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by Strauss, Barry

  Pompey was a first-class strategist. He implemented a variant of Fabius’s strategy: refusing to fight. Each man withdrew his army from the battlefield, if in a different manner. Fabius didn’t have a strategy for victory, however, merely for avoiding defeat. Pompey had a strategy for victory, but some questioned whether he would be fast or aggressive enough to employ it against Caesar—or whether his rivals in the Senate would trip him up, as they had at Corfinium. Brundisium would be a big test.

  Caesar arrived at Brundisium on March 9 with six legions, three veteran and three new. Pompey’s fleet had already left, ferrying off about half of his army as well as the two consuls and a large number of senators, though not Pompey himself. The ships would land at the major port city of Dyrrachium (modern Durrës, Albania), disembark the men, and pivot back to Brundisium to pick up the other half of the army. Pompey was still there, waiting to direct their final escape.

  Caesar sent two high-ranking officers to negotiate with Pompey: Pompey’s chief engineer, captured by Caesar, and one of Caesar’s commanders who was friends with a leading Pompeian officer. Caesar asked Pompey for a face-to-face meeting; surely they could iron out their differences. Pompey sent his regrets that, with the consuls already gone, his hands were tied. It made a good show. Neither man wanted the blame for war but neither intended to give an inch.

  The real action was taking place in and around the port. Like Alexander, Caesar wanted to defeat his enemy’s navy on land. Brundisium’s harbor was shaped something like an inverted letter Y. The fortified city was located between the two oblique arms of the letter. The harbor emptied out into the Adriatic through the letter’s perpendicular leg. Outside the city walls, and at the spot where the arms met the leg, the mouth of the port was at its narrowest.

  It was here that Caesar had his engineers try to block off the harbor. They built a barrier, starting at each shore with breakwaters and earth banks that were joined, in the deep water, by a series of anchored rafts to close the gap. Then they erected screens and towers to defend the barrier against attack by ships or fire.

  Caesar was audacious, but so was Pompey. He seized large merchant ships, outfitted them with three-story towers, armed them with catapults, slingers, and archers, and launched them against Caesar’s rafts. The two sides thrusted and parried for over a week, which kept Caesar from completing his barrier.

  By then, Pompey’s ships had returned from Dyrrachium and picked up the rest of his forces. He left behind only a few light-armed veterans to mount the walls. When the signal came to go, they would have to retreat quickly to the harbor, with Caesar’s men coming over the walls after them. But Pompey’s troops knew the way, while the enemy would have to contend with walls and stake-filled trenches left to slow them down.

  Pompey timed his ships’ departure to take place at nightfall. The gathering darkness put Caesar’s men at greater risk of falling into the Pompeians’ traps. The townspeople helped Caesar’s soldiers make their way to the harbor, either because they were pro-Caesar or just pro-survival. Still, they had to wind their way around the barriers and by the time they reached the harbor, all of Pompey’s ships had escaped except for two that had caught on Caesar’s breakwaters. It was March 17, 49 B.C.

  For Pompey, Brundisium was a great success. Some people, wrote Plutarch, consider the evacuation “among his best stratagems.” Caesar feigned surprise that Pompey had given up Italy without more of a fight, but he knew better. Yet “wars are not won by evacuations,” as Churchill said after Dunkirk.

  Caesar held Italy, which he had conquered in less than two months. The masses showed no sign of opposition; on the contrary, they prized both the cash he had sent from Gaul and the mildness of his men since crossing the Rubicon. The few senators left in Italy were less impressed. Caesar won little new support when he finally entered Rome soon after leaving Brundisium. What he did get was money—a king’s ransom, in fact, from the treasury. But to get it, Caesar had been forced to threaten to kill Lucius Metellus, a tribune of the people who had blocked his way. For once he dropped the mask of clemency.

  Thunder in the West

  The conquest of Italy did not put Caesar in control. On the contrary, it made him a target. Pompey flanked him on either side. In the west, Pompey’s stronghold was Spain. He had close to 100,000 men there. His main force consisted of 5 legions, 80 cohorts of Spanish auxiliaries, and 5,000 cavalry: a total of 70,000 men. Another army, consisting of two legions as well as auxiliaries, was stationed in western Spain.

  In the east, Pompey had five legions or about 27,000 men, with the potential of more to come from new recruits. He could train them while gathering support from the eastern provinces that he had conquered and organized for Rome in the 60s B.C. Meanwhile, Pompey controlled the sea. He could use his ships to prevent the shipment of grain to Italy. Since Italy could not grow enough food for its own needs, the result would be to starve out Caesar.

  Caesar, then, couldn’t afford to rest in Italy. He had to go on the attack and he had to do so immediately—but not recklessly. He might have been itching to go after Pompey, who was just a short trip away across the Adriatic, but Caesar was as shrewd as he was aggressive. Caesar could not afford to leave those Spanish armies in his rear when he turned eastward because they might join Pompey. But unless Pompey sailed to Spain to join them, they lacked good leadership. So he attacked Spain first. In spite of his famous boldness in battle, Caesar’s strategy was methodical, even cautious. He would take out the enemy’s strengths piecemeal, one by one.

  Caesar had another, less complicated reason to begin with Spain: he could get there. He had enough ships to send three legions, commanded by Curio, on an expedition to Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa (modern Tunisia), all key sources of Italy’s food supply. But that was it for his fleet; Caesar could reach other places only by land. Excellent roads linked Italy and Spain via Gaul. Poor roads and hostile tribes lined the land route to Greece. For Caesar, therefore, all signs pointed to Spain.

  Although he was an invader, like Alexander, in attacking Spain, Caesar behaved more like Memnon. Just as Memnon went after Alexander’s “soft underbelly” in Greece, so Caesar went after Pompey’s “soft underbelly” in Spain.

  As he left for Spain, Caesar is supposed to have told his friends that he was going against an army without a leader and that he would return and fight a leader without an army. He meant that the enemy had many troops in Spain but not Pompey, while Pompey had far fewer troops with him in the east.

  On the way to Spain, Caesar ran into an obstacle at Massilia (Marseille), an important city that closed its gates to him. Caesar’s old enemy Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, last seen at Corfinium, was there; Pompey had sent him to take charge of the defense of Massilia. Caesar moved on and left a force behind to besiege the city, but he dearly felt the absence of Masillia’s rich supplies. Yet in spite of these setbacks, Caesar conducted another lightning campaign. How did he do it—and do it against Pompey’s hardened and veteran Spanish troops?

  It helped, of course, that Pompey was passive. Pompey was the opposite of Caesar, because Pompey joined a bold strategy with operational timidity. On the strategic level, Pompey risked everything on giving up Italy and building a new army in the east. But when it came to actual military operations, Pompey handed over the initiative to Caesar. Alexander had made a similar mistake with Memnon and the Persian navy, but Divine Providence stepped in and saved Alexander. Pompey was not as fortunate. He learned a harsh lesson in the cost of letting the enemy decide when and where to fight.

  Spain is a good example. Instead of waiting for Caesar to invade Spain, Pompey could have seized the reins by marching his men from Spain to attack Caesar in Italy. Better yet, he could have gone to Spain himself to take command. Instead, he left everything to his generals in Spain, Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius. They were good and experienced commanders, but Caesar was already a living legend. Only Pompey himself could keep his men’s morale up if the going got rough—as it su
rely would against Caesar.

  The conqueror of Gaul was dangerous beyond measure once he got near the combat zone. Spain was no exception. As soon as he arrived, Caesar displayed the qualities for which he is famous: audacity, agility, good judgment, a strategy that mixed military force with political persuasion, and the leadership skill to hold his men together despite defeat. He turned his weaknesses into strengths and pressed his advantages to the hilt.

  Caesar found the Pompeians west of modern Barcelona, near the town of Ilerda (Lérida) on the Sicoris (modern Segre) River. He went rapidly on the attack. Caesar’s forces had more cavalry but the two armies were evenly matched in infantry, and the Pompeians held their own, so the attack failed. Caesar planned to go back on the offensive, but first he needed access to food and supplies. The situation was difficult, though, because Pompey’s men held the best ground, and the collapse of a bridge over the river further cut off Caesar.

  As usual, failure only made Caesar try harder. What he did was both resourceful and energetic. He had his men build small boats, carried them on wagons about twenty miles to a good crossing point, ferried a legion across, and had them build a new bridge. It proved to be a war-winning operation. Caesar could now harass the enemy with his superior cavalry. In addition, he brought his diplomatic skills to bear and began to win over local tribes that had long hated Pompey. They furnished supplies for Caesar’s army.

  Afranius and Petreius saw the tide turning so they chose to move to safer territory. It would not be easy to outrun Caesar, especially not when he had more horses. He not only followed the enemy but headed them off, which he was able to do by another bold operation: he had thousands of his soldiers wade through the freezing water of the Sicoris. Caesar and his men, now well supplied themselves, trapped the Pompeians without supplies. They merely had to wait for the enemy to give up. To hasten that, Caesar encouraged his men to mix and mingle with the soldiers in the enemy army. This was not difficult to do, as the two forces were camped near each other, and they both, after all, were Roman. The plan worked and the Pompeians surrendered. Caesar pardoned them and some of them joined his ranks. Meanwhile, Pompey’s other forces, in western Spain, quickly surrendered as well.

  It took Caesar only three months to conquer Spain and disarm Pompey’s best troops, and he did it with little or no bloodshed. It was a triumph of maneuver warfare. Caesar could now turn eastward to Pompey without worrying about an attack from Spain on Gaul or Italy. Meanwhile, Masillia finally fell to him, after a months-long siege, in spite of reinforcements sent by Pompey. Domitius escaped.

  Not everything had gone well for Caesar, though. After taking Sardinia and Sicily, Curio had met with disaster in North Africa. The Numidian king Juba, a Pompeian ally who loathed Caesar, sprang a trap for Curio. The Romans lost virtually all ten thousand to fifteen thousand men in their three legions and Curio himself was killed. The loss cut off the people of Italy from a major source of grain. Another setback came in the Adriatic Sea, where Pompey’s navy put one small Caesarian fleet out of action and captured another, adding an additional five thousand to seven thousand men to their forces.

  In fact, no fewer than three of Caesar’s generals had gone down in death or defeat in recent months. Never mind: Caesar himself still strode, magnificent and conquering. Pompey still remained on the defensive. He might have sent a fleet across the Adriatic to bottle Caesar’s forces up in Brundisium. He did not, though, and that left Caesar free to move east when he was ready.

  Still, there was the enemy within. Caesar’s own troops mutinied in Placentia (modern Piacenza) in northern Italy. Civil war frustrated them. The war in Gaul had left them awash in loot, but this time, they had to show clemency and restraint when they wanted more loot. Caesar took a hard line in response. Instead of negotiating, he called an assembly of the entire army. When he rose to speak, Caesar defended the principles of discipline and patriotism. He insisted that Italy must not be sacked. Then, he followed the old Roman strategy of divide and conquer, by singling out one legion. The ninth legion had led the mutiny, and now Caesar promised to decimate it. Decimation was an old-fashioned punishment in which every tenth man was executed. The rest of the army begged for mercy, and Caesar agreed to be satisfied with the heads of a dozen ringleaders. Caesar had won, as one source says, “not through lenience but by the authority of the leader.”

  The mutiny was over and the army was bound even closer to its commander than before. Rebellion and repression: a ritual dance, no doubt, but Caesar’s mastery of the steps might have made his enemy shiver.

  Bring Me the Head of Julius Caesar

  After grabbing Spain and its armies from Pompey, Caesar deserved a break, especially in the wake of mutiny and defeats elsewhere. But, being Caesar, he plunged into another offensive instead. After returning to Italy at the end of 49 B.C., he spent only eleven days in Rome. It was time enough to have himself elected consul and to impress the public with his moderation. Standard behavior in Rome’s civil wars was to round up one’s enemies for execution; Caesar continued his policy of clemency instead. Once again, Caesar distinguished his brand.

  Caesar now began a very risky military operation, which he had a real chance of losing. Strategically, however, it was a sober choice. It would have been suicide to stay in Italy and wait for Pompey to invade in the spring—with a grand fleet, an ever-growing army, and a limitless supply of money. While Caesar had conquered Spain and lost North Africa, Pompey had gathered a massive army, which he had begun training vigorously. He had 9 legions, with 2 more on the way, as well as 5,000 light infantry and 7,000 cavalry, a total of roughly 55,000 men. Caesar had 12 legions and 1,000 cavalry, but attrition had cut his legions down to 2,000 to 3,000 men instead of the full complement of 4,800, for a total of roughly 30,000 men.

  Pompey’s army greatly outnumbered Caesar’s, and Pompey threatened to come roaring after him as soon as Pompey was ready. Toward the end of the year 49 B.C., Pompey finally gained the title of supreme commander. It wasn’t quite enough to corral the senators and aristocrats who sat in his councils of war, each of them convinced that he knew more than the man who called himself “the Great,” but at least Pompey now had legal authority.

  Many men admired the supreme commander but few gave Pompey the kind of loyalty that Caesar’s troops had rendered him ever since Gaul. They were, as a Roman writer put it, “et devotissimi . . . et fortissimi”: both extremely devoted and extremely brave. Caesar had that advantage, and he grabbed another advantage in turn—surprise. As he is said to have told his army around this time, “the most potent thing in war is the unexpected.” In short, things had changed little since the Rubicon: if he wanted to stay in power, Caesar had to attack.

  He began with a gamble. He shipped his men across the Adriatic Sea from Brundisium in late autumn—January 4, 48 B.C. (early November 49 B.C. by the modern calendar). It was about one year since he had crossed the Rubicon. Because he had no warships, Caesar used merchant ships. Because he lacked enough ships to transport all his men, he took only half of them. Expecting that Pompey’s fleet would have its guard down, he hoped to slip by them and land on the Albanian coastline, and he succeeded. Once on the alert, however, the Pompeians prevented Caesar’s ships from returning to Italy. It took four months before Caesar’s lieutenant, Mark Antony, finally had the chance to evade Pompey’s fleet and bring the rest of Caesar’s troops across the Adriatic.

  Alexander too had moved rapidly and decisively in his day, but Caesar took greater chances. Like Caesar, Alexander set out against his main enemy about one year after first launching his invasion (Alexander crossed the Dardanelles in spring 334 and marched toward Darius in spring 333). But Macedonian troops had invaded Anatolia two years earlier and begun laying the groundwork for victory, giving Alexander a head start compared with Caesar. Nor did Alexander do anything as drastic as ship an army across the sea in late autumn. The truth is, Caesar darted ahead of Alexander.

  When he crossed the Adriatic, Caesar landed o
n the coast of Epirus (roughly, modern Albania). His ultimate target was Dyrrachium, about seventy-five miles to the north as the crow flies. Dyrrachium was a Roman naval base at the head of the via Egnatia, the road that led eastward through Epirus, Macedonia, and Thrace (modern Albania, Greece, and Turkey) to Byzantium (Istanbul), linking the Adriatic and the Bosphorus. Pompey planned to winter in Dyrrachium with his army and to cross to Italy as soon as the spring sailing season began. Then he planned to crush Caesar.

  But with so few forces at his disposal, Caesar was in no position to attack Dyrrachium. The most he could do was make threatening moves in its direction by taking a few towns that lay on the way. As it happens, Pompey and his army were to the east of Dyrrachium at the time, but they hurried there at the news of Caesar’s arrival and beat him to the city.

  Then one of those little things happened, one of those rare moments of enlightenment in the fog of wartime. It took place during one of the stabs at negotiation that Caesar made from time to time. He was, after all, a great politician as well as a great general, and he knew how much the average Roman yearned for peace. So, as he had done earlier outside Brundisium, Caesar now called for talks.

  Pompey said no. He was ahead in the military game and he had no intention of throwing away his advantage. Still, refusing the offer made him seem unreasonable. Even some of his men thought so: since the two armies were camped close to each other, Caesar sent a negotiator to Pompey’s troops, and they welcomed him. But Pompey’s officers firmly opposed talks and one of them came forward and started arguing with Caesar’s representative. Suddenly, Pompey’s soldiers began to throw javelins and wounded a number of Caesar’s men.