5. Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  Dawn brought a thick fog and windless, enervating air. In Caesar'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. Pompey had drawn his lines up facing east which meant he had the rising sun facing him on a front a mile and a half long between the line of hills and the river, a huge host of cavalry on his left wing, a much smaller contingent on his right. Caesar, though he had the smaller army, strung his infantry front out a little longer, so that the Tenth, on his right, faced Pompey's archer-slinger detachment and part of Labienus's horse. From right to left he put the Tenth, Seventh, Thirteenth, Eleventh, Twelfth, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth. The Fourteenth, which he had thinned down from ten to eight cohorts when re-forming his legions at Aeginium, he positioned concealed behind his thousand German horse on the right wing. They were curiously armed; instead of their customary pila the men each carried a long, barbed siege spear. His left, against the river, would have to fend for itself without cavalry to stiffen it. Publius Sulla, a knacky soldier, had command of Caesar's right; his center went to Calvinus; his left was in the charge of Mark Antony. He had nothing in reserve. Positioned on a rise behind those eight cohorts of the Fourteenth armed with siege spears, Caesar sat Toes in his usual fashion, side on, one leg hooked round the two front pommels. Risky for any other horseman, not so for Caesar, who could twist in the tiniest fraction of time fully into the saddle and be off at a gallop. He liked his troops to see, should they cast a glance behind, that the General was absolutely relaxed, totally confident. Oh, Pompeius, you fool! You fool! You've let Labienus general this battle. You've staked your all on three silly, flimsy things that your horse has the weight to outflank my right and come round behind me to roll me up that your infantry has the weight to knock my boys back and that you'll tire my boys out by making them run all the way to you. Caesar's eyes went to where Pompey sat on his big white Public Horse behind his archer-slingers, neatly opposite Caesar. I am sorry for you, Pompeius. You can't win this one, and it's the big one. Every detail had been worked out three days before, gone over each day since. When Labienus's cavalry charged, Pompey's infantry did not, though Caesar's infantry did. But they paused halfway to get their breath back, then punched into Pompey's line like a great hammer. The thousand Germans on Caesar's right fell back before Labienus's charge without truly engaging; rather than waste time pursuing them, Labienus wheeled right the moment he got to the back third of the Tenth. And ran straight into a wall of siege spears the eight cohorts of the Fourteenth who had practised the technique for three days jabbed into the faces of Galatians and Cappadocians. Exactly, thought Labienus, mind whirling, like an old Greek phalanx. His cavalry broke, which was the signal for the Germans to fall upon his flank like wolves, and the signal for the Tenth to wheel sideways and slaughter the archer-slinger contingent before wading fearlessly into Labienus's disarrayed cavalry, horses screaming and going down, riders screaming and going down, panic everywhere. Elsewhere the pattern was the same; Pharsalus was more a rout than a battle. It lasted a scant hour. Pompey's foreign auxiliaries held in reserve fled the moment they saw the horse begin to falter. Most of the legions stayed to fight, including the Syrian, the First and the Third, but the eighteen cohorts against the river on Pompey's right scattered everywhere, leaving Antony complete victor along the Enipeus.

  Pompey left the field at an orderly trot the moment he realized he was done for. Rot Labienus and his scornful dismissal of Caesar's soldiers as raw recruits from across the Padus! Those were veteran legions out there and they fought as one unit, so competently and with such businesslike, rational flair! I was right, my legates were wrong. Just what is Labienus up to? No one will ever defeat Caesar on a battlefield. The man is on top of everything. Better strategy, better tactics. I'm done for. Is that what Labienus has been aiming for all along, high command? He rode back to his camp, entered his general's tent and sat with his head between his hands for a long time. Not weeping; the time for tears was past. And so Marcus Favonius, Lentulus Spinther and Lentulus Crus found him, sitting with his head between his hands. "Pompeius, you must get up," said Favonius, going across to put a hand on his silver-sheathed back. Pompey said no word, made no movement. "Pompeius, you must get up!" cried Lentulus Spinther. "It's finished, we're broken." "Caesar will be inside our camp, you must escape!" gasped Lentulus Crus, trembling. His hands fell; Pompey lifted his head. "Escape where?" he asked apathetically. "I don't know! Anywhere, anywhere at all! Please, Pompeius, come with us now!" begged Lentulus Crus. Pompey's eyes cleared enough to see that all three men were clad in the dress of Greek merchants tunic, chlamys cape, broad-brimmed hat, ankle boots. "Like that? In disguise?" he asked. "It's better," said Favonius, who bore another and similar outfit. "Come, Pompeius, stand up, do! I'll help you out of your armor and into these. So Pompey stood and allowed himself to be transformed from a Roman commander-in-chief to a Greek businessman. When it was attended to, he looked about the confines of his tent dazedly, then seemed to come to himself. He chuckled, followed his shepherds out. They left the camp through the gate nearest to the Larissa road on horseback and cantered off before Caesar reached the camp. Larissa was only thirty miles away, a short enough journey not to need a change of horse, but all four horses were blown before they rode in through the Scotussa gate. Even so, the news of Caesar's victory at Pharsalus had preceded them; Larissa, emphatically attached to Pompey's cause, was thronged with confused townsfolk who wandered this way and that, audibly wondering what would be their fate when Caesar came. "He'll not harm you," said Pompey, dismounting in the agora and removing his hat. "Go about your normal business. Caesar is a merciful man; he'll not harm you." Of course he was recognized, but not, thanks be to all the Gods, reviled for losing. What was it I once said to Sulla? asked Pompey of himself, surrounded by weeping partisans offering help. What was it I said to Sulla on that road outside Beneventum? When he was so drunk? More people worship the rising than the setting sun.... Yes, that was it. Caesar's sun is rising. Mine has set. A half-strength squadron of thirty Galatian horse troopers rallied around, offering to escort Pompey and his companions wherever they would like to go provided, that is, that it was eastward along the road back to Galatia and a little peace. They were all Gauls, a part of those thousand men Caesar had sent to Deiotarus as a gift, a way of making sure the men didn't die, but couldn't live to rebel either. Mostly Treveri who had learned a little broken Greek since being relocated so far from home. Freshly mounted, Pompey, Favonius and the two Lentu
li rode out of Larissa's Thessalonica Gate, hidden between the troopers. When they reached the Peneus River inside the Tempe Pass, they encountered a seagoing barge whose captain, ferrying a load of homegrown vegetables to the market in Dium, offered to take the four fugitives as far as Dium. With thanks to the Gallic horsemen, Pompey and his three friends boarded the barge. "More sensible," said Lentulus Spinther, recovering faster than the other three. "Caesar will be looking for us on the road to Thessalonica, but not on a barge full of vegetables." In Dium, a few miles up the coast from the mouth of the Peneus River, the four had another stroke of luck. There tied up at a wharf, having just emptied its cargo of millet and chickpea from Italian Gaul, was a neat little Roman merchantman with a genuinely Roman captain named Marcus Peticius. "No need to tell me who you are," said Peticius, shaking Pompey warmly by the hand. "Where would you like to go?" For once Lentulus Crus had done the right thing; before he left the camp, he filched every silver denarius and sestertius he could find, perhaps as atonement for forgetting to empty Rome's money and bullion out of the Treasury. "Name your price, Marcus Peticius," he said magnificently. "Pompeius, where to?" "Amphipolis," said Pompey, plucking a name out of his memory. "Good choice!" said Peticius cheerfully. "I'll pick up a nice load of mountain ash there hard to get in Aquileia."

  For Caesar, victor and owner of the field of Pharsalus, a very mixed day, that ninth one of Sextilis. His own losses had been minimal; the Pompeian losses at six thousand dead might have been far worse. "They would have it thus," he said sadly to Antony, Publius Sulla, Calvinus and Calenus when the tidying-up began. "They held my deeds as nothing and would have condemned me had I not appealed to my soldiers for help." "Good boys," said Antony affectionately. "Always good boys." Caesar's lips set. "Except the Ninth." The bulk of Pompey's army had vanished; Caesar did not exert himself to pursue it. Even so, it was nearing sunset when he finally found the time to enter and inspect Pompey's camp. "Ye Gods!" he breathed. "Weren't they sure of winning!" Every tent had been decorated, including those of the ranker soldiers. Evidence that a great feast had been ordered lay all over the place: piles of vegetables, fish which must have been sent fresh that morning from the coast and placidly put in shade to the sound of battle, hundreds upon hundreds of newly slaughtered lamb carcasses, mounds of bread, pots of stew, jars of softened chickpea and ground sesame seed in oil and garlic, cakes sticky with honey, olives by the tub, many cheeses, strings of sausages. "Pollio," said Caesar to his very junior legate, Gaius Asinius Pollio, "there's no point in transferring all this food from their camp to ours. Start moving our men over here to enjoy a victory feast donated to them by the enemy." He grunted. "It will have to take place tonight. By tomorrow, a lot of this stuff will have perished. I don't want sick soldiers." However, it was the tents of Pompey's legates really opened every pair of eyes. By ironic coincidence, Caesar reached Lentulus Crus's quarters last. "Shades of that palace on the sea at Gytheum!" he said (a reference no one understood), shaking his head. "No wonder he couldn't be bothered emptying the Treasury! A man might be pardoned for presuming he'd looted the Treasury for himself." Gold plate was strewn everywhere, the couches were Tyrian purple, the pillows pearl embroidered, the tables in the corners were priceless citrus-wood; in Lentulus Crus's sleeping chamber the inspection party found a huge bathtub of rare red marble with lion's paw feet. The kitchen, an open area behind the tent's back, yielded barrels packed with snow in which reposed the most delicate fish shrimps, sea urchins, oysters, dug-mullets. More snow-packed barrels contained various kinds of little birds, lambs' livers and kidneys, herbified sausages. The bread was rising, the sauces all lined up in pots ready to heat. "Hmmm," said Caesar, "this is where we feast tonight! And for once, Antonius, you'll be able to eat and drink to your heart's content. Though," he ended with a chuckle, "it's back to the same old stuff tomorrow night. I will not live like Sampsiceramus when I'm on campaign. I daresay Crus got the snow from Mount Olympus." Accompanied only by Calvinus, he sat down in Pompey's command tent to investigate the chests of papers and documents found there. "One has to trot out that old saw and proclaim to the world that one has burned the enemy's papers Pompeius did that once, in Osca after Sertorius died but it's a foolish man who doesn't have a good look first." "Will you burn them?" Calvinus asked, smiling. "Oh, definitely! In great public state, as Pompeius did. But I read at a glance, Calvinus. We'll establish a system. I'll con everything first, and anything I think might be worth reading at leisure I'll hand to you." Among many dozens of fascinating pieces of paper was the last will and testament of King Ptolemy Auletes, late of Egypt. "Well, well!" said Caesar thoughtfully. "I think this is one document I won't sacrifice to the fire. It might come in quite handy in the future." Everyone rose rather late the following morning, Caesar included; he had stayed up until nearly dawn reading those chests and chests of papers. Very informative indeed. While the legions completed the burning of bodies and other inevitable duties consequent upon victory, Caesar and his legates rode out along the road to Larissa. Where they encountered the bulk of Pompey's Roman troops. Twenty-three thousand men cried for pardon, which Caesar was pleased to grant. He then offered places in his own legions for any men who wanted to volunteer. "Why, Caesar?" asked Publius Sulla, astonished. "We've won the war here at Pharsalus!" The pale, unsettling eyes rested on Sulla's nephew with cool irony. "Rubbish, Publius!" he said. "The war's not over. Pompeius is still at large. So too are Labienus, Cato, all Pompeius's fleet commanders and fleets! and at least a dozen other dangerous men. This war won't be over until they've all submitted to me." "Submitted to you?" Publius Sulla frowned, then relaxed. "Oh! You mean submitted to Rome." "I," said Caesar, "am Rome, Publius. Pharsalus has proved it."

  For Brutus, Pharsalus was a nightmare. Wondering whether Pompey had understood his torment, he had been enormously grateful for the fact that Pompey had deputed him to Lentulus Spinther on the right flank at the river. But Antony and the Eighth and Ninth had faced them, and though the Ninth in particular had been replenished with the more inexperienced men of the Fourteenth, no one could say afterward that they hadn't punished the enemy. Given a horse and told to look after the outermost cohorts, Brutus sat the animal in serviceable steel armor and eyed the ivory eagle hilt of his sword like a small animal fascinated by a snake. He never did draw it. Suddenly chaos broke loose, the world was filled with his own men screaming "Hercules Invictus!" and the men of the Ninth screaming some unintelligible warcry; he discovered, appalled, that hand-to-hand combat in a legion's front line was not a precious pairing-off of one man against another, but a massive push, push, push of mail-clad bodies while other mail-clad bodies pushed, pushed, pushed in the opposite direction. Swords stabbed and flickered, shields were used like rams and levers how did they ever remember who was who, friend or enemy? Did they really have time to look at the color of a helmet crest? Transfixed, Brutus simply sat his horse and watched. The news of the collapse of Pompey's left and his cavalry traveled down the line in some way he didn't understand, except that men ceased to cry "Hercules Invictus!" and started crying quarter instead. Caesar's Ninth wore blue horsehair plumes. When the yellow plumes of his own cohorts seemed suddenly to vanish before a sea of blue ones, Brutus kicked his restive mount in the ribs and bolted for the river. All day and into the night he hid in the swampy overflow of the Enipeus, never for a moment letting go of his horse's reins. Finally, when the cheers, shouts and laughter of Caesar's feasting and victorious troops began to die away with the embers of their fires, he pulled himself upon the horse's back and rode off toward Larissa. There, given civilian Greek clothing by a sympathetic man of Larissa who also offered him shelter, Brutus sat down at once and wrote to Caesar.