*
Pompey left the vicinity of Emporiae fairly early in April, his local advisers having informed him that the volume of the Iberus would be low enough by the end of April to allow him to ford it comfortably.
He had satisfactorily solved the problem of his legates by commissioning none but Picentines or Italians and investing as his two senior legates Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius, both viri militares from Picenum who had been under Pompeian eagles for some years. Caesar’s messmate from Mitylene, Aulus Gabinius, came from a Picentine family; Gaius Cornelius was not one of the patrician Cornelii, nor was Decimus Laelius related to the Laelii who had risen into prominence under Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus. Militarily all had proven themselves or showed promise, but socially none of them save perhaps Aulus Gabinius (whose father and uncle were senators) could hope to advance in Rome without large rations of Pompey’s patronage.
Things went very well. Advancing rapidly down the coast, Pompey and his six legions and his fifteen hundred cavalrymen actually reached Dertosa on the north bank of the Iberus before encountering any opposition at all. As Pompey began to ford the Iberus some two legions commanded by Herennius attempted to thwart him, but were easily beaten off; Pompey’s chest swelled and he proceeded south in optimistic mood. Not far down the road Herennius reappeared, this time reinforced by two legions under Perperna, but when the soldiers in their vanguard began to fall, they drew off southward in a hurry.
Pompey’s scouts were excellent. As he moved steadily further from the Iberus they brought him word that Herennius and Perperna had gone to earth in the big enemy town of Valentia, almost a hundred miles to the south of Pompey’s position. As Valentia lay on the Turis River and the wide alluvial plains of the Turis were rich and intensively farmed, Pompey increased his speed. When he reached Saguntum—near the mouth of a small, short river which lay in the midst of fairly poor country—he learned from his trusty scouts that Sertorius himself was completely out of range, could not possibly assist Herennius and Perperna to hold Valentia. Apparently afraid that Metellus Pius was going to invade northern Spain from the headwaters of the Tagus, Sertorius had positioned his own army on the upper reaches of the Salo at Segontia, where he would be able to intercept the Piglet as he emerged from the narrow bridge of mountains which separated the Tagus from the Iberus. Crafty, thought Pompey smugly, but you really ought to be within hailing distance of Herennius and Perperna, Sertorius!
It was now the middle of May, and Pompey was learning how cruelly hot the long summer of the Spanish lowlands could be. He was also learning how much water his men could drink in one short day, and how quickly they could devour his food supplies. With the harvest still several months off, foraging for grain had yielded little from the granaries of whattowns he had passed through once he left the Iberus. This coast—which had looked so rich on his maps and sounded so rich when his advisers spoke of it—was no Italy; if he had always thought of the Adriatic coast as poor and underpopulated, it was fairer and denser by far than the littoral of eastern Spain.
Protesting itself loyal to Rome, Saguntum was unable to give him grain. Pirates had raided its storage silos, the people of the town would eat sparingly until their crops came in. Thus Valentia and the plains of the Turis beckoned; Pompey struck camp and marched.
If the sight of the formidable crags inland gave even a remote promise of how tortuous and difficult it would be for any army to march through central Spain, then Sertorius, sitting in Segontia in early May, could not hope to relieve Valentia before the end of June—and that, his scouts assured Pompey, only if Sertorius learned to fly! Unable to credit that any general could lead men faster than he could, Pompey believed his scouts, who may have been genuinely of that opinion—or who more likely were secretly working for Sertorius. Be that as it may, not one day south of Saguntum, Pompey learned that Sertorius and his army were already between him and Valentia—and busy attacking the loyal Roman town of Lauro!
What Pompey could not have been brought to understand was that Sertorius knew every kink, every valley, every pass and every track between the Middle Sea and the mountains of western Spain—and that he could move through them at seemingly incredible speed because each village and hamlet he encountered would if asked give him all its food, would push him onward with a love which amounted to adulation. No Celtiberian or Lusitanian welcomed the Roman presence in Spain; every Celtiberian and Lusitanian realized that Rome was in Spain only to exploit the country’s riches. That this bright white hope, Sertorius, was himself a Roman the native Spanish peoples saw as a special gift from their gods. For who knew how to fight the Romans better than a Roman?
When the scouts reported back that Sertorius led but two small legions, Pompey gasped. The cheek of it! The gall of it! To lay siege to a Roman town not far from six crack Roman legions and fifteen hundred horse—! It beggared description!
Off went Pompey to Lauro in a fever of anticipation, exultant because Fortune had given him Sertorius as his adversary so early in the war.
A cool dispassionate look at Lauro and Sertorius’s lines from atop a vantage point to the north of the little plain was more than enough to reinforce Pompey’s confidence. A mile to the east of Lauro’s walls lay the sea, while to the west there reared a high but flat—topped hill. To one looking down on the situation from Pompey’s superior height, the hill to the west was the ideal base from which to conduct operations. Yet Sertorius had quite ignored it! Mind made up, Pompey hustled his army west of the city walls intent upon occupying the hill, and sure that the hill was already his. Riding upon his big white bedizened Public Horse, the twenty-nine-year-old general led his troops and cavalry himself—and at the double—striding out in front so that those who were massed atop Lauro’s walls would be sure to see him in person.
Though he was looking at the hill all the way to its foot, Pompey had actually arrived there before he saw its flat top bristling with spears. And suddenly the air was rent by boos, jeers, catcalls: Sertorius and his men were shouting down to Pompey that he’d have to be speedier than that if he wanted to take a hill from Quintus Sertorius!
“Did you think I wouldn’t realize you’d make for it, kid?” came one lone voice from the top. “You’re too slow! Think you’re as clever as Africanus and as brave as Horatius Cocles, don’t you, kid? Well, Quintus Sertorius says you’re an amateur! You don’t know what real soldiering is! But stay in the vicinity, kid, and let a professional show you!”
Not foolish enough to attempt to storm Sertorius in such an impregnable position, Pompey had no other choice than to retreat. Eyes straight ahead, aware that his face was burning, he wheeled his horse and ploughed straight through the ranks of his own men and did not stop until he stood once more upon his original vantage point. By now the sun was past its zenith, but the day was long enough to fit one more maneuver into the hours left, and pride dictated that Pompey should fit it in.
Chest heaving as he fought to discipline his emotions, he surveyed the scene again. Below him his own army stood at ease, gulping the last of the water from shrinking, wrinkled skins athwart each water donkey, and all too obviously talking to each other as they exposed their steaming heads to the drying rays of the sun and leaned upon their spears or shields. Talking about their lovely young general and his humiliation, wondering if this was going to be the first campaign their lovely young general couldn’t win. Wishing they had made their wills, no doubt.
He hadn’t wanted Afranius or Petreius with him, couldn’t even bear the thought of the younger ones, especially Aulus Gabinius. But now he beckoned to Afranius and Petreius to ride up to him, and when they had ranged themselves one on either side of his Public Horse, he pointed with a stick at the scene in the distance. Not one word did his senior legates say, just waited dumbly to be told what Pompey wanted to do next.
“See where Sertorius is?” Pompey asked, but rhetorically only; he didn’t expect a reply. “He’s busy along the walls, I think sapping them. His camp
is right there. He’s come down from his hill, I see! He doesn’t really want it, he’s interested in taking the town. But I won’t fall for that trick again!” This was said through clenched teeth. “The distance we have to march before we engage him is about a mile, and the length of his line is about half that—he’s spread awfully thin, which is to our advantage. If he’s to stand any chance at all he’ll have to tighten up when he sees us coming—and we have to presume that he thinks he stands a chance, or he wouldn’t be there. He can scatter either west or east, or in both directions at once. I imagine he’ll go both ways—I would.” That popped out; Pompey reddened, but went on smoothly. “We’ll advance on him with our wings projecting ahead of our center, cavalry distributed equally between them on their tips, infantry—one legion to each wing—forming the densest part of the wings closest to the center, where I’ll put my other four legions. When an army is approaching across flat ground it’s hard to tell how far ahead of the center the wings are, and we’ll extend them further forward the closer we get. If he holds me light—and he seems to hold me light!—he won’t believe me capable of military guile. Until my wings enfold him on both sides and prevent his escaping to either the west or the east. We’ll roll him up against the walls, which leaves him nowhere to go.”
Afranius ventured a remark. “It will work,” he said.
Petreius nodded. “It will work,” he said.
That was all the confirmation Pompey needed. At the foot of his vantage point he had the buglers blow “form ranks and fall into line,” and left Afranius and Petreius to issue his orders to the other legates and the leading centurions. Himself he busied in summoning six mounted heralds.
Thus it was that by the time Afranius and Petreius returned to him it was too late and too public to dissuade him from what he had done; appalled, Afranius and Petreius watched the heralds ride away, hoping desperately that for Pompey’s sake Pompey’s new maneuver worked.
While the army moved out, the heralds under a flag of truce rode right up to the outer defenses of Sertorius’s camp. There they brayed their message to the inhabitants of Lauro standing on top of Lauro’s walls.
“Come out, all you people of Lauro!” they bellowed. “Come out! Line your battlements and watch while Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus teaches this renegade wolfshead who calls himself a Roman what being a true Roman is! Come out and watch Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus inflict absolute defeat upon Quintus Sertorius!”
It was going to work! thought Pompey, smarting enough to ride once again in the forefront of his army. His wings extended further and further forward as the legions advanced, and still Sertorius made no move to order his men to flee east and west. They would be enclosed! Sertorius and all his soldiers would die, die, die! Oh, Sertorius would learn in the most painful and final way what it was like to anger Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus!
The six thousand men Sertorius had held in reserve completely hidden from Pompey’s scouts as well as from Pompey’s high vantage point had fallen on Pompey’s unprotected rear and were tearing it into pieces before Pompey in the vanguard even knew. When he was apprised of it, there was nothing he could do to avert disaster. His wings were now so far forward that he was powerless to reverse their thrust, and they had turned inward, were busy engaging Sertorius’s men under Lauro’s walls—their battlements now black with observers of the debacle, thanks to Pompey’s heralds. When attempt after attempt to wheel failed, the most Pompey and his legates could do was to struggle frantically to form the four legions of the center into square. To make matters worse, squadrons of Sertorian cavalry were riding into view from behind Lauro and falling upon Pompey’s horse from the rear of his wing tips. Disaster piled upon disaster.
But they were good men and ably served by good centurions, those veteran Roman legions Pompey led; they fought back bravely, though their mouths gaped from lack of water and a terrible dismay had filled their hearts because someone had outgeneraled their lovely young man, and they hadn’t thought there was anyone alive could do that. So Pompey and his legates managed in the end to form their square, and somehow even to pitch a camp.
At dusk Sertorius drew off, left them to finish the camp amid mountainous heaps of dead. And amid jeers and boos which now came not only from Sertorius’s soldiers, but also from the citizens of Lauro. Pompey couldn’t even escape to weep in private, found himself too mortified to throw his scarlet general’s cape over his head and weep beneath its cover. Instead he forced himself to move here and there with smiles and encouraging words, cheering the parched men up, trying to think where he might find water, unable to think how he might extricate himself from shame.
In the first light of dawn he sent to Sertorius and asked for time to dispose of his dead. His request was granted with sufficient generosity to enable him to shift his camp clear of the reeking field, and to a site well provided with potable water. But then a black depression descended upon him and he left it to his legates to count and bury the dead in deep pits and trenches; there was no timber nearby for burning, no oil either. As they toiled he withdrew to his command tent while his uninjured men—terribly, terribly few—constructed a stout camp around him to keep Sertorius at bay after the armistice was ended. Not until sunset, the battle now a day into the past, did Afranius venture to seek an audience. He came alone.
“It will be the nundinae before we’re finished with the burial details,” said the senior legate in a matter—of—fact voice.
The general spoke, equally matter—of—fact. “How many dead are there, Afranius?”
“Ten thousand foot, seven hundred horse.”
“Wounded?”
“Five thousand fairly seriously, almost everybody else with cuts or bruises or scratches. Those troopers who lived are all right, but they’re short of mounts. Sertorius preferred to kill their horses.”
“That means I’m down to four legions of foot—one legion of which is seriously wounded—and eight hundred troopers who cannot all be provided with horses.”
“Yes.”
“He whipped me like a cur.”
Afranius said nothing, only looked at the leather wall of the tent with expressionless eyes.
“He’s Gaius Marius’s cousin, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“I suppose that accounts for it.”
“I suppose it does.”
Nothing more was said for quite a long time. Pompey broke the silence. “How can I explain this to the Senate?” It came out half whisper, half whimper.
Afranius transferred his gaze from the tent wall to his commander’s face, and saw a man a hundred years old. His heart smote him, for he genuinely did love Pompey, as friend and overlord. Yet what alarmed him more than his natural grief for friend and overlord was his sudden conviction that if Pompey was not shored up, not given back his confidence and his inborn arrogance, the rest of him would waste away and die. This grey—faced old man was someone Afranius had never met.
So Afranius said, “If I were you, I’d blame it on Metellus Pius. Say he refused to come out of his province to reinforce you. I’d triple the number of men in Sertorius’s army too.”
Pompey reared back in horror. “No, Afranius! No! I could not possibly do that!”
“Why?” asked Afranius, amazed; a Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in the throes of moral or ethical dilemmas was an utter unknown.
“Because,” said Pompey in a patient voice, “I am going to need Metellus Pius if I am to salvage anything out of this Spanish commission. I have lost nearly a third of my forces, and I cannot ask the Senate for more until I can claim at least one victory. Also because it is possible someone who lives in Lauro will escape to Rome. His story will have credence when he tells it. And because, though I am not a sage, I do believe that truth will out at exactly the worst moment.”
“Oh, I understand!” cried Afranius, enormously relieved; Pompey was not experiencing moral or ethical scruples, he was just seeing the facts as the facts were. “Then you already know what you have to
explain to the Senate,” he added, puzzled.
“Yes, yes, I know!” snapped Pompey, goaded. “I simply don’t know how to explain it! In words, I mean! Varro isn’t here, and who else is there with the right words?”
“I think,” said Afranius delicately, “that your own words are probably the right words for news like this. The connoisseurs of literature in the Senate will just assume that you’ve chosen a plain style for the plain truth—that’s how their minds work, if you ask me. As for the rest of them—they’re not connoisseurs, so they won’t see anything wrong with your words anyway.”
This splendidly logical and pragmatic analysis went far toward cheering Pompey up, superficially at least. The deeper and more cruelly lacerated layers, incorporating as they did pride, dignitas, confidence, and many complicated images of self, would be slow to mend; some layers would mend maimed, some layers would perhaps not mend at all.
Thus Pompey sat down to begin his report to the Senate with his nostrils assailed by the perpetual stench of rotting flesh, and did not spare himself even by omitting his rashness in sending heralds to cry to the citizens of Lauro, let alone his mistaken tactics on the battlefield itself. He then sent the draft, written with a stylus upon wax smeared and gouged by many erasures, to his secretary, who would copy it in fair script (with no spelling or grammatical errors) in ink upon paper. Not that he finished the missive; Lauro wasn’t finished.
Sixteen days went by. Sertorius continued his investment of Lauro while Pompey did not move out of his camp. That this inertia could not last Pompey was well aware; he was rapidly running out of food, and his mules and horses were growing thinner almost as one looked at them. Yet he couldn’t retreat—not with Lauro under siege and Sertorius doing exactly as he liked. He had no choice but to forage. Upon pain of threatened torture his scouts swore to him that the fields to the north were entirely free of Sertorian patrols, so he ordered a large and well-armed expedition of cavalry to forage in the direction of Saguntum.
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