to be ensnared. With sure glance the vizier had thoroughly seen
both the danger and the means of meeting it. Nothing could
be accomplished against the Roman infantry of the line
with Oriental infantry; so he had rid himself of it, and by
sending a mass, which was useless in the main field of battle,
under the personal leadership of king Orodes to Armenia,
he had prevented king Artavasdes from allowing the promised
10,000 heavy cavalry to join the army of Crassus, who now painfully
felt the want of them. On the other hand the vizier met the Roman
tactics, unsurpassed of their kind, with a system entirely different.
His army consisted exclusively of cavalry; the line was formed of the
heavy horsemen armed with long thrusting-lances, and protected, man
and horse, by a coat of mail of metallic plates or a leathern doublet
and by similar greaves; the mass of the troops consisted of mounted
archers. As compared with these, the Romans were thoroughly inferior
in the corresponding arms both as to number and excellence. Their
infantry of the line, excellent as they were in close combat, whether
at a short distance with the heavy javelin or in hand-to-hand combat
with the sword, could not compel an army consisting merely of cavalry
to come to an engagement with them; and they found, even when they
did come to a hand-to-hand conflict, an equal if not superior
adversary in the iron-clad hosts of lancers. As compared with an
army like this Parthian one, the Roman army was at a disadvantage
strategically, because the cavalry commanded the communications;
and at a disadvantage tactically, because every weapon of close
combat must succumb to that which is wielded from a distance,
unless the struggle becomes an individual one, man against man.
The concentrated position, on which the whole Roman method of war
was based, increased the danger in presence of such an attack;
the closer the ranks of the Roman column, the more irresistible
certainly was its onset, but the less also could the missiles
fail to hit their mark. Under ordinary circumstances,
where towns have to be defended and difficulties of the ground
have to be considered, such tactics operating merely with cavalry
against infantry could never be completely carried out;
but in the Mesopotamian desert, where the army, almost like a ship
on the high seas, neither encountered an obstacle nor met
with a basis for strategic dispositions during many days' march,
this mode of warfare was irresistible for the very reason
that circumstances allowed it to be developed there in all its purity
and therefore in all its power. There everything combined to put
the foreign infantry at a disadvantage against the native cavalry.
Where the heavy-laden Roman foot-soldier dragged himself toilsomely
through the sand or the steppe, and perished from hunger or still more
from thirst amid the pathless route marked only by water-springs
that were far apart and difficult to find, the Parthian horseman,
accustomed from childhood to sit on his fleet steed or camel,
nay almost to spend his life in the saddle, easily traversed
the desert whose hardships he had long learned how to lighten
or in case of need to endure. There no rain fell to mitigate
the intolerable heat, and to slacken the bowstrings and leathern thongs
of the enemy's archers and slingers; there amidst the deep sand
at many places ordinary ditches and ramparts could hardly be formed
for the camp. Imagination can scarcely conceive a situation
in which all the military advantages were more on the one side,
and all the disadvantages more thoroughly on the other.
To the question, under what circumstances this new style
of tactics, the first national system that on its own proper ground
showed itself superior to the Roman, arose among the Parthians,
we unfortunately can only reply by conjectures. The lancers
and mounted archers were of great antiquity in the east, and already
formed the flower of the armies of Cyrus and Darius; but hitherto
these arms had been employed only as secondary, and essentially
to cover the thoroughly useless Oriental infantry. The Parthian armies
also by no means differed in this respect from the other Oriental ones;
armies are mentioned, five-sixths of which consisted of infantry.
In the campaign of Crassus, on the other hand, the cavalry
for the first time came forward independently, and this arm
obtained quite a new application and quite a different value.
The irresistible superiority of the Roman infantry in close combat
seems to have led the adversaries of Rome in very different parts
of the world independently of each other--at the same time
and with similar success--to meet it with cavalry and distant weapons.
What as completely successful with Cassivellaunus in Britain(6)
and partially successful with Vercingetorix in Gaul(7)--
what was to a certain degree attempted even by Mithradates Eupator(8)--
the vizier of Orodes carried out only on a larger scale
and more completely. And in doing so he had special advantages:
for he found in the heavy cavalry the means of forming a line; the bow
which was national in the east and was handled with masterly skill
in the Persian provinces gave him an effective weapon for distant combat;
and lastly the peculiarities of the country and the people
enabled him freely to realize his brilliant idea. Here, where
the Roman weapons of close combat and the Roman system of concentration
yielded for the first time before the weapons of more distant warfare
and the system of deploying, was initiated that military revolution
which only reached its completion with the introduction of firearms.
Battle near Carrhae
Under such circumstances the first battle between the Romans
and Parthians was fought amidst the sandy desert thirty miles
to the south of Carrhae (Harran) where there was a Roman garrison,
and at a somewhat less distance to the north of Ichnae. The Roman
archers were sent forward, but retired immediately before the enormous
numerical superiority and the far greater elasticity and range
of the Parthian bows. The legions, which, in spite of the advice
of the more sagacious officers that they should be deployed
as much as possible against the enemy, had been drawn up
in a dense square of twelve cohorts on each side, were soon outflanked
and overwhelmed with the formidable arrows, which under such circumstances
hit their man even without special aim, and against which the soldiers
had no means of retaliation. The hope that the enemy might expend
his missiles vanished with a glance at the endless range of camels
laden with arrows. The Parthians were still extending their line.
That the outflanking might not end in surrounding, Publius Crassus
advanced to the attack with a select corps of cavalry, archers,
and infantry of the line. The enemy in fact abandoned the attempt
to close the circle, and retreated, hotly pursued by the impetuous
leader of the Romans. But, when the corps of Publius had totally lost
sight of the main army, the heavy cavalry made a stand against it,
and the Parthian host hastening up from all sides closed in
like a net round it. Publius, who saw his troops falling thickly
and vainly around him under the arrows of the mounted archers,
threw himself in desperation with his Celtic cavalry unprotected
by any coats of mail on the iron-clad lancers of the enemy;
but the death-despising valour of his Celts, who seized the lances
with their hands or sprang from their horses to stab the enemy,
performed its marvels in vain. The remains of the corps,
including their leader wounded in the sword-arm, were driven
to a slight eminence, where they only served for an easier mark
to the enemy's archers. Mesopotamian Greeks, who were accurately
acquainted with the country, adjured Crassus to ride off with them
and make an attempt to escape; but he refused to separate his fate
from that of the brave men whom his too-daring courage
had led to death, and he caused himself to be stabbed by the hand
of his shield-bearer. Following his example, most of the still
surviving officers put themselves to death. Of the whole division,
about 6000 strong, not more than 500 were taken prisoners;
no one was able to escape. Meanwhile the attack on the main army
had slackened, and the Romans were but too glad to rest.
When at length the absence of any tidings from the corps
sent out startled them out of the deceitful calm, and they drew near
to the scene of the battle for the purpose of learning its fate,
the head of the son was displayed on a pole before his father's eyes;
and the terrible onslaught began once more against the main army
with the same fury and the same hopeless uniformity. They could
neither break the ranks of the lancers nor reach the archers;
night alone put an end to the slaughter. Had the Parthians bivouacked
on the battle-field, hardly a man of the Roman army would have escaped.
But not trained to fight otherwise than on horseback, and therefore
afraid of a surprise, they were wont never to encamp close to the enemy;
jeeringly they shouted to the Romans that they would give the general
a night to bewail his son, and galloped off to return next morning
and despatch the game that lay bleeding on the ground.
Retreat to Carrhae
Of course the Romans did not wait for the morning. The lieutenant-
generals Cassius and Octavius--Crassus himself had completely
lost his judgment--ordered the men still capable of marching
to set out immediately and with the utmost silence (while the whole--
said to amount to 4000--of the wounded and stragglers were left),
with the view of seeking protection within the walls of Carrhae.
The fact that the Parthians, when they returned on the following day,
applied themselves first of all to seek out and massacre
the scattered Romans left behind, and the further fact that the garrison
and inhabitants of Carrhae, early informed of the disaster by fugitives,
had marched forth in all haste to meet the beaten army, saved the remnants
of it from what seemed inevitable destruction.
Departure from Carrhae
Surprise at Sinnaca
The squadrons of Parthian horsemen could not think of undertaking
a siege of Carrhae. But the Romans soon voluntarily departed,
whether compelled by want of provisions, or in consequence
of the desponding precipitation of their commander-in-chief,
whom the soldiers had vainly attempted to remove from the command
and to replace by Cassius. They moved in the direction of the Armenian
mountains; marching by night and resting by day Octavius with a band
of 5000 men reached the fortress of Sinnaca, which was only
a day's march distant from the heights that would give shelter,
and liberated even at the peril of his own life the commander-in-chief,
whom the guide had led astray and given up to the enemy.
Then the vizier rode in front of the Roman camp to offer,
in the name of his king, peace and friendship to the Romans,
and to propose a personal conference between the two generals.
The Roman army, demoralized as it was, adjured and indeed compelled
its leader to accept the offer. The vizier received the consular
and his staff with the usual honours, and offered anew to conclude
a compact of friendship; only, with just bitterness recalling the fate
of the agreements concluded with Lucullus and Pompeius respecting
the Euphrates boundary,(9) he demanded that it should be immediately
reduced to writing. A richly adorned horse was produced;
it was a present from the king to the Roman commander-in-chief;
the servants of the vizier crowded round Crassus, zealous to mount him
on the steed. It seemed to the Roman officers as if there was a design
to seize the person of the commander-in-chief; Octavius, unarmed
as he was, pulled the sword of one of the Parthians from its sheath
and stabbed the groom. In the tumult which thereupon arose,
the Roman officers were all put to death; the gray-haired commander-
in-chief also, like his grand-uncle,(10) was unwilling to serve
as a living trophy to the enemy, and sought and found death.
The multitude left behind in the camp without a leader were partly
taken prisoners, partly dispersed. What the day of Carrhae had begun,
the day of Sinnaca completed (June 9, 701); the two took their place
side by side with the days of the Allia, of Cannae, and of Arausio.
The army of the Euphrates was no more. Only the squadron
of Gaius Cassius, which had been broken off from the main army
on the retreat from Carrhae, and some other scattered bands
and isolated fugitives succeeded in escaping from the Parthians
and Bedouins and separately finding their way back to Syria.
Of above 40,000 Roman legionaries, who had crossed the Euphrates,
not a fourth part returned; the half had perished; nearly 10,000
Roman prisoners were settled by the victors in the extreme east
of their kingdom--in the oasis of Merv--as bondsmen compelled
after the Parthian fashion to render military service.
For the first time since the eagles had headed the legions,
they had become in the same year trophies of victory in the hands
of foreign nations, almost contemporaneously of a German tribe
in the west(11) and of the Parthians in the east. As to the impression
which the defeat of the Romans produced in the east, unfortunately
no adequate information has reached us; but it must have been deep
and lasting. King Orodes was just celebrating the marriage of his son
Pacorus with the sister of his new ally, Artavasdes the king of Armenia,
when the announcement of the victory of his vizier arrived,
and along with it, according to Oriental usage, the cut-off head
of Crassus. The tables were already removed; one of the wandering
companies of actors from Asia Minor, numbers of which at that time
existed and carried Hellenic poetry and the Hellenic drama
far into the east, was just performing before the assembled court
the -Bacchae- of Euripides. The actor playing the part of Agave,
who in her Dionysiac frenzy has torn in pieces her son and returns
from Cithaeron carrying his head on the thyrsus, exchanged this
for the bloody head of Crassus, and to the infinite delight of his
audience of half-Hellenized barbarians began afresh the well-known song:
--pheromin ex oreos
elika neotomon epi melathra
makarian theiran--.
It was, since the times of the Achaemenids, the first serious victory
which the Orientals had achieved over the west; and there was
a deep significance in the fact that, by way of celebrating
this victory, the fairest product of the western world--
Greek tragedy--parodied itself through its degenerate representatives
in that hideous burlesque. The civic spirit of Rome and the genius
of Hellas began simultaneously to accommodate themselves
to the chains of sultanism.
Consequences of the Defeat
The disaster, terrible in itself, seemed also as though
it was to be dreadful in its consequences, and to shake the foundations
of the Roman power in the east. It was among the least of its results
that the Parthians now had absolute sway beyond the Euphrates;
that Armenia, after having fallen away from the Roman alliance
even before the disaster of Crassus, was reduced by it
into entire dependence on Parthia; that the faithful citizens
of Carrhae were bitterly punished for their adherence to the Occidentals
by the new master appointed over them by the Parthians,
one of the treacherous guides of the Romans, named Andromachus.
The Parthians now prepared in all earnest to cross the Euphrates
in their turn, and, in union with the Armenians and Arabs, to dislodge
the Romans from Syria. The Jews and various other Occidentals
awaited emancipation from the Roman rule there, no less impatiently
than the Hellenes beyond the Euphrates awaited relief
from the Parthian; in Rome civil war was at the door; an attack
at this particular place and time was a grave peril. But fortunately
for Rome the leaders on each side had changed. Sultan Orodes
was too much indebted to the heroic prince, who had first placed
the crown on his head and then cleared the land from the enemy,
not to get rid of him as soon as possible by the executioner.
His place as commander-in-chief of the invading army destined for Syria
was filled by a prince, the king's son Pacorus, with whom on account
of his youth and inexperience the prince Osaces had to be associated
as military adviser. On the other side the interim command
in Syria in room of Crassus was taken up by the prudent and resolute
quaestor Gaius Cassius.
Repulse of the Parthians
The Parthians were, just like Crassus formerly, in no haste to attack,
but during the years 701 and 702 sent only weak flying bands,
who were easily repulsed, across the Euphrates; so that Cassius
obtained time to reorganize the army in some measure, and with the help
of the faithful adherent of the Romans, Herodes Antipater,
to reduce to obedience the Jews, whom resentment at the spoliation
of the temple perpetrated by Crassus had already driven to arms.
The Roman government would thus have had full time to send
fresh troops for the defence of the threatened frontier;
but this was left undone amidst the convulsions of the incipient
revolution, and, when at length in 703 the great Parthian invading army
appeared on the Euphrates, Cassius had still nothing to oppose to it
but the two weak legions formed from the remains of the army of Crassus.
Of course with these he could neither prevent the crossing
nor defend the province. Syria was overrun by the Parthians,
and all Western Asia trembled. But the Parthians did not understand
the besieging of towns. They not only retreated from Antioch,
into which Cassius had thrown himself with his troops, without having
accomplished their object, but they were on their retreat
along the Orontes allured into an ambush by Cassius' cavalry
and there severely handled by the Roman infantry; prince Osaces
was himself among the slain. Friend and foe thus perceived
that the Parthian army under an ordinary general and on ordinary ground
was not capable of much more than any other Oriental army.
However, the attack was not abandoned. Still during the winter
of 703-704 Pacorus lay encamped in Cyrrhestica on this side
of the Euphrates; and the new governor of Syria, Marcus Bibulus,
as wretched a general as he was an incapable statesman,
knew no better course of action than to shut himself up
in his fortresses. It was generally expected that the war
would break out in 704 with renewed fury. But instead
of turning his arms against the Romans, Pacorus turned against
his own father, and accordingly even entered into an understanding
with the Roman governor. Thus the stain was not wiped
from the shield of Roman honour, nor was the reputation of Rome
restored in the east; but the Parthian invasion of Western Asia
was over, and the Euphrates boundary was, for the time being
at least, retained.
Impression Produced in Rome by the Defeat of Carrhae
In Rome meanwhile the periodical volcano of revolution was whirling
upward its clouds of stupefying smoke. The Romans began to have
no longer a soldier or a denarius to be employed against the public foe--
no longer a thought for the destinies of the nations. It is
one of the most dreadful signs of the times, that the huge national
disaster of Carrhae and Sinnaca gave the politicians of that time
far less to think and speak of than that wretched tumult
on the Appian road, in which, a couple of months after Crassus,
Clodius the partisan-leader perished; but it is easily conceivable
and almost excusable. The breach between the two regents, long felt
as inevitable and often announced as near, was now assuming
such a shape that it could not be arrested. Like the boat
of the ancient Greek mariners' tale, the vessel of the Roman community
now found itself as it were between two rocks swimming towards each other;
expecting every moment the crash of collision, those whom it was bearing,
tortured by nameless anguish, into the eddying surge that rose
higher and higher were benumbed; and, while every slightest movement
there attracted a thousand, eyes, no one ventured to give a glance
to the right or the left.
The Good Understanding between the Regents Relaxed
After Caesar had, at the conference of Luca in April 698,
agreed to considerable concessions as regarded Pompeius,
and the regents had thus placed themselves substantially on a level,
their relation was not without the outward conditions of durability,
so far as a division of the monarchical power--in itself indivisible--
could be lasting at all. It was a different question
whether the regents, at least for the present, were determined
to keep together and mutually to acknowledge without reserve their title
to rank as equals. That this was the case with Caesar, in so far
as he had acquired the interval necessary for the conquest of Gaul
at the price of equalization with Pompeius, has been already set forth.
But Pompeius was hardly ever, even provisionally, in earnest
with the collegiate scheme. His was one of those petty
and mean natures, towards which it is dangerous to practise magnanimity;
to his paltry spirit it appeared certainly a dictate of prudence
to supplant at the first opportunity his reluctantly acknowledged rival,
and his mean soul thirsted after a possibility of retaliating on Caesar
for the humiliation which he had suffered through Caesar's indulgence.
But while it is probable that Pompeius in accordance with his dull
and sluggish nature never properly consented to let Caesar
hold a position of equality by his side, yet the design
of breaking up the alliance doubtless came only by degrees
to be distinctly entertained by him. At any rate the public,
which usually saw better through the views and intentions
of Pompeius than he did himself, could not be mistaken
in thinking that at least with the death of the beautiful Julia--
who died in the bloom of womanhood in the autumn of 700 and was
soon followed by her only child to the tomb--the personal relation
between her father and her husband was broken up. Caesar attempted
to re-establish the ties of affinity which fate had severed;
he asked for himself the hand of the only daughter of Pompeius,
and offered Octavia, his sister's grand-daughter, who was now
his nearest relative, in marriage to his fellow-regent; but Pompeius
left his daughter to her existing husband Faustus Sulla the son
of the regent, and he himself married the daughter of Quintus Metellus
Scipio. The personal breach had unmistakeably begun, and it was
Pompeius who drew back his hand. It was expected that a political
breach would at once follow; but in this people were mistaken;
in public affairs a collegiate understanding continued for a time
to subsist. The reason was, that Caesar did not wish publicly
to dissolve the relation before the subjugation of Gaul
was accomplished, and Pompeius did not wish to dissolve it
before the governing authorities and Italy should be wholly reduced
under his power by his investiture with the dictatorship.
It is singular, but yet readily admits of explanation, that the regents
under these circumstances supported each other; Pompeius
after the disaster of Aduatuca in the winter of 700 handed over
one of his Italian legions that were dismissed on furlough
by way of loan to Caesar; on the other hand Caesar granted his consent
and his moral support to Pompeius in the repressive measures
which the latter took against the stubborn republican opposition.
Dictatorship of Pompeius
Covert Attacks by Pompeius on Caesar
It was only after Pompeius had in this way procured for himself
at the beginning of 702 the undivided consulship and an influence
in the capital thoroughly outweighing that of Caesar,
and after all the men capable of arms in Italy had tendered
their military oath to himself personally and in his name,
that he formed the resolution to break as soon as possible
formally with Caesar; and the design became distinctly enough apparent.
That the judicial prosecution which took place after the tumult
on the Appian Way lighted with unsparing severity precisely
on the old democratic partisans of Caesar,(12) might perhaps pass
as a mere awkwardness. That the new law against electioneering intrigues,
which had retrospective effect as far as 684, included also the dubious
proceedings at Caesar's candidature for the consulship,(13)
might likewise be nothing more, although not a few Caesarians thought
that they perceived in it a definite design. But people
could no longer shut their eyes, however willing they might be
to do so, when Pompeius did not select for his colleague
in the consulship his former father-in-law Caesar, as was fitting
in the circumstances of the case and was in many quarters demanded,
but associated with himself a puppet wholly dependent on him
in his new father-in-law Scipio;(14) and still less, when Pompeius
at the same time got the governorship of the two Spains continued
to him for five years more, that is to 709, and a considerable
fixed sum appropriated from the state-chest for the payment of his troops,
not only without stipulating for a like prolongation of command
and a like grant of money to Caesar, but even while labouring
ulteriorly to effect the recall of Caesar before the term
formerly agreed on through the new regulations which were issued
at the same time regarding the holding of the governorships.
These encroachments were unmistakeably calculated to undermine
Caesar's position and eventually to overthrow him. The moment
could not be more favourable. Caesar had conceded so much to Pompeius
at Luca, only because Crassus and his Syrian army would necessarily,
in the event of any rupture with Pompeius, be thrown into Caesar's scale;
for upon Crassus--who since the times of Sulla had been
at the deepest enmity with Pompeius and almost as long politically
and personally allied with Caesar, and who from his peculiar character
at all events, if he could not himself be king of Rome, would have been
content with being the new king's banker--Caesar could always reckon,
and could have no apprehension at all of seeing Crassus confronting him
as an ally of his enemies. The catastrophe of June 701,
by which army and general in Syria perished, was therefore
a terribly severe blow also for Caesar. A few months later
the national insurrection blazed up more violently than ever in Gaul,
just when it had seemed completely subdued, and for the first time
Caesar here encountered an equal opponent in the Arvernian king
Vercingetorix. Once more fate had been working for Pompeius;
Crassus was dead, all Gaul was in revolt, Pompeius was practically
dictator of Rome and master of the senate. What might have happened,
if he had now, instead of remotely intriguing against Caesar,
summarily compelled the burgesses or the senate to recall Caesar
at once from Gaul! But Pompeius never understood how to take advantage
of fortune. He heralded the breach clearly enough; already in 702
his acts left no doubt about it, and in the spring of 703 he openly
expressed his purpose of breaking with Caesar; but he did not
break with him, and allowed the months to slip away unemployed.
The Old Party Names and the Pretenders
But however Pompeius might delay, the crisis was incessantly urged
on by the mere force of circumstances.
The impending war was not a struggle possibly between republic
and monarchy--for that had been virtually decided years before--
but a struggle between Pompeius and Caesar for the possession
of the crown of Rome. But neither of the pretenders found his account
in uttering the plain truth; he would have thereby driven
all that very respectable portion of the burgesses, which desired
the continuance of the republic and believed in its possibility,
directly into the camp of his opponent. The old battle-cries raised
by Gracchus and Drusus, Cinna and Sulla, used up and meaningless
as they were, remained still good enough for watchwords
in the struggle of the two generals contending for the sole rule;
and, though for the moment both Pompeius and Caesar ranked themselves
officially with the so-called popular party, it could not be
for a moment doubtful that Caesar would inscribe on his banner
the people and democratic progress, Pompeius the aristocracy
and the legitimate constitution.
The Democracy and Caesar
Caesar had no choice. He was from the outset and very earnestly
a democrat; the monarchy as he understood it differed more outwardly
than in reality from the Gracchan government of the people;
and he was too magnanimous and too profound a statesman to conceal
his colours and to fight under any other escutcheon than his own.
The immediate advantage no doubt, which this battle-cry brought to him,
was trifling; it was confined mainly to the circumstance
that he was thereby relieved from the inconvenience of directly naming
the kingly office, and so alarming the mass of the lukewarm
and his own adherents by that detested word. The democratic banner
hardly yielded farther positive gain, since the ideals of Gracchus
had been rendered infamous and ridiculous by Clodius;
for where was there now--laying aside perhaps the Transpadanes--
any class of any sort of importance, which would have been induced
by the battle-cries of the democracy to take part in the struggle?
The Aristocracy and Pompeius
This state of things would have decided the part of Pompeius
in the impending struggle, even if apart from this it had not been
self-evident that he could only enter into it as the general
of the legitimate republic. Nature had destined him, if ever any one,
to be a member of an aristocracy; and nothing but very accidental
and very selfish motives had carried him over as a deserter
from the aristocratic to the democratic camp. That he should now
revert to his Sullan traditions, was not merely befitting in the case,
but in every respect of essential advantage. Effete as was
the democratic cry, the conservative cry could not but have
the more potent effect, if it proceeded from the right man.
Perhaps the majority, at any rate the flower of the burgesses,
belonged to the constitutional party; and as respected its numerical
and moral strength might well be called to interfere powerfully,
perhaps decisively, in the impending struggle of the pretenders.
It wanted nothing but a leader. Marcus Cato, its present head,
did the duty, as he understood it, of its leader amidst daily peril
to his life and perhaps without hope of success; his fidelity to duty
deserves respect, but to be the last at a forlorn post is commendable
in the soldier, not in the general. He had not the skill
either to organize or to bring into action at the proper time
the powerful reserve, which had sprung up as it were spontaneously
in Italy for the party of the overthrown government; and he had
for good reasons never made any pretension to the military leadership,
on which everything ultimately depended. If instead of this man,
who knew not how to act either as party-chief or as general,
a man of the political and military mark of Pompeius should raise
the banner of the existing constitution, the municipals of Italy
would necessarily flock towards it in crowds, that under it
they might help to fight, if not indeed for the kingship of Pompeius,
at any rate against the kingship of Caesar.
To this was added another consideration at least as important.
It was characteristic of Pompeius, even when he had formed a resolve,
not to be able to find his way to its execution. While he knew
perhaps how to conduct war but certainly not how to declare it,
the Catonian party, although assuredly unable to conduct it,
was very able and above all very ready to supply grounds for the war
against the monarchy on the point of being founded. According to
the intention of Pompeius, while he kept himself aloof, and in his
peculiar way, now talked as though he would immediately depart
for his Spanish provinces, now made preparations as though he would
set out to take over the command on the Euphrates, the legitimate
governing board, namely the senate, were to break with Caesar,
to declare war against him, and to entrust the conduct of it to Pompeius,
who then, yielding to the general desire, was to come forward
as the protector of the constitution against demagogico-
monarchical plots, as an upright man and champion of the existing
order of things against the profligates and anarchists,
as the duly-installed general of the senate against the Imperator
of the street, and so once more to save his country. Thus Pompeius
gained by the alliance with the conservatives both a second army
in addition to his personal adherents, and a suitable war-manifesto--
advantages which certainly were purchased at the high price
of coalescing with those who were in principle opposed to him.
Of the countless evils involved in this coalition, there was developed
in the meantime only one--but that already a very grave one--
that Pompeius surrendered the power of commencing hostilities
against Caesar when and how he pleased, and in this decisive point
made himself dependent on all the accidents and caprices
of an aristocratic corporation.
The Republicans
Thus the republican opposition, after having been for years
obliged to rest content with the part of a mere spectator
and having hardly ventured to whisper, was now brought back once more
to the political stage by the impending rupture between the regents.
It consisted primarily of the circle which rallied round Cato--
those republicans who were resolved to venture on the struggle
for the republic and against the monarchy under all circumstances,
and the sooner the better. The pitiful issue of the attempt
made in 698(15) had taught them that they by themselves alone
were not in a position either to conduct war or even to call it forth;
it was known to every one that even in the senate, while the whole
corporation with a few isolated exceptions was averse to monarchy,
the majority would still only restore the oligarchic government
if it might be restored without danger--in which case, doubtless,
it had a good while to wait. In presence of the regents on the one hand,
and on the other hand of this indolent majority, which desired peace
above all things and at any price, and was averse to any decided action
and most of all to a decided rupture with one or other of the regents,
the only possible course for the Catonian party to obtain a restoration
of the old rule lay in a coalition with the less dangerous
of the rulers. If Pompeius acknowledged the oligarchic constitution
and offered to fight for it against Caesar, the republican opposition
might and must recognize him as its general, and in alliance
with him compel the timid majority to a declaration of war.
That Pompeius was not quite in earnest with his fidelity
to the constitution, could indeed escape nobody; but, undecided
as he was in everything, he had by no means arrived like Caesar
at a clear and firm conviction that it must be the first business
of the new monarch to sweep off thoroughly and conclusively
the oligarchic lumber. At any rate the war would train
a really republican army and really republican generals;
and, after the victory over Caesar, they might proceed
with more favourable prospects to set aside not merely
oneof the monarchs, but the monarchy itself, which was in the course
of formation. Desperate as was the cause of the oligarchy, the offer
of Pompeius to become its ally was the most favourable arrangement
possible for it.
Their League with Pompeius
The conclusion of the alliance between Pompeius and the Catonian party
was effected with comparative rapidity. Already during the dictatorship
of Pompeius a remarkable approximation had taken place between them.
The whole behaviour of Pompeius in the Milonian crisis,
his abrupt repulse of the mob that offered him the dictatorship,
his distinct declaration that he would accept this office
only from the senate, his unrelenting severity against disturbers
of the peace of every sort and especially against the ultra-democrats,
the surprising complaisance with which he treated Cato
and those who shared his views, appeared as much calculated to gain
the men of order as they were offensive to the democrat Caesar.
On the other hand Cato and his followers, instead of combating
with their wonted sternness the proposal to confer the dictatorship
on Pompeius, had made it with immaterial alterations of form
their own; Pompeius had received the undivided consulship
primarily from the hands of Bibulus and Cato. While the Catonian party
and Pompeius had thus at least a tacit understanding as early
as the beginning of 702, the alliance might be held as formally
concluded, when at the consular elections for 703 there was elected
not Cato himself indeed, but--along with an insignificant man
belonging to the majority of the senate--one of the most decided
adherents of Cato, Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Marcellus was
no furious zealot and still less a genius, but a steadfast
and strict aristocrat, just the right man to declare war
if war was to be begun with Caesar. As the case stood,
this election, so surprising after the repressive measures
adopted immediately before against the republican opposition,
can hardly have occurred otherwise than with the consent,
or at least under the tacit permission, of the regent of Rome
for the time being. Slowly and clumsily, as was his wont,
but steadily Pompeius moved onward to the rupture.
Passive Resistance of Caesar
It was not the intention of Caesar on the other hand to fall out
at this moment with Pompeius. He could not indeed desire seriously
and permanently to share the ruling power with any colleague,
least of all with one of so secondary a sort as was Pompeius;
and beyond doubt he had long resolved after terminating the conquest
of Gaul to take the sole power for himself, and in case of need to extort
it by force of arms. But a man like Caesar, in whom the officer
was thoroughly subordinate to the statesman, could not fail
to perceive that the regulation of the political organism
by force of arms does in its consequences deeply and often permanently
disorganize it; and therefore he could not but seek to solve
the difficulty, if at all possible, by peaceful means or at least
without open civil war. But even if civil war was not to be avoided,
he could not desire to be driven to it at a time, when in Gaul
the rising of Vercingetorix imperilled afresh all that had been obtained
and occupied him without interruption from the winter of 701-702
to the winter of 702-703, and when Pompeius and the constitutional party
opposed to him on principle were dominant in Italy. Accordingly
he sought to preserve the relation with Pompeius and thereby
the peace unbroken, and to attain, if at all possible,
by peaceful means to the consulship for 706 already assured
to him at Luca. If he should then after a conclusive settlement
of Celtic affairs be placed in a regular manner at the head
of the state, he, who was still more decidedly superior
to Pompeius as a statesman than as a general, might well reckon
on outmanoeuvring the latter in the senate-house and in the Forum
without special difficulty. Perhaps it was possible to find out
for his awkward, vacillating, and arrogant rival some sort
of honourable and influential position, in which the latter might be
content to sink into a nullity; the repeated attempts of Caesar
to keep himself related by marriage to Pompeius, may have been
designed to pave the way for such a solution and to bring about
a final settlement of the old quarrel through the succession
of offspring inheriting the blood of both competitors. The republican
opposition would then remain without a leader and therefore
probably quiet, and peace would be preserved. If this should not
be successful, and if there should be, as was certainly possible,
a necessity for ultimately resorting to the decision of arms,
Caesar would then as consul in Rome dispose of the compliant majority
of the senate; and he could impede or perhaps frustrate the coalition
of the Pompeians and the republicans, and conduct the war
far more suitably and more advantageously, than if he now as proconsul
of Gaul gave orders to march against the senate and its general.
Certainly the success of this plan depended on Pompeius being good-
natured enough to let Caesar still obtain the consulship for 706
assured to him at Luca; but, even if it failed, it would be always
of advantage for Caesar to have given practical and repeated
evidence of the most yielding disposition. On the one hand time
would thus be gained for attaining his object meanwhile in Gaul;
on the other hand his opponents would be left with the odium
of initiating the rupture and consequently the civil war--
which was of the utmost moment for Caesar with reference to the majority
of the senate and the party of material interests, and more especially
with reference to his own soldiers.
On these views he acted. He armed certainly; the number of his legion
was raised through new levies in the winter of 702-703 to eleven,
including that borrowed from Pompeius. But at the same time
he expressly and openly approved of Pompeius' conduct during
the dictatorship and the restoration of order in the capital
which he had effected, rejected the warnings of officious friends
as calumnies, reckoned every day by which he succeeded
in postponing the catastrophe a gain, overlooked whatever
could be overlooked and bore whatever could be borne--
immoveably adhering only to the one decisive demand that,
when his governorship of Gaul came to an end with 705,
the second consulship, admissible by republican state-law
and promised to him according to agreement by his colleague,
should be granted to him for the year 706.
Preparation for Attacks on Caesar
This very demand became the battle-field of the diplomatic war
which now began. If Caesar were compelled either to resign
his office of governor before the last day of December 705,
or to postpone the assumption of the magistracy in the capital
beyond the 1st January 706, so that he should remain for a time
between the governorship and the consulate without office,
and consequently liable to criminal impeachment--which according
to Roman law was only allowable against one who was not in office--
the public had good reason to prophesy for him in this case
the fate of Milo, because Cato had for long been ready to impeach him
and Pompeius was a more than doubtful protector.
Attempt to Keep Caesar Out of the Consulship
Now, to attain that object, Caesar's opponents had a very simple means.
According to the existing ordinance as to elections, every candidate
for the consulship was obliged to announce himself personally
to the presiding magistrate, and to cause his name to be inscribed
on the official list of candidates before the election,
that is half a year before entering on office. It had probably
been regarded in the conferences at Luca as a matter of course
that Caesar would be released from this obligation, which was
purely formal and was very often dispensed with; but the decree
to that effect had not yet been issued, and, as Pompeius was now
in possession of the decretive machinery, Caesar depended in this respect
on the good will of his rival. Pompeius incomprehensibly abandoned
of his own accord this completely secure position; with his consen
and during his dictatorship (702) the personal appearance
of Caesar was dispensed with by a tribunician law. When however
soon afterwards the new election-ordinance(16) was issued,
the obligation of candidates personally to enrol themselves
was repeated in general terms, and no sort of exception was added
in favour of those released from it by earlier resolutions
of the people; according to strict form the privilege granted in favour
of Caesar was cancelled by the later general law. Caesar complained,
and the clause was subsequently appended but not confirmed
by special decree of the people, so that this enactment inserted
by mere interpolation in the already promulgated law could only be
looked on de jure as a nullity. Where Pompeius, therefore,
might have simply kept by the law, he had preferred first
to make a spontaneous concession, then to recall it,
and lastly to cloak this recall in a manner most disloyal.
Attempt to Shorten Caesar's Governorship
While in this way the shortening of Caesar's governorship
was only aimed at indirectly, the regulations issued at the same time
as to the governorships sought the same object directly.
The ten years for which the governorship had been secured to Caesar,
in the last instance through the law proposed by Pompeius himself
in concert with Crassus, ran according to the usual mode of reckoning
from 1 March 695 to the last day of February 705. As, however,
according to the earlier practice, the proconsul or propraetor
had the right of entering on his provincial magistracy immediately
after the termination of his consulship or praetorship, the successor
of Caesar was to be nominated, not from the urban magistrates of 704,
but from those of 705, and could not therefore enter before 1st Jan. 706.
So far Caesar had still during the last ten months of the year 705
a right to the command, not on the ground of the Pompeio-Licinian law,
but on the ground of the old rule that a command with a set term
still continued after the expiry of the term up to the arrival
of the successor. But now, since the new regulation of 702
called to the governorships not the consuls and praetors
going out, but those who had gone out five years ago or more,
and thus prescribed an interval between the civil magistracy
and the command instead of the previous immediate sequence,
there was no longer any difficulty in straightway filling up
from another quarter every legally vacant governorship, and so,
in the case in question, bringing about for the Gallic provinces
the change of command on the 1st March 705, instead of the 1st Jan. 706.
The pitiful dissimulation and procrastinating artifice of Pompeius
are after a remarkable manner mixed up, in these arrangements,
with the wily formalism and the constitutional erudition
of the republican party. Years before these weapons of state-law
could be employed, they had them duly prepared, and put themselves
in a condition on the one hand to compel Caesar to the resignation
of his command from the day when the term secured to him by Pompeius'
own law expired, that is from the 1st March 705, by sending successors
to him, and on the other hand to be able to treat as null and void
the votes tendered for him at the elections for 706. Caesar,
not in a position to hinder these moves in the game, kept silence
and left things to their own course.
Debates as to Caesar's Recall
Gradually therefore the slow course of constitutional procedure
developed itself. According to custom the senate had to deliberate
on the governorships of the year 705, so far as they went
to former consuls, at the beginning of 703, so far as they went
to former praetors, at the beginning of 704; that earlier deliberation
gave the first occasion to discuss the nomination of new governors
for the two Gauls in the senate, and thereby the first occasion
for open collision between the constitutional party pushed forward
by Pompeius and the senatorial supporters of Caesar. The consul
Marcus Marcellus introduced a proposal to give the two provinces
hitherto administered by the proconsul Gaius Caesar
from the 1st March 705 to the two consulars who were to be provided
with governorships for that year. The long-repressed indignation
burst forth in a torrent through the sluice once opened;
everything that the Catonians were meditating against Caesar
was brought forward in these discussions. For them it was
a settled point, that the right granted by exceptional law
to the proconsul Caesar of announcing his candidature for the consulship
in absence had been again cancelled by a subsequent decree of the people,
and that the reservation inserted in the latter was invalid.
The senate should in their opinion cause this magistrate,
now that the subjugation of Gaul was ended, to discharge immediately
the soldiers who had served out their time. The cases in which
Caesar had bestowed burgess-rights and established colonies
in Upper Italy were described by them as unconstitutional and null;
in further illustration of which Marcellus ordained that a respected
senator of the Caesarian colony of Comum, who, even if that place
had not burgess but only Latin rights, was entitled to lay claim
to Roman citizenship,(17) should receive the punishment
of scourging, which was admissible only in the case of non-burgesses.
The supporters of Caesar at this time--among whom Gaius Vibius Pansa,
who was the son of a man proscribed by Sulla but yet had entered
on a political career, formerly an officer in Caesar's army
and in this year tribune of the people, was the most notable--
affirmed in the senate that both the state of things in Gaul
and equity demanded not only that Caesar should not be recalled
before the time, but that he should be allowed to retain the command
along with the consulship; and they pointed beyond doubt to the facts,
that a few years previously Pompeius had just in the same way
combined the Spanish governorships with the consulate,
that even at the present time, besides the important office
of superintending the supply of food to the capital, he held
the supreme command in Italy in addition to the Spanish,
and that in fact the whole men capable of arms had been sworn in by him
and had not yet been released from their oath.
The process began to take shape, but its course was not on that account
more rapid. The majority of the senate, seeing the breach approaching,
allowed no sitting capable of issuing a decree to take place for months;
and other months in their turn were lost over the solemn procrastination
of Pompeius. At length the latter broke the silence and ranged himself,
in a reserved and vacillating fashion as usual but yet plainly enough,
on the side of the constitutional party against his former ally.
He summarily and abruptly rejected the demand of the Caesarians
that their master should be allowed to conjoin the consulship
and the proconsulship; this demand, he added with blunt coarseness,
seemed to him no better than if a son should offer to flog
his father. He approved in principle the proposal of Marcellus,
in so far as he too declared that he would not allow Caesar
directly to attach the consulship to the pro-consulship.
He hinted, however, although without making any binding declaration
on the point, that they would perhaps grant to Caesar admission
to the elections for 706 without requiring his personal announcement,
as well as the continuance of his governorship at the utmost
to the 13th Nov. 705. But in the meantime the incorrigible
procrastinator consented to the postponement of the nomination
of successors to the last day of Feb. 704, which was asked
by the representatives of Caesar, probably on the ground of a clause
of the Pompeio-Licinian law forbidding any discussion in the senate
as to the nomination of successors before the beginning of Caesar's
last year of office.
In this sense accordingly the decrees of the senate were issued
(29 Sept. 703). The filling up of the Gallic governorships
was placed in the order of the day for the 1st March 704; but even now
it was attempted to break up the army of Caesar--just as had formerly
been done by decree of the people with the army of Lucullus(18)--
by inducing his veterans to apply to the senate for their discharge.
Caesar's supporters effected, indeed, as far as they constitutionally
could, the cancelling of these decrees by their tribunician veto;
but Pompeius very distinctly declared that the magistrates were bound
unconditionally to obey the senate, and that intercessions and similar
antiquated formalities would produce no change. The oligarchical party,
whose organ Pompeius now made himself, betrayed not obscurely the design,
in the event of a victory, of revising the constitution in their sense
and removing everything which had even the semblance of popular freedom;
as indeed, doubtless for this reason, it omitted to avail itself
of the comitia at all in its attacks directed against Caesar.
The coalition between Pompeius and the constitutional party
was thus formally declared; sentence too was already evidently passed
on Caesar, and the term of its promulgation was simply postponed.
The elections for the following year proved thoroughly adverse to him.
Counter-Arrangements of Caesar
During these party manoeuvres of his antagonists preparatory to war,
Caesar had succeeded in getting rid of the Gallic insurrection
and restoring the state of peace in the whole subject territory.
As early as the summer of 703, under the convenient pretext
of defending the frontier(19) but evidently in token of the fact
that the legions in Gaul were now beginning to be no longer
needed there, he moved one of them to North Italy. He could not avoid
perceiving now at any rate, if not earlier, that he would not
be spared the necessity of drawing the sword against his fellow-
citizens; nevertheless, as it was highly desirable to leave the legions
still for a time in the barely pacified Gaul, he sought even yet
to procrastinate, and, well acquainted with the extreme
love of peace in the majority of the senate, did not abandon
the hope of still restraining them from the declaration of war
in spite of the pressure exercised over them by Pompeius.
He did not even hesitate to make great sacrifices, if only he might
avoid for the present open variance with the supreme governing board.
When the senate (in the spring of 704) at the suggestion of Pompeius
requested both him and Caesar to furnish each a legion
for the impending Parthian war(20) and when agreeably to this resolution
Pompeius demanded back from Caesar the legion lent to him
some years before, so as to send it to Syria, Caesar complied with
the double demand, because neither the opportuneness of this decree
of the senate nor the justice of the demand of Pompeius
could in themselves be disputed, and the keeping within the bounds
of the law and of formal loyalty was of more consequence to Caesar
than a few thousand soldiers. The two legions came without delay
and placed themselves at the disposal of the government, but instead
of sending them to the Euphrates, the latter kept them at Capua
in readiness for Pompeius; and the public had once more the opportunity
of comparing the manifest endeavours of Caesar to avoid a rupture
with the perfidious preparation for war by his opponents.
Curio
For the discussions with the senate Caesar had succeeded
in purchasing not only one of the two consuls of the year,
Lucius Aemilius Paullus, but above all the tribune of the people
Gaius Curio, probably the most eminent among the many profligate men
of parts in this epoch;(21) unsurpassed in refined elegance, in fluent
and clever oratory, in dexterity of intrigue, and in that energy
which in the case of vigorous but vicious characters bestirs itself
only the more powerfully amid the pauses of idleness; but also
unsurpassed in his dissolute life, in his talent for borrowing--
his debts were estimated at 60,000,000 sesterces (600,000 pounds)--
and in his moral and political want of principle. He had previously
offered himself to be bought by Caesar and had been rejected;
the talent, which he thenceforward displayed in his attacks on Caesar,
induced the latter subsequently to buy him up--the price was high,
but the commodity was worth the money.
Debates as to the Recall of Caesar and Pompeius
Curio had in the first months of his tribunate of the people
played the independent republican, and had as such thundered
both against Caesar and against Pompeius. He availed himself
with rare skill of the apparently impartial position which
this gave him, when in March 704 the proposal as to the filling up
of the Gallic governorships for the next year came up afresh
for discussion in the senate; he completely approved the decree,
but asked that it should be at the same time extended to Pompeius
and his extraordinary commands. His arguments--that a constitutional
state of things could only be brought about by the removal
of all exceptional positions, that Pompeius as merely entrusted
by the senate with the proconsulship could still less than Caesar
refuse obedience to it, that the one-sided removal of one
of the two generals would only increase the danger to the constitution--
carried complete conviction to superficial politicians and to the public
at large; and the declaration of Curio, that he intended to prevent
any onesided proceedings against Caesar by the veto constitutionally
belonging to him, met with much approval in and out of the senate.
Caesar declared his consent at once to Curio's proposal
and offered to resign his governorship and command at any moment
on the summons of the senate, provided Pompeius would do the same;
he might safely do so, for Pompeius without his Italo-Spanish command
was no longer formidable. Pompeius again for that very reason
could not avoid refusing; his reply--that Caesar must first resign,
and that he meant speedily to follow the example thus set--
was the less satisfactory, that he did not even specify
a definite term for his retirement. Again the decision was delayed
for months; Pompeius and the Catonians, perceiving the dubious humour
of the majority of the senate, did not venture to bring Curio's
proposal to a vote. Caesar employed the summer in establishing
the state of peace in the regions which he had conquered, in holding
a great review of his troops on the Scheldt, and in making
a triumphal march through the province of North Italy, which was
entirely devoted to him; autumn found him in Ravenna, the southern
frontier-town of his province.
Caesar and Pompeius Both Recalled
The vote which could no longer be delayed on Curio's proposal
at length took place, and exhibited the defeat of the party
of Pompeius and Cato in all its extent. By 370 votes against 20
the senate resolved that the proconsuls of Spain and Gaul
should both be called upon to resign their offices; and with boundless
joy the good burgesses of Rome heard the glad news of the saving
achievement of Curio. Pompeius was thus recalled by the senate
no less than Caesar, and while Caesar was ready to comply with
the command, Pompeius positively refused obedience. The presiding
consul Gaius Marcellus, cousin of Marcus Marcellus and like the latter
belonging to the Catonian party, addressed a severe lecture
to the servile majority; and it was, no doubt, vexatious
to be thus beaten in their own camp and beaten by means of a phalanx
of poltroons. But where was victory to come from under a leader,
who, instead of shortly and distinctly dictating his orders
to the senators, resorted in his old days a second time
to the instructions of a professor of rhetoric, that with eloquence
polished up afresh he might encounter the youthful vigour
and brilliant talents of Curio?
Declaration of War
The coalition, defeated in the senate, was in the most painful position.
The Catonian section had undertaken to push matters to a rupture
and to carry the senate along with them, and now saw their vessel
stranded after a most vexatious manner on the sandbanks of the indolent
majority. Their leaders had to listen in their conferences
to the bitterest reproaches from Pompeius; he pointed out
emphatically and with entire justice the dangers of the seeming peace;
and, though it depended on himself alone to cut the knot
by rapid action, his allies knew very well that they could never expect
this from him, and that it was for them, as they had promised,
to bring matters to a crisis. After the champions of the constitution
and of senatorial government had already declared the constitutional
rights of the burgesses and of the tribunes of the people
to be meaningless formalities,(22) they now found themselves
driven by necessity to treat the constitutional decision; of the senate
itself in a similar manner and, as the legitimate government
would not let itself be saved with its own consent, to save it
against its will. This was neither new nor accidental; Sulla(23)
and Lucullus(24) had been obliged to carry every energetic
resolution conceived by them in the true interest of the government
with a high hand irrespective of it, just as Cato and his friends
now proposed to do; the machinery of the constitution was in fact
utterly effete, and the senate was now--as the comitia had been
for centuries--nothing but a worn-out wheel slipping constantly
out of its track.
It was rumoured (Oct. 704) that Caesar had moved four legions
from Transalpine into Cisalpine Gaul and stationed them at Placentia.
This transference of troops was of itself within the prerogative
of the governor; Curio moreover palpably showed in the senate
the utter groundlessness of the rumour; and they by a majority
rejected the proposal of the consul Gaius Marcellus to give
Pompeius on the strength of it orders to march against Caesar.
Yet the said consul, in concert with the two consuls elected for 705
who likewise belonged to the Catonian party, proceeded to Pompeius,
and these three men by virtue of their own plenitude of power
requested the general to put himself at the head of the two legions
stationed at Capua, and to call the Italian militia to arms
at his discretion. A more informal authorization for the commencement
of a civil war can hardly be conceived; but people had no longer time
to attend to such secondary matters; Pompeius accepted it.
The military preparations, the levies began; in order personally
to forward them, Pompeius left the capital in December 704.
The Ultimatum of Caesar
Caesar had completely attained the object of devolving
the initiative of civil war on his opponents. He had, while himself
keeping on legal ground, compelled Pompeius to declare war,
and to declare it not as representative of the legitimate authority,
but as general of an openly revolutionary minority of the senate
which overawed the majority. This result was not to be reckoned
of slight importance, although the instinct of the masses could not
and did not deceive itself for a moment as to the fact that the war
concerned other things than questions of formal law. Now, when war
was declared, it was Caesar's interest to strike a blow as soon
as possible. The preparations of his opponents were just beginning
and even the capital was not occupied. In ten or twelve days
an army three times as strong as the troops of Caesar
that were in Upper Italy could be collected at Rome; but still
it was not impossible to surprise the city undefended, or even perhaps
by a rapid winter campaign to seize all Italy, and to shut off
the best resources of his opponents before they could make them available.
The sagacious and energetic Curio, who after resigning his tribunate
(10 Dec. 704) had immediately gone to Caesar at Ravenna,
vividly represented the state of things to his master;
and it hardly needed such a representation to convince Caesar
that longer delay now could only be injurious. But, as he with the view
of not giving his antagonists occasion to complain had hitherto
brought no troops to Ravenna itself, he could for the present do nothing
but despatch orders to his whole force to set out with all haste;
and he had to wait till at least the one legion stationed in Upper Italy
reached Ravenna. Meanwhile he sent an ultimatum to Rome,
which, if useful for nothing else, by its extreme submissiveness
still farther compromised his opponents in public opinion,
and perhaps even, as he seemed himself to hesitate, induced them
to prosecute more remissly their preparations against him.
In this ultimatum Caesar dropped all the counter-demands
which he formerly made on Pompeius, and offered on his own part
both to resign the governorship of Transalpine Gaul, and to dismiss
eight of the ten legions belonging to him, at the term fixed
by the senate; he declared himself content, if the senate would leave him
either the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria with one,
or that of Cisalpine Gaul alone with two, legions, not, forsooth,
up to his investiture with the consulship, but till after the close
of the consular elections for 706. He thus consented to those proposals
of accommodation, with which at the beginning of the discussions
the senatorial party and even Pompeius himself had declared
that they would be satisfied, and showed himself ready to remain
in a private position from his election to the consulate down to
his entering on office. Whether Caesar was in earnest with these
astonishing concessions and had confidence that he should be able
to carry through his game against Pompeius even after granting
so much, or whether he reckoned that those on the other side
had already gone too far to find in these proposals of compromise
more than a proof that Caesar regarded his cause itself as lost,
can no longer be with certainty determined. The probability is,
that Caesar committed the fault of playing a too bold game, far worse
rather than the fault of promising something which he was not minded
to perform; and that, if strangely enough his proposals had been
accepted, he would have made good his word.
Last Debate in the Senate
Curio undertook once more to represent his master in the lion's den.
In three days he made the journey from Ravenna to Rome.
When the new consuls Lucius Lentulus and Gaius Marcellus the younger(25)
assembled the senate for the first time on 1 Jan. 705, he delivered
in a full meeting the letter addressed by the general to the senate.
The tribunes of the people, Marcus Antonius well known
in the chronicle of scandal of the city as the intimate friend
of Curio and his accomplice in all his follies, but at the same time
known from the Egyptian and Gallic campaigns as a brilliant cavalry
officer, and Quintus Cassius, Pompeius' former quaestor,--the two,
who were now in Curio's stead managing the cause of Caesar in Rome--
insisted on the immediate reading of the despatch. The grave
and clear words in which Caesar set forth the imminence of civil war,
the general wish for peace, the arrogance of Pompeius, and his own
yielding disposition, with all the irresistible force of truth;
the proposals for a compromise, of a moderation which doubtless
surprised his own partisans; the distinct declaration that this was
the last time that he should offer his hand for peace--
made the deepest impression. In spite of the dread inspired
by the numerous soldiers of Pompeius who flocked into the capital,
the sentiment of the majority was not doubtful; the consuls could not
venture to let it find expression. Respecting the proposal renewed
by Caesar that both generals might be enjoined to resign their commands
simultaneously, respecting all the projects of accommodation
suggested by his letter, and respecting the proposal made
by Marcus Coelius Rufus and Marcus Calidius that Pompeius
should be urged immediately to depart for Spain, the consuls refused--
as they in the capacity of presiding officers were entitled to do--
to let a vote take place. Even the proposal of one of their
most decided partisans who was simply not so blind to the military
position of affairs as his party, Marcus Marcellus--to defer
the determination till the Italian levy en masse could be under arms
and could protect the senate--was not allowed to be brought to a vote.
Pompeius caused it to be declared through his usual organ,
Quintus Scipio, that he was resolved to take up the cause of the senate
now or never, and that he would let it drop if they longer delayed.
The consul Lentulus said in plain terms that even the decree
of the senate was no longer of consequence, and that, if it
should persevere in its servility, he would act of himself
and with his powerful friends take the farther steps necessary.
Thus overawed, the majority decreed what was commanded--
that Caesar should at a definite and not distant day give up
Transalpine Gaul to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Cisalpine Gaul
to Marcus Servilius Nonianus, and should dismiss his army,
failing which he should be esteemed a traitor. When the tribunes
of Caesar's party made use of their right of veto against this resolution,
not only were they, as they at least asserted, threatened
in the senate-house itself by the swords of Pompeian soldiers,
and forced, in order to save their lives, to flee in slaves'
clothing from the capital; but the now sufficiently overawed senate
treated their formally quite constitutional interference
as an attempt at revolution, declared the country in danger,
and in the usual forms called the whole burgesses to take up arms,
and all magistrates faithful to the constitution to place themselves
at the head of the armed (7 Jan. 705).
Caesar Marches into Italy
Now it was enough. When Caesar was informed by the tribunes
who had fled to his camp entreating protection as to the reception
which his proposals had met with in the capital, he called together
the soldiers of the thirteenth legion, which had meanwhile arrived
from its cantonments near Tergeste (Trieste) at Ravenna,
and unfolded before them the state of things. It was not merely
the man of genius versed in the knowledge and skilled in the control
of men's hearts, whose brilliant eloquence shone forth and glowed
in this agitating crisis of his own and the world's destiny;
nor merely the generous commander-in-chief and the victorious general,
addressing soldiers, who had been called by himself to arms
and for eight years had followed his banners with daily-increasing
enthusiasm. There spoke, above all, the energetic and consistent
statesman, who had now for nine-and-twenty years defended
the cause of freedom in good and evil times; who had braved for it
the daggers of assassins and the executioners of the aristocracy,
the swords of the Germans and the waves of the unknown ocean,
without ever yielding or wavering; who had torn to pieces
the Sullan constitution, had overthrown the rule of the senate,
and had furnished the defenceless and unarmed democracy with protection
and with arms by means of the struggle beyond the Alps. And he spoke,
not to the Clodian public whose republican enthusiasm had been
long burnt down to ashes and dross, but to the young men from the towns
and villages of Northern Italy, who still felt freshly and purely
the mighty influence of the thought of civic freedom; who were still
capable of fighting and of dying for ideals; who had themselves
received for their country in a revolutionary way from Caesar
the burgess-rights which the government refused to them;
whom Caesar's fall would leave once more at the mercy of the -fasces-,
and who already possessed practical proofs(26) of the inexorable use
which the oligarchy proposed to make of these against the Transpadanes.
Such were the listeners before whom such an orator set forth the facts--
the thanks for the conquest of Gaul which the nobility were preparing
for the general and his army; the contemptuous setting aside
of the comitia; the overawing of the senate; the sacred duty
of protecting with armed hand the tribunate of the people wrested
five hundred years ago by their fathers arms in hand from the nobility,
and of keeping the ancient oath which these had taken for themselves
as for their children's children that they would man by man stand firm
even to death for the tribunes of the people.(27) And then, when he--
the leader and general of the popular party--summoned the soldiers
of the people, now that conciliatory means had been exhausted
and concession had reached its utmost limits, to follow him in the last,
the inevitable, the decisive struggle against the equally hated
and despised, equally perfidious and incapable, and in fact ludicrously
incorrigible aristocracy--there was not an officer or a soldier
who could hold back. The order was given for departure; at the head
of his vanguard Caesar crossed the narrow brook which separated
his province from Italy, and which the constitution forbade
the proconsul of Gaul to pass. When after nine years' absence
he trod once more the soil of his native land, he trod at the same time
the path of revolution. "The die was cast."
CHAPTER X
Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus
The Resources on Either Side
Arms were thus to decide which of the two men who had hitherto
jointly ruled Rome was now to be its first sole ruler. Let us see
what were the comparative resources at the disposal of Caesar
and Pompeius for the waging of the impending war.
Caesar's Absolute Power within His Party
Caesar's power rested primarily on the wholly unlimited authority
which he enjoyed within his party. If the ideas of democracy
and of monarchy met together in it, this was not the result
of a coalition which had been accidentally entered into and might be
accidentally dissolved; on the contrary it was involved
in the very essence of a democracy without a representative constitution,
that democracy and monarchy should find in Caesar at once their highest
and ultimate expression. In political as in military matters
throughout the first and the final decision lay with Caesar.
However high the honour in which he held any serviceable instrument,
it remained an instrument still; Caesar stood, in his own party
without confederates, surrounded only by military-political
adjutants, who as a rule had risen from the army and as soldiers
were trained never to ask the reason and purpose of any thing,
but unconditionally to obey. On this account especially,
at the decisive moment when the civil war began, of all the officers
and soldiers of Caesar one alone refused him obedience;
and the circumstance that that one was precisely the foremost
of them all, serves simply to confirm this view of the relation
of Caesar to his adherents.
Labienus
Titus Labienus had shared with Caesar all the troubles of the dark times
of Catilina(1) as well as all the lustre of the Gallic career of victory,
had regularly held independent command, and frequently led half the army;
as he was the oldest, ablest, and most faithful of Caesar's adjutants,
he was beyond question also highest in position and highest in honour.
As late as in 704 Caesar had entrusted to him the supreme command
in Cisalpine Gaul, in order partly to put this confidential post
into safe hands, partly to forward the views of Labienus in his canvass
for the consulship. But from this very position Labienus entered
into communication with the opposite party, resorted at the beginning
of hostilities in 705 to the headquarters of Pompeius instead of those
of Caesar, and fought through the whole civil strife with unparalleled
bitterness against his old friend and master in war. We are not
sufficiently informed either as to the character of Labienus
or as to the special circumstances of his changing sides;
but in the main his case certainly presents nothing but a further proof
of the fact, that a military chief can reckon far more surely
on his captains than on his marshals. To all appearance Labienus
was one of those persons who combine with military efficiency
utter incapacity as statesmen, and who in consequence, if they
unhappily choose or are compelled to take part in politics, are exposed
to those strange paroxysms of giddiness, of which the history
of Napoleon's marshals supplies so many tragi-comic examples.
He may probably have held himself entitled to rank alongside of Caesar
as the second chief of the democracy; and the rejection of this claim
of his may have sent him over to the camp of his opponents.
His case rendered for the first time apparent the whole gravity
of the evil, that Caesar's treatment of his officers as adjutants
without independence admitted of the rise of no men fitted to undertake
a separate command in his camp, while at the same time he stood
urgently in need of such men amidst the diffusion--which might easily
be foreseen--of the impending struggle through all the provinces
of the wide empire. But this disadvantage was far outweighed
by that unity in the supreme leadership, which was the primary condition
of all success, and a condition only to be preserved at such a cost.
Caesar's Army
This unity of leadership acquired its full power through the efficiency
of its instruments. Here the army comes, first of all, into view.
It still numbered nine legions of infantry or at the most
50,000 men, all of whom however had faced the enemy and two-thirds
had served in all the campaigns against the Celts. The cavalry
consisted of German and Noric mercenaries, whose usefulness
and trustworthiness had been proved in the war against Vercingetorix.
The eight years' warfare, full of varied vicissitudes,
against the Celtic nation--which was brave, although in a military
point of view decidedly inferior to the Italian--had given Caesar
the opportunity of organizing his army as he alone knew
how to organize it. The whole efficiency of the soldier
presupposes physical vigour; in Caesar's levies more regard was had
to the strength and activity of the recruits than to their means
or their morals. But the serviceableness of an army, like that
of any other machine, depends above all on the ease and quickness
of its movements; the soldiers of Caesar attained a perfection
rarely reached and probably never surpassed in their readiness
for immediate departure at any time, and in the rapidity
of their marching. Courage, of course, was valued above everything;
Caesar practised with unrivalled mastery the art of stimulating
martial emulation and the esprit de corps, so that the pre-eminence
accorded to particular soldiers and divisions appeared even to those
who were postponed as the necessary hierarchy of valour.
He weaned his men from fear by not unfrequently--where it could be done
without serious danger--keeping his soldiers in ignorance
of an approaching conflict, and allowing them to encounter
the enemy unexpectedly. But obedience was on a parity with valour.
The soldier was required to do what he was bidden, without asking
the reason or the object; many an aimless fatigue was imposed on him
solely as a training in the difficult art of blind obedience.
The discipline was strict but not harassing; it was exercised
with unrelenting vigour when the soldier was in presence of the enemy;
at other times, especially after victory, the reins were relaxed,
and if an otherwise efficient soldier was then pleased to indulge
in perfumery or to deck himself with elegant arms and the like,
or even if he allowed himself to be guilty of outrages
or irregularities of a very questionable kind, provided only
his military duties were not immediately affected, the foolery
and the crime were allowed to pass, and the general lent a deaf ear
to the complaints of the provincials on such points. Mutiny
on the other hand was never pardoned, either in the instigators,
or even in the guilty corps itself.
But the true soldier ought to be not merely capable, brave,
and obedient, he ought to be all this willingly and spontaneously;
and it is the privilege of gifted natures alone to induce the animated
machine which they govern to a joyful service by means of example
and of hope, and especially by the consciousness of being turned
to befitting use. As the officer, who would demand valour
from his troops, must himself have looked danger in the face with them,
Caesar had even when general found opportunity of drawing his sword
and had then used it like the best; in activity, moreover,
and fatigue he was constantly far more exacting from himself
than from his soldiers. Caesar took care that victory, which primarily
no doubt brings gain to the general, should be associated also
with personal hopes in the minds of the soldiers. We have already
mentioned that he knew how to render his soldiers enthusiastic
for the cause of the democracy, so far as the times which had become
prosaic still admitted of enthusiasm, and that the political equalization
of the Transpadane country--the native land of most of his soldiers--
with Italy proper was set forth as one of the objects of the struggle.(2)
Of course material recompenses were at the same time not wanting--
as well special rewards for distinguished feats of arms as general
rewards for every efficient soldier; the officers had their portions,
the soldiers received presents, and the most lavish gifts were placed
in prospect for the triumph.
Above all things Caesar as a true commander understood
how to awaken in every single component element, large or small,
of the mighty machine the consciousness of its befitting application.
The ordinary man is destined for service, and he has no objection
to be an instrument, if he feels that a master guides him. Everywhere
and at all times the eagle eye of the general rested on the whole army,
rewarding and punishing with impartial justice, and directing
the action of each towards the course conducive to the good of all:
so that there was no experimenting or trifling with the sweat and blood
of the humblest, but for that very reason, where it was necessary,
unconditional devotion even to death was required. Without allowing
each individual to see into the whole springs of action,
Caesar yet allowed each to catch such glimpses of the political
and military connection of things as to secure that he should
be recognized--and it may be idealized--by the soldiers
as a statesman and a general. He treated his soldiers throughout,
not as his equals, but as men who are entitled to demand and were able
to endure the truth, and who had to put faith in the promises
and the assurances of their general, without thinking of deception
or listening to rumours; as comrades through long years in warfare
and victory, among whom there was hardly any one that was not known
to him by name and that in the course of so many campaigns
had not formed more or less of a personal relation to the general;
as good companions, with whom he talked and dealt confidentially
and with the cheerful elasticity peculiar to him; as clients,
to requite whose services, and to avenge whose wrongs and death,
constituted in his view a sacred duty. Perhaps there never was an army
which was so perfectly what an army ought to be--a machine able
for its ends and willing for its ends, in the hand of a master,
who transfers to it his own elasticity. Caesar's soldiers were,
and felt themselves, a match for a tenfold superior force;
in connection with which it should not be overlooked, that under
the Roman tactics--calculated altogether for hand-to-hand conflict
and especially for combat with the sword--the practised Roman soldier
was superior to the novice in a far higher degree than is now the case
under the circumstances of modern times.(3) But still more
than by the superiority of valour the adversaries of Caesar
felt themselves humbled by the unchangeable and touching fidelity
with which his soldiers clung to their general. It is perhaps
without a parallel in history, that when the general summoned
his soldiers to follow him into the civil war, with the single exception
already mentioned of Labienus, no Roman officer and no Roman soldier
deserted him. The hopes of his opponents as to an extensive
desertion were thwarted as ignominiously as the former attempts
to break up his army like that of Lucullus.(4) Labienus himself
appeared in the camp of Pompeius with a band doubtless of Celtic
and German horsemen but without a single legionary. Indeed
the soldiers, as if they would show that the war was quite as much
their matter as that of their general, settled among themselves
that they would give credit for the pay, which Caesar had promised
to double for them at the outbreak of the civil war, to their commander
up to its termination, and would meanwhile support their poorer comrades
from the general means; besides, every subaltern officer
equipped and paid a trooper out of his own purse.
Field of Caesar's Power
Upper Italy
While Caesar thus had the one thing which was needful--
unlimited political and military authority and a trustworthy army
ready for the fight--his power extended, comparatively speaking,
over only a very limited space. It was based essentially
on the province of Upper Italy. This region was not merely
the most populous of all the districts of Italy, but also devoted
to the cause of the democracy as its own. The feeling
which prevailed there is shown by the conduct of a division of recruits
from Opitergium (Oderzo in the delegation of Treviso), which not long
after the outbreak of the war in the Illyrian waters, surrounded
on a wretched raft by the war-vessels of the enemy, allowed themselves
to be shot at during the whole day down to sunset without surrendering,
and, such of them as had escaped the missiles, put themselves to death
with their own hands during the following night. It is easy to conceive
what might be expected of such a population. As they had already
granted to Caesar the means of more than doubling his original army,
so after the outbreak of the civil war recruits presented themselves
in great numbers for the ample levies that were immediately instituted.
Italy
In Italy proper, on the other hand, the influence of Caesar was not
even remotely to be compared to that of his opponents. Although
he had the skill by dexterous manoeuvres to put the Catonian party
in the wrong, and had sufficiently commended the rectitude
of his cause to all who wished for a pretext with a good conscience
either to remain neutral, like the majority of the senate,
or to embrace his side, like his soldiers and the Transpadanes,
the mass of the burgesses naturally did not allow themselves to be misled
by these things and, when the commandant of Gaul put his legions
in motion against Rome, they beheld--despite all formal explanations
as to law--in Cato and Pompeius the defenders of the legitimate republic,
in Caesar the democratic usurper. People in general moreover
expected from the nephew of Marius, the son-in-law of Cinna,
the ally of Catilina, a repetition of the Marian and Cinnan horrors,
a realization of the saturnalia of anarchy projected by Catilina;
and though Caesar certainly gained allies through this expectation--
so that the political refugees immediately put themselves in a body
at his disposal, the ruined men saw in him their deliverer,
and the lowest ranks of the rabble in the capital and country towns
were thrown into a ferment on the news of his advance,--these belonged
to the class of friends who are more dangerous than foes.
Provinces
In the provinces and the dependent states Caesar had
even less influence than in Italy. Transalpine Gaul indeed as far as
the Rhine and the Channel obeyed him, and the colonists of Narbo
as well as the Roman burgesses elsewhere settled in Gaul
were devoted to him; but in the Narbonese province itself
the constitutional party had numerous adherents, and now even
the newly-conquered regions were far more a burden than a benefit
to Caesar in the impending civil war; in fact, for good reasons
he made no use of the Celtic infantry at all in that war,
and but sparing use of the cavalry. In the other provinces
and the neighbouring half or wholly independent states
Caesar had indeed attempted to procure for himself support,
had lavished rich presents on the princes, caused great buildings
to be executed in various towns, and granted to them in case of need
financial and military assistance; but on the whole, of course,
not much had been gained by this means, and the relations
with the German and Celtic princes in the regions of the Rhine
and the Danube,--particularly the connection with the Noric king Voccio,
so important for the recruiting of cavalry,--were probably
the only relations of this sort which were of any moment for him.
The Coalition
While Caesar thus entered the struggle only as commandant of Gaul,
without other essential resources than efficient adjutants,
a faithful army, and a devoted province, Pompeius began it
as de facto supreme head of the Roman commonwealth, and in full
possession of all the resources that stood at the disposal
of the legitimate government of the great Roman empire. But while
his position was in a political and military point of view
far more considerable, it was also on the other hand far less definite
and firm. The unity of leadership, which resulted of itself
and by necessity from the position of Caesar, was inconsistent
with the nature of a coalition; and although Pompeius, too much
of a soldier to deceive himself as to its being indispensable,
attempted to force it on the coalition and got himself nominated
by the senate as sole and absolute generalissimo by land and sea,
yet the senate itself could not be set aside nor hindered
from a preponderating influence on the political, and an occasional
and therefore doubly injurious interference with the military,
superintendence. The recollection of the twenty years' war
waged on both sides with envenomed weapons between Pompeius
and the constitutional party; the feeling which vividly prevailed
on both sides, and which they with difficulty concealed,
that the first consequence of the victory when achieved would be
a rupture between the victors; the contempt which they entertained
for each other and with only too good grounds in either case;
the inconvenient number of respectable and influential men in the ranks
of the aristocracy and the intellectual and moral inferiority
of almost all who took part in the matter--altogether produced
among the opponents of Caesar a reluctant and refractory co-operation,
which formed the saddest contrast to the harmonious and compact action
on the other side.
Field of Power of the Coalition
Juba of Numidia
While all the disadvantages incident to the coalition of powers
naturally hostile were thus felt in an unusual measure by Caesar's
antagonists, this coalition was certainly still a very considerable power.
It had exclusive command of the sea; all ports, all ships of war,
all the materials for equipping a fleet were at its disposal.
The two Spains--as it were the home of the power of Pompeius
just as the two Gauls were the home of that of Caesar--
were faithful adherents to their master and in the hands of able
and trustworthy administrators. In the other provinces also,
of course with the exception of the two Gauls, the posts
of the governors and commanders had during recent years been filled up
with safe men under the influence of Pompeius and the minority
of the senate. The client-states throughout and with great decision
took part against Caesar and in favour of Pompeius. The most important
princes and cities had been brought into the closest personal relations
with Pompeius in virtue of the different sections of his manifold
activity. In the war against the Marians, for instance, he had been
the companion in arms of the kings of Numidia and Mauretania and had
reestablished the kingdom of the former;(5) in the Mithradatic war,
in addition to a number of other minor principalities spiritual
and temporal, he had re-established the kingdoms of Bosporus, Armenia,
and Cappadocia, and created that of Deiotarus in Galatia;(6)
it was primarily at his instigation that the Egyptian war was undertaken,
and it was by his adjutant that the rule of the Lagids
had been confirmed afresh.(7) Even the city of Massilia
in Caesar's own province, while indebted to the latter
doubtless for various favours, was indebted to Pompeius
at the time of the Sertorian war for a very considerable extension
of territory;(8) and, besides, the ruling oligarchy there stood
in natural alliance--strengthened by various mutual relations--
with the oligarchy in Rome. But these personal and relative
considerations as well as the glory of the victor in three continents,
which in these more remote parts of the empire far outshone
that of the conqueror of Gaul, did perhaps less harm to Caesar
in those quarters than the views and designs--which had not remained
there unknown--of the heir of Gaius Gracchus as to the necessity
of uniting the dependent states and the usefulness of provincial
colonizations. No one of the dependent dynasts found himself
more imminently threatened by this peril than Juba king
of Numidia. Not only had he years before, in the lifetime
of his father Hiempsal, fallen into a vehement personal quarrel
with Caesar, but recently the same Curio, who now occupied almost
the first place among Caesar's adjutants, had proposed to the Roman
burgesses the annexation of the Numidian kingdom. Lastly, if matters
should go so far as to lead the independent neighbouring states
to interfere in the Roman civil war, the only state really powerful,
that of the Parthians, was practically already allied
with the aristocratic party by the connection entered into
between Pacorus and Bibulus,(9) while Caesar was far too much a Roman
to league himself for party-interests with the conquerors
of his friend Crassus.
Italy against Caesar
As to Italy the great majority of the burgesses were, as has been
already mentioned, averse to Caesar--more especially, of course,
the whole aristocracy with their very considerable following,
but also in a not much less degree the great capitalists,
who could not hope in the event of a thorough reform of the commonwealth
to preserve their partisan jury-courts and their monopoly of extortion.
Of equally anti-democratic sentiments were the small capitalists,
the landholders and generally all classes that had anything to lose;
but in these ranks of life the cares of the next rent-term and of sowing
and reaping outweighed, as a rule, every other consideration.
The Pompeian Army
The army at the disposal of Pompeius consisted chiefly
of the Spanish troops, seven legions inured to war and in every respect
trustworthy; to which fell to be added the divisions of troops--
weak indeed, and very much scattered--which were to be found
in Syria, Asia, Macedonia, Africa, Sicily, and elsewhere. In Italy
there were under arms at the outset only the two legions
recently given off by Caesar, whose effective strength did not amount
to more than 7000 men, and whose trustworthiness was more than doubtful,
because--levied in Cisalpine Gaul and old comrades in arms
of Caesar--they were in a high degree displeased at the unbecoming
intrigue by which they had been made to change camps,(10)
and recalled with longing their general who had magnanimously
paid to them beforehand at their departure the presents
which were promised to every soldier for the triumph.
But, apart from the circumstance that the Spanish troops might arrive
in Italy with the spring either by the land route through Gaul
or by sea, the men of the three legions still remaining
from the levies of 699,(11) as well as the Italian levy sworn
to allegiance in 702,(12) could be recalled from their furlough.
Including these, the number of troops standing at the disposal
of Pompeius on the whole, without reckoning the seven legions in Spain
and those scattered in other provinces, amounted in Italy alone
to ten legions(13) or about 60,000 men, so that it was no exaggeration
at all, when Pompeius asserted that he had only to stamp
with his foot to cover the ground with armed men. It is true
that it required some interval--though but short--to render
these soldiers available; but the arrangements for this purpose
as well as for the carrying out of the new levies ordered by the senate
in consequence of the outbreak of the civil war were already
everywhere in progress. Immediately after the decisive decree
of the senate (7 Jan. 705), in the very depth of winter
the most eminent men of the aristocracy set out to the different
districts, to hasten the calling up of recruits and the preparation
of arms. The want of cavalry was much felt, as for this arm
they had been accustomed to rely wholly on the provinces and especially
on the Celtic contingents; to make at least a beginning,
three hundred gladiators belonging to Caesar were taken
from the fencing-schools of Capua and mounted--a step which however
met with so general disapproval, that Pompeius again broke up
this troop and levied in room of it 300 horsemen from the mounted
slave-herdmen of Apulia.
The state-treasury was at a low ebb as usual; they busied themselves
in supplementing the inadequate amount of cash out of the local
treasuries and even from the temple-treasures of the -municipia-.
Caesar Takes the Offensive
Under these circumstances the war opened at the beginning
of January 705. Of troops capable of marching Caesar had not
more than a legion--5000 infantry and 300 cavalry--at Ravenna,
which was by the highway some 240 miles distant from Rome; Pompeius
had two weak legions--7000 infantry and a small squadron of cavalry--
under the orders of Appius Claudius at Luceria, from which,
likewise by the highway, the distance was just about as great
to the capital. The other troops of Caesar, leaving out of account
the raw divisions of recruits still in course of formation,
were stationed, one half on the Saone and Loire, the other half
in Belgica, while Pompeius' Italian reserves were already arriving
from all sides at their rendezvous; long before even the first
of the Transalpine divisions of Caesar could arrive in Italy,
a far superior army could not but be ready to receive it there.
It seemed folly, with a band of the strength of that of Catilina
and for the moment without any effective reserve, to assume
the aggressive against a superior and hourly-increasing army
under an able general; but it was a folly in the spirit of Hannibal.
If the beginning of the struggle were postponed till spring,
the Spanish troops of Pompeius would assume the offensive
in Transalpine, and his Italian troops in Cisalpine, Gaul,
and Pompeius, a match for Caesar in tactics and superior to him
in experience, was a formidable antagonist in such a campaign
running its regular course. Now perhaps, accustomed as he was
to operate slowly and surely with superior masses, he might
be disconcerted by a wholly improvised attack; and that which
could not greatly discompose Caesar's thirteenth legion
after the severe trial of the Gallic surprise and the January campaign
in the land of the Bellovaci,(14)--the suddenness of the war and the toil
of a winter campaign--could not but disorganize the Pompeian corps
consisting of old soldiers of Caesar or of ill-trained recruits,
and still only in the course of formation.
Caesar's Advance
Accordingly Caesar advanced into Italy.(15) Two highways led
at that time from the Romagna to the south; the Aemilio-Cassian
which led from Bononia over the Apennines to Arretium and Rome,
and the Popillio-Flaminian, which led from Ravenna along the coast
of the Adriatic to Fanum and was there divided, one branch running
westward through the Furlo pass to Rome, another southward
to Ancona and thence onward to Apulia. On the former Marcus Antonius
advanced as far as Arretium, on the second Caesar himself
pushed forward. Resistance was nowhere encountered; the recruiting
officers of quality had no military skill, their bands of recruits
were no soldiers, the inhabitants of the country towns were only anxious
not to be involved in a siege. When Curio with 1500 men
approached Iguvium, where a couple of thousand Umbrian recruits
had assembled under the praetor Quintus Minucius Thermus,
general and soldiers took to flight at the bare tidings of his approach;
and similar results on a small scale everywhere ensued.
Rome Evacuated
Caesar had to choose whether he would march against Rome, from which
his cavalry at Arretium were already only about 130 miles distant,
or against the legions encamped at Luceria. He chose the latter plan.
The consternation of the opposite party was boundless.
Pompeius received the news of Caesar's advance at Rome; he seemed
at first disposed to defend the capital, but, when the tidings
arrived of Caesar's entrance into the Picenian territory
and of his first successes there, he abandoned Rome and ordered
its evacuation. A panic, augmented by the false report that Caesar's
cavalry had appeared before the gates, came over the world of quality.
The senators, who had been informed that every one who should
remain behind in the capital would be treated as an accomplice
of the rebel Caesar, flocked in crowds out at the gates.
The consuls themselves had so totally lost their senses, that they
did not even secure the treasure; when Pompeius called upon them
to fetch it, for which there was sufficient time, they returned
the reply that they would deem it safer, if he should first
occupy Picenum. All was perplexity; consequently a great council of war
was held in Teanum Sidicinum (23 Jan.), at which Pompeius, Labienus,
and both consuls were present. First of all proposals of accommodation
from Caesar were again submitted; even now he declared himself
ready at once to dismiss his army, to hand over his provinces
to the successors nominated, and to become a candidate
in the regular way for the consulship, provided that Pompeius
were to depart for Spain, and Italy were to be disarmed.
The answer was, that if Caesar would immediately return to his province,
they would bind themselves to procure the disarming of Italy
and the departure of Pompeius by a decree of the senate
to be passed in due form in the capital; perhaps this reply
was intended not as a bare artifice to deceive, but as an acceptance
of the proposal of compromise; it was, however, in reality the opposite.
The personal conference which Caesar desired with Pompeius
the latter declined, and could not but decline, that he might not
by the semblance of a new coalition with Caesar provoke still more
the distrust already felt by the constitutional party. Concerning
the management of the war it was agreed in Teanum, that Pompeius
should take the command of the troops stationed at Luceria,
on which notwithstanding their untrustworthiness all hope depended;
that he should advance with these into his own and Labienus'
native country, Picenum; that he should personally call
the general levy there to arms, as he had done some thirty-five
years ago,(16) and should attempt at the head of the faithful
Picentine cohorts and the veterans formerly under Caesar
to set a limit to the advance of the enemy.
Conflicts in Picenum
Everything depended on whether Picenum would hold out
until Pompeius should come up to its defence. Already Caesar
with his reunited army had penetrated into it along the coast road
by way of Ancona. Here too the preparations were in full course;
in the very northernmost Picenian town Auximum a considerable band
of recruits was collected under Publius Attius Varus; but at the entreaty
of the municipality Varus evacuated the town even before Caesar
appeared, and a handful of Caesar's soldiers which overtook the troop
not far from Auximum totally dispersed it after a brief conflict--
the first in this war. In like manner soon afterwards
Gaius Lucilius Hirrus with 3000 men evacuated Camerinum,
and Publius Lentulus Spinther with 5000 Asculum. The men,
thoroughly devoted to Pompeius, willingly for the most part abandoned
their houses and farms, and followed their leaders over the frontier;
but the district itself was already lost, when the officer
sent by Pompeius for the temporary conduct of the defence,
Lucius Vibullius Rufus--no genteel senator, but a soldier
experienced in war--arrived there; he had to content himself
with taking the six or seven thousand recruits who were saved
away from the incapable recruiting officers, and conducting them
for the time to the nearest rendezvous.
Corfinium Besieged
And Captured
This was Corfinium, the place of meeting for the levies in the Albensian,
Marsian and Paelignian territories; the body of recruits here assembled,
of nearly 15,000 men, was the contingent of the most warlike
and trustworthy regions of Italy, and the flower of the army
in course of formation for the constitutional party. When Vibullius
arrived here, Caesar was still several days' march behind;
there was nothing to prevent him from immediately starting agreeably
to Pompeius' instructions and conducting the saved Picenian recruits
along with those assembled at Corfinium to join the main army in Apulia.
But the commandant in Corfinium was the designated successor to Caesar
in the governorship of Transalpine Gaul, Lucius Domitius,
one of the most narrow-minded and stubborn of the Roman aristocracy;
and he not only refused to comply with the orders of Pompeius,
but also prevented Vibullius from departing at least with the men
from Picenum for Apulia. So firmly was he persuaded that Pompeius
only delayed from obstinacy and must necessarily come up to his relief,
that he scarcely made any serious preparations for a siege
and did not even gather into Corfinium the bands of recruits
placed in the surrounding towns. Pompeius however did not appear,
and for good reasons; for, while he might perhaps apply
his two untrustworthy legions as a reserved support for the Picenian
general levy, he could not with them alone offer battle to Caesar.
Instead of him after a few days Caesar came (14 Feb.). His troops
had been joined in Picenum by the twelfth, and before Corfinium
by the eighth, legion from beyond the Alps, and, besides these,
three new legions had been formed partly from the Pompeian men
that were taken prisoners or presented themselves voluntarily,
partly from the recruits that were at once levied everywhere;
so that Caesar before Corfinium was already at the head
of an army of 40,000 men, half of whom had seen service. So long as
Domitius hoped for the arrival of Pompeius, he caused the town
to be defended; when the letters of Pompeius had at length undeceived him,
he resolved, not forsooth to persevere at the forlorn post--
by which he would have rendered the greatest service to his party--
nor even to capitulate, but, while the common soldiers
were informed that relief was close at hand, to make his own escape
along with his officers of quality during the next night.
Yet he had not the judgment to carry into effect even this pretty scheme.
The confusion of his behaviour betrayed him. A part of the men
began to mutiny; the Marsian recruits, who held such an infamy
on the part of their general to be impossible, wished to fight
against the mutineers; but they too were obliged reluctantly
to believe the truth of the accusation, whereupon the whole garrison
arrested their staff and handed it, themselves, and the town
over to Caesar (20 Feb.). The corps in Alba, 3000 strong,
and 1500 recruits assembled in Tarracina thereupon laid down
their arms, as soon as Caesar's patrols of horsemen appeared;
a third division in Sulmo of 3500 men had been previously
compelled to surrender.
Pompeius Goes to Brundisium
Embarkation for Greece
Pompeius had given up Italy as lost, so soon as Caesar
had occupied Picenum; only he wished to delay his embarkation
as long as possible, with the view of saving so much of his force
as could still be saved. Accordingly he had slowly put himself
in motion for the nearest seaport Brundisium. Thither came
the two legions of Luceria and such recruits as Pompeius
had been able hastily to collect in the deserted Apulia,
as well as the troops raised by the consuls and other commissioners
in Campania and conducted in all haste to Brundisium;
thither too resorted a number of political fugitives,
including the most respected of the senators accompanied
by their families. The embarkation began; but the vessels at hand
did not suffice to transport all at once the whole multitude,
which still amounted to 25,000 persons. No course remained
but to divide the army. The larger half went first (4 March);
with the smaller division of some 10,000 men Pompeius
awaited at Brundisium the return of the fleet; for, however desirable
the possession of Brundisium might be for an eventual attempt
to reoccupy Italy, they did not presume to hold the place
permanently against Caesar. Meanwhile Caesar arrived
before Brundisium; the siege began. Caesar attempted first of all
to close the mouth of the harbour by moles and floating bridges,
with a view to exclude the returning fleet; but Pompeius
caused the trading vessels lying in the harbour to be armed,
and managed to prevent the complete closing of the harbour
until the fleet appeared and the troops--whom Pompeius
with great dexterity, in spite of the vigilance of the besiegers
and the hostile feeling of the inhabitants, withdrew from the town
to the last man unharmed--were carried off beyond Caesar's reach
to Greece (17 March). The further pursuit, like the siege itself,
failed for want of a fleet.
In a campaign of two months, without a single serious engagement,
Caesar had so broken up an army of ten legions, that less than
the half of it had with great difficulty escaped in a confused flight
across the sea, and the whole Italian peninsula, including the capital
with the state-chest and all the stores accumulated there,
had fallen into the power of the victor. Not without reason
did the beaten party bewail the terrible rapidity, sagacity,
and energy of the "monster."
Military and Financial Results of the Seizure of Italy
But it may be questioned whether Caesar gained or lost more
by the conquest of Italy. In a military respect, no doubt,
very considerable resources were now not merely withdrawn
from his opponents, but rendered available for himself;
even in the spring of 705 his army embraced, in consequence
of the levies en masse instituted everywhere, a considerable
number of legions of recruits in addition to the nine old ones
But on the other hand it now became necessary not merely
to leave behind a considerable garrison in Italy, but also
to take measures against the closing of the transmarine traffic
contemplated by his opponents who commanded the sea, and against
the famine with which the capital was consequently threatened;
whereby Caesar's already sufficiently complicated military task
was complicated further still. Financially it was certainly
of importance, that Caesar had the good fortune to obtain
possession of the stock of money in the capital; but the principal
sources of income and particularly the revenues from the east
were withal in the hands of the enemy, and, in consequence
of the greatly increased demands for the army and the new obligation
to provide for the starving population of the capital,
the considerable sums which were found quickly melted away.
Caesar soon found himself compelled to appeal to private credit,
and, as it seemed that he could not possibly gain any long respite
by this means, extensive confiscations were generally anticipated
as the only remaining expedient.
Its Political Results
Fear of Anarchy
More serious difficulties still were created by the political relations
amidst which Caesar found himself placed on the conquest of Italy.
The apprehension of an anarchical revolution was universal
among the propertied classes. Friends and foes saw in Caesar
a second Catilina; Pompeius believed or affected to believe
that Caesar had been driven to civil war merely by the impossibility
of paying his debts. This was certainly absurd; but in fact Caesar's
antecedents were anything but reassuring, and still less reassuring
was the aspect of the retinue that now surrounded him.
Individuals of the most broken reputation, notorious personages
like Quintus Hortensius, Gaius Curio, Marcus Antonius,--
the latter the stepson of the Catilinarian Lentulus who was executed
by the orders of Cicero--were the most prominent actors in it;
the highest posts of trust were bestowed on men who had long ceased
even to reckon up their debts; people saw men who held office
under Caesar not merely keeping dancing-girls--which was done
by others also--but appearing publicly in company with them.
Was there any wonder, that even grave and politically impartial men
expected amnesty for all exiled criminals, cancelling
of creditors' claims, comprehensive mandates of confiscation,
proscription, and murder, nay, even a plundering of Rome
by the Gallic soldiery?
Dispelled by Caesar
But in this respect the "monster" deceived the expectations
of his foes as well as of his friends. As soon even as Caesar occupied
the first Italian town, Ariminum, he prohibited all common soldiers
from appearing armed within the walls; the country towns
were protected from all injury throughout and without distinction,
whether they had given him a friendly or hostile reception.
When the mutinous garrison surrendered Corfinium late in the evening,
he in the face of every military consideration postponed
the occupation of the town till the following morning, solely
that he might not abandon the burgesses to the nocturnal invasion
of his exasperated soldiers. Of the prisoners the common soldiers,
as presumably indifferent to politics, were incorporated
with his own army, while the officers were not merely spared,
but also freely released without distinction of person and without
the exaction of any promises whatever; and all which they claimed
as private property was frankly given up to them, without even
investigating with any strictness the warrant for their claims.
Lucius Domitius himself was thus treated, and even Labienus had the money
and baggage which he had left behind sent after him to the enemy's camp.
In the most painful financial embarrassment the immense estates
of his opponents whether present or absent were not assailed; indeed
Caesar preferred to borrow from friends, rather than that he should
stir up the possessors of property against him even by exacting
the formally admissible, but practically antiquated, land tax.(17)
The victor regarded only the half, and that not the more difficult half,
of his task as solved with the victory; he saw the security
for its duration, according to his own expression, only
in the unconditional pardon of the vanquished, and had accordingly
during the whole march from Ravenna to Brundisium incessantly
renewed his efforts to bring about a personal conference
with Pompeius and a tolerable accommodation.
Threats of the Emigrants
The Mass of Quiet People Gained for Caesar
But, if the aristocracy had previously refused to listen
to any reconciliation, the unexpected emigration of a kind
so disgraceful had raised their wrath to madness, and the wild vengeance
breathed by the beaten contrasted strangely with the placability
of the victor. The communications regularly coming from the camp
of the emigrants to their friends left behind in Italy
were full of projects for confiscations and proscriptions,
of plans for purifying the senate and the state, compared with which
the restoration of Sulla was child's play, and which even
the moderate men of their own party heard with horror.
The frantic passion of impotence, the wise moderation of power,
produced their effect. The whole mass, in whose eyes material interests
were superior to political, threw itself into the arms of Caesar.
The country towns idolized "the uprightness, the moderation,
the prudence" of the victor; and even opponents conceded
that these demonstrations of respect were meant in earnest.
The great capitalists, farmers of the taxes, and jurymen,
showed no special desire, after the severe shipwreck
which had befallen the constitutional party in Italy,
to entrust themselves farther to the same pilots; capital came
once more to the light, and "the rich lords resorted again to their
daily task of writing their rent-rolls." Even the great majority
of the senate, at least numerically speaking--for certainly but few
of the nobler and more influential members of the senate
were included in it--had notwithstanding the orders of Pompeius
and of the consuls remained behind in Italy, and a portion of them
even in the capital itself; and they acquiesced in Caesar's rule.
The moderation of Caesar, well calculated even in its very semblance
of excess, attained its object: the trembling anxiety of the propertied
classes as to the impending anarchy was in some measure allayed.
This was doubtless an incalculable gain for the future;
the prevention of anarchy, and of the scarcely less dangerous alarm
of anarchy, was the indispensable preliminary condition
to the future reorganization of the commonwealth.
Indignation of the Anarchist Party against Caesar
The Republican Party in Italy
But at the moment this moderation was more dangerous for Caesar
than the renewal of the Cinnan and Catilinarian fury would have been;
it did not convert enemies into friends, and it converted
friends into enemies. Caesar's Catilinarian adherents
were indignant that murder and pillage remained in abeyance;
these audacious and desperate personages, some of whom
were men of talent, might be expected to prove cross and untractable.
The republicans of all shades, on the other hand, were neither
converted nor propitiated by the leniency of the conqueror.
According to the creed of the Catonian party, duty towards
what they called their fatherland absolved them from every
other consideration; even one who owed freedom and life to Caesar
remained entitled and in duty bound to take up arms or at least
to engage in plots against him. The less decided sections
of the constitutional party were no doubt found willing to accept peace
and protection from the new monarch; nevertheless they ceased not
to curse the monarchy and the monarch at heart. The more clearly
the change of the constitution became manifest, the more distinctly
the great majority of the burgesses--both in the capital with its
keener susceptibility of political excitement, and among
the more energetic population of the country and country towns--
awoke to a consciousness of their republican sentiments; so far
the friends of the constitution in Rome reported with truth
to their brethren of kindred views in exile, that at home all classes
and all persons were friendly to Pompeius. The discontented temper
of all these circles was further increased by the moral pressure,
which the more decided and more notable men who shared such views
exercised from their very position as emigrants over the multitude
of the humbler and more lukewarm. The conscience of the honourable man
smote him in regard to his remaining in Italy; the half-aristocrat
fancied that he was ranked among the plebeians, if he did not go
into exile with the Domitii and the Metelli, and even if he took his seat
in the Caesarian senate of nobodies. The victor's special clemency
gave to this silent opposition increased political importance;
seeing that Caesar abstained from terrorism, it seemed as if
his secret opponents could display their disinclination
to his rule without much danger.
Passive Resistance of the Senate to Caesar