Ancient Rome: An Introductory History (39 page)

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Labienus, who joined the Pompeians against Caesar, told Pompey and the Senate that Caesar's army was demoralized and that the veterans who had conquered Gaul were dead or retired. When someone asked Pompey what he would defend Rome with, if Caesar invaded, Pompey nonchalantly replied, ''Wherever I should stamp my foot in Italy, there will rise up forces of infantry and cavalry" (Plutarch,
Pompey
LVII).

Yet, as the vote on Curio's proposal shows, most people wanted peace. In 50 Cicero wrote to his friend and confidant Atticus, "Up to now I have scarcely found anyone who would prefer fighting it out with Caesar to allowing him what he wants" (
Ep. ad Att
. VII.6). "Even Cato himself," he writes in another letter to Atticus, "prefers to be a slave than to fight [in a civil war]" (
Ep. ad Att
. VII. 15). In March of 49 Balbus, one of Caesar's men, wrote to Cicero that Caesar preferred nothing to living without fear, with Pompey the more eminent. Pompey, however, turned down Caesar's numerous requests for a meeting to work things out. Later, Caesar blamed the war's horrible bloodshed on the twenty-two diehard Optimates who had voted against ordering Caesar and Pompey both to lay down their commands and relinquish their armies.

"Iacta Alea Est"

In 49 the consuls were G. Claudius Marcellus (brother of the consul of 51) and Lucius Lentulus, both hostile to Caesar, but Caesar's lieutenant Marcus Antonius (better known in English as Mark Antony) was elected tribune. Caesar made another offer, to take Illyricum as his province with one legion. That too failed. Another offer from Caesar: He would resign his command if Pompey would resign his. The consuls would not permit a vote on the exact terms.

Metellus Scipio (Pompey's father-in-law) then proposed that if Caesar did not lay down his command, he should be declared a public enemy. Marcus Antonius vetoed the proposal, but his veto was ignored; he and Q. Cassius (not Gaius Cassius, Caesar's future murderer), another tribune friendly to Caesar, were warned that they might meet with violence if they remained in Rome. Fearing the violence of the Optimates, Antonius and Q. Cassius disguised

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themselves as slaves and fled to Caesar in Ravenna. The consuls' threat of violence against the tribunes gave Caesar another point in propaganda: The Senate was destroying the rights of the tribunes and common people.

After receiving the news that his latest peace proposal had been rejected, Caesar ate dinner with his staff and then said, "Iacta alea est" ("the die has been cast"; Suetonius,
Divus Julius
XXXII). With only one legion (the others were stationed across the Alps), he crossed the Rubicon, the river that separated Italy from the province of Cisalpine Gaul. In doing so, he committed treason against the republic. This act of Caesar's also added a phrase to English: "to cross the Rubicon" is to commit oneself to a course of action from which there is no turning back.

Stamp .Your Foot, Pompey

The party opposed to Caesar did not choose a wise time for giving Caesar the ultimatum either to relinquish his command or to become an enemy of Rome. Although on paper Pompey had all the resources of the republic at his disposal, he had only two legions in Italy, both of which had formerly served under Caesar and no doubt remembered him fondly. Pompey and the Optimates never expected Caesar to attack immediately, but they were now about to experience what the Gauls were already very familiar with: Caesar's
celeritas
(swiftness). Caesar knew to strike immediately, before an enemy could prepare his defense.

Since most of his soldiers were in Spain, Pompey had to recruit in Italy; his new soldiers were inexperienced. Many men refused to enlist, and those who did who were apathetic. Caesar's legions, in contrast, had served under him during the years in Gaul and were devoted to their charismatic and seemingly democratic leader; contrary to Labienus' claims, Caesar's soldiers did not have low morale and constituted an army of great endurance and discipline. So devoted were Caesar's soldiers that, at the beginning of the war, his centurions offered to pay for a cavalryman, each from his own savings, and his foot soldiers offered to fight without pay or rations and to pool resources so no one would go short.

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When Caesar invaded Italy, the Senate and Pompey, having no army with which to mount a defense, fled, with Pompey declaring that any senators who stayed in Rome would be considered traitors. One noble, Favonius, when seeing that they could not defend Rome from Caesar, told Pompey to stamp his foot and produce the promised armies. First they went to Capua, then to Brundisium, on the Adriatic coast, and then across the Adriatic into Greece. Caesar pursued but failed to catch them. Backed by only one legion, Caesar took over Italy and Rome without bloodshed; even Picenum, where Pompey's family lived and had great influence, surrendered to Caesar without fighting.

After failing to catch the fleeing senators, Caesar returned to Rome, where he rifled the treasury, which the consul Marcellus in his haste to flee had neglected to empty. A tribune tried to veto Caesar's access to the treasury, but Caesar threatened his life, and the tribune wisely relented. Caesar was appointed dictator, in which capacity he oversaw the consular elections for 48; he was elected consul for 48 and resigned his dictatorship. He then turned to Spain, where a large contingent of Pompey's forces was stationed. Caesar wanted to prevent their joining Pompey in Greece or taking Italy and Rome when he himself went to attack Pompey. As he was leaving, he said that he was first going to fight against an army that had no general, and after that, against a general who had no army. On the way to Spain he demanded the surrender of Massilia, which refused. He left a part of his army to besiege the city and continued to Spain.

Caesar took over Spain with no large battles, although there were many small ones and skirmishes. In the endless maneuvering for better position, Caesar managed to trap his enemies on a hill, where they had no access to food or water. The enemy troops, Romans and Italians, were forced to surrender; Caesar, showing his
clementia
, let them go free, demanding only that they disband their army. He even gave them food for a few days' journey. Caesar's clemency was not without purpose or result: Since the Optimates had branded him a renegade, he wanted to prove that he was not a Sulla and was not waging war against Rome for his own power or profit. He worked extra hard to restrain his soldiers from plundering the fields and houses of

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Italy, for he wanted to win the goodwill of the Italians. His policy was successful, for a number of the Pompeians deserted to his side, and he gave them positions of equal rank and pay. After taking over Spain, Caesar returned to Massilia, which surrendered after a three-month siege.

Caesar then traversed Italy again and crossed from Brundisium to Greece. Crossing the Adriatic was no easy matter, for it was winter and, more important, Pompey had the republic's fleet with which to control the seas. Bibulus, Pompey's admiral, died while attempting to prevent Caesar from landing in Epirus, but Caesar and a small force managed to slip through the blockade. Later, Antony brought four legions to Caesar in Greece.

Pompey had by now consolidated his forces and provisions in the vicinity of Dyrrhachium, where each general tried to outflank the other and to isolate him from food and water. Such was the scale of their defensive works that it took a line of forts and entrenchment more than 25 kilometers long for Caesar to hem in Pompey's army; the line was too long for Caesar's small army to maintain, however, and Caesar had to abandon that plan. Every day the two did not fight allowed Pompey more time to train his recruits. Time was on Pompey's side, for he had ample provisions and superiority in number of foot soldiers, cavalry, and navy. Caesar's troops, however, were so low on provisions that at one point his men were forced to bake bread made from tree roots. They threw some of the loaves to the Pompeians to prove that they were not starving. Upon seeing one of the loaves, Pompey exclaimed, "What beasts we're fighting with!" and ordered the loaves to be hidden, so his soldiers would not learn just how tough Caesar's soldiers were.

Finally Caesar decided to leave for Thessaly, where he could more easily get food for his men. His departure followed a small defeat, in which Pompey could have inflicted a crushing blow if he had not been timid: according to Caesar, "Today the enemy would have had the victory, if they had had a real winner in charge" (Appian,
Civil Wars
II.9). This raised the Pompeians' spirits even higher: Caesar's forces were hungry and sick, had recently suffered a loss, and had to flee. Things looked good for the Pompeians.

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"Uterque Regnare Vult"

In spite of these seemingly favorable circumstances, Pompey's army had major problems, namely, divided leadership and purpose. Soon after following Caesar into Thessaly, the Pompeians were joined by Metellus Scipio, who had brought his army from his province Syria to help Pompey. Caesar describes the problems in Pompey's camp:

Once Pompey's army had been enlarged and the two large armies had been joined together, the opinion that they had formerly held was simply confirmed, and the expectation of victory grew so large that whatever time came before the victory seemed simply to delay their return to Italy. Whenever Pompey did something somewhat slowly or carefully, they said the whole war was simply a day's work, but that he reveled in the power and considered men of consular and praetorian rank like slaves. By this time they were vying with each other, out in the open, for rewards and priesthoods, and they allotted the consulship for years ahead. Others, meanwhile, were seeking the houses and possessions of those in my camp. . . . Already Domitius, Scipio, and Spinther Lentulus were resorting to viciously insulting each other in their daily arguments about who would become pontifex maximus after me. (Caesar,
De bello civili
III.82.2)

Plutarch tells us that the Optimates, Pompey's allies and followers, called him Agamemnon and King of Kings.

Still worse was the lack of principles: Pompey was not fighting for republican principles against tyranny; he was fighting for the Optimate party. "I look at it this way," writes Cicero to Atticus (
Ep. ad Att
. IX.7), "we won't have a republic with both alive or even with this one [i.e., Pompey]." He writes in another letter:

Each of them has sought a tyranny; they have never done anything so that the state would be prosperous and respectable. He [Pompey] certainly didn't leave the city because he couldn't guard it or Italy because he was being driven from it. No, he planned this from the start, to get all the lands and seas in an uproar, to arouse foreign kings, to lead to Italy wild, armed nations, and to create huge armies. He's been after

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