Caesar Ascending-Conquest of Parthia

by R. W. Peake

  That was how it started; Caspar never learned how Teispes convinced Gobryas to accede to the proposal, nor did he ever ask. All he cared about was that before the sun set on the following day, the one-eyed Parthian came to Caspar’s quarters, and as was his habit, simply entered.

  “We start tomorrow,” Teispes told Caspar, which caused the Primus Pilus to realize that he hadn’t expected an answer so quickly, and as a consequence, he had yet to inform the eight Centurions and two Optios he had selected as the cadre who would be responsible for imparting what they could in however much time they had before the Romans came in earnest.

  The rest of that day had been a frenzy of activity for Caspar, first as he summoned the men he had chosen, each of whom took the news with varying degrees of enthusiasm, for which Caspar had sympathy, although he kept that hidden. As far as the actual training went, it had to be confined within the walls of Susa in order to preserve the surprise, but there was not only a dearth of open spaces inside the city, the one suitable spot was the large square outside the palace, but this was located on top of the lone hill around which Susa had been built and could possibly be visible from the Roman lines, which meant that the men being trained had to be divided into smaller groups. It was inevitable that, even with Gobryas’ issuing this as a command, acting under the authority given him by Phraates, there were some recalcitrant noblemen who initially refused to participate in any activity that was beneath them. That it was Teispes who Gobryas chose to visit these noblemen Caspar knew was no accident, just as it had been no accident that Orodes had chosen this hulking, menacing warrior to work with the Crassoi. Caspar was certainly an able warrior in his own right, and there weren’t many men that he feared, but Teispes was one of them, if only because of his sheer brute strength that, in the early days of the transformation of captured Roman Legionaries into the Crassoi, he had seen the Parthian demonstrate in the most brutal fashion imaginable. Never far from Caspar’s mind was the image of the unfortunate ranker who had been caught planning to escape, not just for the purpose of spending an extra day or two in debauchery, but with the intent of crossing the vast wasteland back in the direction of Rome. Teispes had beaten the man with a merciless ease, yet it was when the Parthian had lifted the man, barely alive but still conscious, above his head before slamming him down across the Parthian’s knee and breaking the man’s back with a meaty, snapping sound that was audible from a dozen paces away that Caspar never forgot, nor did any other Crassoi. It had been done, Caspar recalled, in the same manner someone would snap a stick over their knee to put in a fire, and as he was sure Teispes intended, more than anything else, this had served to convince the Crassoi of not just the futility, but the horrible fate that awaited them if they tried to escape. This was also why Caspar was a bit apprehensive when Teispes told the Primus Pilus that he would be the Parthian’s private tutor, teaching him how to use sword and shield, on the ground, like a Roman fought. Therefore, while Caesar’s army continued their work, now well into the second set of entrenchments, the Parthians made their own preparations for what was coming.

  Chapter Three

  Two months after the work began, the last shovelful of dirt in the outer entrenchment was tossed out, completing the contravallation of Susa. Regardless of this seeming progress, Caesar was far from satisfied. In its simplest terms, the general had been forced to make a choice between two alternatives, neither of which were palatable. Because of the scarcity of timber in the lengths and size sufficient to create enough towers that housed the artillery in which he believed so strongly, Caesar had to decide whether or not the few he could construct would serve better facing the Crassoi entrenchments, or whether they should be positioned in anticipation of an attack from Phraates. The bulk of his cavalry arm he had placed for the time being under Aulus Hirtius, due to his recognition that, as hale and hearty as his Muleteer Ventidius might have been, he was still in his mid-sixties, and they had picked up Phraates’ trail and were now observing the small city of Sostrate, watching for signs that the Parthian king was preparing to return. He received daily reports, as a constant stream of dispatch riders shuttled back and forth, and to this point, there had been no overt signs that Phraates was rousing himself. This hadn’t surprised him, which was why he had made the snap decision to free Kambyses, hoping that the Parthian king would send his old adversary back at the head of the spad that was now at Sostrate. Caesar had certainly never met Phraates, and indeed had just gotten a glimpse of the man before he fled, but while Kambyses had done his best to be circumspect, Caesar had gleaned what he felt confident was an accurate picture of the Parthian king. Pieces of that assessment didn’t come from Kambyses alone; Caesar had sources in places that nobody but he knew about, although his high-ranking captive had by far been the most informative. Now, only time would tell if his belief about the quality of Phraates as not king but warrior would be accurate.

  Additionally, for weeks, Caesar had been trying to think of a way that his army could cope with the lack of timber, even resorting to the idea of using stones dredged from the muddy river bottom to try and construct towers, but there hadn’t been enough to solve his problem, a situation that he correctly deduced was due to the fact that the Crassoi had already done so when building their defenses. Then, at least a partial solution had presented itself, from an unlikely source, when one of the Decurions in command of an ala of cavalry that wasn’t part of Hirtius’ force had returned from a long scouting mission. Decimus Silva, who had proven himself to Caesar’s satisfaction during the days leading up to the battle on the ridge where Pacorus had been killed by Titus Pullus, had been sent far to the southwest, following the Tigris. It hadn’t been strictly for the purpose of scouting; Caesar had given him specific instructions to find a location that, frankly, was to this point was viewed by many Romans as myth. Supposedly, there was a tiny but independent city-state named Charax, whose origins Caesar had first learned about from some of the materials he had salvaged from the library of Alexandria, before the unfortunate fire. It was tiny enough that for whatever reason, the surrounding Parthian empire hadn’t deemed it important enough to expend the time and resources to conquer. While he didn’t have specific information, Caesar’s assumption was that the satrap of Charax paid tribute to the Parthians in exchange for being left alone, but it wasn’t Charax’s wealth that Caesar was interested in; it was in a single line in the description of the tiny territory from a scroll he had found in Alexandria’s library. Before Caesar made any mention of it, however, he waited until Silva returned, which fortuitously occurred late in the day of the completion of the outer entrenchment.

  At the evening briefing, Caesar informed his assembled officers, “I think I’ve found a solution to our problem concerning the lack of timber, one that doesn’t involve ripping out the material we used to rebuild Seleucia.” As might be expected, this news was met with interest, and Caesar waited for a moment before continuing, “But, like with everything concerning this campaign, there is a…complication.” When Caesar paused again, Pullus wasn’t alone in thinking that this was one habit of Caesar’s that he could live without, certain that his general was simply building the tension before providing a solution that would show his subordinates his brilliance. Finally, Caesar continued by amending himself. “Actually, there are a couple complications. One is a matter of distance, but it’s the other that concerns which Legion I select to handle this task. There’s a small, a very small city-state, the name it’s most commonly known by is Charax, and it’s changed hands several times. Right now, it appears that the Parthians have allowed this city to remain independent, but what concerns us is that they have a large quantity of timber. Now,” he held up a cautioning hand as his officers began muttering to each other and shifting on their stools, “according to the report from Decurion Silva, there are several large orchards containing date palm trees. Volusenus has informed me that since he hasn’t worked with this kind of wood, he has no idea if it will be suitable for our purposes. B
ut it’s really all that’s available without going more than two hundred miles.”

  It was Pullus who sat quietly for a moment, thinking through not just what Caesar had said, but what he hadn’t mentioned yet.

  He was about to raise his hand to ask when Caesar unknowingly answered the question by turning to Atartinus, informing him, “Primus Pilus Atartinus, you and the 11th will leave in the morning. Wait until after this meeting, and I’ll give you your specific orders.” Returning to the larger meeting, Caesar continued, “I believe we can expect at least one other sortie by the Parthians, and if they’re smart, they’ll do it now before we have our artillery emplaced.”

  “Couldn’t we put the scorpions on the ramparts now?” Aulus Mus asked. “It’s true they won’t be as protected, but it would be better to have them ready, wouldn’t it?”

  “Perhaps,” Caesar answered, but Pullus and those who were more familiar with their general than Mus heard the tone that informed them the general wasn’t seriously entertaining this as an option, “but you can be sure that when they come, they’ll be flinging those accursed firepots at anything that can burn.”

  “And,” Spurius of the 3rd leaned over to whisper to Pullus, “as far as Caesar’s concerned, he’d rather us go up in flames than his precious artillery.”

  Despite the grim nature of the jest, Pullus had to smother a chuckle, if only because he agreed with Spurius; this time, fortune favored the pair because Caesar had not heard this exchange.

  “Are there any estimates of the supply situation inside Susa?” Asinius Pollio asked Caesar, and again Pullus sensed this was a prearranged question.

  “On that, we do have some good news.” Caesar smiled broadly. “Thanks to some…little birds who aren’t stopped by walls,” there were a few smiles, but nobody chuckled, a sign that Caesar’s attempt at levity had fallen flat, “we’ve learned that their situation isn’t dire…yet. But a month from now, my sources estimate that the townspeople will be put on half rations. And,” he continued, “now that we’re this far south and have access to all the farmlands between the Tigris and Euphrates, our own situation is actually quite good, considering. At least,” he allowed, “we can use the harvest from this coming season to replenish our own quaestorium without relying on grain from Egypt.”

  This made sense to the officers, and he was pleased to see that none of them seemed inclined to press further, because as he had a tendency to do, Caesar was withholding information he had received just the day before from even his most senior Legates like Pollio and Ventidius. Word had come from Rome, by way of Octavian in Ctesiphon, that the whole of Italia was in the grip of a massive drought, and it was almost a certainty that there would be widespread famine; unless, that is, the grain grown in Egypt was transshipped across Our Sea, instead of being sent by mule train across the wastes to Caesar’s army. His reason for not saying anything was based in several factors, not least of which was how many of the men who marched for him came from somewhere like Umbria, or Campania, and their minds would be occupied with worry about their families. There was another aspect that Caesar chose not to share, and that was in his lack of information about what kind of quantities of foodstuffs the land between the Tigris and Euphrates provided; he knew that it supplied the majority of the grain for the entirety of this, the lower portion of the Parthian empire, but Phraates had still been in control of this region the autumn before, so there was no way of knowing how much of the total would be consumed by the civilian populace that was now effectively under Roman control. He was including Susa in his calculations, such as they were; he was committed to taking the Parthian capital this campaign season, and he would also do everything within his power to bring Phraates to a decisive battle, and defeat and kill him. Because, the part of his mind that was always active with other matters no matter how engaged he might seem at moments such as this, there could only be one ruler in Parthia. And that would be Caesar.

  From outward appearances, especially to an uninformed observer, what was taking place between the two combatants amounted to little more than a collective staring contest, where men from both sides struggled to remain alert despite the oppressive heat and the crushing boredom. Too far apart for any kind of verbal confrontations, fairly quickly, the novelty of making obscene gestures to each other wore off, for both the Caesarians and the Crassoi. What was actually taking place, however, was distinctly different, with Caspar and the Crassoi busily working on improving their fortifications now that the form of Caesar’s design was evident. It was going to be a straightforward siege, where Caesar’s army would effectively choke an entire city off from any outside succor, either in the form of fresh supplies, or, as Caspar and his men hoped, in the form of the spad that had escaped. Parthian communication with Phraates had been maintained until the last day before the two encircling ends met each other. Then, while it wasn’t impossible, it was much more haphazard and less reliable getting messages back and forth. The last word that Gobryas had seen fit to share with Caspar was a vaguely worded message from the Parthian king that assured them plans were in the works to come to their relief, but that was as far as it went. Or, Caspar had thought at the time, Gobryas doesn’t want us to know how long we’re expected to hold out before help arrives. While Caesar was reluctant to strip any materials that would prove valuable in the achievement of his aims, Gobryas had no such compunctions, and what little wood there was available within Susa’s walls had been ripped from wherever it was found, which meant in some cases, buildings were demolished. Unlike Kambyses’ plight the year before, the Crassoi were Roman Legionaries, which meant among their ranks were the immunes of all the various skills that made the Legion unique, allowing it a level of self-subsistence that no other army could match. The combination of their skills, when given materials with which to work, meant that new artillery pieces were fashioned, with the special modification first created by Anaxagoras, the Greek who had been executed by Caesar, of the latticework metal basket that could hold the clay pots of naphtha that would be hurled at the attackers, just as they had at Ctesiphon. Before he fled, Phraates had expressed confidence in the use of this fiery weapon; not enough confidence to stay here, Caspar thought sourly as he examined the work of the artillery immunes as they assembled one of the four ballistae they were able to create, using the wood that the woodworking immunes had fashioned in the proper shapes. While he watched his men attaching the special iron basket to a finished ballista, he was unaware that it was for precisely this piece of information that Anaxagoras had smuggled out of Ctesiphon after its capture that had cost him his life. And, if he had been pressed, Caspar wasn’t sanguine that the sticky, volatile substance would prove decisive, or even provide that much of an advantage. Yes, Kambyses and his artillery force had been able to inflict terrible casualties on the Romans, but it still hadn’t kept the two cities from falling. Kambyses hadn’t had the Crassoi, however, nor did he have the time and ability to impress his fellow nobles into training in a manner that at least resembled the Roman method of fighting. It had come as a major surprise to Caspar that, aside from a few malcontents, the cataphractoi, the Greek term that the Parthians had adopted, who had been selected to learn had taken to the training, although he ascribed that more to their circumstances, being penned up inside Susa, than to the idea they believed this would enable them to repel Caesar’s army when it came.

  Another item the immunes were busily crafting was a stockpile of bolts, both with wooden shafts about the length of a man’s forearm to his fingertips, for the scorpions, but also large ones made of iron for the ballistae. While missiles of this nature didn’t inflict as many casualties as a well-placed firepot did, Caspar had convinced Gobryas that it was a devastating psychological weapon in its own right. The manner in which this had been demonstrated didn’t trouble Caspar very much; four men of the contingent of native Parthian infantry had been caught stealing food from the central stores, and they had been sentenced to die. As a demonstration, Caspar had the four
blindfolded men arranged in a straight line, standing roughly the same distance apart as if they were in a Roman formation. The iron bolt launched by the ballista punched through all four men without visibly slowing, and buried itself in the brick wall behind them, trailing a spray of blood and gore as it eviscerated the condemned men more quickly than the eye could track. That had been enough for Gobryas, and he had actually ordered every scrap of iron that wasn’t already being used to be gathered, melted down, and forged into a new purpose. The one bone of contention between Gobryas and Caspar had been the placement of these new artillery pieces. Caspar had assumed that the new addition to the complement of machines would be under his operational command, but when he ordered the first completed ballista to be rolled out through one of the city gates, Gobryas had countermanded the order, insisting that these pieces were best utilized by being rolled up to the ramparts of the city. This had been the first indication to Caspar that his commander wasn’t convinced that the Crassoi would be able to hold the outer entrenchments, but it was his subsequent refusal to relinquish direct command of the thousand cataphractoi that confirmed this was his belief. Not surprisingly, news of this nature was impossible to withhold from the rankers, which meant that the Centurions were busy quelling the grumbling, more for the sake of their men than themselves. A siege of this nature was simply outside the realm of experience of the Parthians, and even for men who had participated in one, no matter which side they were on, it was a tense affair. Caspar’s fear was that Gobryas would retaliate even more harshly than their Parthian overlords normally did for infractions of discipline because of the circumstances, so in an almost identical manner as his counterpart Primi Pili among Caesar’s Legions, Caspar went to work. From one fire to the next, he had his Centurions circulate, issuing warnings that their personal feelings about this latest decision by their overall commander were to go no farther than their own section, and that they never utter a word of protest during their duty periods. What worried Caspar more than these challenges of the moment was his recognition that it was still early in the siege, and when the inevitable day came when rations would be reduced, he could only hope that it was uniformly and equally applied, but he harbored serious doubts that Gobryas would be willing to weaken his bodyguard. If that happened, only the gods knew how long he could maintain control of the Crassoi. Depending on events, he thought grimly, Caesar’s army might only have to penetrate the entrenchments and clean up the remaining survivors after we turn on each other.