by R. W. Peake
Having become accustomed to my attempts to bully him, Apollonius was unperturbed. “I imagine that he’s giving Pharnaces a chance to reconsider his decision to stay put. Not to mention that he has to give the 36th time to march overland to the place Caesar has designated for us to meet.”
He gave me a smug look, raising his cup in a mock salute, giving a girlish squeal when I kicked the chair out from under him.
Meeting Caesar in Tarsus were two men, and I use the term men loosely, none other than Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius, both of whom came begging Caesar’s forgiveness. More accurately, Brutus had already been forgiven by Caesar, but was now interceding with him on behalf of Cassius, and it should be no surprise that Caesar did indeed forgive Cassius, restoring him to favor. Of course, Cassius went on to repay this kindness with the vilest example of treachery in history. In Tarsus, it took Caesar just a few days to dispose of all outstanding matters, then at dawn one day near the end of Junius, we marched out of the city, heading north through Cappadocia. Stopping in the capital Mazaca for two days, Caesar did more of his administrative work before we pushed on for the Pontus border. Just a day out of Mazaca, shortly before sunset, a large group of horsemen along with a small force of infantry approached the camp, asking for entrance. The leader was none other than Deiotarus, tetrarch of Lesser Armenia, coming not as a head of state but as a supplicant; another bottom feeder throwing himself on Caesar’s mercy because he had chosen to support Pompey. I do not know what he said, but I know that Caesar forgave him, except not without a demand for Deiotarus to supply one of his Roman-trained Legions, along with all of his cavalry to augment our force. More accurately, the Legion he ended up supplying was the combined remnants of the two Legions that Domitius had led at Nicopolis, but they were so badly cut up that they had to be combined to make one full Legion. Deiotarus had no choice but to agree, promising that they would be at the same place that Caesar had designated for the 36th to wait for us to arrive, at the appointed time. With this matter settled, we marched across the border into Pontus in late Quintilis, the month now named for Caesar.
~ ~ ~ ~
The 36th, the amalgamated Deiotaran Legion and the Pontic cavalry arrived the day after we reached the spot by a river that Caesar had designated as our meeting place. Rather than go immediately into action, we worked on fortifying our camp, which may sound somewhat strange given the fact that we were there to take offensive action against Pharnaces. However, we had long since learned that the sight of a fortified Roman army camp was one of the most powerful weapons in our arsenal, almost always filling our enemy with fear and dread at the sight of our precision and skill in erecting defenses. It is the same reason why we built a marching camp every single night, almost without exception, because it sent a signal to all who thought to oppose us that there was no stopping us and that we would be relentless foes. I do not believe there has ever been a general in our history who understood the power of warfare against the minds of men better than Caesar; one only has to look at the bridge we built across the Rhenus as an example of that. Therefore, it was into this fortified camp that envoys from Pharnaces came, under a flag of truce, claiming to want peace and that his invasion was nothing more than a big misunderstanding.
I was present at the meeting, along with the other Primi Pili of the 36th, the Deiotaran Legion and the commanders of the auxiliary forces. That is when we learned of some of the outrages that Pharnaces had committed against Roman citizens who lived in the region that he had taken. Aside from the usual rapine and looting, the most outrageous act was the castration of every young Roman teenager that his men could get their hands on, along with acts so despicable that I will not enumerate them here. Yet, despite the horrific nature of these crimes, Pharnaces’ envoys stood there, behaving as if these acts were mere trifles, even going so far as saying that he deserved to be praised for not siding with Pompey, unlike Deiotarus. The main spokesman for Pharnaces went even further, saying that if Caesar had pardoned Deiotarus for his siding with Pompey, then it was a case of simple justice for Pharnaces to be pardoned, despite the atrocities committed in his name. They also said that they would be more than happy to return within their own borders and leave Pontus, giving their word that Caesar could trust them to do so, enabling Caesar to return to Rome with his army, confident that Pharnaces would withdraw. Fortunately, Caesar was not buying anything that Pharnaces was selling, telling the envoys that he not only expected them to withdraw immediately, but also to restore all property seized from Roman citizens and to free all those Romans they had taken as slaves. As far as what had been taken from the young men, that could not be restored, but Caesar demanded that each defiled man must be compensated with hard currency, at a rate set by Caesar. To my surprise, the envoys of Pharnaces did not balk at any of this, saying instead that they believed that Pharnaces would agree to these terms, but they had to go to their king to discuss them, which Caesar gave them leave to do. To my eyes at least, it appeared as if we had marched a long way for nothing, but Caesar immediately dispelled that idea.
“They're stalling, nothing more,” he said after they had left. “Pharnaces has no intention of withdrawing.”
“But why would his envoys say so?” one of the auxiliary commanders asked, and I was pleased that he did, since that was what I wanted to know but was not willing to ask myself.
“Because they have undoubtedly heard of everything that is going on back in Rome, and they're sure that I can't afford to stay here. They'll come back in a day or two and tell me that while Pharnaces has agreed, there will undoubtedly be some condition that prevents him from leaving immediately. I would guess that there will be some sort of horrible illness gripping his army, or perhaps his livestock. Whatever the case, he'll expect me to be unable to wait and that we'll march away. And of course if I do that, he'll never leave Pontus until I return and forcibly expel him.”
That is exactly what happened. Two days later, the envoys returned, acting like they brought joyful news, making a great show of announcing that Pharnaces had agreed to Caesar’s conditions and that he and his army would be withdrawing, very soon.
“How soon?” Caesar asked as if he was just happy that they had agreed.
The envoy proceeded to explain that it would be very soon. Of course, moving such a large army took time, and regrettably, while Pharnaces’ army had been encamped, many of the men were struck down by some mysterious but serious illness, so it would be impossible to move until they were fully recovered. It took quite a bit of willpower for me not to burst out laughing and I could see that I was not alone in my amusement, Caesar included, whose mouth kept twitching, a sure sign that he was secretly amused as well. Once the envoys had finished making their excuses, Caesar gave a great sigh.
“That is unfortunate indeed.” He shook his head. “I had hoped to return to Rome, as there are some matters there that I need to attend to, but I'll keep my army right here while we all wait for your stricken soldiers to recover.”
The chief envoy began protesting that this was truly not necessary, that he was sure that it was only a matter of a few days before the army would be able to march. There was no need for Caesar to tarry here in that event, he insisted, a look of alarm clearly written on his dark features. Caesar spread his hands and shrugged, as if he were helpless in the matter, and the envoys left once again, this time not nearly has happy as the last. We laughed for several moments after they had gone, then Caesar called us to order to begin planning the battle.
~ ~ ~ ~
Choosing not to wait until the next day, Caesar ordered camp to be broken so that we stole a march, moving through the night until we drew close enough to see the lights from the enemy camp located about three miles north of the town of Zela. Pharnaces had chosen to build his camp on the site of the camp that his father Mithridates had pitched, about a mile from where the old king had defeated a general of Lucullus, one Gaius Triarius when I was about ten years old. At dawn, our presence was discovered a
nd a thoroughly alarmed party, led by the same envoy who had visited us twice previously, hurried to meet us. Caesar did not even dismount from his horse, keeping us on the march while the Bosporans offered Caesar even more than they had previously, anything to get him to stop. Before, on their first visit, they had offered Caesar a gold crown and I must say that it was a very lavish and obviously valuable trinket, but of course, he refused. Now, they were not only offering Caesar the crown, they also offered him Pharnaces’ daughter’s hand in marriage, which he rejected out of hand. Apollonius told Diocles and me later that Caesar’s response was to ask the envoys if they considered it right for a man who caused the death of his father to escape justice. Apollonius gleefully relayed how the Bosporans looked like they had been slapped; such was the sting of Caesar’s words, because that is indeed what had happened. There are two versions of the story of how Mithridates had met his end. One was that while Pharnaces did not kill his father outright, he had engineered a takeover of the army, and Mithridates was unable to live with the shame and killed himself. The second version, and the one most widely believed was that Pharnaces engineered his father’s death by poisoning, using an extremely rare poison, not one of those that Mithridates had ingested on a daily basis to inure himself to such attempts. When Caesar said this to the Bosporans, it was then that they realized that there would be no negotiated settlement, or any further stalling of Caesar, so they turned around and galloped off to inform their king to make ready for battle. We continued marching until we were about two miles south of Zela and five miles south of Pharnaces’ encampment, where we occupied a small hill with fairly steep sides and began constructing our camp. Caesar went scouting while we worked, which progressed quickly despite our fatigue from marching through the night. Once he returned, he immediately called a council to begin issuing orders. When we left Tarsus to march overland, Caesar had drafted a large number of slaves over and above the normal contingent that accompanies an army. While we were meeting, he sent these slaves out into the countryside to find wood of a proper size to use as palisade stakes, ordering them to gather a sufficient amount to fortify another camp of equal size to the one we currently occupied. Caesar told us that he had found a position near Pharnaces’ camp that, when occupied, would put Pharnaces into a situation where he would be forced to fight, because we would be cutting off his access to Zela and his base of supply. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he began grinning, causing us to exchange puzzled glances.
“It’s also a position that's near and dear to Pharnaces’ heart,” he explained. Seeing that we still did not understand, he continued, “It's the hill on which his father defeated Triarius. When he sees us camped on the hill, I'm fairly sure that he will fight.” This was just one more example of how Caesar knew exactly how the mind of his enemy worked, and how he used what he knew about the other general to his advantage. “We'll march at the beginning of fourth watch. As soon as we take the hill, the slaves will then cart over the stakes, while we dig the rampart, which means that we'll be able to build the camp much more quickly than normal. Speed is absolutely essential because the valley that separates the hill we're going to occupy from Pharnaces’ camp isn't much more than a mile.”
Our orders given, we were dismissed to go prepare our men, and we left the Praetorium, talking over what needed to be done.
~ ~ ~ ~
Marching out of camp at the appointed third of a watch, the 6th was in the lead, leaving behind everything but our weapons and our entrenching tools. A Cohort of the amalgamated Legion was also left behind to guard the original camp, while we marched as quickly as possible in the gloom of the night, covering the roughly three miles in a little less than two parts of a watch, giving us barely the same amount of time before dawn. Since we arrived first, we were assigned to guard, moving down the slope in the direction of the enemy camp, the rest of the men beginning to dig the ditch and build the rampart. The sound of a few thousand men digging makes quite a racket, particularly when the soil is rocky like it was there, so I suppose it was inevitable that we would be heard before too much time passed. As soon as we arrived, one of the cavalrymen was sent back to the original camp to give the order for the slaves, who had piled all the stakes in the Legion wagons, to make their way to us. There was considerable wagering going on that the slaves would get lost in the darkness; most of the men considered slaves of the quality that Caesar drafted, the majority untrained labor, to be little smarter than the mules and oxen that pulled the carts, but they arrived safely, if not loudly. Caesar had ordered the wheels of the wagons wrapped in rags to muffle the sound, and for the axles to be freshly greased, but I could not tell an appreciable difference, hearing them long before they actually arrived. Naturally, that meant that the enemy did as well, so that we could also clearly hear the cries of alarm from across the small valley. This spurred us to push the men to work harder and faster to complete the camp now that we were discovered, the air filling with the sounds of Centurions cursing, men gasping for breath as they worked as quickly as they could in the dark, accompanied by the sounds of metal striking rock. I could just barely see the gleam of teeth in the darkness as my own men grinned at each other, ecstatic in the misery of others and in their escape from such intense labor.
“Don’t get too happy,” I growled at them. “You know how it works; Fortuna will take a dump on us for this.”
My words had the desired effect, the little spots of white disappeared all around me, causing me to smile on my own.
~ ~ ~ ~
Cries of alarm then reached my ears; I turned to the source and could barely make out a transverse crest bobbing up and down as one of my Centurions ran towards me. Finally getting close enough for me to recognize that it was Valens, I saw him pointing across the valley.
“Looks like they’re up and about, Primus Pilus.”
Peering through the darkness, after a moment I could just make out a movement of some sort, followed an instant later by a torch, followed by another, then another. Men holding torches were spreading out, the bright points of light suddenly appearing once they passed through the gate of their camp so that they were no longer shielded by the wall. After a moment, I determined that these men were being sent out to mark the shape of the enemy formation. As we watched, we saw a mass of something darker than the surrounding area moving across the slope parallel to where our own lines were formed. Grabbing my runner, I ordered him to go find Caesar to inform him that the enemy was aware of our presence and was forming up. He ran off, and I heard him trip in the dark, cursing whatever it was that had caught his toe, causing the men nearby to laugh. I did not bother to tell them to shut up; we were about to start fighting and I would rather have men who could laugh at times like this than men scared out of their wits. We could hear the Bosporan army now, the clinking of metal on metal carrying through the air, along with the yells of their officers, though they were just noises, their words not distinguishable. Looking to the east, I saw that the sky was getting light, the silhouette of the low hills in that direction becoming more and more distinct, rimmed in orange. There were no clouds that day, meaning it was going to be light fairly soon and even in the short time since Valens alerted me, I was able to make out more details, the men working on the camp distinguishable to the point where I could tell what each man was doing and not just detect indistinct movements.
“What do you suppose they’re going to do?”
I was startled; I had been deep in my own thoughts and forgotten Valens was there. I did not answer, so he asked, “Do you think they’ll try and come up the hill and knock us off before we’re finished?”
I shook my head. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I think they’re going to at least wait until it’s fully light before they do anything.”