Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome
Page 33
and foolish, but was still scornful of Caesar’s behavior: “He claims that
he is doing all this to protect his dignity. How can there be any dignity
where there is no honesty?”3
The rebel won the war. Caesar became dictator for life and held su-
preme authority in the republic. He also had effective control of the en-
tire Roman army. His rule was not especial y tyrannical. Enemies were
pardoned and many promoted, while his legislation was general y sen-
sible. However, the republican system was supposed to prevent any one
individual from permanently possessing so much power. For this and
other reasons, a group of senators stabbed Caesar to death on March 15,
44 BC. Just over a decade later, Caesar’s adopted son defeated his last rival
and became Rome’s first emperor. Augustus created a system that would
endure for centuries, and was a monarchy in al but name. “ Caesar” even-
tual y went from being simply a family name to a title synonymous with
supreme power. Caesars would rule Rome for 500 years, and the Eastern
or Byzantine Empire for nearly a thousand more. The name would sur-
vive into the twentieth century in the forms kaiser and tsar.
Caesar conquered Gaul and raided across the Rhine into Germany
and over the English Channel into Britain. By Roman standards these
wars were all justified and for the general good of the state. Success-
ful commanders were expected to profit from victory, and Caesar did
so on a massive scale, matching the scope of his campaigns. He was a
commander of genius who then turned his army against opponents
within the republic and made himself dictator through force of arms.
His career was that of a talented man who began as a servant of the
state, but then subverted it and became its master.
In a modern democracy, the armed forces are supposed always to
remain fully under the control of civil authorities. This has been es-
pecially important in Britain since the civil wars, which had led to the
rule of Cromwell and the Major Generals. Memories of this same rule
by the army influenced America’s founding fathers, and George Wash-
ington earned almost as much praise for his refusal to stand for a third
term as president as for winning the war with Britain in the first place.
The United States was to be a better version of the ancient republics,
avoiding Rome’s slide into military dictatorship and imperial rule. In
contrast, France’s revolution led to the rise of its own Caesar in the
form of Napoleon. At his coronation as emperor in 1804, Napoleon
himself placed the crown on his head to emphasize that he had taken
power rather than been given it.
The General as State 207
Dictators have seized powers in military coups in many countries,
although since the Second World War the problem has afflicted only
Third World countries and has seemed a distant one in the West. It is
important to remember that Caesar did not spring from nowhere. He
did not single-handedly destroy the republic, nor did he subvert a de-
mocracy that was functioning well and essentially stable. The conflict
from 49 to 45 BC was not the first civil war, and others were as willing as
he to resort to violence. Sulla had already fought his way to the dicta-
torship in 82 BC, ruthlessly proscribing his enemies for execution. He is
supposed to have had on his tombstone an inscription boasting that no
one was a better friend or worse enemy.4
Roman public life was very dangerous in Caesar’s day. Most impor-
tant men had lost relatives or friends during the struggle between Sulla
and Marius. Senators lived with the knowledge that political rivalries
could easily erupt into intimidation, violence, or even warfare itself.
Times were less stable than in earlier centuries, and that meant that
there were greater opportunities for rapid advancement. Pompey the
Great broke almost all the rules in his rise to become Rome’s great-
est general and one of the dominant figures in the state. Ironically, he
would die as a defender of the republic against the rebel Caesar.
The Roman republic was already floundering before Caesar began
his career, let alone by the time he crossed the Rubicon. That does not
mean that its collapse was inevitable, but it did make it a real possibil-
ity. Military dictators do not usually appear unless a state is in serious,
usually long-term, trouble. Napoleon could not have existed without
the chaos of the Revolution and the Terror. However popular a great
and successful military commander may be, the circumstances need to
be right for him to turn against the state that appointed him. Caesar’s
dictatorship was not an instance of the army taking over the state. The
republic’s political leaders also commanded its army, and in 49 BC they
chose to employ the legions to resolve their political rivalry.
There is also another lesson from Caesar’s career. For all his military
success, he failed to find a political solution, and was murdered. There
are limits to what force alone can achieve. Caesar might have preserved
both his life and his rule had he taken greater precautions to protect
himself, and had he maintained control with greater ruthlessness.
208 Goldsworthy
Augustus would do both these things, learning a brutal lesson from the
failure of his adoptive father.
Politics and War
The same men led Rome in both peace and war. Men entering pub-
lic life followed a structured career, the cursus honorum, which brought
them a mixture of military and civil posts. Provincial governors com-
bined supreme military, civil, and judicial power within the territory
placed under their command. Magistrates were elected and held office
for a single year. Governors were normally appointed by the Senate
and did not have a fixed term in the post, remaining there until a re-
placement was appointed. They were rarely left in a post for more than
a few years.
Leading an army in a successful war gave a man glory and wealth.
Both brought considerable political advantages, helping him and his
descendants to win office in the future. Annual elections meant that
competition for the approval of voters was frequent. The compara-
tively short terms granted to provincial governors ensured that many
were eager to fight and win a war before they were replaced. It was a
system that had fostered aggressive warfare and expansion throughout
the republican period. It did not do much to encourage long-term plan-
ning or consistency in relations with neighboring peoples.
Caesar came from an aristocratic family that had languished in com-
parative obscurity for a long time. His early career was flamboyant but
in most respects conventional. He saw military service as a junior of-
ficer in Asia Minor in his late teens and won the corona civica, Rome’s
highest award for gallantry, which was traditionally given for saving the
life of a fellow citizen. As a private citizen he raised a force to arrest a
group of pirates, and on another occasion did the same to repulse an
attack on the Roman province of Asia by elements of Mithridates of
Pontus’s army. Caesar later served as a military tribune, most probably
in the war against Spartacus. There is no record of any military activ-
ity during his quaestorship. In 61 BC he went to Spain as governor and
led a rapid punitive expedition against Lusitanian tribes. His army was
equivalent in size to three legions.5
The General as State 209
By the time he was forty, Caesar had served for at most six or seven
years in some military capacity or other. This was perhaps a little below
average for a Roman politician, but not excessively so. Although his
record was good, many other men could boast of comparable achieve-
ments. Caesar’s rise up the cursus honorum was helped by his military
exploits, but other factors were far more important. He championed
popular causes, won a reputation as an orator and legal advocate, and
spent borrowed money on a staggering scale to advertise himself and
win popularity. As Sallust put it, “ ‘Caesar had accustomed himself to
great effort and little rest; to concentrate on his friends’ business at the
expense of his own, and never to neglect anything which was worth
doing as a favour. He craved great imperium, an army, and a new war so
that he could show his talent.”6
The contrast between Pompey’s career and Caesar’s career could
not be more marked. Only six years older, Pompey raised three legions
from his own estates and at his own expense, and rallied to Sulla’s cause
during the civil war. He had no legitimate authority to do this, but his
army was large enough to make his support worth having. All of his
early victories were achieved over Roman enemies, as he mopped up
Sulla’s enemies in Italy and Africa and earned himself the nickname
“the young butcher” for the enthusiasm with which he executed sena-
tors. In 78 BC the Senate employed him to deal with an attempted coup
by the consul Lepidus. After that he was sent to Spain to finish off the
last remnants of Marius’s supporters. He was given proconsular power
by the Senate, but had never held a magistracy and was not even a sena-
tor. In 71 he returned to Rome, demanded and was given the right to
stand for the consulship, and finally became a senator. In 67 and 66 BC he
was given extraordinarily large provincial commands, for the first time
winning victories against genuinely foreign opponents. On his return
to Rome at the end of the decade, he was fabulously wealthy and en-
joyed a record of military success far outstripping any other senator’s.
Caesar wanted a war to win glory to match men like Crassus and
Lucul us, and ideal y Pompey himself. He also needed a war to pay his
massive debts. Late in 60 BC, he formed a secret al iance with Pompey
and Crassus, both of whom were frustrated by their failure to get mea-
sures through the Senate. Caesar became consul for 59 BC, and with their
210 Goldsworthy
backing he forced through the legislation they wanted, as wel as some
of his own. He also secured himself a grand military command, com-
bining the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Il yria, which won him an
army of three legions. This was not al ocated by the Senate but given
to him by the vote of the Popular Assembly, which at the same time
granted him five years in the post. Pompey had gained some of his com-
mands in the same way. The Senate did augment Caesar’s province by
adding Transalpine Gaul fol owing the sudden death of its current gov-
ernor. This province included another legion to augment Caesar’s army.
The Shaping of War
Like many successful statesmen, Caesar was an opportunist. When
he went to his province in 58 BC, he needed a war, any war, so long
as it was on a grand scale. His initial plans envisaged a campaign on
the Danube, most likely against the wealthy and powerful Dacian king
Burebista. The unexpected addition of Transalpine Gaul to Caesar’s
command was soon followed by news of the migration of the Helvetii,
a tribe from what is now Switzerland. The migrants wanted to cross
through the Roman province and were seen as a threat by tribes allied
with Rome. Caesar would have been criticized if he had ignored this
problem. In any event, he quickly realized this was an opportunity, and
took swift action. He concentrated his army to meet this threat, and
repulsed the Helvetii. He then left his province to pursue them, eventu-
ally smashing them in battle.
By the end of the campaign, it was too late in the year to think of
mounting an operation in the Balkans. Rather than waste the time,
Caesar decided to attack the German leader Ariovistus. The latter had
originally been invited into Gaul by the Sequani, but had then come
to dominate the tribe and its neighbors. Up to this point, the Romans
had accepted the situation, and in 59 BC Caesar himself had helped
Ariovistus be formally named a “friend and ally of the Roman People.”
Now he argued that the German leader was a serious threat to allied
tribes such as the Aedui. Ariovistus was attacked and defeated. Involve-
ment in the affairs of Gaul offered further opportunities for interven-
tion. In 57 BC, Caesar once again claimed that defending Rome’s allies
The General as State 211
and interests required him to launch another major aggressive war, this
time against the Belgic tribes.
Caesar carefully publicized his achievements in his famous Commen-
taries, which seem to have been released as individual books during
the winter months after a campaign.7 These portray a commander al-
ways acting for the good of the republic. They do not mention the
more personal factors that shaped the warfare but instead present a
seamless—and apparently logical—progression from one campaign to
the next. The tribes of Gaul were portrayed as unstable and prone to
internal revolution, but essentially static. In contrast, Caesar depicted
the Germanic tribes as seminomadic pastoralists, always inclined to mi-
grate westward to the better land of Gaul. This invoked memories and
fears of the Cimbri and other tribes that had threatened Italy itself at
the end of the second century BC. The Rhine was presented as the clear
dividing line between the Gauls and the Germans, although Caesar’s
own narrative acknowledges that things were more complicated. This
gave him a clear limit to the land he needed to occupy, and a clear rea-
son for destroying any Germanic groups that moved into Gaul. The
expeditions over the Rhine were brief and never intended to lead to
permanent occupation. They demonstrated that the Romans could
and would cross the river whenever they chose. Doing so by building a
bridge—something beyond the capability of the tribes—reinforced the
point of overwhelming Roman superiority.8
In 56 BC, the fighting was smaller scale, and much of it was carried
out by Caesar’s subordinates at the head of detachments from the
army. This was in part because the largest obvious targets or opponents
had already been dealt with, but mai
nly because political concerns kept
Caesar in Cisalpine Gaul, as close to Italy as possible. Tensions between
Pompey and Crassus nearly led to the breakdown of their alliance.
Both men traveled to meet with Caesar inside his province, at what is
known as the Conference of Luca. A new deal was made, one conse-
quence of which was the extension of Caesar’s command by five years.
This permitted Caesar far more scope for planning. It is probable
that he was already contemplating an expedition to Britain. In 56 BC
he defeated the Veneti, a tribe that possessed a fleet and might have
hindered the expedition. In 55 BC a campaign against migrating German
212 Goldsworthy
tribes delayed the attack on Britain, so that only a small-scale operation
crossed the channel at the very end of the year. The campaign nearly
ended in disaster when much of the fleet was wrecked in a storm.
Caesar returned the next year with a much bigger force. He achieved
a minor victory, but once again underestimated the power of the Eng-
lish Channel and was nearly stranded on the island. Militarily, the Brit-
ish expeditions achieved very little indeed, at high risk. Politically they
were a staggering success, with the Senate voting Caesar twenty days
of public thanksgiving to mark the victory—a longer period than had
ever been awarded before.9
Caesar’s campaigns were aggressive and opportunistic. However, in
neither their conduct nor their operation were they markedly differ-
ent from Roman warfare in this and earlier periods. Unlike most com-
manders, Caesar had larger forces at his disposal and a longer period
of command. By Roman standards, his campaigns were justified. The
only direct attack on his behavior in Gaul was launched by Cato the
Younger in 55 BC, after Caesar had massacred the migrating German
tribes. Cato’s concern was not with the slaughter itself but that it had
occurred during a truce, and so was a breach of Rome’s much vaunted
faithfulness ( fides). Even in the build-up to the civil war, Caesar’s oppo-
nents attacked him for his behavior during his consulship in 59 BC and
for what they claimed were his ambitions for the future. They do not
seem to have wanted to hold him to account for his activities in Gaul.10
Different Politics