by R. W. Peake
I turned to the man next to me, “Do you have anything white? A bandage maybe?”
He looked at me as if I had grown a third eye, but nervously shook his head. Irritated, I turned around, shouting for someone to produce something to be used as a flag of truce, and it was a moment before I saw something passed through the ranks and handed to me. I looked at it in disgust; it would be extremely charitable to refer to the soiled bandage in my hands as white, but it would have to do.
Picking up a spent javelin, I stuck it on the end, holding it up and stepping into the space between our two forces, calling out, “I propose a truce and I request to speak to the commanding officer.”
It was relatively easy to spot who that was, there being only one man left standing wearing the transverse crest of the Centurion, and the Pompeian men immediately looked to him. Reluctantly, he stepped forward, pushing through his men to stand facing me a few feet away. I was surprised to see that he was somewhere around my age. I had become accustomed to being one of the youngest Centurions in Caesar’s army, making it rare to see someone like me in the uniform of a Centurion. He was clearly a man who had seen fighting, having a long, vividly red scar running up the length of his sword arm. Standing stiffly, he waited for me to speak, and I cleared my throat, knowing that what I had to say was as much for his men as for himself.
“I am Secundus Pilus Prior Titus Pullus, of the Tenth Legion,” I said clearly, hoping that my voice did not hold the tremor that I felt. A lot was riding on my ability to convince this man that it was useless to keep fighting. “Who am I addressing?”
He did not speak for a moment, then grudgingly answered, “I am Decimus Princeps Prior Quintus Albinus, of Pompey’s First Legion.”
Raising an eyebrow, I turned back to my men, saying with a smile, “Funny, I thought that the Legions belonged to Rome, not one man.”
This was met with chuckles from my men, but Albinus apparently did not find it humorous.
“Pompey Magnus is Rome,” he snapped. “And you are traitors to the Republic.”
There was a low growl behind me, and I knew that if I did not do something quickly, my attempts at avoiding further bloodshed would be for naught.
Stepping closer to Albinus, I said so that only he could hear, “Quiet, you idiot! I’m trying to save your life!”
“Don’t worry about my life,” he shot back. “I’m happy to die today if I can take more of you bastards with me!”
I looked him in the eye, saying quietly, “Do they feel the same way?” With a jerk of my head, I indicated the men behind them. Before he could answer, I continued. “And don’t you have a duty to your men as much as you do to Pompey?”
I saw the doubt in his eyes, and I was about to say more before deciding that silence was the best approach.
We stood looking at each other for a moment, then finally, his shoulders slumped and he nodded sadly. “You’re right, Pullus. I do owe them their lives. They fought well today.”
“That they did,” I agreed, being totally honest. “And we would treat you with honor; all we ask is that you surrender your weapons, and swear a solemn oath to leave the fort and fight no more.”
“You know I can’t do that,” he protested. “We can’t very well go back and tell Pompey that we won’t fight again.”
I knew he was right. I shrugged and said, “Honestly, I don’t care what you do once you leave the fort, as long as you don’t try stopping me and my men from what we’re supposed to do. Once you go back to your camp, you can rearm yourselves and we’ll fight another day.” I grinned at him. “And who knows, maybe next time things will be different, and you’ll return the favor.”
I could tell he did not want to, but he smiled back, saying with heavy humor, “Don’t bet on it. You don’t know our officers. If they’re involved, we won’t have any choice.”
“Oh, I know them all right. Labienus was our commander, remember. In fact, you tell him that Titus Pullus sends his regards and if I see him on the battlefield, I’m going to cut his balls off and feed them to him for what he did.”
He gave a startled laugh, then saw that I was perfectly serious, and he swallowed hard before answering, “Well, I’ll give him the first part of the message at least.”
“No, you tell him the whole thing,” I said firmly. “And tell him if I don’t, one of my boys will. Now,” I said, turning back to the business at hand, “I’ve given you my terms. What is your answer?”
He stood there, looking at the ground for what seemed like several moments, then finally nodded and responded faintly, “I accept your terms. But only for my men, you understand?”
I nodded, for I truly did and I said so. “Who else but a fellow Centurion could help but understand? You’re doing the right thing, for your men. I salute you Quintus Albinus.”
Then I offered him my hand and for a moment, I thought he would refuse, but he grasped it and I could hear the collective sigh of relief from both sides flow around us.
~ ~ ~ ~
Making arrangements for the Pompeians to stack arms and with my Centurions supervising, Albinus and I stood to one side. At first, there was a strained silence, but before long, we were talking like we had known each other for years. His story was similar to mine; he was from Gades, and he had been in his first enlistment when he was promoted to the Centurionate. He had seen action against the pirates and in the East, and against the Parthians. We carefully avoided any topic that could prove contentious, such as the war currently going on, but it was there between us. He was a good sort and I would have enjoyed sitting with him, sharing a jug of wine and swapping stories, but we both knew that it was impossible under the current circumstances. Once the surrender of the weapons finished up, I cleared my throat and asked Albinus, “What would you like to do with your dead? Your wounded will be cared for by our medici, and I think you know that Caesar will treat them as his own.”
He nodded and replied grudgingly, “Traitor he may be, but I will say that we’ve been impressed with his clemency.”
“He’s only a traitor if he loses,” I reminded him, and he shot me an angry look, then shrugged.
“We’ll see.”
He turned to gaze at the bodies strewn around us, then said sadly, “How do we tell which is ours?”
His words struck at my heart like a dagger; he was right. It would take much too long to try to separate our dead. The wounded would be easier, at least those who were still lucid. “Albinus, I swear to you by any god you care to choose that I’ll see that your men are accorded the proper funeral rites, and we’ll treat them as if they were our own dead.”
“Very well, Pullus. And…..thank you,” he said, offering his hand again. With that, he and his men marched out of the fort. Now we had to do what we came for, destroying every piece of engineering equipment and artillery.
~ ~ ~ ~
It took us the better part of a third of a watch to pile all the tools into a pile, drag the catapult down off the parapet and wreck the fort. We could not spare the time to pull up all the stakes to add to the pyre, but we removed a number of them at strategic points around the fort, putting them on the pile. A Century was kept on the parapets to keep an eye on the Pompeians, since I was expecting some sort of sortie from the next fort along the line, a little more than a mile away. It took the released Pompeians almost half that time to reach the fort, and I calculated that it would take them a few moments to organize and get marching back towards us, but they would undoubtedly cover the ground more quickly than Albinus. That gave us less than another third of a watch to finish up, and I detailed the Sixth Century to go fill in as much of the ditch as they could in the time we had left before we left. The medici had already gathered up the wounded from both sides, while I detailed men to help carry the dead back to our lines, using scraps of wood as makeshift stretchers. The numbers were dismaying, but there was nothing I could do about it except make sure as many men made it back as possible. I cursed myself for making the promise to Albi
nus that I had, but I was not about to go back on my word now. The flames began licking at the wood and other flammable material, then in moments, a column of smoke was billowing up into the air. If there was any doubt about what had happened it was gone now, I thought, giving the command to form up and march out of the fort.
Just as we were leaving the burning ruin, one of the men I had detailed to act as a scout shouted a warning, and I looked to see that the relief column of the Pompeians had broken into a trot in a desperate attempt to cut us off. Well, two could play that game and I gave my own command to pick up the pace. We easily outstripped the pursuit, making it back to our own camp. The Pompeians quickly realized that they were not going to catch us, having to settle for shouting their frustration and contempt, jeering at us as we called back to them, pointing to the burning fort and ruined defenses. Our mission was a success, but it had been a costly victory, and I could not help wondering what was accomplished, exactly? We did not stop Pompey’s construction of his defenses, we had only slowed it down, and I had lost a lot of men in doing so. Was it worth it?
~ ~ ~ ~
The final butcher’s bill was 17 dead, 30 wounded, five of them, including Figulus, so severely that they would be dismissed from the Legions as invalids. Although the rest would recover, for some it would take weeks before they would be fit for duty. In effect, I had lost almost ten percent of what was left of my Cohort, and the mood among our tent lines was somber, with every man in the Cohort losing a friend. Our numbers were shrinking and our supply situation was not going to help the wounded regain their strength. The foraging parties kept returning with less and less grain, forcing Caesar first to put us on three-quarters rations, then after a few days, half rations. Our sortie resulted in no more than two or three days delay for the Pompeians, and that did not help morale either. There was a lot of muttering about the waste of good men for nothing more significant than a couple of days, although it was muted and the men stopped whenever I was nearby. One result of our raid was that Caesar forbade the further use of Legionaries in any sorties against Pompey’s works, realizing that he could not afford the losses of such experienced men, and from then on, the auxiliaries carried out these operations. Still, it was dangerous for us because of the large number of Pompeian slingers and archers that targeted every man wearing a Legionary uniform, with special attention paid to Centurions.
That was how Longus died, one ordinary day when he got careless during his Century’s guard shift, turning his back on the Pompeians, who had sent out a small group of men in the night to hide and wait for just such a moment. They were of course cut down, but the damage was done; Longus and one of his men died, another was wounded. Now there was a vacancy in my Cohort and it did not take long for Celer to try putting forward one of his toadies, his Optio, a man named Scrofa. Scrofa was not a bad Legionary, but there was no way that I was going to allow him to be promoted if I could help it. My choice was Scribonius, but despite my choice carrying some weight, it was not a done deal by any stretch, because he was junior to Scrofa. The only thing Celer and I agreed on was that Longus’ Optio, a wormy little man named Postumus, was completely unacceptable. He was promoted by Longus on the basis of loyalty alone and had been Longus’ confederate in his shakedown schemes. Despite being successful in somewhat curtailing Longus’ habit of disciplining his men excessively as a means of enriching himself, I was unable to stop it completely, something that I was not happy with to say the least. In fact, I suspected that all I did was make Longus and Postumus more creative in their schemes, another reason I was not grief stricken at Longus’ death. Nevertheless, it also created a problem between Celer and me, since we had competing interests. I would be less than honest if I denied that our goals were not the same; we each wanted a man that would be loyal to us, but in my mind, I held the greater right being the Pilus Prior, making it my Cohort, and I still believe that to this day.
~ ~ ~ ~
I went to the Primus Pilus, my old commander Gaius Crastinus, making my case for Scribonius, arguing that his record spoke for itself despite his lack of seniority over Scrofa, while Celer argued that Scrofa, being the most senior of the Optios in the Cohort, was the natural choice. Ultimately, it cost me a pretty sum to convince Crastinus to select Scribonius over Scrofa, something that I have never uttered until now, yet I considered it an investment in not just my future, but in the future of Scribonius. Once Scribonius was promoted to take Longus’ position, over his vigorous protests I made Vibius my Optio, a promotion that I did not have to justify to anyone at this point. The added benefit of Scribonius’ promotion was that it made Celer apoplectic with rage. Meanwhile, our larger situation remained desperate, as it became more and more difficult for our foragers to obtain any supplies whatsoever, while Pompey still controlled the seas. The only success we had was in cutting off the forage for his livestock, but his men still ate well, whereas we began a diet of barley bread, something normally reserved for men on punishment. Our contravallation reached a point where it made sense to begin to turn westward, at a place where it would cut Pompey off from one of his best sources of water. The problem for us was that making that turn took us from the protection of the ridgeline that ran north and south, and was across open ground. With the only geographical feature a hill that stood all by itself, it quickly became the focal point of contention between the two armies, as Pompey occupied a smaller mound nearby. The men of the 9th were charged with fortifying this hill but Pompey, also recognizing its importance, committed a large force of slingers and archers to rain continuous death down on our men. The 9th was commanded by Antonius, and the Pompeians made it impossible for them to both defend themselves and to fortify the hill, forcing Caesar to give the command to vacate the position. When the Pompeians saw our men withdrawing, they tried to press the advantage, sending out auxiliaries while bringing up artillery within range to inflict as much damage on the 9th during their retreat as possible. Now Caesar was forced to intervene personally, sending a scratch force of engineers out to throw up a series of hurdles, wicker baskets filled with dirt and buttressed with poles, placing them on the slopes of the hill in an attempt to provide some protection as the 9th gathered their gear and made their withdrawal. Additionally, Caesar ordered the digging of a ditch behind the hurdles to impede the Pompeians in their pursuit, but this backfired, the Pompeians simply using the hurdles to fill in the ditch by pushing them into it. Caesar was forced to stop the 9th in its withdrawal, turn them around and order a countercharge to throw the Pompeians back long enough for the 9th to make good its retreat, with a loss of only about five men. While in the grand scheme of the campaign this qualified as little more than a skirmish, it was the first time since we had landed where Pompey had inflicted what could be called a defeat on Caesar, and the Pompeians celebrated it like the whole war was won. Of course, this was not the case, but it did put even more of a damper on the army, since we now could not use the hill as the pivot point to finish the contravallation. Instead, we had to continue digging to the south to the next hill, a couple miles further along, and in our weakened state because of our supply situation this was a heavy blow indeed. At this point, we were digging up a root that the locals claimed was nutritious and tasted good when ground into a flour then baked into a loaf of what they claimed was bread. I will say that it was better than eating dirt, but just barely. Although we in the Spanish Legions did not have a problem, the new Legions were now faced with deserters at an alarming rate, and apparently, one of those deserters carried one of the loaves to show to Pompey as evidence that we were in desperate straits. Somewhat surprisingly, it actually had the opposite result intended, alarming Pompey that although we were reduced to such measures, we did not show any sign of giving in.
~ ~ ~ ~
All was not going Pompey’s way, however. As he had foreseen, Pompey’s men were eating well but his livestock was suffering from lack of forage and were beginning to die off. Additionally, Caesar now ordered work to begin on damming off
the rivers flowing to the coast that supplied Pompey with his fresh water, using one of the new Legions and some auxiliary as labor. It took a few weeks, but once it was completed, it forced Pompey to evacuate his livestock, including most importantly his cavalry, by sea back to Dyrrhachium, relieving some of the pressure on our foragers who no longer had to worry about Pompey’s cavalry patrols. Not that it mattered all that much; we had picked the country clean of just about every grain of wheat, every chicken, in fact everything that a hungry Legionary could eat. It was now getting close to summer; we had crossed over from Brundisium more than five months before, meaning the fields of grain that we had protected with our lives were just beginning to ripen, and we knew that shortly our hunger would be a thing of the past. For those of us who were at Avaricum, Alesia, and Ilerda, this was nothing new and nothing that we could not cope with, but it did not stop the Pompeians from using their artillery to fling loaves of bread at us, with taunts about how they were just throwing the leftovers that they did not want at us. Despite our hunger, it made me proud to see that not one man in my Cohort deigned to pick up a loaf, despite it laying there for all to see. I heard that the boys in the new Legions were not so quick to turn their noses up, gobbling up the loaves that the Pompeians flung at them, making me happy that I did not have to worry about disciplining any men for showing such weakness. During the time all of this was taking place, an event happened that, when one reads Caesar’s account of the civil war, is missing and I do not know of any other account. I want to caution you, gentle reader, that this is not a firsthand account, but is what I heard from members of Caesar’s staff who were present, and I trust that what I was told is as close to accurate as it is possible to make it. What I am about to relate is how close Caesar came to being killed and is an example of how, at least in those days, the gods truly did smile on him.