Athene's Prophecy (Gaius Claudius Scaevola Trilogy)

by Ian Miller

  "Pompey marched directly to Caesar, and launched a cavalry attack from his left flank. They fought their way and exposed the right flank of a legion, then ran into Caesar's hidden six cohorts. They halted at the wave of javelins, and when Caesar personally led the charge, the cavalry fled, trampling down the archers and slingers Pompey had sent in support. The centres held for both sides, but Caesar's six cohorts and cavalry got in behind Pompey's lines, his men panicked, and eventually the battle turned into a rout."

  "If you can remember nothing else from this exercise," the old man nodded, "remember that timing and surprise are critical. You wouldn't believe surprise is important in a set battle on an open plain, but Caesar's six cohorts and cavalry were critical. Not because of their power, but because Pompey's cavalry wasn't expecting them. By themselves, they couldn't swing the battle, but the surprise led to Pompey's cavalry fleeing. Pompey could have done better by supporting his cavalry with his best heavy infantry. Now when Caesar counter-attacks, these can stand and fight, and the cavalry can regroup and rejoin the battle. But by letting this small force out when all of Pompey's other forces were engaged, they could strike Pompey's rear. A smaller force, striking as a concentrated unit at precisely the right time can achieve miracles sometimes."

  Chapter 18

  "Now, young Gaius, your second battle. You are Antony. Relationships with Octavian have hit an all-time low because you're in bed with Cleopatra . . ."

  "Lucky me!" Gaius laughed.

  "That's a matter of opinion," the General laughed back. "Octavia wasn't all that bad, and if you had stayed with her, you wouldn't be in this pickle. However, you are, and you hear that Octavian is building ships at a furious rate. Octavian commands the western legions, you command the eastern ones. Octavian's ships will be many of the small fast Liburnian ships, which mainly fight by ramming their opponents, thus sinking them. You will have fewer ships, but will have the massive quinqueremes that have plated hulls, hence can't be sunk by ramming, but they are slower and can never ram a Liburnian ship other than by accident.

  "It is the winter solstice, and you can now plan your strategy over the coming year, but you must take your land force to the southern side of the Gulf of Ambracia, and Octavian must place his legions on the northern side. We assume you will build towers with catapults on the Actium peninsula and hence have at least partial control over who gets in and out of the gulf. Unless you do something different, you must fight by the second of September. On that day, Octavian and Agrippa will be at sea, having blockaded you.

  "Now, take three days to consider your options."

  * * *

  "So," the old General smiled, "what use have you made of your time? Tell me what you would do, and why?"

  "I assume that for this exercise, trying to make peace is not an option?" Gaius asked.

  "In short, no."

  "Then I think what happens depends on how well I have used the year. Antony effectively sat on his backside, and ran out of supply. My first task is to get supply, so throughout the year I would have sent reasonable strength forces into Greece to forage," Gaius said, "and I would also ensure that my spies had a good idea as to what the land forces are doing to the north of me. Part of the problem that developed at Actium was that too many of Antony's ships could not put to sea because the men were too weak, from lack of supplies. What happens next depends on how well this goes."

  "If their forces go after your foragers?"

  "Then we march around the gulf, and we fight a land battle while we still have the supplies we arrived with. I have Caesar's legions, and they were the best. In a roughly equal land contest, Octavian is most likely to lose, especially if he is at sea and his men have no idea what is happening, and I am not interested in sending roughly equal."

  "Then suppose you get whatever supplies you need. Fight the naval battle."

  Gaius had to struggle to keep himself from smiling. This was a test of command in an asymmetric struggle, and he was ready for it. "I must start by agreeing with Cleopatra how we shall fight," Gaius said. "I agree my fight is with Octavian, and I tell my troops, and anyone else who will listen, including their troops, that once Octavian himself is defeated, there will be no more of Roman killing Roman."

  "You are still on land and Octavian is at sea," the general smiled, but he had nodded in appreciation of Gaius' sentiments.

  "I know you are going to accuse me of hindsight," Gaius said, "but Cleopatra has to go to the north of me, or stay on land. I drill her troops well before the fight, and make sure the commanders know what the plan is, and what to do under the various options that might develop. They have to believe me, so they stay with the fight."

  "That's sound," the General nodded. "What you must realize is that particularly with ships, once the battle starts it is very difficult to issue more than the very basic commands. So, why are they not going to flee?"

  "Basically, I hope to have a surprise for Octavian."

  "And that is?"

  "The fundamental problem at Actium was that neither ship could do much to the other, so they all stood off and fired arrows and spears a each other, without doing an awful lot of damage. Antony should have known that, because he knew the characteristics of the ships."

  "That's not a surprise," the General pointed out.

  "I'm getting to it. What I do is plate some of the upper decks, and have good fires going. If I can find some naphtha, I fill flasks with it, and if not, I'll have a good store of burnable wood impregnated with sulphur. Well before the battle, I shall have tried to modify ballistae or catapults to propel this stuff, but if not, we have to throw it. The quinqueremes were much higher, so we can propel that down onto the enemy ships. And before you bite my head off, in the time leading up to the battle, I would have developed what is needed to carry this off, and had my men drilled so it would work. The drills would, of course be out of sight of Octavian," Gaius added.

  "So, on September 2, what exactly are you going to do?"

  "I ensure the ships are ready, the crews are well-fed thanks to my raids into Greece, the catapults are working, and the fires lit. I then sail out to meet Octavian. I then try to work out where Octavian is likely to be, and attack towards the south of him, leaving the centre open. We start off fighting with spears and arrows."

  "Why?"

  "If Octavian wants to get in behind me, so much the better," Gaius said simply. "He can't flee from there."

  "So?"

  "Once the fighting gets underway, and our quinqueremes are properly surrounded, I order the fire attack," Gaius said. "I hope to burn their ships. Once a fire is going, fleeing is pointless. I offer them the surrender or incineration. Surrender requires the striking of any sail, the laying down of weapons, and rowing towards my land forces."

  "I see," the General nodded.

  "So?"

  "Again, who knows? However, I will say this for you. If you ever launch a surprise in battle and it does realistic damage, you usually prevail. In battle, the enemy simply has no time to coordinate a response. Even if some captain thinks out a response to your tactic, it will only save him. With no communication, each ship has to come up with its own solution, and that is simply asking too much. If you offer them the option of surrender, most will probably accept. Why?"

  "Because to die with no possibility of escape, purpose, or victory is not courage," Gaius remarked. "It is just plain stupid."

  "What about Thermopylae?"

  "There was purpose," Gaius noted, "namely to buy time, but in my view on the last day the survivors should have fled to fight another day."

  "Ah, but think, no legend!"

  "I want to be a winner, not a legend," Gaius countered.

  "I can understand that," the General smiled. "Gaius, this is your last lesson from me, but don't stop learning. I'll recommend you to Tiberius, and when you get your command, remember you're still learning. The one thing you cannot be taught is how to sense what's going on. My one piece of advice is, when you see the ene
my make a move, ask yourself, why? Try pretending you are him. If you can answer why he is doing whatever he is doing, you might guess what's coming next in time to do something about it. Don't despise the enemy, but don't grant him superhuman skill. Most of the time he's about average. Finally, look after your men. If you do, they'll look after you, and to start with, you'll need looking after. Good luck to you."

  When Gaius left the room, one phrase kept ringing in his ears: when you get your command. He had satisfied the old man. He would get the hand up he needed.

  Chapter 19

  "It is now time to have our debate. You have elected to follow the theory of Aristarchus. Do you wish to concede?" Timothy's face was strangely tense.

  "Before I've started?" Gaius asked in disbelief.

  "Just checking," Timothy shrugged. "You wish to bet?"

  "No." Timothy's expression was familiar, but where had he seen it?

  "And why not? Are you afraid?" Timothy taunted.

  "Afraid of what?" a perplexed Gaius asked. "You think you could put up more money than I could cover?"

  Now Timothy's expressions became apprehensive. He had planned his approach over and over again, and he had convinced himself that the best way to secure his freedom was to play on the natural Claudian arrogance. But, despite all the mental rehearsals, this had not gone the way it was supposed to go. Suddenly he was on the defensive, and not in the position he had hoped for. "I might want my freedom," he said at last.

  "Oh!" Gaius laughed. "So that's it!" He now understood the tense expression: it meant 'this has got to work'. But where had he seen it, and why was it bothering him?

  "And you object?" a now deflated Timothy almost rasped out.

  "Of course not!" Gaius replied. "I'm not betting because, quite simply, there's no way of verifying what the truth is, however I've promised you your freedom, so why bet for what you've got? All you can do is lose?"

  "I haven't actually got my freedom," Timothy said softly. "I know you said, but . . ."

  "But some Romans don't honour their word?" Gaius asked in a challenging tone, then, on seeing Timothy's fearful expression, he added, "Don't say any more. A lot of Romans don't honour their word, but I'm not one of them. Here, win or lose, is the piece of paper freeing you, and here is payment for services to date. " He paused, and handed over a sheet of vellum and a small bag of coins.

  "Thank you," Timothy felt even more deflated when he saw the small bag of coins. Typical Roman, stingy to the end. Then he looked inside the bag, and gasped. Where he expected sesterces and had hoped for denarii, there were aureii. He looked at Gaius, firstly with a new respect, then with an expression of greedy curiosity, then, pulling himself together, he said, "Then we'd better finish off the lessons with our debate. You must state your interpretation of the theory of Aristarchus. You may vary it if you wish."

  "Then as I understand it," Gaius started slowly but clearly, and while he appeared to be looking into empty space, his eyes were fixed on Timothy as he watched for reflexes, to let him know where Timothy thought his strength was. "The Earth is a very large sphere and along with the planets, which are of comparable size, it travels around the sun. Jupiter and Saturn, being so bright and so distant will be much bigger. The Moon travels around the Earth, and it is a sphere of about a third the size of the Earth. That would give it a diameter of about 4,500 kilometers, and from geometry it is somewhere between a hundred and thirty thousand to half a million kilometres away. From Aristarchus' calculation the sun is approximately twenty times bigger and twenty times further away. I believe these distances are only approximate and . . ."

  "The actual distances are irrelevant," Timothy interrupted. "The problem is one of logic, so assume what you wish."

  "Then the sun, being so much more massive, is at the centre. Since the remaining planets, which reflect sunlight, are seen as points they must be much further away than the moon. Now, Mercury and Venus occur both in the morning and evening, but never get far from the sun. That suggests they're closer to the sun than the Earth, and since Mercury always stays closer to the sun, presumably the order out is Mercury, Venus, Earth. To be far enough away, Aristarchus' calculation may be too small. The angle is difficult to measure and . . ."

  "As I said, for the purposes of debate, if you need the sun to be further away, assume it," Timothy nodded.

  "First, the Moon goes around the Earth, so some of the time gets in between the Earth and the Sun, and we get an eclipse. The Moon takes a month to go around the Earth, so every month it has the same phase. This explains the phases . . ."

  "I concede the Moon goes around the Earth," Timothy interrupted. "My position is, so does everything else. Your arguments on the phases of the Moon will be my arguments."

  "Then the planets go around the sun, and simple geometry shows why those closer to the sun can appear either in the morning sky or the evening sky, but not the midnight sky."

  "That," Timothy interrupted again, "is probably the strongest point in favour of Aristarchus. However, it has been explained."

  "In a very awkward way," Gaius suggested.

  "Perhaps," Timothy shrugged.

  "Then look at this," Gaius continued. "The outer planets wander across the heavens in a general eastward direction, except very occasionally they seem to stop, then go westwards for a while, then stop and resume going eastwards. This is exactly what Aristarchus predicts, because the reversal occurs when the Earth's motion catches up with the others."

  "Nevertheless, that has also been explained," Timothy continued.

  "In an even more awkward way," Gaius suggested, "and there's another point. According to Aristarchus the reversal occurs when the planet is at its brightest, and is in the midnight sky. It does, and that requires the epicycles to only occur where the planet has wandered onto a Sun – Earth – planet line. Why do the epicycles only occur there, and where it is almost random against the background?"

  "I don't know," Timothy admitted, "but that doesn't make the epicycle model wrong."

  "Perhaps, but it certainly doesn't make it right," Gaius emphasized. "Also, there are no planetary eclipses, where the planet falls in the Earth's shadow. Again, the spheres model effectively has to say there are a large number of spheres, but only one is really close. The question is, why is that one special?"

  "The same goes for Aristarchus," Timothy protested, too quickly.

  "Not at all!" Gaius quickly countered. "Aristarchus says Earth is a planet, and it goes around the sun just like the others, which means that the planets must be a long way away from each other. The Moon falls around the Earth so it has to be much closer. If another planet was, say, two times as far away, the Moon could switch planets, however the planets have no effect on the Moon, nor on our tides. If the other planets are far enough away, the Earth seems to be too small and cannot shade the sun, just as Venus and Mercury are too small to shade the Earth. We know they are too small because we can see them, and see the angle they subtend is far smaller than that of the sun. But for the disc model, there is only one type of disc, the planets have to be on discs a very long way away, and that means there have to be a number of these coincidences with no cause, despite the fact the planets all wander at different speeds."

  "You're assuming the planets are very large," Timothy warned. "Just because Aristarchus says so doesn't make it so. They could be small and close."

  "In which case they should be eclipsed!" Gaius countered.

  "I see," Timothy mused. "They are really good points. In fact, Gaius, you've excelled so far, and if it wasn't for the fact that the Aristarchus model is physically wrong, your arguments on planetary motion would be reasonably convincing."

  "You keep saying it's wrong. How?"

  "We'll come to that," Timothy assured him. "First, everything goes around the Earth once a day. I assume you will concede that?"

  "Everything else more or less stays put," Gaius interposed. "Day/night is explained by the sun being at the centre, and the Earth rotating."
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  "So let me get this right," Timothy said, a little pedantically, Gaius thought, until he realized that Timothy was overdoing the importance of this. It meant that this would not be his main line of approach. "You are saying that while everything seems to be going around the Earth, it is not, and it is the Earth that is rolling."

  "I believe that explains everything quite well," Gaius shrugged. "As Aristotle said, when anything moves, it moves with respect to something else."

  "Which is why the Earth has to be immovable," Timothy protested.

  "The sun would work just as well," Gaius smiled. "Look at it this way. According to you, all the stars rotate around the Earth at a terrifying velocity?"

  "Around an immovable Earth," Timothy confirmed.

  "So, supposing something removed the Earth?" Gaius smiled. "What happens? Does everything else just stop? And if so, how does whatever is driving the rotating spheres know when to stop?"

  "What?" Timothy gasped. "You can't just remove the Earth."

  "You can in the abstract," Gaius said, "and in any case, the problem is merely one of size. The quality is conceptually different from the quantity, as Aristotle noted."

  "That may be," Timothy said, as he struggled to recover, "but the fact remains, the Earth is quite different in quality from the rest of the universe."

  "You don't know that," Gaius smiled.

  "Oh, yes I do!" Timothy responded. "The Earth undergoes continual change, but the other bodies have remained constant for as long as we have been observing them."

  "They could be too far away," Gaius replied. "If a body as big as the Earth is reduced to the size of a pin head, you wouldn't see such changes."

  "Suppose you see a large storm," Timothy replied. "You can measure the wind speed, and estimate the size of the clouds from the time it take them to pass. If there were clouds that big on the Moon, then we would be able to see them. We would also see them on the edges, but the edges of the Moon are very sharp."

  Gaius thought about this for a moment. While this was a point he had never considered, for some reason it should support his position, but he could not for the life of him think how. To gain time he decided to get the conversation back to where it should be, so he said, "We are being distracted. My point is, and I repeat it, that the Moon seems to go slightly slower is because it really does go around, the Earth." He paused, then said in a challenging way, "It explains everything, and there is nothing contradicting it. Therefore, as the great Aristotle would say, it must be true."