by R. W. Peake
He paused, and I sensed that there was more to it than just waiting for his words to be relayed, and the moment he began speaking again, I knew I was right because his voice became harsh.
“It was not me who turned and ran; it was not me who turned on his general and threatened his very life!”
This was the first I had heard of what took place the day before, and I shot a glance at Crastinus, who looked as puzzled as I did, but there were men who obviously knew what he was talking about, because the character of the murmuring was different. To my ears, they sounded ashamed and Caesar glared over my head in the direction of where the men of the 8th and 9th were assembled. For several seconds after the Centurions relayed his last words, Caesar said nothing, instead just maintaining his scowl and glaring at the men who had turned on him. Finally, his expression softened, and his tone became, if not conciliatory, at least softer.
“But what is past cannot be undone, and as you and my enemies know, I am not one to bear a grudge. And the service you have rendered me in the past outweighs this one lapse in your duty to me. In truth, it matters not whether this setback was due to a lack of fortitude on your part, or if it is simply a matter that the gods did not favor us this day. What does matter is that I, your general, will not allow this to stop us from achieving our goal.”
There was an audible sigh of relief while we waited for his next words, but as quickly as it came, the sense of having escaped further punishment blew away like smoke before a strong wind. “However, while I can forgive your lapse in your duty, I cannot forgive the loss of so many standards. Therefore, I now call on the signifer for each Century and Cohort that surrendered their standards to the enemy to step forward and receive punishment.”
There was another commotion as the men Caesar had named made their way to the front of the formation. Some of them came, if not willingly, at least on their own power. Others among them had to be shoved forward by their comrades, and I felt my lips curl in contempt at the naked fear shown by some of the men. These were veterans, acting like they were raw tirones, quaking in fear as they stood at some semblance of intente in front of Caesar. Is this what happens when a man finally loses his nerve, I wondered, and I was troubled by a fleeting thought that if it happened to men charged with carrying the standard, it could happen to anyone. Immediately, I dismissed the idea from my mind and turned my attention back to the rostrum, where Caesar stared down at the miserable specimens in front of him.
“You have failed in your duty, not just to your general, but to them.” He swept his arm over the rest of the army. “Your comrades, men you have marched with for many years. And it is your failure to them that I must punish, not your failure to your general. I hereby reduce you all to Gregarius, and sentence you to 60 days on barley and water. I further order that each of you be given ten lashes, which I will suspend for the time being until such time as I deem appropriate. You are dismissed.”
The humiliated men turned stiffly about, marching on unsteady legs back to their respective Centuries to take their place in the ranks. After they had resumed their spots, Caesar turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
“Now, my comrades, we must move on to the next phase of this campaign. This position is no longer tenable, and I have decided that we must move to a new position . . .”
“Nooooooooooo!”
“Caesar, do not shame us this way! Let us stay and fight!”
The roar of protest swelled as Caesar stood, listening impassively to the men shouting at him to let them fight. He listened for a moment, then lifted his hand, but it took the Centurions a moment to quiet the men down before he continued.
“I understand your feelings, my comrades. Believe me, I do. We are leaving many of our friends behind; their blood has soaked this ground. But my responsibility is to put this army in the best position to win, and that is what I must do now by moving the army to a better location. I ask you to show the same zeal that you are displaying now in preparing to move. And I swear to you on Jupiter’s Stone that you will have the opportunity to avenge your fallen comrades!”
The last words of Caesar were drowned out by the roar of the army, and he let us carry on for several moments before he silenced us with another wave.
“Centurions, you will receive your orders by the end of the day. Prepare your men to move out. That is all.”
And with that, he stepped off the rostrum in a flurry of his paludamentum to stride away, followed by his bevy of staff officers, moving in his wake like a gaggle of ducklings following their mama.
~ ~ ~ ~
Breaking down the camp began immediately after we came back. The men needed little prodding to move quickly. True to his word, near the end of the day, a courier arrived carrying the orders to the Tribune, who in turn relayed them to Crastinus, who passed them to us. We were ordered to vacate the camp and form up for the march at sunset, the assembly point being the same spot where Caesar had held his formation. Caesar had already ordered the wagons carrying the wounded to head for our destination, Apollonia on the coast. His decision to take the wounded with him was one that the army appreciated, because in circumstances like this it would have not been unheard of for him to leave them behind. However, I suspect that he knew that we needed as much of a morale boost as we could get, and nothing is worse than leaving a helpless comrade behind to the mercy of the enemy. Not only morale was at stake; given the fate of the captured men at the hands of Labienus, we would have been condemning them to death ourselves, for all intents and purposes, and many of these men would recover to fight again. The wagons rumbled off into the dusk while the rest of the army began to form up, which would take about two parts of a watch. My Cohort was assigned to be flank security on the march, prompting us to move out a short distance from the rest of the army, whereupon I set out pickets facing the Pompeian lines to give a warning in the event that Pompey roused himself and tried to prevent our leaving. However, Pompey was content to bask in the glory of his victory, not even sending out his cavalry to harass us, thereby allowing us to slip away unnoticed. Shortly before dawn, our turn came to march, following the rest of the army to Apollonia, where we would regroup and wait for Caesar’s next move.
Chapter 4- Pharsalus
Our withdrawal to Apollonia was not without incident. Despite somehow managing to give Pompey’s scouts the slip during our initial march, it was impossible to hide the fact that a whole army had disappeared. Nevertheless, our absence was not noticed until the 10th, acting as rearguard, had already reached the banks of the Genusis River. The banks of the river ford we were using were very steep, rising more than 30 feet above the riverbed, requiring the men to scramble up the opposite bank, thereby slowing our progress. Naturally, the men coming down the near side practically tumbled down the slope to the river, creating a massive jam while they waited for the men on the far bank to clamber to the top. This was the state we were in when Pompey’s cavalry found us, the cornu immediately sounding the alarm at the sight of enemy horsemen. I had already crossed and was standing on the top of the opposite bank with my Cohort, with the men yelling to their friends down in the riverbed of the approaching danger. Immediately, Caesar sent a squadron of cavalry back and they went pounding down the slope and across the river, scattering the men in their path as they rushed to meet the Pompeians. The Primus Pilus acted as quickly, shaking a Cohort out in skirmish formation, armed with not only their own javelins but extras taken from the other men. This Cohort began showering the Pompeians with the javelins, and we heard the screams of men and horse as the iron heads punched into flesh and bone. For perhaps the hundredth or thousandth time, I reflected on how much I pitied the poor horses more than the men; after all, the men had a choice but the poor beasts did not. We made short work of the Pompeians, forcing them to retire with heavy losses, then finished crossing the river and marched to join the rest of the army, who were already stopped for the day at the site of our old camp near Asparagium.
Because of the
circumstances of our last visit, although we burned the gates and towers, we had not filled in the ditches. This made it a matter of short work to throw the stakes back up on top of the wall, and then rebuild the gates and towers before settling in for the night, giving us about a watch for extra rest that we normally spent making camp. As we were settling down, we finally saw the leading elements of Pompey’s army come hurrying after us, their commanders ordering them to hurry ahead of their baggage train in order to catch up with us. Like us, they settled in their own old camp, it being in the same shape as ours, yet unlike us, this proved their undoing. Sitting in their camp without their luxuries, many of the men decided to go back to the baggage train to retrieve their belongings in order to make their stay more comfortable. Since we had crossed over to Greece without any of our baggage, we did not have to worry about such things, and in their laxity, Caesar saw his opportunity to steal a march. With a large part of Pompey’s army out of the camp, the orders were given to us to pull up our stakes, pack what little we had, and get back on the march. Pompey could only watch in frustration as we marched out of camp, being neither desperate nor crazy enough to try to pursue us with only part of his force. He was forced to wait for the rest of his men to return, then wait even longer for them to repack their baggage on the train, and only then did he begin the pursuit. By that time, we had gained more than eight miles on Pompey, an advantage that we would keep for the next four days it took us to reach Apollonia. We maintained it by never fully unloading the baggage train when we made camp, then sent it ahead long before daybreak, giving it a head start. It was in this manner we were able to prevent Pompey from closing the gap. Pompey finally gave up the pursuit and took up position along the Via Egnatia, waiting for us to make our next move.
~ ~ ~ ~
Now that we were back on the coast and safe within the fortified walls of Apollonia, it was time for Caesar to ponder his next move. Meanwhile, we spent the time resting and refitting as much as our supply situation allowed, although as usual with Caesar that was precious little time. The most important thing that we did was to deposit our wounded within the walls, of which there were two or three thousand, most of them from all the Spanish Legions, thereby enabling us to move quickly. We were at Apollonia only a couple of days when Crastinus summoned us to his quarters to inform us that we would be moving the next day. Caesar had decided to march to join Calvinus, who had taken the 11th and 12th after they landed with Antonius to forage and put pressure on Scipio, who was commanding an independent Pompeian force of two Legions in Thessalia, getting there by marching overland from Syria. By joining forces with Calvinus, we had a chance to crush Scipio before Pompey could move to his aid. Almost as important, even if Pompey reached Scipio in time, it would draw him farther from his own base of supply, and Caesar was counting on the fact that we had been dealing with deprivation and short rations, whereas it would be new to Pompey’s men, giving the advantage to us. Accordingly, we marched out of Apollonia, leaving behind four Cohorts in the city, along with those already in Oricum, heading east to meet up with Calvinus and his two Legions. Calvinus was waging a campaign of attrition against Scipio, with limited success and in doing so had managed to turn a good number of the natives against Caesar and his cause. The news of Pompey’s victory did not help either, and as we marched through the countryside, we found towns closing their gates to us, not wanting to incite Pompey against them. In fact, Calvinus learned of Pompey’s victory through friends of the two Gallic traitors who were now scouting for Pompey, looking for Scipio but finding Calvinus instead. Calvinus also learned in this way that Caesar was nearby, since the couriers that Caesar sent out were obviously intercepted, and consequently sent out his own scouts looking for us, which is how we linked up. Now it was time to turn on Scipio, although there was also the matter of our supply situation and the issue of these towns that had turned their back on us. One such was the town of Gomphi, and it was to there that we marched, much to their misery and misfortune.
~ ~ ~ ~
Arriving at the walls of the town around midday, after a quick reconnaissance, Caesar determined that we could take the town by assault, rather than to try to reduce it by siege. He ordered us to knock together assault ladders and make bundles of sticks to throw into the ditch at the base of the walls. We did so in plain sight of the townspeople lining the low wall and we heard their cries of despair, but they were lost on us. They had supplies that we desperately needed, and while I know that they would have gladly surrendered them once they saw we were about to take them by force, it was too late for that. I think Caesar had a number of reasons for ordering the assault, not least of which was to restore some of the morale we had lost by allowing us to exact a measure of revenge. It was just the people of Gomphi’s misfortune that their leaders chose to change sides upon hearing of Pompey’s victory at Dyrrhachium. It did not take us long to build the ladders and gather the bundles together, and the 10th was one of the Legions selected for the assault, but because of the casualties my Cohort took during our assault on the fort we were put in reserve. The men were not happy, the rumor being that Caesar was going to give the town over to us, meaning that they would not get first pickings of loot and women, although we would still do better than the men who were not taking part in the assault at all. No matter how hard the provosts tried, despite the fact that the town was supposed to be divided up, with a section of the town designated for each Legion, the first men over the walls always managed to slip into areas in which they were not supposed to be. They nabbed choice bits of loot before the men actually assigned to the area got there. However, it is when the men stop grumbling that the Centurions have to worry, so I was not concerned about my men and their complaints. The assault started about a full watch before dusk, yet it took barely a third of a watch for the walls to be taken, and not much more than another third of a watch later for the last defender to be slaughtered. By dusk, we had rounded up the civilians that were not well hidden, and on Caesar’s orders, put them to the sword. Normally, we would not have been happy about this since we all profited from the sale of slaves, but our desire for revenge outweighed our greed in this case, and it was just the bad luck of the townspeople that they were the objects of our wrath. The rest of the night was spent stripping the town of everything of any value, the men drinking anything that held the remotest possibility of getting them drunk, except this time it was with Caesar’s blessing. He understood that the men needed something to cheer them up; I suppose it seems odd to say that the rape and pillage of a peaceful town would be considered sport, yet that is the nature of the Legionary. It is a harsh life we lead, and there is no place for finer notions like sensitivity, which is viewed as a weakness, and indeed in many ways it is. One cannot be mooning about thinking about whether or not what you are doing is the right thing when thrusting a sword into a man’s guts, not unless you want to be the one stretched out on a funeral pyre. Still, there are men who participate with less gusto than others, and there are those like Didius who lived for moments when they were allowed to run wild.
I walked the streets of the town, listening to the screams of the women who had not been killed yet, making sure that my men did not stray into areas designated for other Cohorts, or worse, other Legions. In the beginning, it would be fairly easy to keep order, but once the supplies of wine were uncovered and consumed, it would be harder and harder to maintain discipline. Consequently, I had ordered my Centurions to keep a tight rein on the men. With every sacking of a town there is always one Cohort that goes farther than any other; it was almost a given that there would be punishments forthcoming, and it was not unheard of that the crimes committed by men inflamed by wine, lust, and greed were sufficiently serious enough to warrant execution. I was determined that my Cohort would not be the one to be made an example of, and I was worried about Scribonius, since this would be his first big test of command of his Century. I knew the men liked him well enough; but did they fear him, because that is what it took at t
imes like this. Once men are robbed of their senses by drink and debauchery, the only thing that they understand is fear, fear of a beating at the hands of their Centurion or Optio. Whereas my reputation was already made, and in truth, I had no reason not to allow Vibius to handle any disciplinary issues in the First Century, Scribonius would have to handle any problems himself this time. Later it would not be necessary, but because this was his first such challenge, it was crucial that he be the one to keep his men in line.
With that in mind, I held a briefing with my Centurions, stressing the importance of keeping a lid on the men. Now we were patrolling the streets, watching for trouble. What we feared occurred about two thirds of a watch after midnight, over on the next street from where I was standing talking to Vibius. It was normal by this point in the sacking of the town that the air was filled with the yells and curses of the men, but above that came first the noise of men shouting at each other, followed by what sounded like amphorae being smashed against the stone walls of the houses. In short, what we were hearing was different from the normal sounds of a town being ravaged, and we instantly understood that it meant trouble. Celer, Niger, Crispus, and I were standing together, along with Vibius and a couple other Optios. We did not hesitate, turning and running down the street to round the corner and head up the street where the sound was originating. I was in the lead, so I saw immediately that what was happening was the worst possible scenario; the men of Scribonius’ Century were involved in an altercation with some men I did not immediately recognize, which could only mean they were from another Legion. Despite the time of night, the flames from the piles of furniture and other odds and ends that the men had dumped in the middle of the street then set alight made the scene clear, like it was almost high noon. Scanning the faces of the small knot of men standing angrily facing ours, my heart sank as my worst fears were confirmed. None of the men were from the 10th, and I vaguely recognized one of the men, thinking he was one of the 9th, which, if true, helped to at least partially explain what the problem was. Ever since their mutiny, we had not thought very well of the 9th, then after the debacle at Dyrrhachium, our opinion sank even lower, believing that they brought shame onto the army and to Caesar. The men were arrayed facing each other, and despite no weapons being drawn, a number of men on each side had picked up lengths of wood from the pile by the fire to use as clubs, and were brandishing them at each other, shouting vile threats as they did so. I saw that Scribonius was standing in between them, but it did not look like he held more than a tenuous hold on the situation, with both sides looking poised to throw themselves at each other. Striding through the middle of my men, I pushed them roughly aside, their faces showing first angry surprise, then fear when they recognized me, and I made my way to Scribonius.