Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire

by Baker, Simon

  Finally, Pompey emerged with a plan, painful and shocking though it was to the ears of the senators. To defend the republic, he said, it was necessary to abandon Rome, to evacuate their legions and set sail for the east, where he could rely on his allies in Greece to complete the levy of an army. Only with the support of the friends of the Roman people would he relish the prospect of facing Caesar, not before. Anyone who stayed behind, Pompey added, would be considered a traitor and a partisan of Caesar.56

  The strategy sank the senators deeper into despair. Although Pompey was proposing a tactical retreat, they could not escape the feeling that they were taking flight before a tyrant. Caesar had forced this miserable plan upon them. Adding to their humiliation and disillusionment, they knew that they would have to abandon every physical manifestation of their cherished republic – their beloved temples, the homes of the city’s gods, and, above all their ancestral property. What was the republic if not the city of Rome itself, they protested to Pompey. Cato went about as if in mourning, lamenting and bewailing the senators’ losses and the fate of Rome. Cicero, yet to decide whether to stay or go, complained of the indignity of having to walk around ‘like a beggar’. Any peace terms would have been better than abandoning the mother city to Caesar and his ‘underworld’ of disgraced and bankrupt outcasts, he wrote.57 Nonetheless, they all realized that, with their backs against the wall, they had no choice but to leave.

  So, after a night of hurriedly packing up their trunks and bags, laying their hands on whatever property they could ‘as if they were robbing their neighbours’, and barricading their houses, the majority of the senators, their slaves, friends and dependants kissed the ground, invoked the gods and fled from Rome. There was not even time for the consuls to make the usual sacrifices. The city’s poor were left behind, many in tears, morose and resigned to being taken captive.58 It left the impression that perhaps Caesar was indeed right: the rich did not care for the Roman people, but just for themselves.

  But few took any notice of the reproaches of the people. For the Pompeians now formed a massive column of evacuees, making their way along the straight roads that cut through the Italian countryside. Their destination was Brundisium (modern-day Brindisi); their goal, to seize the Roman fleet based there and get to safety as quickly as possible. The port of Brundisium was situated on the heel of Italy, at the point where the crossing to Greece was at its shortest. It became the target of Caesar too. When he received news of Pompey’s strategy, he knew that all he had to do was cut his enemy off at the port to bring about an early, bloodless end to the war. The race was on.

  By the time Caesar arrived at Brundisium in the company of six legions, Pompey had successfully requisitioned ships and evacuated half his army. The other half now remained with their general. The challenge they faced was daunting: to defend themselves against Caesar’s legions until the ships returned from ferrying the first dispatch of soldiers. Caesar made the first move. With typical ambition and clarity of purpose, he immediately blockaded the harbour of Brundisium across the narrowest part of its mouth by building a causeway made of rafts. On top of these his army piled earthworks. Pompey immediately countered by commandeering whatever ships he could and building on to their decks three-storey-high siege towers. From this great height his harassing legionaries attacked and bombarded the barricade with arrows, firebrands and ballistic missiles.59

  While the battle for the port raged, Caesar pressed home a slender advantage and sent in one of his officers, Caninius Rebilus, to negotiate for peace. But if Caesar expected Pompey to roll over, he was to be quickly disappointed. The retired general, who was seeing action for the first time in over ten years, chose to gamble. Believing that he could pull off an extraordinary evacuation, Pompey fobbed Rebilus off. He gave the reply that without the consuls present, he could never reach a settlement with his enemy. Caesar saw through this pathetic excuse. His verdict on it was unsentimental: ‘Caesar finally determined to abandon these repeated vain efforts at peace and to wage war in earnest.’60

  To Pompey’s delight, the ships returning from Greece were now spotted on the horizon. Before long they had smashed their way back into the harbour. While Caesar organized his legionaries for a frontal assault on the city, Pompey made every preparation to restrain such an attack and protect the evacuation. The gates of the town were barricaded, trenches embedded with vicious spikes were dug in the roads, and the walls of the town were lined with slingers and archers. Under cover of darkness, Pompey’s soldiers boarded their ships and looked set to escape. The people of Brundisium, angry at their harsh treatment by Pompey, had other plans. They signalled to Caesar’s men from their rooftops that Pompey was preparing to cast off. Then, helping them up the scaling ladders and over the defences, the townspeople told them where the traps were laid and pointed out the detour to the harbour. Charging headlong through the town, Caesar’s legionaries finally managed to reach some skiffs and small vessels just in time to scupper two of Pompey’s ships snagged on Caesar’s causeway. However, as daylight returned, the rest were nowhere to be seen.61

  As the bows of his ships beat out spuming foam from the blue of the Adriatic Sea, Pompey knew he had snatched an extraordinary escape from the jaws of disaster. He was now safely on his way to visit friends and allies, the many wealthy kings, dynasts and potentates of Greece and Asia, who would provide him with further levies of soldiers with which to fight Caesar. It now perhaps came as a gentle surprise to Pompey that the plan to abandon Rome was actually working. But Caesar too could reflect on his own success to date. After all, within sixty days and without shedding any blood, he had become master of all Italy. And were it not for his lack of ships, he would without hesitation chase after and attack Pompey and his men before they had time to strengthen their forces abroad. But, on further reflection, he realized that now was not the time to go pursuing Pompey. This would only leave both Gaul and Italy exposed to Pompey’s four legions still in Spain.62 Indeed, Caesar stood to lose everything he had won for his Roman republic unless he dealt with this threat immediately. Before he collected all his legions together, however, and marched north to defeat the Pompeian army in Spain, he had a little stop to make en route.

  When Caesar rode into Rome at the end of March 49 BC, he was greeted not by cheering, jubilant crowds celebrating their hero’s return, but the sullen faces of a Roman people struck dumb by terror. In this civil war, they wondered, would Caesar regard Rome as just another foreign city to be captured wholesale, its riches plundered and its gods thoughtlessly desecrated?63 Over the next ten days, despite the absence of the consuls and praetors, and the emptiness of the chairs of office, Caesar did everything to maintain a semblance of legitimate government. He called a meeting of the Senate in a temple, and a handful of disgruntled senators showed up. But when he asked them to join him in taking over the government they hesitated, still unable to commit to one side. After three days of discussion and excuses, Caesar, despising the weakness of these little men, gave up his patient show of legality and acted according to his own dignity.64

  To fight the war against the armies of Pompey and Cato, Caesar told the Senate, he needed money from the state treasury. A tribune of the people called Metellus vetoed the request, protesting that it was against the law. Caesar snapped, stormed out of the meeting and declared that in the war against the enemies of the republic he was going to take the money anyway. When the keys to the doors of the Temple of Saturn could not be found, the general ordered his soldiers to take a battering ram to it. The tribune Metellus, however, again tried to stop Caesar by standing in their way. The people’s politician, the man whose whole career had depended on his alliance with the tribunes of the people and the defence of their sanctified rights, now forced Metellus aside with the words, ‘It’s easier for me to kill you than argue with you’.65 The gold reserves of the republic were Caesar’s. But before he left the city, there was time for one last act of illegality. As if a king, he appointed a praetor to take care of a
ffairs in Rome on his behalf. With that, Caesar and his army headed west.

  It took a matter of months to defeat Pompey’s three armies in Spain. But while Caesar drove his legionaries to the physical limits of exhaustion and endurance, the same could not be said of Pompey. In Greece he recruited his army at leisure. His army coffers were in rude health too, as he had forced the tax-farming companies of the east to hand over their gold.66 Despite knowing that Pompey held these major advantages, in the winter of 49–48 BC Caesar returned to Brundisium. Here Mark Antony had collected a fleet, and together they prepared to set sail for the great confrontation with Pompey. The republic had come to a fork in the road: would it fall into the hands of the old guard constitutionalists or to Caesar’s new order – to those protecting the liberty of the élite or that of people?

  Although it was the depths of winter and the Adriatic was crawling with Pompey’s ships, Caesar’s fleet, shuttling between the two coasts of Italy and modern-day Albania, outwitted the blockade of his enemies and safely landed seven legions near Dyracchium (Durres). When the rest of his soldiers were delayed by the enemy fleet, Caesar was so determined for them to join him that he disguised himself and forced the captain of a twelve-oared fishing vessel to ferry him back to Italy in the midst of a violent storm.67 Close to being shipwrecked, Caesar gave up the plan and put his trust in his deputy across the water. Mark Antony duly rose to the occasion, ran the gauntlet and successfully ferried over Caesar’s remaining legions.

  Once in northern Greece, one principle of war dictated the tactics that both sides adopted: the need for supplies. Pompey was in friendly territory, had secure supply lines and was in control of the seas. Caesar, by contrast, was utterly outnumbered, in enemy territory and had very few supplies. As a result, Pompey wanted to wage a war of attrition, to grind down Caesar’s men by putting off any engagement with them, and to watch starvation destroy all their vigour. Yes, Caesar’s soldiers were experienced and battle-hardened, but the years of war, of long marches, of building camps and besieging cities had taken their toll too. Time and again Caesar tried to lure Pompey into battle to win a quick victory. Time and again Pompey resisted the temptation.

  A psychological battle ensued, the Pompeian soldiers testing the endurance of Caesar’s gritty, bloody-minded legionaries. When Caesar besieged Pompey’s camp near Dyrrachium, Pompey thought he had Caesar’s army starved of supplies. However, the soldiers, more wild beast than human, were determined to maintain the blockade in the face of illness, fatigue and extreme privation. They found a solution in a local root called ‘chara’, from which they managed to bake loaves and survive. When the Pompeian army goaded its enemies with taunts of famine, the Caesareans replied by throwing a few loaves over the walls into its camp just to rattle the enemy with their tenacity, just to prove their invincibility, their superhuman powers.68 Nevertheless, the Pompeian legionaries would not be rattled for long.

  When Pompey finally engaged his enemy at Dyrrachium, he routed Caesar’s army. The ninth legion took the brunt of the casualties. Crucially, however, Pompey did not drive home his advantage, but let his enemy’s army escape to safety. Distraught at his first defeat in years, Caesar came to a tough realization. He needed to exhaust his enemy, to draw Pompey away from the sea into the mountainous countryside where both armies would be poorly supplied. So Caesar, his risks already running high, gambled on a strategy that approximated to a collective death wish: to march his tired, starving and disease-ridden legions further inland, further into hostile territory, where the chances of finding food were even more remote. In August 48 BC, although the order ran counter to all their instincts, Caesar’s soldiers picked themselves up and pressed on through the rocky, forested hills of Thessaly. En route they took the Greek towns of Gomphi and Metropolis, and plundered them for wine and food. Their health and spirits restored, the legionaries finally set camp near a town called Pharsalus.

  Believing that he had his enemy on the run and that he now held all the aces, Pompey was quick to follow Caesar. After his first success in battle, he was jubilant, pumped up, giddy with anticipation of victory. But, as his army too set camp near Pharsalus, Pompey had overlooked his one critical weakness: the value he placed on the opinion of the senatorial establishment. That Achilles heel now became fatally exposed. As the days passed and Pompey did nothing, Cato and his faction ran out of patience and turned on the pressure. Surely Pompey had Caesar just where he wanted him, they pestered. Why wouldn’t their great general simply engage Caesar and deliver the death blow? Was he too old? Had his judgement gone? Or was he just so glad to be the general once again, so drunk on power that he did not even want to win the war, but only to hold on to his glorious command ad infinitum?69

  Wearily but with steel, Pompey resisted. All the senators seemed to care about, came his acerbic rebuke, was money and whether or not they missed the fig season in Tusculum! His concern, however, was to minimize the loss of Roman life. The strategy of delay, he insisted, was the best way of ensuring that. Besides, what did they, with their soft, metropolitan manners and worries, know about war? Nothing! But as time wore on, and as the insults and nicknames continued to pique, so Pompey showed signs of caving in.70 Meanwhile, the daily dance was maintained: Caesar and Pompey led out their armies in formation, the bait of battle was offered, and Pompey refused to bite.

  On the bright morning of 9 August 48 BC, his supplies again running dangerously low and his strategy failing, Caesar decided to strike camp and march once more inland. But just as the tents were being dismantled and the baggage animals loaded up, scouts rushed in to report that they had noticed something different. Pompey’s line of soldiers had advanced further forward from the rampart than usual.71 The signal was unmistakable. At long last Pompey the Great was ready for battle. The bait had been taken. Caesar was overjoyed, and as a signal to prepare for war he ordered his purple tunic to be hoisted in front of his tent.

  The flurry of activity surrounding the two commanders could not have been more different. The politicians in Pompey’s camp cried ‘On to Pharsalus!’ and rubbed their hands at the prospect of witnessing a glorious victory. They argued jovially over who on their triumphant return to Rome would be allocated the priesthoods, who would stand for the offices of praetor and consul, and who would rent which Palatine villa to whom. Caesar and his officers, by contrast, were utterly focused on the task ahead. Buoyed up, they knew they had been handed a life-line. It was one they were now going to seize.72

  When the two lines of battle came face to face, the landscape shone with the glitter of their javelins, short swords, bows, slings and quivers full of arrows.73 Caesar’s 22,000 infantry were confronting an army twice that size, while his 1000 cavalry faced an opponent seven times greater. But where his army was smaller, his strategy was shrewder. Seeing that Pompey’s cavalry were all aligned on their general’s left flank, Caesar knew that his old ally’s plan was to encircle one of Caesar’s wings. To neutralize that threat, Caesar took a series of cohorts from each of his legions and from them created a fourth line of infantry. Placing them behind his three existing lines, he gave them the following instructions: on the signal of his flag and not before, they were to advance and engage Pompey’s cavalry. Above all, they were to use their javelins as pikes and thrust up at the faces of the enemy. Victory that day, he told them, depended on their valour.

  Caesar rallied his army with a final speech. To Crastinus, a loyal centurion of the tenth legion who had served with him throughout Gaul, Alesia and Spain, he said, ‘Only this one battle remains. After it Caesar will regain his dignity and we our freedom.’ Crastinus replied, ‘Today, General, I shall earn your gratitude either dead or alive.’74 And with those words, Crastinus and 120 crack troops, bellowing at the tops of their voices, charged. The impetus lying with Caesar’s infantry, Roman now clashed with Roman, each side hacking down the other with mirror-image technique and brutality.

  Soon enough, Pompey deployed his cavalry too. Immediately they succeeded
in unsettling their enemy. Their assault was so committed, so convincing that Caesar’s cavalry was forced to give ground. However, as Pompey’s cavalry formed into squadrons and surrounded Caesar’s line on its exposed flank, Caesar gave the signal for his secret detachment to break away. Its standards brandished aloft, the fourth line swiftly attacked Pompey’s cavalry, jabbing their javelins upwards at enemy faces. It was a moment of military genius. Caesar had correctly guessed that the flower of Rome’s aristocratic youth, the scions of senators, might well have the eagerness for battle, but they had neither the experience nor the stomach for it. The decisive action threw them into a panic. They turned and fled to the hills.

  Now it was Pompey’s flank that was exposed. The fourth line pressed home its advantage and attacked the rear. Caesar, scenting blood, dealt the death blow. He had kept his third line in reserve and inactive. Now, swooping into the bloody mêlée, fresh, unscathed and battle-hardened veterans from Caesar’s long-serving campaigns replaced the weary. Without mercy, they smashed and stabbed their way through the bloodied, exhausted Pompeian ranks. Eventually, Pompey’s grand coalition, unable to hold the new assault, gave out and was routed.

  Seeing his forces flee, Pompey had the look of a man half-crazed or ‘whom some god had deprived of his wits’.75 After waiting silently in his tent while his legionaries outside were slaughtered, he was suddenly taken by the belief that he could regroup and counter-attack. So, in the company of thirty cavalrymen, Pompey the Great also fled from Pharsalus. In reality, he had been utterly defeated. Caesar had decisively won the civil war. Pompey would launch no second offensive.