompeius attempting to penetrate by land into Italy, Marcus Licinius Crassus, the eldest son of the old colleague of Caesar, was to conduct the defence of Cisalpine Gaul, Gaius the younger brother of Marcus Antonius that of Illyricum.

  Caesar's Fleet and Army in Illyricum Destroyed

  But the expected attack was long in coming. It was not till the height of summer that the conflict began in Illyria. There Caesar's lieutenant Gaius Antonius with his two legions lay in the island of Curicta (Veglia in the gulf of Quarnero), and Caesar's admiral Publius Dolabella with forty ships lay in the narrow arm of the sea between this island and the mainland. The admirals of Pompeius in the Adriatic, Marcus Octavius with the Greek, Lucius Scribonius Libo with the Illyrian division of the fleet, attacked the squadron of Dolabella, destroyed all his ships, and cut off Antonius on his island. To rescue him, a corps under Basilus and Sallustius came from Italy and the squadron of Hortensius from the Tyrrhene Sea; but neither the former nor the latter were able to effect anything in presence of the far superior fleet of the enemy.

  The legions of Antonius had to be abandoned to their fate. Provisions came to an end, the troops became troublesome and mutinous; with the exception of a few divisions, which succeeded in reaching the mainland on rafts, the corps, still fifteen cohorts strong, laid down their arms and were conveyed in the vessels of Libo to Macedonia to be there incorporated with the Pompeian army, while Octavius was left to complete the subjugation of the Illyrian coast now denuded of troops. The Dalmatae, now far the most powerful tribe in these regions[22], the important insular town of Issa (Lissa), and other townships, embraced the party of Pompeius; but the adherents of Caesar maintained themselves in Salonae (Spalato) and Lissus (Alessio), and in the former town not merely sustained with courage a siege, but when they were reduced to extremities, made a sally with such effect that Octavius raised the siege and sailed off to Dyrrhachium to pass the winter there.

  Result of the Campaign as a Whole

  The success achieved in Illyricum by the Pompeian fleet, although of itself not inconsiderable, had yet but little influence on the issue of the campaign as a whole; and it appears miserably small, when we consider that the performances of the land and naval' forces under the supreme command of Pompeius during the whole eventful year 705 were confined to this single feat of arms, and that from the east, where the general, the senate, the second great army, the principal fleet, the immense military and still more extensive financial resources of the antagonists of Caesar were u
nited, no intervention at all took place where it was needed in that all-decisive struggle in the west. The scattered condition of the forces in the eastern half of the empire, the method of the general never to operate except with superior masses, his cumbrous and tedious movements, and the discord of the coalition may perhaps explain in some measure, though not excuse, the inactivity of the land-force; but that the fleet, which commanded the Mediterranean without a rival, should have thus done nothing to influence the course of affairs - nothing for Spain, next to nothing for the faithful Massiliots, nothing to defend Sardinia, Sicily, Africa, or, if not to reoccupy Italy, at least to obstruct its supplies - this makes demands on our ideas of the confusion and perversity prevailing in the Pompeian camp, which we can only with difficulty meet.

  The aggregate result of this campaign was corresponding. Caesar's double aggressive movement, against Spain and against Sicily and Africa, was successful, in the former case completely, in the latter at least partially; while Pompeius' plan of starving Italy was thwarted in the main by the taking away of Sicily, and his general plan of campaign was frustrated completely by the destruction of the Spanish army; and in Italy only a very small portion of Caesar's defensive arrangements had come to be applied. Notwithstanding the painfully-felt losses in Africa and Illyria, Caesar came forth from this first year of the war in the most decided and most decisive manner as victor.

  Organizations in Macedonia - The Emigrants

  If, however, nothing material was done from the east to obstruct Caesar in the subjugation of the west, efforts at least were made towards securing political and military consolidation there during the respite so ignominiously obtained. The great rendezvous of the opponents of Caesar was Macedonia. Thither Pompeius himself and the mass of the emigrants from Brundisium resorted; thither came the other refugees from the west: Marcus Cato from Sicily, Lucius Domitius from Massilia but more especially a number of the best officers and soldiers of the broken-up army of Spain, with its generals Afranius and Varro at their head. In Italy emigration gradually became among the aristocrats a question not of honour merely but almost of fashion, and it obtained a fresh impulse through the unfavourable accounts which arrived regarding Caesar's position before Ilerda; not a few of the more lukewarm partisans and the political trimmers went over by degrees, and even Marcus Cicero at last persuaded himself that he did not adequately discharge his duty as a citizen by writing a dissertatio on concord. The senate of emigrants at Thessalonica, where the official Rome pitched its interim abode, numbered nearly 200 members including many venerable old men and almost all the consulars.

  But emigrants indeed they were. This Roman Coblentz displayed a pitiful spectacle in the high pretensions and paltry performances of the genteel world of Rome, their unseasonable reminiscences and still more unseasonable recriminations, their political perversities and financial embarrassments. It was a matter of comparatively slight moment that, while the old structure was falling to pieces, they were with the most painstaking gravity watching over every old ornamental scroll and every speck of rust in the constitution; after all it was simply ridiculous, when the genteel lords had scruples of conscience as to calling their deliberative assembly beyond the sacred soil of the city the senate, and cautiously gave it the title of the "three hundre"[23]; or when they instituted tedious investigations in state law as to whether and how a curiate law could be legitimately enacted elsewhere than within the ring-wall of Rome.

  The Lukewarm

  Far worse traits were the indifference of the lukewarm and the narrow-minded stubbornness of the ultras. The former could not be brought to act or even to keep silence. If they were asked to exert themselves in some definite way for the common good, with the inconsistency characteristic of weak people they regarded any such suggestion as a malicious attempt to compromise them still further, and either did not do what they were ordered at all or did it with half heart. At the same time of course, with their affectation of knowing better when it was too late and their over-wise impracticabilities, they proved a perpetual clog to those who were acting; their daily work consisted in criticizing, ridiculing, and bemoaning every occurrence great and small, and in unnerving and discouraging the multitude by their own sluggishness and hopelessness.

  The Ultras

  While these displayed the utter prostration of weakness, the ultras on the other hand exhibited in full display its exaggerated action. With them there was no attempt to conceal that the preliminary to any negotiation for peace was the bringing over of Caesar's head; every one of the attempts towards peace, which Caesar repeatedly made even now, was tossed aside without being examined, or employed only to cover insidious attempts on the lives of the commissioners of their opponent. That the declared partisans of Caesar had jointly and severally forfeited life and property, was a matter of course; but it fared little better with those more or less neutral. Lucius Domitius, the hero of Corfinium, gravely proposed in the council of war that those senators who had fought in the army of Pompeius should come to a vote on all who had either remained neutral or had emigrated but not entered the army, and should according to their own pleasure individually acquit them or punish them by fine or even by the forfeiture of life and property.

  Another of these ultras formally lodged with Pompeius a charge of corruption and treason against Lucius Afranius for his defective defence of Spain. Among these deep-dyed republicans their political theory assumed almost the character of a confession of religious faith; they accordingly hated their own more lukewarm partisans and Pompeius with his personal adherents, if possible, still more than their open opponents, and that with all the dull obstinacy of hatred which is wont to characterize orthodox theologians; and they were mainly to blame for the numberless and bitter separate quarrels which distracted the emigrant army and emigrant senate. But they did not confine themselves to words. Marcus Bibulus, Titus Labienus, and others of this coterie carried out their theory in practice, and caused such officers or soldiers of Caesar's army as fell into their hands to be executed en masse; which, as may well be conceived, did not tend to make Caesar's troops fight with less energy. If the counterrevolution in favour of the friends of the constitution, for which all the elements were in existence[24], did not break out in Italy during Caesar's absence, the reason, according to the assurance of discerning opponents of Caesar, lay chiefly in the general dread of the unbridled fury of the republican ultras after the restoration should have taken place. The better men in the Pompeian camp were in despair over this frantic behaviour. Pompeius, himself a brave soldier, spared the prisoners as far as he might and could; but he was too pusillanimous and in too awkward a position to prevent or even to punish all atrocities of this sort, as it became him as commander-in-chief to do. Marcus Cato, the only man who at least carried moral consistency into the struggle, attempted with more energy to check such proceedings; he induced the emigrant senate to prohibit by a special decree the pillage of subject towns and the putting to death of a burgess otherwise than in battle.

  The able Marcus Marcellus had similar views. No one, indeed, knew better than Cato and Marcellus that the extreme party would carry out their saving deeds, if necessary, in defiance of all decrees of the senate. But if even now, when they had still to regard considerations of prudence, the rage of the ultras could not be tamed, people might prepare themselves after the victory for a reign of terror from which Marius and Sulla themselves would have turned away with horror; and we can understand why Cato, according to his own confession, was more afraid of the victory than of the defeat of his own party.

  The Preparations for War

  The management of the military preparations in the Macedonian camp was in the hands of Pompeius the commander-in-chief. His position, always troublesome and galling, had become still worse through the unfortunate events of 705. In the eyes of his partisans he was mainly to blame for this result. This judgment was in various respects not just. A considerable part of the misfortunes endured was to be laid to the account
of the perversity and insubordination of the lieutenant-generals, especially of the consul Lentulus and Lucius Domitius; from the moment when Pompeius took the head of the army, he had led it with skill and courage, and had saved at least very considerable forces from the shipwreck; that he was not a match for Caesar's altogether superior genius, which was now recognized by all, could not be fairly made matter of reproach to him. But the result alone decided men's judgment. Trusting to the general Pompeius, the constitutional party had broken with Caesar; the pernicious consequences of this breach recoiled upon the general Pompeius; and, though owing to the notorious military incapacity of all the other chiefs no attempt was made to change the supreme command yet confidence at any rate in the commander-in-chief was paralyzed. To these painful consequences of the defeats endured were added the injurious influences of the emigration.