“Won’t get my toga wet, will I? Can’t meet the King of Egypt looking bedraggled,” said Pompey jovially.
“Dry as an old bone,” said Achillas.
“Magnus, please don’t!” Cornelia Metella whispered.
“I agree, Father. Don’t go in this insult!” said Sextus.
“Truly,” said Achillas, smiling to reveal that he had lost two of his front teeth, “circumstances have dictated the conveyance, nothing else. Why, I even brought along a familiar face to calm any fears you might have had. See the fellow in centurion’s dress?”
Pompey’s eyes were not the best these days, but he had learned that if he screwed one of them three-quarters shut, the other one snapped into focus. He did his trick and let out a huge Picentine whoop of joy—Gallic, Caesar would have called it. “Oh, I don’t believe it!” He turned to Sextus and Cornelia Metella, face alight. “Do you know who that is down there in my ship of state? Lucius Septimius! A Fimbriani primus pilus from the old days in Pontus and Armenia! I decorated him several times, then he and I almost walked to the Caspian Sea. Except that we turned back because we didn’t like the crawlies. Well! Lucius Septimius!”
After that it seemed a shame to crush his joy. Cornelia Metella contented herself with an admonition to be careful, while Sextus had a word with the two centurions from the First Legion who had insisted on coming along when they found Pompey in Paphos.
“Keep an eye on him,” Sextus muttered.
“Come on, Philip, hurry up!” said Pompey, climbing the rail without fuss despite the purple-bordered toga.
Achillas, who had gone down the side first, ushered Pompey to the single seat in the bow. “The driest spot,” he said.
“Septimius, you rogue, sit here right behind me!” said Pompey, disposing himself tidily. “Oh, what a pleasure to see you! But what are you doing in Pelusium?”
Philip and his slave servant sat amidships between two of the six oarsmen, with Pompey’s two centurions behind them and Achillas in the stern.
“Retired here after Aulus Gabinius left a garrison behind in Alexandria,” said Septimius, a very grizzled veteran blinded in one eye. “All went to pieces after a little scrap with the sons of Bibulus—well, you’d know about that. The rankers got sent back to Antioch and the ringleaders were executed. But yon General Achillas had a fancy to keep the centurions. So here I am, primus pilus in a legion full of Jews.”
Pompey chatted for a while, but the trip was very slow and he worried a little about his speech; composing a flowery speech in Greek to deliver to a twelve-year-old boy had been difficult. He turned on his seat in the bow and called back to Philip.
“Pass me my speech, would you?”
Philip passed him the speech. He unrolled it, hunched his shoulders and began to go through it again.
The beach came up quite suddenly; he had become absorbed.
“Hope we run this thing up far enough not to muddy my shoes!” he laughed to Septimius, bracing himself for the jar.
The oarsmen did well, the boat coasted up the dirty, muddy beach beyond the waterline, and came to rest level.
“Up!” he said to himself, curiously happy. The night with Cornelia had been a lusty one, more lusty nights would come, and he had Serica to look forward to, a new life where an old soldier might teach exotic people Roman tricks. They said there were men out there whose heads grew out of their chests—men with two heads—men with one eye—sea serpents—oh, what mightn’t he find beyond the rising sun?
You can keep the West, Caesar! I’m going East! Serica and freedom! What do the Sericans know or care about Picenum, what do they know or care about Rome? The Sericans will deem a Picentine upstart like me the equal of any Julian or Cornelian!
Something tore, crunched and broke. His body already half out of the boat, Pompey turned his head to see Lucius Septimius right behind him.
Warm liquid gushed down his legs; for a moment he thought he must have urinated, then the unmistakable smell rose to his nostrils. Blood. His? But there was no pain! His legs gave way, he fell full length in the dirty dry mud. What is it? What is happening to me? He felt rather than saw Septimius flip him over, sensed a sword looming above his chest.
I am a Roman nobleman. They must not see my face as I die, they must not see that part of me which makes me a man. I must die like a Roman nobleman! Pompey made a last, convulsive effort. One hand yanked his toga decently down over his thighs, the other pulled a fold over his face. The sword point entered his chest with skill and power. He moved no more.
Achillas had stabbed both the centurions in the back, but to kill two men at once is difficult. A fight broke out; the rear oarsmen turned to help. Still glued to their seat, Philip and the slave suddenly realized that they were going to die. They leaped to their feet, out of the boat, and were away.
“I’ll go after them,” said Septimius, grunting.
“Two silly Greeks?” asked Achillas. “What can they do?”
A small party of slaves waited nearby, a big earthen crock at their feet. Achillas lifted his hand; they picked up the crock—it seemed very heavy—and approached.
In the meantime Septimius had pulled the toga away from Pompey’s face to reveal its contours: peaceful, unmarred. He put the tip of his bloodied sword under the neck of the tunic with the broad purple stripe on its right shoulder and ripped it down to the waist. The second blow had been true; the wound lay over the heart.
“It’s a bit hard,” said Septimius, “to cut a head off with the body like this. Someone find me a block of wood.”
The block of wood was found. Septimius draped Pompey’s neck across it, lifted his sword and chopped down. Neat and clean. The head rolled a little way; the body subsided to the mud.
“Never thought I’d be the one to kill him. Funny, that… A good general as generals go… Still, him alive is no use to me. Want the head in that jar?”
Achillas nodded, more moved than this Roman centurion. As Septimius lifted the head up by its luxuriant silver hair, Achillas found his eyes going to it. Dreaming… but what of?
The crock was full almost to the brim with natron, the liquid in which the embalmers soaked an eviscerated body for months as part of the mummification process. One of the slaves lifted its wooden plug; Septimius dropped the head in and stepped back quickly to avoid the sudden overflow.
Achillas nodded. The slaves picked the jar up on its rope handles and carried it ahead of their master. The oarsmen had pushed the dinghy off and were busy rowing it away; Lucius Septimius plunged his sword into the dry mud to clean it, shoved it back into its scabbard and strolled off in the wake of the others.
*
Hours later Philip and the slave crept to the place where Pompey’s headless body lay on the deserted beach, its toga a browning crimson as the blood grew old yet still seeped through the porous woolen fibers.
“We’re stranded in Egypt,” said the slave.
Worn out from weeping, Philip looked up from the body of Pompey apathetically. “Stranded?”
“Yes, stranded. They sailed, our ships. I saw them.”
“Then there is no one save us to attend to him.” Philip gazed about, nodded. “At least there’s driftwood. No wonder they came in here; it’s so lonely.”
The two men toiled until they had built a pyre six feet high; getting the body onto it wasn’t easy, but they managed.
“We don’t have fire,” said the slave.
“Then go and ask someone.”
Darkness was falling when the slave returned carrying a small metal bucket puffing smoke.
“They didn’t want to give me the bucket,” said the slave, “but I told them we wanted to burn Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. So then they said I could have the bucket.”
Philip scattered the glowing coals through the open network of sea-silvered branches, made sure the toga was well rucked in, and stood back with the slave to see if the wood caught.
It took a little time, but when it did catch the driftwood blaze
d fiercely enough to dry the fresh spate of Philip’s tears.
Exhausted, they lay down some distance away to sleep; in that languorous air a fire was too warm. And at dawn, finding the pyre reduced to blackened debris, they used the metal bucket to cool it from the sea, then sifted through it for Pompey’s ashes.
“I can’t tell what’s him and what’s wood,” said the slave.
“There’s a difference,” said Philip patiently. “Wood crumbles. Bones don’t. Ask me if you’re not sure.”
They put what they found in the metal bucket.
“What do we do now?” asked the slave, a poor creature whose job was to wash and scrub.
“We walk to Alexandria,” said Philip.
“Got no money,” said the slave.
“I carry Gnaeus Pompeius’s purse for him. We’ll eat.”
Philip picked up the bucket, took the slave by one limp hand, and walked off down the beach, away from stirring Pelusium.
FINIS
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AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD
Having arrived at the years which are very well documented in the ancient sources, in order to keep my wordage within limits my publishers find acceptable, I have had to pick and choose rather than retell every aspect. The addition of Caesar’s Commentaries, both on Gaul and on the civil war against Pompey the Great, enriches the ancient sources enormously.
I don’t think there is much doubt that Caesar’s Commentaries on the war in Gallia Comata are his senatorial dispatches, and so have made them; the modern debate occurs more about whether Caesar published these dispatches in one lump at the beginning of 51 B.C., or whether he published them over the years one at a time. I have chosen to have him publish the first seven books as one volume around the beginning of 51 B.C.
For my comments on the codex as used by Caesar, see the Glossary entry under codex.
The amount of detail in Caesar’s Gallic War Commentaries is daunting, so also the number of names which come and go, never to be mentioned again. Therefore I have adopted a policy which curtails the mention of names never heard again. Quintus Cicero in winter camp along the Mosa had military tribunes under his command, for example, but I have elected not to mention them. The same can be said for Sabinus and Cotta. Caesar always cared more for his centurions than his military tribunes, and I have followed his example in places where a plethora of aristocratic new names would serve only to confuse the reader.
In some other ways I have “tampered” with the Gallic War Commentaries, one quite major. This major one concerns Quintus Cicero at the end of 53 B.C., when he undergoes an ordeal quite remarkably similar to his ordeal in winter camp at the beginning of that year. Again he is besieged in a camp, this time the oppidum of Atuatuca, from whence Sabinus and Cotta had fled. In the interests of brevity I have changed this incident to an encounter with the Sugambri on the march; I have also changed the number of his legion from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth, as it is difficult later to know exactly which legion Caesar led in such a hurry from Placentia to Agedincum. Caesar’s penetration of the Cebenna in winter has also been modified in the interests of brevity.
Other, more minor departures stem out of Caesar’s own inaccuracies. His estimates of mileage, for example, are shaky. So too, sometimes, his descriptions of what is going on. The duel between the centurions Pullo and Vorenus has been simplified.
One of the great mysteries about the Gallic War concerns the small number of his Atrebates whom King Commius was able to bring to the relief of Alesia. I couldn’t find a battle wherein they had perished en masse; until Labienus’s little plot, Commius and his Atrebates were on Caesar’s side. The only thing I could think was that they had marched en masse to the assistance of the Parisii, the Aulerci and the Bellovaci when Titus Labienus slaughtered those tribes along the Sequana (Seine) while Caesar was engaged in the campaigns around Gergovia and Noviodunum Nevirnum. Perhaps we should read “Atrebates” for “Bellovaci,” as the Bellovaci did remain alive in sufficient numbers to be a great nuisance later on.
Again in the interests of simplicity, I have not done much with specific septs of the great Gallic confederations: Treveri (Mediomatrices and other septs), Aedui (Ambarri, Segusiavi), and Armorici (many septs from Esubii to Veneti to Venelli).
Some years after Caesar’s death, a man from Gallia Comata turned up in Rome, claiming to be Caesar’s son. According to the ancient sources, he resembled Caesar physically. Out of this I have concocted the story of Rhiannon and her son. The concoction serves a twofold purpose: the first, to reinforce my contention that Caesar was not incapable of siring children, rather that he was hardly in anyone’s bed for long enough to do so; and the second, that it permits a more intimate look at the lives and customs of the Celtic Gauls. Though a late source, Ammianus is most informative.
There have been many papers written by modern scholars as to why Titus Labienus did not side with Caesar after he crossed the Rubicon, why Labienus sided instead with Pompey the Great. Much is made of the fact that Labienus was in Pompey’s clientele because he was a Picentine from Camerinum and served as Pompey’s tame tribune of the plebs in 63 B.C. However, the fact remains that Labienus worked far more for Caesar than he did for Pompey, even during his tribunate of the plebs. Also, Labienus stood to gain more from allying himself with Caesar than with Pompey. The assumption is always that it was Labienus who said no to Caesar; but why, I wondered, could it not have been Caesar who said no to Labienus? There is a logical answer supporting this in the Eighth Book of the Gallic War Commentaries. The Eighth Book was not written by Caesar, but by his fanatically loyal adherent Aulus Hirtius. At one stage Hirtius waxes indignant over the fact that Caesar had refused to record Labienus’s plot against King Commius in his Seventh Book; it is up to him, says Hirtius, to record what was, as readers of this novel will have seen, a shabby and dishonorable affair. Not, I would have thought, anything Caesar would have approved of. Caesar’s action at Uxellodunum, a horrific business, was nonetheless done right up front and publicly. As Caesar seems to have conducted himself. Whereas Labienus was sneaky and underhanded. To me, the evidence seems to say that Caesar tolerated Labienus in Gaul because of his brilliance in the field, but that he would not have wanted Labienus in his camp after crossing the Rubicon; to Caesar, a political alliance with Labienus might have been a bit like marrying a cobra.
Evidence favors Plutarch rather than Suetonius in the matter of what Caesar actually said when he crossed the Rubicon. Pollio, who was there, says that Caesar quoted some of a couplet from the New Comedy poet and playwright Menander, and quoted it in Greek, not in Latin. “Let the dice fly high!” Not “The die is cast.” To me, very believable. “The die is cast” is gloomy and fatalistic. “Let the dice fly high!” is a shrug, an admission that anything can happen. Caesar was not fatalistic. He was a risk taker.
The Commentaries on the Civil War required far less adjustment than the Gallic War ones. On only one occasion have I altered the sequence of events, by having Afranius and Petreius return to Pompey earlier than it seems they did. My reason: to keep them in the minds of my non-scholar readers more comfortably.
Now to the maps. Most are self-explanatory. Only Avaricum and Alesia need some words of explanation.
What we know about these immortal situations is mostly based upon nineteenth-century maps and models done around the time Napoleon III was immersed in his Life of Caesar, and had Colonel Stoffel digging up France to look at Caesar’s camp and battle sites.
I have departed from these maps and models in certain ways.
In the case of Alesia, where the excavations proved that Caesar
didn’t lie about what he accomplished, I differ from Stoffel in two ways (which do not contradict Caesar’s reportage, I add). First, Caesar’s cavalry camps. These, shown as free-floating and waterless, had to have been connected to Caesar’s fortifications. They also had to have incorporated a part of a natural stream at a place the Gauls would find difficult to divert. Riverbeds shift with the millennia, so we have no real idea whereabouts precisely the streams ran at Alesia two thousand years ago. Aerial surveys have revealed that the Roman fortifications at Alesia were as straight and/or regular as was general Roman military custom. I have therefore partially “squared” the cavalry camps, which Stoffel draws most irregularly. Second, I believe that the camp of Rebilus and Antistius formed the closure of Caesar’s ring, and have drawn it thus. In Stoffel’s maps it “floats,” and suggests that Caesar’s ring was never closed at all. I can’t see Caesar making that kind of mistake. To use the vulnerable camp as his closure, given that he couldn’t take the circumvallation up and over the mountain, is good sense. He had two legions there to man the lines along his great weakness.
As for Avaricum, I depart from the models in four ways. First, that I can see no reason not to make the wall connecting Caesar’s two flank walls as high as his flank walls. To have it the same height creates a proper fighting platform fed by troops from everywhere at once. Second, I fail to see why defense towers would have been erected on Avaricum’s walls right where the gangplanks of Caesar’s towers would have thumped down. In a famously iron-rich tribe like the Bituriges, surely iron shields were more likely opposite Caesar’s towers; the Avarican towers would have been more useful elsewhere. Third, I have halved the number of mantlets these models have put outside the flanking walls and going nowhere of much help in getting troops on top of the assault platform. I believe these particular mantlets sheltered the Roman sappers. Fourth, I have not drawn in any shelter sheds or a palisade on top of the assault platform; not because they weren’t there, but rather to show what the platform itself looked like.
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