The Horse Changer

by Craig Smith

  It made no sense to me that we let Antony construct such elaborate defensive works. We outnumbered his force two-to-one. Whether we swept down against his army with our own or simply harassed those parties collecting timber, we might have damaged him. Instead, we watched quietly until, a week later, Caesar joined Antony’s army.

  From that point forward our armies began turning out each morning for battle. Because the legions of Cassius and Brutus enjoyed the high ground, much as Gnaeus Pompey had done in his battle against Julius Caesar at Ronda, Brutus and Cassius were content to form a battle line then wait for an attack.

  My cohort was supposed to defend the army’s left wing, reinforcing the legion closest to the marsh. Should our infantry break through the enemy’s right wing, I would naturally lead my Thracian cohort forward, taking as many of the enemy as possible as they ran for their camp. In normal circumstances there would be ground to our left and considerable space between the back of our legions and the camp palisades. At Philippi there was no room for movement. Cassius and Brutus had let Antony compress the distance between the two armies. This meant our cavalry, far superior in number to Antony’s and Caesar’s, would have little or no effect on the outcome of the battle. Only in a rout would the majority of us be let loose to fight. And of course since we intended to establish a defensive posture a rout was unlikely.

  Of all our cavalry, my cohort had the very worst of it, for we were set against the marsh with a legion immediately before us and our camp’s ditch and palisade close behind. I might send messengers behind the lines so long as we stood at formation, but there was no space available to take all my men at once.

  That is not to say all of our cavalry units were useless. Once the armies faced one another, there was any number of skirmishes between the cavalries on both sides. We employed four thousand Parthian archers who spent their day riding between the two armies firing their arrows into the enemy. Antony’s and Caesar’s lancers came out to clear these fellows away and to form a cover for their own archers. We answered with attacks by heavy and light cavalry. So there were always horses and archers on the narrow strip of ground between the armies, but the infantry, with which battles are won and lost, stood by quietly like spectators at the races.

  Our high command gave repeated assurances that time was on our side. We had no shortage of supplies, and once the fall rains began Antony’s and Caesar’s camp, necessarily established on low ground, would turn into a swamp. With the coming of winter and supplies becoming more difficult for them to acquire, Antony and Caesar must either retreat or make an uphill charge. In either event we would possess every advantage. Before that day came, however, we spent our time standing in a hot dusty field learning patience.

  Philippi, Macedonia: 3rd October, 42 BC

  A week into our standoff, Cassius learned from a captured cavalryman that Antony’s engineers were building a road deep inside the marsh. The road itself was two miles distant from our camp and ran parallel to our position. We could not see or hear the work and only learned of the road by a chance confession. I joined a squad of legionaries and tribunes who waded into the marsh to confirm the information. It took most of the day to travel the two miles out and back, but we found the road. It was primitive in form, being only a dirt road, but it was wide enough for two chariots to pass, which is to say it was up to military standard. The ground was supported by timbers then covered over with mud. The mud soon baked into a hardpan surface, sufficient for both infantry and cavalry, at least until the autumn rains came. Unchecked, it would have proceeded past our camp and come out on dry land somewhere behind our position. Once completed the very existence of such a road might compromise our supply line. In the worst case, it would allow enemy legions to come in behind us.

  The answer ought to have been to build fortifications once the road was nearly completed. The road was narrow and therefore easily blocked. A few cohorts might defend it. With a large cavalry ready to pursue the enemy as they retreated the danger would suddenly belong to Antony’s men. It might also have been a wise precaution to secure our camps with palisades along our flanks and at the rear. Cassius, however, thought to cut the road off in the very middle of the marsh.

  To do this he built a wall running due south from our camp. This eventually blocked all further progress on Antony’s part. Of course, behind our wall, we had been forced to build our own road, which was quite as good as Antony’s. What Cassius seemed not to notice was the fact that our road completed Antony’s work for him.

  We interrogated men we had captured as a matter of routine. The road through the marsh was only a distraction, until of course it became a disaster. What interested every man in our army was the rumour that Caesar had died. Not one of the men whom we captured had seen him since he had left the litter that bore him into camp. Antony was alive and well, of course. He rode before his legions every morning, his massive frame and scarlet commander’s cloak easily discernible. Caesar’s legions, in contrast, were leaderless. They would not pledge themselves to Antony, nor to any man but Caesar, who still paid them, and though Caesar’s legates turned out for battle each morning there was no supreme commander to review the rank and file and coordinate the various legions during an attack.

  One morning, soon after we had blocked the construction of Antony’s highway through the marsh, the armies formed for battle as usual. As per my custom I rode forward to have a look at the enemy. Nothing appeared to have changed at first glance, and yet as I studied Antony’s legions, they appeared to be very slightly diminished. It was not immediately apparent, but here and there a centurion was not in his usual place, nor did I see that century’s standards, all of which, in my boredom, I had begun to recognise.

  A few centuries missing is odd, nothing more. There might be any number of reasons for using them on some other task, but as I continued down the line, I noticed that every legion under Antony’s command appeared somewhat reduced. Caesar’s army, however, stood at full capacity. Riding back along the line I finally realised Mark Antony himself was missing too. That seemed one too many.

  ‘Horace!’ I cried, when I had returned to my cohort. My friend pulled his horse next to mine. ‘Send a man to Cassius. Tell him Antony may be leading as many as half-a-legion of men through the marsh. If it is true, they’re coming for our camp.’ Horace stared at me without comprehending how I could know such a thing. I shouted at him to do as I ordered, and he turned and repeated my message in Greek to one of our Thracian captains. This fellow rode away in the direction of Cassius, but at that very moment I heard the shrill cry of a whistle deep within enemy lines.

  Other whistles answered and then the flags at either wing signalled the enemy to advance. Suddenly all nineteen enemy legions began a cadenced march in our direction. Our light cavalry darted before them in columns, the lead men tossing javelins, then turning away so the next horseman might have his turn. They were answered by lancers who rode into their flanks. Our own lancers and the Parthian mounted archers came to the rescue, but the ground between the armies was vanishing quickly. Antony’s and Caesar’s legions were on the attack.

  For a time the march was a slow one, then the flags moved again. Cries from the enemy centurions sent every century into a slow trot, and the cavalry of both armies retreated behind their legions. I rode forward to watch the advance, and still saw no evidence of Antony. I rode back along the lanes and checked our camp gates for activity. My warning to Cassius had apparently gone unheeded. He was not sending reinforcements into our camp.

  I rode toward the command position, thinking Cassius had not received my warning or had misunderstood what I was telling him. Seeing me, one the prefects came out to block my way. ‘What do you want, Tribune?’

  ‘To tell Cassius we are under attack in the marsh!’ I cried.

  The fellow looked at the quiet marshlands then pointed his finger at the enemy on the battlefield. ‘Turn around and have a look, lad. That’s what an attack looks like.’

  ‘A
ntony is missing.’

  ‘Sleeping one off likely.’

  ‘On the day his army attacks?’

  ‘Get back to your position.’

  ‘Mark Antony is in the marsh with three thousand picked legionaries.’

  ‘We’ve got men out there to stop him. If Antony was really attacking them, we would know about it. Now get back to your men while you’ve still got skin on your back!’

  Cassius had placed two cohorts to defend our wall in the marsh. A dozen centuries, well armed and guarding a single point of land, ought to have been sufficient, but under cover of a new moon Antony had sent a hundred squads into the soft ground to the north and south of his road. Some of the men came with axes, picks and shovels; still others carried ladders.

  They moved slowly under cover of perfect darkness and came so close they could see our sentries as they stood on the ramparts of our palisade. At sunrise Antony appeared on the road at the head of two thousand men. They came running along the road, taking volleys of stones and arrows. To cover themselves from the withering assault, Antony’s men formed a testudo, shields up and interconnected. Against the testudo only heavy artillery stops an advance. In this instance, Cassius’s men had catapults loaded and ready.

  Antony’s men suffered heavy casualties as they closed on our palisades and were soon driven back. But the testudo had done its work; Cassius’s forces came away from their redoubts, running to the aid of those holding the road. Once that happened Antony’s squads came out of the heavy grass, striking at the palisade up and down the line. With few men available to resist them, they crossed the palisade and took possession of Cassius’s road with very little trouble. Once that had happened, the men Cassius had sent to defend the marsh could no longer send him messages. From the camp, none of this was visible. Cassius presumably learned about the possibility of the attack from my message but getting no distress signal from the cohorts defending the marsh concluded there was nothing to worry about.

  Once Antony’s squads had crossed the palisade, they cut down the enemy where they stood. With that fight won, Antony signalled for a cohort of his cavalry to come forward. These followed behind Antony’s infantry attack until they had broken into our camp. At that point several squads of Antony’s cavalry raced forward to hold the gates between the battlefield and the camp. As a result, Cassius could no longer enter his own camp. The remainder of Antony’s cavalry and infantry turned to the business of looting and burning our southern camp. Antony himself robbed the praetorium, where the army payroll was kept. Once all the tents were ablaze, Antony sounded the retreat. Our men, finally able to enter the camp, began pouring through the gates, but it was too late. All had been lost.

  On the battlefield, Antony’s and Caesar’s armies attacked our legions at about the time Antony took possession of our camp. Some have speculated that Cassius hesitated because of the attack on his camp, but in my opinion, he refused to advance his forces because that had been his strategy from the beginning. This cost lives at the front, but it was a strategy that reduced the chances of a rout, which could amount to the loss of his entire army in an afternoon. So the fight on the battlefield proceeded much as Cassius anticipated it would do, with neither army taking ground.

  Brutus gave his army the same orders, but as Caesar’s legions closed for the fight their formation grew so ragged that one of Brutus’s legates could not resist giving the order to charge against them. It was folly not to. Once one legion began the attack, the rest followed. With Brutus’s army far in advance of Cassius’s legions, the fight that erupted on the northern half of our battlefield occurred in the middle of the field, rather than close to our palisades.

  An hour into it, Caesar’s legions finally broke and ran. This gave Brutus’s cavalry the opening they needed. Again without Brutus giving the order, his cavalry raced forward for the kill. Had Brutus led the cavalry assault instead of trying to stop it, he might have turned it against Antony’s exposed flank. Owning the entire northern half of the battlefield he had only to roll up the rank and file behind Antony’s front line, just as Julius Caesar had done against Pompey Magnus at Pharsalus. Instead, as I learned later, Brutus lamented his army’s lack of discipline as they raced headlong toward Caesar’s camp.

  I saw none of these things from my position. The field was soon covered in a thick screen of dust, and I was tucked away behind the lines, pressed against the marsh and our camp palisades. From my perspective, all of our legions were being pushed back even as our camp burned. At the rear of our battle lines men were turning from their appointed places and crowding the camp gates in the vain hope of saving the camp from annihilation. The result was chaos at the gates and a blockage of the ground behind our army.

  Realising there was no chance of receiving orders from Cassius, I gave the order to abandon our horses and enter the marsh. Soon the entire cohort, three hundred Thracians and a handful of Roman officers, crashed into the murky water and began wading through the mire. I went last, making sure the men formed a column and moved as quickly as possible away from the battlefield. When a volley of arrows came swarming into us, our centurions ordered shields up and directed the men to continue their slow retreat from the battlefield. Once beyond the reach of Antony’s archers I ordered the wounded to be taken to dry ground, where their wounds might be treated. As this occurred I brought my staff together and explained my intentions. The moment their complaints began I shut them off. ‘Any man disobeying orders will lose his head.’

  Our long summer of training paid off. Not another man dared protest, and when we returned to the Thracians my officers were quick to keep their centurions and the rank and file from protesting, repeating my promise of severed heads. So it is with armies; the officers assume the manner of their commander. Up and down the line, men behave exactly as their superiors do. Hesitation breeds cowardice; confidence makes for courage. I was taking our men into the fight, not away from danger as they had at first hoped, and though every man in our cohort dreaded my decision he pressed forward without daring to protest. So the armies of Caesar had fought. The real Caesar, I mean.

  As we made our way we encountered legionaries who had fled death on the battlefield by plunging into the marsh and escaping into the wetlands. These I pressed into our column, and I was soon commanding four hundred men. Sometimes we were in water, sometimes deep in the mud, but there were also soft fields of dead grass atop mud flats, which was as close to hard ground as we could hope for.

  We were closing in on Antony’s road when two of the legionaries I had pressed into service broke from our column and ran. I tossed my lance and shield to Horace and took off after them. I knew that if I let these deserters get away, I could expect to lose a great many others as well. They were fit and fast, but they had foolishly kept their shields, and I was soon closing on them. Of course a legionary is loath to abandon his shield, for he fights as much with it as with his gladius. We raced along the soft dead grass, sometimes sinking into water, sometimes running on ground firm enough to let us run flat out. I was barefoot of course. Like everyone else I had lost my sandals soon after entering the mud. Two furlongs on, a quarter of a mile at most, I began to close the distance. The legionaries stopped and turned to face me. Each man drew his gladius.

  I expect they hoped I would be afraid to face them. We were certainly too far from the others for me to get any assistance. When I kept coming for them they spread out to either side to receive me. Several paces away from them, I stopped to catch my breath. ‘Don’t be a fool, lad!’ the older of the two men called to me. ‘Turn back and save your own skin.’

  I pulled both of my swords out. ‘I’ll turn back when I’ve got your heads.’

  ‘They might be harder to take than you think!’

  Saying this, they came at me. These men were not like my officers, who had grown wary of my talents and fearful of being hurt. They had spent their lives on the line and had survived against every sort of enemy; so they had no fear of me. They were veter
an brawlers and supremely confident of their abilities. Best of all, from their perspective, I was without a shield.

  The first to lunge at me was on my right. He swung his shield at my sword, holding his gladius close to his hip at the ready. Only a step behind his companion, the second man came against my left side, pushing close and ready to end it at once. He too used his shield in an effort to pre-empt my attack. Like his partner, he kept his gladius close to his hip. Rather than getting caught between their shields, I threw all my weight across the shield of the second man. With my left hand I blocked the gladius that came for me. With my right hand I reached around and cut a deep gash across the tenderest part of the fellow’s arm. Rolling off his shield, I heard his scream as the blood spurted wildly from his wound. I turned to find the second man coming in for the kill. I had not the balance to meet his attack. Instead, I went under his shield. I blocked his sword thrust with one gladius, then cut his tendon with the second.

  Coming to my feet again, I faced the man whose arm I had cut. He had dropped his shield and sword because he was desperate to bind his wound. I stepped toward him hoping to plunge a sword into him. Rather than trying to recover his weapons, he ran for his life.

  I finished the man on the ground; then I took off after the other. We had not gone another half a furlong when I suddenly went face down in the mud. I kept a grip on both swords but with the wind knocked out of me I was slow coming to my feet.

  By then, the fleeing legionary had vanished. I knew he was in the high grass; I knew he had to be close, not more than fifty paces away, somewhere in front of me. I watched the grass in case he tried to circle behind me. He was without shield or sword, but he had a dagger and there were fieldstones lying about.

  I went forward slowly, listening, turning, watching for an attack. When I came to a large pool, I realised he could be somewhere in the high grass at the centre of it or already over the small knoll on the opposite bank. The water was moving but where exactly he had gone I could not tell. As I weighed my options, I heard the cry of what sounded like a girl just beyond the pond. I waded into the pool and crossed to the opposite bank. Crawling out of the water and over a low grassy bank, I pushed forward to have a look, only to discover Maecenas and Caesar alone in the marsh.