Pompey’s temper snapped. “Acutius, dismiss this illegal court!” he roared, fists clenched, face mottling. “Go on, get out before I arraign you on treason charges! As for you, Favonius, I would have thought that your experience in public life would have taught you to avoid unconstitutional prosecutions! Get out! Get out! Get out!”
The court dissolved, but Favonius wasn’t done. He began to lie in wait for Pompey, to hector him at every opportunity with Afranius’s falseness, and Afranius, almost deprived of breath at the impudence of it, hammered away in Pompey’s other ear with demands that he dismiss Favonius from his service. Petreius sided with Afranius, naturally, and hammered away too.
Active command of the army had devolved upon Labienus, whose lightest punishment for the most minor infringement was a flogging; the troops muttered and shivered, looked sideways with darkling glances, plotted how to expose Labienus to the spears during the battle everyone knew was coming.
Over dinner, Ahenobarbus struck.
“And how’s our dear Agamemnon, King of Kings?” he enquired as he strolled in on Favonius’s arm.
Jaw dropped, Pompey stared. “What did you call me?”
“Agamemnon, King of Kings,” said Ahenobarbus, sneering.
“Meaning?” asked Pompey dangerously.
“Why, that you’re in the same position as Agamemnon, King of Kings. Titular head of the army of a thousand ships, titular head of a group of kings, any one of whom has as much right to call himself King of Kings as you do. But it’s over a millennium since the Greeks invaded Priam’s homeland. You’d think something would have changed, wouldn’t you? But it hasn’t. In modern Rome we still suffer Agamemnon, King of Kings.”
“Cast yourself in the role of Achilles, have you, Ahenobarbus? Going to sulk beside your ships while the world goes to pieces and the best men die?” asked Pompey, lips white.
“Well, I’m not sure,” said Ahenobarbus, comfortably disposed on his couch between Favonius and Lentulus Spinther. He selected a hothouse grape from bunches ferried across from Chalcidean Pallene, where this profitable little industry had grown up inside linen-draped frames. “Actually,” he went on, spitting out seeds and reaching for the whole bunch, “I was thinking more of the role of Agamemnon, King of Kings.”
“Hear, hear,” barked Favonius, searching in vain for some simpler fare—and profoundly glad that Cato wasn’t present to see how Pompey’s high command were living in this Romanized land of luxurious plenty. Hothouse grapes! Chian wine twenty years in the amphora! Sea urchins galloped from Rhizus and sauced with an exotic version of garum! Baby quail filched from new mothers to slide down the gullet of Lentulus Crus!
“Want the command tent, do you, Ahenobarbus?”
“I’m not sure I’d say no.”
“Why,” asked Pompey, tearing savagely at some cheesed bread, “would you want the aggravation?”
“The aggravation,” said Ahenobarbus, bald pate sporting a pretty wreath of spring flowers, “lies in the fact that Agamemnon, King of Kings, never wants to give battle.”
“A wise course,” said Pompey, hanging onto his temper grimly. “My strategy is to wear Caesar down by Fabian means. Engaging the man is an unnecessary risk. We lie between him and good supply lines. Greece is in drought. As summer comes in, he’ll be hungry. By autumn he will have looted Greece of everything edible. And in winter he’ll capitulate. My son Gnaeus is so snugly based in Corcyra that he’ll get nothing across the Adriatic, Gaius Cassius has won a big victory against Pomponius off Messana—”
“I heard,” Lentulus Spinther interrupted, “that after this much-lauded victory, Gaius Cassius went on to do battle with Caesar’s old legate Sulpicius. And that a legion of Caesar’s watching from the shore became so fed up with the way Sulpicius was handling the battle that they rowed out, boarded Cassius’s ships, and trounced him. He had to slip over the side of his flagship to get away.”
“Well, yes, that is true,” Pompey admitted.
“Fabian means,” said Lentulus Crus between mouthfuls of succulent squid sauced with their own sepia ink, “are ridiculous, Pompeius. Caesar can’t win; we all know that. You’re always griping about our lack of money, so why are you so determined on these Fabian tactics?”
“Strategy, not tactics,” said Pompey.
“Whatever—who cares?” asked Lentulus Crus loftily. “I say that the moment we find Caesar, we give battle. Get it over and done with. Then head home for Italia and a few proscriptions.”
Brutus lay listening to all this in growing horror. His own participation in the siege of Dyrrachium had been minuscule; at any chance he volunteered to ride for Thessalonica or Athens or anywhere far from that frenzied, revolting cesspool. Only at Heracleia had he realized what kind of dissension was going on between Pompey and his legates. At Heracleia he heard of the doings of Labienus. At Heracleia he began to realize that Pompey’s own legates would end in ruining him.
Oh, why had he ever left Tarsus, Publius Sestius and that careful state of neutrality? How could he collect the interest on debts from people like Deiotarus and Ariobarzanes while they were funding Pompey’s war? How would he manage if these intransigent boars did manage to thrust Pompey into the battle he so clearly didn’t want? He was right, he was right! Fabian tactics—strategy—would win in the end. And wasn’t it worth it, to spare Roman lives, ensure a minimum of bloodshed? What would he do if someone thrust a sword into his hand and told him to fight?
“Caesar’s done for,” said Metellus Scipio, who didn’t agree with his son-in-law in this matter. He sighed happily, smiled. “I will be the Pontifex Maximus at last.”
Ahenobarbus sat bolt upright. “You’ll what?”
“Be the Pontifex Maximus at last.”
“Over my dead body!” yelled Ahenobarbus. “That’s one public honor belongs to me and my family!”
“Gerrae!” said Lentulus Spinther, grinning. “You can’t even get yourself elected a priest, Ahenobarbus, let alone get yourself elected Pontifex Maximus. You’re a born loser.”
“I will do what my grandfather did, Spinther! I’ll be voted in as pontifex and Pontifex Maximus at the same election!”
“No! It’s going to be a race between me and Scipio.”
“Neither of you stands a chance!” gasped Metellus Scipio, outraged. “I’m the next Pontifex Maximus!”
The clang of a knife thrown against precious gold plate set everyone jumping; Pompey slid off his couch and walked from the room without looking back.
*
On the fifth day of Sextilis, Pompey and his army arrived at Pharsalus to find Caesar occupying the ground on this north side of the river, but to the east.
“Excellent!” said Pompey to Faustus Sulla, who, dear boy, was just about the only one among the legates he could bear to talk to. Never criticized, just did what tata-in-law said. Well, there was Brutus. Another good fellow. But he skulked so! Kept himself out of sight, never wanted to attend the councils or even the dinners. “If we put ourselves here on this nice slope up to the hills, Faustus, we’re well above Caesar’s lie and between him and Larissa, Tempe and access to Macedonia.”
“Is it going to be a battle?” asked Faustus Sulla.
“I wish not. But I fear so.”
“Why are they so determined on it?”
“Oh,” said Pompey, sighing, “because they’re none of them soldiers save Labienus. They don’t understand.”
“Labienus is set on fighting too.”
“Labienus wants to pit himself against Caesar. He’s dying for the chance. He believes he’s the better general.”
“And is he?”
Pompey shrugged. “In all honesty, Faustus, I have absolutely no idea. Though Labienus should. He was Caesar’s right-hand man for years in Gallia Comata. Therefore I’m inclined to say yes.”
“Is it for tomorrow?”
Seeming to shrink, Pompey shook his head. “No, not yet.”
The morrow brought Caesar out to deploy. Pompey did
not follow suit. After a wait of some hours, Caesar sent his troops back into his camp and put them in the shade. Only spring, yes, but the sun was hot and the air, perhaps because of the swampiness of the river, was suffocatingly humid.
That afternoon Pompey called his legates together. “I have decided,” he announced, on his feet and inviting no one to sit. “We will give battle here at Pharsalus.”
“Oh, good!” said Labienus. “I’ll start the preparations.”
“No, no, not tomorrow!” cried Pompey, looking horrified.
Nor the next day. Thinking to stretch his men’s legs, he led them out for a walk—or so his legates assumed, since he put them in places where only a fool would have attacked after a long uphill run. Since Caesar was not a fool, he didn’t attack.
But on the eighth day of Sextilis, with the sun sliding down behind his camp, Pompey called his legates together again, this time in his command tent and around a large map his cartographers had drawn up for him upon calfskin.
“Tomorrow,” said Pompey tersely, and stepped back. “Labienus, explain the plan.”
“It’s to be a cavalry battle,” Labienus began, moving up to the map and beckoning everyone to cluster around. “By that I mean that we’ll use our enormous superiority in cavalry as the lever to defeat Caesar, who has only a thousand Germans. Note, by the way, that our skirmish with them revealed that Caesar has armed some of his foot in the same way the Ubii foot fight among the Ubii horse. They’re dangerous, but far too few. We’ll deploy here, with our long axis positioned between the river and the hills. At nine Roman legions we’ll outnumber Caesar, who must keep one of his nine in reserve. That’s where we’re lucky. We have fifteen thousand foreign auxiliary infantry as our reserve. The ground favors us; we’re slightly uphill. For that reason, we’ll draw up further away from Caesar’s front line than usual. Nor will we charge. Puff his men out before they reach our front line. We’re going to pack our infantry tightly because I’m massing six thousand cavalry on the left wing—here, against the hills. A thousand cavalry on our right, against the river—the ground’s too swampy for good horse work. A thousand archers and slingers will be interposed between the first legion of foot on the left and my six thousand horse.”
Labienus paused, glared at each of the men around him with fierce intensity. “The infantry will be drawn up in three separate blocks each comprising ten ranks. All three blocks will charge at the same moment. We have more weight than Caesar, who I’m very reliably informed has only four thousand men per legion due to his losses over the months in Epirus. Our legions are at full strength. We’ll let him charge us with breathless men and roll his front line back. But the real beauty of the plan is in the cavalry. There’s no way Caesar can resist six thousand horse charging his right. While the archer-slinger unit bombards the legion on his far right, my cavalry will drive forward like a landslide, repulse Caesar’s scant cavalry, then swing behind his lines and take him in the rear.” He stepped back, grinning broadly. “Pompeius, it’s all yours.”
“Well, I haven’t much more to add,” said Pompey, sweating in the humid air. “Labienus will command the six thousand horse on my left. As to the infantry, I’ll put the First and Third Legions on my left wing. Ahenobarbus, you’ll command. Then five legions in the center, including the two Syrian. Scipio, you’ll command the center. Spinther, you’ll command my right, closest to the river. You’ll have the eighteen cohorts not in legions. Brutus, you’ll second-in-command Spinther. Faustus, you’ll second-in-command Scipio. Afranius and Petreius, you’ll second-in-command Ahenobarbus. Favonius and Lentulus Crus, you’re in charge of the foreign levies drawn up in reserve. Young Marcus Cicero, you can have the cavalry reserve. Torquatus, take the reserve archers and slingers. Labienus, depute someone to command the thousand horse on the river. The rest of you can sort yourselves out among the legions. Understood?”
Everyone nodded, weighed down by the solemnity of the moment.
Afterward Pompey went off with Faustus Sulla. “There,” he said, “they have what they wanted. I couldn’t hold out any longer.”
“Are you well, Magnus?”
“As well as I’ll ever be, Faustus.” Pompey patted his son-in-law in much the same affectionate way as he had patted Cicero on leaving Dyrrachium. “Don’t worry about me, Faustus, truly. I’m an old man. Fifty-eight in less than two months. There’s a time… It’s hollow, all this ripping and clawing for power. Always a dozen men drooling at the prospect of tearing the First Man down.” He laughed wearily. “Fancy finding the energy to quarrel over which one of them will take Caesar’s place as Pontifex Maximus! As if it matters, Faustus. It doesn’t. They’ll all go too.”
“Magnus, don’t talk like this!”
“Why not? Tomorrow decides everything. I didn’t want it, but I’m not sorry. A decision of any kind is preferable to a continuation of life in my high command.” He dropped an arm about Faustus’s shoulders. “Come, it’s time to call the army to assembly. I have to tell them that tomorrow is the day.”
By the time the army had been summoned and the obligatory pre-battle oration given, darkness had fallen. An augur, Pompey then took the auspices himself. Because no cattle were available, the victim was to be a pure white sheep; a round dozen animals had been herded into a pen, washed, combed, readied for the augur’s expert eye to choose the most suitable offering. But when Pompey indicated a placid-looking bi-dentalis ewe and the cultarius and popa opened the gate, all twelve animals bolted for freedom. Only after a chase was the victim, dirtied and distressed, caught and sacrificed. Not a good omen. The army stirred and muttered; Pompey took the trouble to descend from the augural platform after the sacrifice and go among them, speaking reassuringly. The liver had been perfect, all was well, nothing to worry about.
Then the worst happened. The men were facing east toward Caesar’s camp, still milling and murmuring, when a mighty fireball streaked across the indigo sky like a falling comet of white flames. Down, down, down, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake, not to fall on Caesar’s camp— which might have been a good omen—but to disappear into the darkness far beyond. The unrest began all over again; this time Pompey couldn’t dispel it.
He went to bed in fatalistic mood, convinced that whatever the morrow might bring, it would be to his ultimate good. Why was a fireball a bad omen? What might Nigidius Figulus have made of it, that walking encyclopaedia of ancient Etruscan augural phenomena? Might the Etruscans not have thought it a good omen? Romans went only as far as livers, with the occasional foray into entrails and birds, whereas the Etruscans had catalogued everything.
The thunder woke him up several hours before dawn, sitting straight up in bed and wondering if he had leaped as high as the leather ceiling. Because his sleep had been interrupted at the right moment, he could remember his dream as vividly as if it were still going on. The temple of Venus Victrix at the top of his stone theater, where the statue of Venus had Julia’s face and slender body. He had been in it and decorating it with trophies of battle, while crowds and crowds in the auditorium applauded in huge delight. Oh, such a good omen! Except that the trophies of battle were trophies from his own side: his best silver armor, unmistakable with its cuirass depicting the victory of the Gods over the Titans; Lentulus Crus’s enormous ruby quizzing glass; Faustus Sulla’s lock of hair from his father Sulla’s bright red-gold tresses; Scipio’s helmet, which had belonged to his ancestor Scipio Africanus and still bore the same moth-eaten, faded egret’s feathers in its crest; and, most horrifying trophy of all, the glossy-pated head of Ahenobarbus on a German spear. Flower wreathed.
Shivering from cold, sweating from heat, Pompey lay down again and closed his eyes upon the flaring white lightning, listened as the thunder rolled away across the hills behind him. When the drumming rain came down in torrents, he drifted back into an uneasy sleep, his mind still going over the details of that awful dream.
*
Dawn brought a thick fog and windless, enervating air. In C
aesar’s camp all was stirring; the mules were being loaded up, the wagon teams harnessed, everyone getting into marching mode.
“He won’t fight!” Caesar had barked when he came to wake Mark Antony a good hour before first light. “The river’s running a banker after this storm, the ground’s soggy, the troops are wet, da de da de da… Same old Pompeius, same old list of excuses. We’re moving for Scotussa, Antonius, before Pompeius can get up off his arse to stop our slipping by him. Ye Gods, what a slug he is! Will nothing tempt him to fight?”
From which exasperated diatribe the sleepy Antony deduced that the old boy was touchy again.
In that grey, lustrous pall it was impossible to see as far as the lower ground between his own camp and Pompey’s; the pulling of stakes continued unabated.
Until an Aeduan scout came galloping up to where Caesar stood watching the beautiful order of nine legions and a thousand horse troopers preparing to move out silently, efficiently.
“General, General!” the man gasped, sliding off his horse. “General, Gnaeus Pompeius is outside his camp and lined up for—for battle! It really looks as if he means to fight!”
“Cacat!”
That exclamation having escaped his lips, no more followed. Caesar started barking orders in a fluent stream.
“Calenus, have the noncombatants get every last animal to the back of the camp! At the double! Sabinus, start the men tearing the front ramparts to pieces and filling in the ditch—I want every man out quicker than the capite censi can fill the bleachers at the circus! Antonius, get the cavalry saddled up for war, not a ride. You—you—you—you—form up the legions as we discussed. We’ll fight exactly as planned.”
When the fog lifted, Caesar’s army waited on the plain as if no march had ever been on the agenda for that morning.
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