Caesar

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by Adrian Goldsworthy


  The Italian campaign 49 BC

  terms were accepted with the proviso that he must at once withdraw all his garrisons from the towns which he had occupied outside his province. Once that was done, they replied that we should return to the city and settle the matter in the Senate. I hope at present that it will be possible for us to have peace. For one leader regrets his rash folly and the other his lack of forces.8

  Letters were sent to Caesar informing him of the offer – as he himself put it, that he should ‘go back to Gaul, abandon Ariminum and disband his forces’. To him this was an ‘unfair deal’. No date was given for Pompey’s departure to his provinces or his laying the command down and giving up his armies. It was obvious that he was effectively being asked to give up the military advantage he had gained by his sudden invasion. His opponents wanted him to withdraw and then trust to their giving his demands a sympathetic hearing in future meetings of the Senate. There was no reason for Caesar to believe that things would go better for him than they had in the debates of the last eighteen months. Pompey and his allies did not trust Caesar enough to stop raising troops in expectation that he would accept their terms. In return Caeser did not trust them sufficiently to take the first step towards peace and go back to his province. Caesar does seem to have been especially frustrated by Pompey’s reluctance to agree to a face-to-face conference. In the past the two men had got on well and he seems to have been confident that he could reach a genuine agreement with his former son-in-law. Pompey may have been unsure about whether or not he could resist Caesar’s persuasiveness. For a man with a morbid fear of assassination and memories of an earlier and very brutal civil war, it is possible that he was reluctant to risk such a meeting. Yet in the end it was probably more a question of his relationship with Cato and his other new allies. Their alliance was recent, his friendship with Caesar older and of longer duration. Whatever he felt himself, Pompey knew that these men simply would not believe in his good faith and constancy if he privately met Caesar. Cato had already urged the Senate to appoint Pompey as supreme commander until the crisis was over and the rebellious proconsul defeated. This was rejected by the consuls and ex-consuls who were too proud to be commanded by anyone else. Jealousy and suspicion between allies was as much a hindrance to a negotiated settlement as mistrust between enemies.9

  Caesar resumed his advance. A report reached him that Iguvium was held by a garrison of five cohorts under the command of the propraetor Quintus Minucius Thermus, but that the townsfolk favoured him. The two cohorts with him at Ariminum were added to the one stationed in Pisarum and sent under Curio to the town. Thermus retreated, his raw recruits deserted and went home, and Curio’s men were welcomed at Iguvium. Trusting in local goodwill, Caesar pushed on to Auxinum and had soon overrun Picenum, supposedly the heartland of Pompey’s family. There was one small skirmish in which a few prisoners were taken, but the general population was displaying no enthusiasm for rising up against Caesar and his men. The cause against Caesar had little popular appeal and his army was not plundering or doing anything else that might have created hostility A few of the Pompeian soldiers even chose to join him. Many communities also remembered the gifts Caesar had distributed to them from the profits of Gaul – he took particular satisfaction in reporting that even the town of Cingulum, which had been especially favoured by Labienus, now willingly opened its gates to him.10

  By this time it was February and Caesar had reunited the detachments of the Thirteenth and been joined by the Twelfth. At Asculum another Pompeian garrison fled before him, and it was not until he reached Corfinium that he encountered any serious opposition. In command there was Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had not yet managed to get anywhere near his province. Together with his subordinates he had managed to muster a force of more than thirty cohorts, but these were entirely raw recruits. Pompey had not wanted Ahenobarbus to defend the town, as he had no doubt of the inevitable outcome when such inexperienced troops came up against Caesar’s veterans. He was himself much further south in Apulia with the First and Third legions, as well as a number of recent levies. However, he had no power to issue orders to Ahenobarbus and could do no more than send letters urging him to abandon the town and join him. Domitius Ahenobarbus was not a man to change his mind too readily and wrote replies imploring Pompey to come to him. There were no similar divisions over strategy for Caesar. He closed on Corfinium, driving off some enemy cohorts which attempted to break down the bridge outside the town. Soon afterwards Antony was sent with a quarter of the army to Sulmo in response to an appeal from the town. In another bloodless victory the Pompeian commander was captured, taken to Caesar and promptly allowed to go free. In the meantime the Caesarean army gathered food in preparation for the siege of Corfinium. After three days it received a major boost to its strength when it was joined by the Eighth Legion and the twenty-two cohorts raised from Transalpine Gaul and trained and equipped as legionaries. The troops were set to building a line of circumvallation strengthened by forts to surround the town.

  Before the blockade was complete, Domitius Ahenobarbus received a final letter from Pompey making it clear that he had no intention of marching to relieve Corfinium. Deciding now that the town’s prospects were not good, he publicly announced that help was on its way, while privately planning his own escape. However, his increasingly furtive manner soon revealed the truth to his legionaries. A council was organised consisting of the tribunes, along with the centurions – almost two hundred of these if the thirty-three cohorts were at full strength – and representatives of the ordinary soldiers to debate the matter. Some of the troops were Marsi, who had a close tie to their commander through his family’s estates in the region. At first they were staunchly loyal, even threatening to use force against the other legionaries, but their mood changed when they became convinced that their leader planned to abscond. Ahenobarbus was placed under arrest by his own men, who immediately sent envoys to surrender themselves and the town to Caesar. This was welcome news, since although he had little doubt of the outcome of the siege it would clearly pin him down for several weeks. Instead the matter had been resolved in only seven days. However, he was reluctant to enter the walls immediately, for night was falling and he did not trust his legionaries not to misbehave once they got into the dark streets of the town. So far his army had not plundered or laid waste the lands they passed through, as they had so often done in the past. Instead he had the troops stand to arms in the lines around Corfinium throughout the night to prevent any fugitives from slipping out. Near dawn one of the senior Pompeians, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, who had been consul in 57 BC, surrendered himself and was soon followed by the remaining senior officers.

  Caesar’s portrait of Ahenobarbus is scarcely flattering, but our other sources were even less kind. It was claimed that he had decided to commit suicide and demanded that his physician supply him with poison. However, when he heard that Caesar was not executing his important prisoners, he immediately repented of his rashness and was delighted to be informed by his doctor that he had only taken a harmless draught. Domitius Ahenobarbus then went out to surrender to the man whose bitter opponent he had been for at least a decade. Altogether there were fifty senators and equestrians amongst the Pompeians who surrendered, probably on 21 February. Caesar had them brought before him, repeated the charges that he had been unfairly and illegally treated and forced into war, reminding some of them of personal favours he had done them in the past. After that, all were allowed to go free. Caesar had already followed the same policy earlier in the campaign, but never up to this point had so many or so distinguished a group received the benefit of his clemency. Ahenobarbus had brought 6 million sestertii of public money with him to provide pay for his troops. This was handed over to Caesar by the town’s magistrates, but he ordered that it be sent back to his enemy, lest it be thought that ‘he was more restrained in dealing with men’s lives, than their wealth’. The surrendered soldiers were asked to take an oath to him. Soon, these
legions would go under Curio’s command to fight for Caesar in Sicily and Africa.11

  The clemency of Corfinium became famous, and his moderation formed a central part of Caesar’s propaganda campaign. Everyone had expected him to behave like Sulla or Marius – or even, though few would dare to say it, like the Pompey who had earned the nickname of the ‘young butcher’. Instead his soldiers were kept under tight discipline, did not plunder and only fought when they were themselves resisted. Even his bitterest enemies were allowed to go free, although both Lentulus and Ahenobarbus went straight off to fight against him again. The overwhelming majority of people in Italy were apathetic to the issues about which the Civil War was being waged. Amongst the wider population both Pompey and Caesar were highly respected and seen as great servants of the Republic. If Caesar’s legions had come marauding and slaughtering their way through Italy, then this might well have turned more of the population against him. His policy of clemency made practical sense. Armies failed to spring from the soil of Italy as Pompey had promised just a few months before. One senator acidly suggested that maybe it was about time the great man started stamping his foot. Very early on Pompey had decided that Rome was indefensible. At some point he reached the further conclusion that Caesar could not be beaten in Italy with two veteran, but possibly unreliable, legions, supported by the rawest of recruits. Instead he planned to shift the war away, taking his forces across the sea to Greece where they could be trained and a massive army gathered with the support of the eastern provinces. It was not a popular decision with other senators, and for this reason, as well as wanting to conceal his intentions from Caesar, he at first kept the idea to himself. The stand at Corfinium wasted the equivalent of three legions, but Pompey managed to concentrate the remainder of his forces at Brundisium (modern Brindisi). Merchant vessels were requisitioned and the process of shipping men and equipment over the Adriatic begun. It was a long and complex task, but Pompey had always excelled at organisation on a massive scale and set about the task with all his accustomed skill.12

  Caesar arrived outside Brundisium on 9 March. He had six legions, the veteran Eighth, Twelfth and Thirteenth, along with some new recruits and presumably the cohorts from Transalpine Gaul, some of whom were soon to be formally converted into a legion, the Fifth Alaudae – the name meant the ‘Larks’, probably from its distinctive feathered crest or shield design. Pompey had only a rearguard of two legions awaiting shipment. Caesar set his men to building booms to close off the narrow entrance to the harbour. The defenders put their own engineering skills to good use to prevent this. There were further attempts at negotiation, but none came to anything. Pompey once again refused Caesar’s plea for a personal meeting. Then, when they were at last ready, the Pompeians evacuated the town during the night of 17 March. Pompey escaped with virtually all his men, apart from two ships that ran aground on the boom built by Caesar’s men. The townsfolk – at last able to express their resentment against the Pompeians according to Caesar, but doubtless also through a keenness to avoid rough treatment at the hands of the legionaries-pointed out the traps built by the enemy to cause casualties amongst Caesar’s men. Pompey had got away with a substantial force, around which he could in time build a great army. Then, when he was ready he could invade Italy from Greece just as Sulla had done so successfully. As Pompey so often declared, ‘Sulla did it, why shouldn’t I?’13

  ROME

  For the moment Caesar could not follow. The Pompeians had gathered up and taken most of the merchant ships from the region, and it would take a long time to collect and bring vessels from elsewhere. Caesar was not inclined to wait, sitting on the defensive and handing the initiative back to his opponents. It was now spring, the opening of the proper campaigning season when armies found it easier to operate. The bulk of his own army-some seven legions along with numerous allies and auxiliaries – was still north of the Alps. Pompey’s best legions were in the Spanish Peninsula, cut off from their commander and led by his legates. At the moment they were still passive but it was unlikely that this would last forever, especially if Caesar massed all his forces and prepared for a seaborne invasion of Greece. He did not need a fleet of ships to reach Spain, neither would the enemy forces there have much difficulty marching on Gaul or Italy. In contrast it would take many months for Pompey to form and train an army, so that there was no real prospect of his trying to invade Italy from Greece during 49 BC.Yet Pompey was not inactive and he and his allies planned to cut off the food supplies going to Italy from the provinces. Defeating the armies in Spain would deprive Pompey of his best troops and weaken him, even if it would not be the decisive encounter of the war. It was beneficial and, most important of all, it was possible. Without hesitation Caesar decided to attack the Pompeians in Spain. He joked that he was going to fight ‘an army without a general’, and that then he would deal with ‘a general without an army’ when he went to confront Pompey in Greece. In the meantime Curio would go to secure Sicily and ensure that it continued to ship its surplus crops to Italy Another force went to take Sardinia.14

  Caesar had military control of all of Italy, for not a single walled town or city resisted him. He was eager to hasten to Spain since time was not on his side, and as every month passed Pompey would only continue to grow stronger. Most of the magistrates had gone with his opponents, as had some distinguished senators. Many more remained in Italy but had yet to commit themselves to either side. Caesar wanted the Senate to meet and hoped to give every impression that the organs of the State continued to function even at this time of crisis. His enemies claimed that they represented the true Republic. Caesar wanted to challenge this and show that the State continued to function in Rome, where it was supposed to be, and so to make clear that his cause was legitimate, that he did not fight against the Republic, but against a faction that had usurped power. As a result he wanted as many senators as possible to attend the meeting that was called for 1 April. Cicero was still in Italy, and in a series of letters Caesar’s associates tried to persuade him to attend. The orator had worked hard to avoid the situation developing into war in the first place and had been dismayed by the militant enthusiasm he had seen in others. When war began, he was appalled by the speed with which Rome was abandoned, and then even more disgusted when he realised that Pompey planned to evacuate Italy altogether. Cicero felt an old and deep loyalty to Pompey as a man, and from the beginning his instinct and judgement had dictated that whatever happened, he must in the end be on the same side. Pompey had often disappointed him, not always giving him the praise he wanted, forming the alliance with Crassus and Caesar and, most of all, abandoning him to his fate when Clodius had forced Cicero into exile. Nevertheless, the deep affection remained, along with the hope that the great man would one day live up to what the orator believed was his full potential to be a force for good within the Republic. Yet since his return from exile Pompey and others had encouraged him to develop a friendship with Caesar. Apart from the warm correspondence, the involvement in Caesar’s building plans and Quintus’ service in Gaul, Cicero himself had received a major loan from Caesar. In the months leading up to the war this had greatly exercised him, as he had no wish to be seen as having been bought by Caesar, still less of fighting against him in order to avoid the debt.15

  Cicero had not welcomed his posting as governor of Cilicia, but had taken care to perform his duties well. In a campaign against the tribes of Mount Amanus he – or in truth his more experienced legates – had won a minor victory. Though scarcely a military man, the orator was desperately eager to be awarded a triumph for this success. In 50 BC the Senate had voted him a public thanksgiving, a common preliminary to the greater honour. Cato had opposed the motion and later primly informed Cicero that this was because he felt it would be better to honour him for his good and honest administration, since this was of far more worth to the Republic. Curio had at first also been hostile. Days of thanksgiving prevented public business from being conducted and he may have been worried that Cae
sar’s opponents would seek to gain advantage through manipulating the calendar in this way. However, Caesar swiftly instructed the tribune to back the claim and in the end the motion passed easily Salt was rubbed into the wound when Cato successfully put forward a vote awarding twenty days of thanksgiving to Bibulus, who had campaigned in the same mountains as Cicero, which bordered Cilicia and his own province of Syria. Cato’s son-in-law had achieved little and had in fact suffered at least one serious defeat. Granting him an honour at all was questionable, but one of this length was absurd, yet presumably it was felt that he should be granted a number of days surpassing those ever given to Pompey and only equalled by Caesar. Cicero accepted the hypocrisy necessary for success in politics. His predecessor in Cilicia had been Appius Claudius, who had plundered the province for his own gain. Privately Cicero described his actions as those of a ‘wild beast’, but he was invariably scrupulously polite, even warm, in his dealings with Claudius himself. Nevertheless Cato’s actions left a bitter taste. Caesar wrote to Cicero after the vote congratulating him, doubtless encouraging his hopes for a triumph, and crowing over his old adversary’s double standards.16

 

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