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by Strauss, Barry

  Pompey went from Pharsalus to the Greek coast, and then by sea to the island of Lesbos, where he picked up his wife, Cornelia, and son, Sextus. He might have gone to North Africa but instead sailed to Egypt, after first recruiting several thousand soldiers in Anatolia and Cyprus. Caesar followed with a small army and navy; he had few ships of his own, and besides, he wanted to travel light in order to catch Pompey.

  Fortune, as usual, smiled on Caesar, as an incident along the way shows. He was hurrying across the Hellespont in a ferryboat when he ran into a squadron of Pompey’s fleet. With ten warships, they could have easily captured and killed Caesar. Instead, he headed for the flagship and demanded the captain’s surrender—and the man gave in without a peep. “Fortis fortuna adiuvat,” Caesar might have said, quoting a Roman poet—“Fortune favors the bold.”

  By going to Egypt, Pompey was taking a leaf from Caesar’s book of risk taking. Egypt might allow Pompey to turn the tables on Caesar. It was the richest country in the ancient world, thanks to the amazing agricultural fertility of the Nile Valley. Although the Romans leaned hard on it, Egypt was still an independent state with a major army and navy—the best that money could buy. The king of Egypt, Ptolemy XIII, owed his throne to Pompey, who had saved his father from exile nine years before. Now, Pompey intended to present his bill. He anchored offshore and sent a messenger to Ptolemy, asking that he be allowed to land.

  But the Ptolemies were about as hospitable as rattlesnakes. Besides, Ptolemy XIII was engaged in a civil war against his sister. In any case he lacked power—he was only a boy of about thirteen, and in the hands of his advisors. They feared that Pompey would replace them in the boy-king’s eyes, so they didn’t want him to land. But they didn’t want him to leave either, because then he might return one day and take revenge. So, they invited Pompey ashore and promptly had him murdered—in full view of Cornelia and Sextus, who were still aboard ship. Fearing pursuit by the Egyptian fleet, Pompey’s ships hurried away, leaving his corpse on the sand. He was fifty-seven years old.

  “I cannot but mourn his fate,” wrote Cicero of Pompey, “for I knew him as a man of integrity, of spotless and dignified character.”

  When Caesar arrived in Egypt three days later, he was presented with Pompey’s severed head and signet ring. The sources say that Caesar wept. If so, perhaps he cried as much over his failed strategy as over the death of his former son-in-law—now Caesar would have to fight the senators alone. And perhaps it occurred to him that he too was vulnerable to assassination.

  Soldiers and Money

  It might seem as if Caesar should have hurried to North Africa before his enemies had a chance to regroup. Instead, he spent the next year in the East. This was bad news for Rome’s tranquillity, but it had its own logic.

  If his first priority was the common good, a Roman patriot would have hoped for a peace agreement between Caesar and the Senate or at least a quick and decisive end to the civil war. A showdown in North Africa might have brought a speedy decision but Caesar was out of money. He needed more ships and men and he had to pay the soldiers he already had. Like Pompey, Caesar looked at Egypt and saw gold. He demanded payment of a debt owed him from a decade earlier by the Egyptian crown—a huge sum, enough to pay a very large army for a year.

  The government in Alexandria refused to pay, so Caesar solved the problem with his usual flair for simple solutions—he changed the government. Caesar used his four thousand troops to try to settle the war between Ptolemy and his sister. The woman had a secret weapon—herself. She was smuggled into the palace in Alexandria, wrapped up, as one story has it, in a carpet or blanket, and unrolled in front of Caesar’s wide eyes. She was Cleopatra. She was not conventionally pretty—she had a prominent chin, a large mouth, and a rugged nose. But she was clever, cunning, and seductive. She was twenty-one years old and, at fifty-two, Caesar was smitten.

  Or so the legend goes, but Caesar had a political reason to prefer Cleopatra to Ptolemy: she was weaker. Ptolemy had strong popular support in the key city of Alexandria; Cleopatra could not win without Rome. Naturally Caesar preferred to have her, a loyal ally, in charge of Egypt. Naturally she would pay him the money he wanted in exchange for the throne.

  Realizing that he could not compete with Cleopatra in Caesar’s eyes, Ptolemy had his soldiers besiege the palace. The siege went on all winter (48–47 B.C.). There were moments of drama, including fighting in the harbor, in which Caesar was forced to swim for his life. Once again, Caesar put himself at personal risk.

  In the spring, a relief force arrived. Led by Antipater, the Jewish governor of Judaea, it consisted of both Jews and Arabs, with the main strike force consisting of fifteen hundred Jewish heavy infantry. Past history inclined the Jews toward Caesar, because Pompey had entered Jerusalem in 63 B.C. and annexed Jewish territory and desecrated the Temple. Now they won a key battle in the Nile Delta that lifted the siege and freed Caesar. In later years, Caesar treated Judaea and the Jews as allies and friends—they had, after all, saved his life.

  But the Jews were only one of dozens of new allies Caesar acquired in the East. Egypt itself was the largest. Before leaving there, Caesar spent two months with Cleopatra and may have fathered her child; she named the baby Ptolemy XV but he was known as Caesarion, or “Little Caesar.” From Egypt, Caesar headed eastward, stopping in the great cities of Antioch (Syria) and Tarsus (southern Anatolia) to add them to his supporters. Then he headed to north-central Anatolia to put down a serious revolt by one Pharnaces.

  Pharnaces was the son of Mithradates VI of Pontus, the rebel king who had stormed through the Roman east for twenty-five years and nearly destroyed Rome’s empire there. From the time Caesar marched into the kingdom of Pontus (in northern Turkey) it took only five days for him to meet Pharnaces and defeat him on August 2 (June 12) 47 B.C. in the battle of Zela. A year later, when Caesar celebrated his triumphs in Rome, he advertised his speedy victory over Pharnaces with a placard in the triumphal procession. It contained one of the greatest slogans in the history of politics: Veni vidi vici, a phrase that shines in the English translation or “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

  Caesar could have used another slogan to describe his activity in the East. It was less catchy but more accurate: Exegi mutuum sumpsi sustinui—“I demanded, I borrowed, I supported.” Caesar began hitting up the cities of the East for money during his pursuit of Pompey after Pharsalus. He continued demanding funds when he got to Egypt. Then, after defeating Pharnaces, he exacted money from cities, temples, and wealthy private individuals all along the way back to Italy. Where he had a good excuse for taking their wealth—such as a city’s having supported Pompey—Caesar called it a “demand.” Where he had no excuse, he called it “borrowing”—not that he had any intention of ever paying it back. He had no choice, said Caesar, but to follow a simple arithmetic: states need soldiers, soldiers need support, and support costs money. Caesar understood the infrastructure of war as well as any general.

  “My Commander-in-Chief”

  The enemy was in North Africa, but now Caesar went straight to Rome. Street violence in the capital between borrowers and lenders had gotten out of hand. Worse still, there was talk of mutiny in the legions billeted outside Rome, and they were some of Caesar’s best men, including the crack soldiers of the Tenth Legion. They wanted their back pay and they wanted to be discharged and given land.

  When the mutineers marched on Rome, Caesar’s friends advised caution. Instead he met the soldiers in their camp. As if that wasn’t brave enough, Caesar called their bluff. He needed them, in Africa, but he pretended not to. Since the men said they wanted to be discharged, he discharged them. Instead of calling them “fellow soldiers” (commilitones), as was standard Roman practice, he pointedly called them “citizens” (quirites). It was audacity at its finest, and it worked. The soldiers loved making war and they had no intention of giving it up. They demanded that Caesar take them back, and so he did. But he didn’t forget the mutiny. He is said to have rid him
self of the ringleaders later on by giving them the most dangerous assignments in North Africa.

  After putting down the mutiny and placing new, more trustworthy politicians in office, Caesar left Rome. He had been there two months, from late September (our July) to late November (mid-September) 47 B.C. He now headed for Africa, using Sicily as his staging ground. Bad weather and organizational slowness held him back. But Caesar had no intention of waiting until all his forces were ready. He departed as soon as the weather broke, on December 25, 47 B.C. (mid-October).

  Caesar’s “African War,” as it was called, was a study in extremes. Careless haste was followed by a patient ability to see the big picture. Rarely was Caesar more impressive as a field commander; rarely was he less impressive as an organizer, and his generalship more fully eclipsed by his political skill; and never was his dependence on Providence more evident.

  Caesar’s invasion of Roman Africa was like his invasion of Albania all over again. Both times he took the risk of establishing a bridgehead with a token force and waiting for the big battalions to follow. But the invasion of Africa was infinitely more haphazard. Caesar had assembled in Sicily six legions, two thousand cavalrymen, and many ships’ worth of supplies. But strong winds on the crossing scattered the fleet, and the strategic realities prevented Caesar from giving the captains precise instructions about where to put in. The enemy controlled the seas, so the captains would have to find whatever safe harbors they could. Caesar himself landed on the African coast four days later with only three thousand legionaries and 150 cavalrymen. He needed to feed and protect them until the other ships arrived. In the meantime, the enemy struck.

  The action took place outside the seaport of Ruspina (modern Monastir, Tunisia). Having left some of his men to garrison other ports, Caesar went on a foraging expedition with a small army of 30 infantry cohorts, perhaps 2,500 men to which he added the only other troops he had—400 cavalry and 150 archers—when he saw the enemy’s cloud of dust in the distance. Their commander was Titus Labienus, Caesar’s former second-in-command and an excellent tactician.

  Labienus had a much larger force than Caesar, consisting of nearly 10,000 cavalrymen—8,000 Numidian and 1,600 Gallic or German—as well as light-armed Numidian infantrymen. The Roman province of Africa (roughly, modern Tunisia) bordered the kingdom of Numidia (roughly, modern Algeria) on its south and west. Pompeians held Roman Africa and King Juba of Numidia was their ally. As in Hannibal’s day, Numidia provided quick and deadly light cavalry.

  What followed was a thinking-man’s battle. Labienus aimed at outflanking Caesar by lining up his cavalry in an unusually long line. Caesar responded by forming his men in an unusual, single-deep line in order not to be outflanked. It worked for a while, but the Numidian cavalry kept attacking again and again, charging and throwing their javelins. They broke up several attempts by Caesar’s legionaries to attack Labienus’s infantrymen. Eventually Labienus’s cavalry surrounded Caesar’s forces.

  But Caesar proved equal to the challenge. He rearranged his army in two lines, back to back, facing the enemy in two directions. His move bought Caesar breathing space to attack different parts of the enemy line in isolation, which proved very effective. Little by little, Caesar’s men were able to force the enemy off a hill that blocked their march, and from there, they limped back to their camp at Ruspina. The battle was a near-run thing but it demonstrated yet again Caesar’s cool as a commander, his quickness on his feet, and his inspirational hold on his men.

  For several weeks, the Pompeians kept Caesar bottled up in Ruspina. The Pompeians had fourteen legions—ten Roman and four Numidian—plus numerous auxiliaries and 120 elephants. They outnumbered Caesar but they lacked experience. They had nothing to compare with the five veteran legions that Caesar would eventually have, out of a total of ten legions and two thousand cavalrymen. Caesar wouldn’t be at full strength for months, but in the meantime, enough reinforcements and supplies arrived for him to break out of Ruspina.

  The enemy’s generals were a mixed lot. Most of Labienus’s colleagues were second-rate, none more so than their commander-in-chief, Metellus Scipio. The Pompeians’ alliance with Juba was also a doubtful advantage, since Juba was distracted by an invasion of his kingdom from the west by King Bocchus of Mauretania.

  Against them stood Caesar. A small incident sheds light on his political power. The story appears in “The African War,” a pamphlet written by an unknown supporter of Caesar. The story is surely exaggerated and might well be invented, but it is brilliant propaganda.

  As new Caesarian convoys reached Africa, single ships were scattered by the winds and captured by the enemy. The crew of one such ship, soldiers of the Fourteenth Legion, were taken to see Scipio. He offered them the chance to denounce their “guilt-stained” commander and to join Rome’s best in defense of the Republic. Speaking for all of them, an unnamed centurion defiantly refused.

  “Should I take a stand in arms against my commander, Caesar?” he asked. He referred to Caesar as imperatorem meum, “my commander-in-chief,” while pointedly announcing to Scipio that he would not grant him a similar term of respect: “I don’t call you commander-in-chief (imperator).”

  “My imperator” is a full-blooded term. Like “my country,” it is a phrase that men fought and died for. It suggests the hold that Caesar had over men’s minds. It indicates not only why his own soldiers were devoted to him but also why the enemy’s soldiers gave up their own cause and deserted to Caesar whenever things began to tip in his favor. It helps explain why Caesar continued to beat the odds both in Africa and elsewhere, in spite of his inferiority in manpower and supplies: men believed in him.

  But it did not encourage optimism about the future of free institutions in Rome in 46 B.C. The centurion’s language was worthy of a personality cult. The Latin word imperator meant “commander-in-chief” but, within a generation, it would come to mean “emperor” as well. When the word imperator packed more rhetorical punch than the words res publica—“republic”—then the Republic itself was in doubt.

  The centurion, by the way, is supposed to have ended his speech by challenging Scipio’s men to a fight. An indignant Scipio had him immediately executed. The rest of the captives were either tortured, if they were veterans, or distributed among his legions, if they were new recruits.

  Meanwhile, to return to the war, it was around this time that Caesar’s men suffered the torrential rainfall mentioned in chapter 1. Nature only added to Caesar’s logistical difficulties.

  Scipio knew that Caesar would have to keep moving in search of supplies. He planned to use his cavalry in order to whittle Caesar down to pieces. In short, Scipio followed a Fabian strategy. Caesar, in turn, followed Hannibal’s strategy—he wanted to fight a pitched battle as soon as his veteran legions arrived. When two more of his legions came, Caesar tried to force Scipio’s hand by besieging the city of Uzitta (today’s Henchir Makhreba) but Scipio refused to fight a pitched battle.

  Caesar’s moment came on April 4 (February 4), 46 B.C. By then, his army had reached full strength. Caesar laid siege to the enemy stronghold of Thapsus, a port city about five miles east of today’s Teboulba, Tunisia. Scipio came to the city’s defense. A pitched battle followed two days later, on April 6 (February 6).

  On the landward side of Thapsus, a narrow plain stretched as far as a wide salt lake. In this constricted terrain, Scipio’s cavalry could not ride around Caesar’s flanks and strangle the enemy as Hannibal’s horsemen had done at Cannae. Scipio’s ace was his elephants, which he stationed in front of either wing. Caesar posted two of his veteran legions on either wing. To counter the elephants, he added extra punch to the wings by dividing his fifth veteran legion in two and placing the halves in a fourth line on each wing.

  But that was the end of military science and discipline. As Caesar’s men were taking their final positions, the word went round that the enemy deployment was not going well; in fact, they were clearly in disorder. Caesar’s more experience
d officers demanded an immediate attack but he insisted on getting all his troops in position. No matter. A trumpeter sounded the advance and other trumpeters followed. The centurions tried to hold the men back but it was too late. Ever the pragmatist, Caesar called out the watchword of the day—“Felicitas!” or “Good luck!”—and the battle began.

  Caesar’s archers and slingers made short work of the elephants, which turned on their own men and trampled them. In a panic, the enemy army simply fell apart. Caesar’s men butchered them, even those who tried to surrender. In the end Caesar’s forces killed five thousand of the enemy.

  For Caesar, Thapsus was a sloppy victory but a great one. Almost all of the enemy’s generals in North Africa had been killed or had committed suicide; Labienus was one of the few to escape. But one of the suicides stung.

  Caesar left Thapsus for Utica, seaport and capital of the province. The town was under the command of his last great enemy in the Senate still at large, Marcus Porcius Cato. The others were either dead, like Pompey, or recipients of Caesar’s pardons, like Cicero. Having Cato accept clemency would be a propaganda coup for Caesar. It would prove that there was no fight left in the party of the Senate.

  But Cato said no. He considered Caesar a tyrant and refused to be under obligation to him. Instead, Cato stood his ground and committed suicide. It was not a pretty process. He ripped out his intestines with his sword, only to have his supporters come running and get a doctor to stitch him back up. Cato then tore out the stitches and died.

  When Caesar got the news, he is supposed to have said, “O Cato, I begrudge you your death; for you begrudged me the sparing of your life.” Caesar knew whereof he spoke. Cato’s suicide gave life to the Senate’s cause. In military terms, Caesar had won. In political terms, Cato had revenge from beyond the grave. Caesar branded himself as the prince of pardons, but Cato forced the wolf to bare his teeth.