Cicero considered that the Civil War ought to have ended with
Pharsalia; and in this opinion most reasonable men among the
conservatives were agreed. They had fought one battle; and it had gone
against them. To continue the struggle might tear the Empire to pieces,
but could not retrieve a lost cause; and prudence and patriotism alike
recommended submission to the verdict of fortune. It is probable that
this would have been the result, could Caesar have returned to Italy
immediately after his victory. Cicero himself refused to participate in
further resistance. Cato offered him a command at Corcyra, but he
declined it with a shudder, and went back to Brindisi; and all but
those whose consciences forbade them to hope for pardon, or who were
too proud to ask for it, at first followed his example. Scipio, Cato,
Labienus, Afranius, Petreius, were resolute to fight on to the last;
but even they had no clear outlook, and they wandered about the
Mediterranean, uncertain what to do, or whither to turn. Time went on,
however, and Caesar did not appear. Rumor said at one time that he was
destroyed at Alexandria. The defeat of Calvinus by Pharnaces was an
ascertained fact. Spain was in confusion. The legions in Italy were
disorganized, and society, or the wealthy part of society, threatened
by the enemies of property, began to call for some one to save it. All
was not lost. Pompey's best generals were still living. His sons,
Sextus and Cnaeus, were brave and able. The fleet was devoted to them
and to their father's cause, and Caesar's officers had failed, in his
absence, to raise a naval force which could show upon the sea. Africa
was a convenient rallying point. Since Curio's defeat, King Juba had
found no one to dispute his supremacy, and between Juba and the
aristocracy who were bent on persisting in the war, an alliance was
easily formed. While Caesar was perilling his own interest to remain in
Asia to crush Pharnaces, Metellus Scipio was offering a barbarian chief
the whole of Roman Africa, as the price of his assistance, in a last
effort to reverse the fortune of Pharsalia. Under these scandalous
conditions, Scipio, Labienus, Cato, Afranius, Petreius, Faustus Sylla,
the son of the Dictator, Lucius Caesar, and the rest of the
irreconcilables, made Africa their new centre of operations. Here they
gathered to themselves the inheritors of the Syllan traditions, and
made raids on the Italian coasts and into Sicily and Sardinia. Seizing
Caesar's officers when they could find them, they put them invariably
to death without remorse. Cicero protested honorably against the
employment of treacherous savages, even for so sacred a cause as the
defence of the constitution;[1] but Cicero was denounced as a traitor
seeking favor with the conqueror, and the desperate work went on.
Caesar's long detention in the East gave the confederates time. The
young Pompeys were strong at sea. From Italy there was an easy passage
for adventurous disaffection. The shadow of a Pompeian Senate sat once
more, passing resolutions, at Utica; while Cato was busy organizing an
army, and had collected as many as thirteen legions out of the
miscellaneous elements which drifted in to him. Caesar had sent orders
to Cassius Longinus to pass into Africa from Spain, and break up these
combinations; but Longinus had been at war with his own provincials. He
had been driven out of the Peninsula, and had lost his own life in
leaving it. Caesar, like Cicero, had believed that the war had ended at
Pharsalia. He found that the heads of the Hydra had sprouted again, and
were vomiting the old fire and fury. Little interest could it give
Caesar to match his waning years against the blinded hatred of his
countrymen. Ended the strife must be, however, before order could be
restored in Italy, and wretched men take up again the quiet round of
industry. Heavy work had to be done in Rome. Caesar was consul
now--annual consul, with no ten years' interval any longer possible.
Consul, dictator, whatever name the people gave him, he alone held the
reins; he alone was able to hold them. Credit had to be restored;
debtors had to be brought to recognize their liabilities. Property had
fallen in value since the Civil Wars, and securities had to be freshly
estimated. The Senate required reformation; men of fidelity and ability
were wanted for the public offices. Pompey and Pompey's friends would
have drowned Italy in blood. Caesar disappointed expectation by
refusing to punish any one of his political opponents. He killed no
one. He deprived no one of his property. He even protected the
money-lenders, and made the Jews his constant friends. Debts he
insisted must be paid, bonds fulfilled, the rights of property
respected, no matter what wild hopes imagination might have indulged
in. Something only he remitted of the severity of interest, and the
poor in the city were allowed their lodgings rent free for a year.
He restored quiet, and gave as much satisfaction as circumstances
permitted. His real difficulty was with the legions, who had come back
from Greece. They had deserved admirably well, but they were
unfortunately over-conscious of their merits. Ill-intentioned officers
had taught them to look for extravagant rewards. Their expectations had
not been fulfilled; and when they supposed that their labors were over,
they received orders to prepare for a campaign in Africa. Sallust, the
historian, was in command of their quarters in Campania. They mutinied,
and almost killed him. He fled to Rome. The soldiers of the favored
10th legion pursued him to the gates, and demanded speech with Caesar.
He bade them come to him, and with his usual fearlessness told them to
bring their swords.
The army was Caesar's life. In the army lay the future of Rome, if Rome
was to have a future. There, if anywhere, the national spirit survived.
It was a trying moment; but there was a calmness in Caesar, a rising
from a profound indifference to what man or fortune could give or take
from him, which no extremity could shake.
The legionaries entered the city, and Caesar directed them to state
their complaints. They spoke of their services and their sufferings.
They said that they had been promised rewards, but their rewards so far
had been words, and they asked for their discharge. They did not really
wish for it. They did not expect it. But they supposed that Caesar
could not dispense with them, and that they might dictate their own
terms.
During the wars in Gaul, Caesar had been most munificent to his
soldiers. He had doubled their ordinary pay. He had shared the spoils
of his conquests with them. Time and leisure had alone been wanting to
him to recompense their splendid fidelity in the campaigns in Spain and
Greece. He had treated them as his children; no commander had ever been
more careful of his soldiers' lives; when addressing the army he had
called them always "commilitones," "comrades," "brothers-in-arms."
The familiar word was now no longer heard from him. "You say well,
quirites," [2] he answered; "you have labored hard, and you have
suffered much; you desire your discharge--you have it. I discharge you
who are present. I discharge all who have served their time. You shall
have your recompense. It shall never be said of me that I made use of
you when I was in danger, and was ungrateful to you when the peril was
past."
"Quirites" he had called them; no longer Roman legionaries, proud of
their achievements, and glorying in their great commander, but
"quirites"--plain citizens. The sight of Caesar, the familiar form and
voice, the words, every sentence of which they knew that he meant, cut
them to the heart. They were humbled, they begged to be forgiven. They
said they would go with him to Africa, or to the world's end. He did
not at once accept their penitence. He told them that lands had been
allotted to every soldier out of the _ager publicus_, or out of his own
personal estates. Suetonius says that the sections had been carefully
taken so as not to disturb existing occupants; and thus it appeared
that he had been thinking of them and providing for them when they
supposed themselves forgotten. Money, too, he had ready for each, part
in hand, part in bonds bearing interest, to be redeemed when the war
should be over. Again, passionately, they implored to be allowed to
continue with him. He relented, but not entirely.
"Let all go who wish to go," he said; "I will have none serve with me
who serve unwillingly."
"All, all!" they cried; "not one of us will leave you"--and not one
went. The mutiny was the greatest peril, perhaps, to which Caesar had
ever been exposed. No more was said; but Caesar took silent notice of
the officers who had encouraged the discontented spirit. In common
things, Dion Cassius says, he was the kindest and most considerate of
commanders. He passed lightly over small offences; but military
rebellion in those who were really responsible he never forgave.
[Sidenote: B.C. 46.] The African business could now be attended to. It
was again midwinter. Winter campaigns were trying, but Caesar had
hitherto found them answer to him; the enemy had suffered more than
himself; while, as long as an opposition Senate was sitting across the
Mediterranean, intrigue and conspiracy made security impossible at
home. Many a false spirit now fawning at home on Caesar was longing for
his destruction. The army with which he would have to deal was less
respectable than that which Pompey had commanded at Durazzo, but it was
numerically as strong or stronger. Cato, assisted by Labienus, had
formed into legions sixty thousand Italians. They had a hundred and
twenty elephants, and African cavalry in uncounted multitudes. Caesar
perhaps despised an enemy too much whom he had so often beaten. He
sailed from Lilybaeum on the 19th of December, with a mere handful of
men, leaving the rest of his troops to follow as they could. No
rendezvous had been positively fixed, for between the weather and the
enemy it was uncertain where the troops would be able to land, and the
generals of the different divisions were left to their discretion.
Caesar on arriving seized and fortified a defensible spot at
Ruspinum.[3] The other legions dropped in slowly, and before a third of
them had arrived the enemy were swarming about the camp, while the
Pompeys were alert on the water to seize stray transports or provision
ships. There was skirmishing every day in front of Caesar's lines. The
Numidian horse surrounded his thin cohorts like swarms of hornets.
Labienus himself rode up on one occasion to a battalion which was
standing still under a shower of arrows, and asked in mockery who they
were. A soldier of the 10th legion lifted his cap that his face might
be recognized, hurled his javelin for answer, and brought Labienus's
horse to the ground. But courage was of no avail in the face of
overwhelming numbers. Scipio's army collected faster than Caesar's, and
Caesar's young soldiers showed some uneasiness in a position so
unexpected. Caesar, however, was confident and in high spirits.[4]
Roman residents in the African province came gradually in to him, and
some African tribes, out of respect, it was said, for the memory of
Marius. A few towns declared against the Senate in indignation at
Scipio's promise that the province was to be abandoned to Juba. Scipio
replied with burning the Roman country houses and wasting the lands,
and still killing steadily every friend of Caesar that he could lay
hands on. Caesar's steady clemency had made no difference. The
senatorial faction went on as they had begun till at length their
ferocity was repaid upon them.
The reports from the interior became unbearable. Caesar sent an
impatient message to Sicily that, storm or calm, the remaining legions
must come to him, or not a house would be left standing in the
province. The officers were no longer what they had been. The men came,
but bringing only their arms and tools, without change of clothes and
without tents, though it was the rainy season. Good will and good
hearts, however, made up for other shortcomings. Deserters dropped in
thick from the Senate's army. King Juba, it appeared, had joined them,
and Roman pride had been outraged, when Juba had been seen taking
precedence in the council of war, and Metellus Scipio exchanging his
imperial purple in the royal presence for a plain dress of white.
[Sidenote: April 6, B.C. 46.] The time of clemency was past. Publius
Ligarius was taken in a skirmish. He had been one of the captives at
Lerida who had given his word to serve no further in the war. He was
tried for breaking his engagement, and was put to death. Still,
Scipio's army kept the field in full strength, the loss by desertions
being made up by fresh recruits sent from Utica by Cato. Caesar's men
flinched from facing the elephants, and time was lost while other
elephants were fetched from Italy, that they might handle them and grow
familiar with them. Scipio had been taught caution by the fate of
Pompey, and avoided a battle, and thus three months wore away before a
decisive impression had been made. But the clear dark eyes of the
conqueror of Pharsalia had taken the measure of the situation and
comprehended the features of it. By this time he had an effective
squadron of ships, which had swept off Pompey's cruisers; and if Scipio
shrank from an engagement it was possible to force him into it. A
division of Scipio's troops were in the peninsula of Thapsus.[5] If
Thapsus was blockaded at sea and besieged by land, Scipio would be
driven to come to its relief, and would have to fight in the open
country. Caesar occupied the neck of the peninsula, and the result was
what he knew it must be. Scipio and Juba came down out of the hills
with their united armies. Their legions were beginning to form
intrenchments, and Caesar was leisurely watching their operations, when
at the sight of the enemy an irresistible enthusiasm ran through his
lines. The cry rose for instant attack; and Caesar, yielding willingly
to the universal impulse, sprang on his horse and led the charge in
person. There was no real fighting. The elephants which Scipio had
placed in front wheeled about and plunged back into the camp,
trumpeting and roaring. The vallum was carried at a rush, and afterward
there was less a battle than a massacre. Officers and men fled for
their lives like frightened antelopes, or flung themselves on their
knees for mercy. This time no mercy was shown. The deliberate cruelty
with which the war had been carried on had done its work at last. The
troops were savage, and killed every man that they overtook. Caesar
tried to check the carnage, but his efforts were unavailing. The
leaders escaped for the time by the speed of their horses. They
scattered with a general purpose of making for Spain. Labienus reached
it, but few besides him. Afranius and Faustus Sylla with a party of
cavalry galloped to Utica, which they expected to hold till one of the
Pompeys could bring vessels to take them off. The Utican towns-people
had from the first shown an inclination for Caesar. Neither they nor
any other Romans in Africa liked the prospect of being passed over to
the barbarians.
[Sidenote: B.C. 46.] Cowards smarting under defeat are always cruel.
The fugitives from Thapsus found that Utica would not be available for
their purpose, and in revenge they began to massacre the citizens. Cato
was still in the town. Cato was one of those better natured men whom
revolution yokes so often with base companionship. He was shocked at
the needless cruelty, and bribed the murderous gang to depart. They
were taken soon afterward by Caesar's cavalry. Afranius and Sylla were
brought into the camp as prisoners. There was a discussion in the camp
as to what was to be done with them. Caesar wished to be lenient, but
the feeling in the legions was too strong. The system of pardons could
not be continued in the face of hatred so envenomed. The two commanders
were executed; Caesar contenting himself with securing Sylla's property
for his wife, Pompeia, the great Pompey's daughter. Cato Caesar was
most anxious to save; but Cato's enmity was so ungovernable that he
grudged Caesar the honor of forgiving him. His animosity had been
originally the natural antipathy which a man of narrow understanding
instinctively feels for a man of genius. It had been converted by
perpetual disappointment into a monomania, and Caesar had become to him
the incarnation of every quality and every principle which he most
abhorred. Cato was upright, unselfish, incorruptibly pure in deed and
word; but he was a fanatic whom no experience could teach, and he
adhered to his convictions with the more tenacity, because fortune or
the disposition of events so steadily declared them to be mistaken. He
would have surrendered Caesar to the Germans as a reward for having
driven them back over the Rhine. He was one of those who were most
eager to impeach him for the acts of his consulship, though the acts
themselves were such as, if they had been done by another, he would
himself have most warmly approved; and he was tempted by personal
dislike to attach himself to men whose object was to reimpose upon his
country a new tyranny of Sylla. His character had given respectability
to a cause which, if left to its proper defenders, would have appeared
in its natural baseness, and thus on him rested the responsibility for
the color of justice in which it was disguised. That after all which
had passed he should be compelled to accept his pardon at Caesar's
hands was an indignity to which he could not submit, and before the
conqueror could reach Utica he fell upon his sword and died. _Ultimus
Romanorum_ has been the epitaph which posterity has written on the tomb
of Cato. Nobler Romans than he lived after him; and a genuine son of
the old Republic would never have consented to surrender an imperial
province to a barbarian prince. But at least he was an open enemy. He
would not, like his nephew Brutus, have pretended to be Caesar's
friend, that he might the more conveniently drive a dagger into his
side.
The rest of the party was broken up. Scipio sailed for Spain, but was
driven back by foul weather into Hippo, where he was taken and killed.
His correspondence was found and taken to Caesar, who burnt it unread,
as he had burnt Pompey's. The end of Juba and Petreius had a wild
splendor about it. They had fled together from Thapsus to Zama, Juba's
own principal city, and they were refused admission. Disdaining to be
taken prisoners, as they knew they inevitably would be, they went to a
country house in the neighborhood belonging to the king. There, after a
last sumptuous banquet, they agreed to die like warriors by each
other's hand. Juba killed Petreius, and then ran upon his own sword.
So the actors in the drama were passing away. Domitius, Pompey,
Lentulus, Ligarius, Metellus Scipio, Afranius, Cato, Petreius, had sunk
into bloody graves. Labienus had escaped clear from the battle; and
knowing that if Caesar himself would pardon him Caesar's army never
would, he made his way to Spain, where one last desperate hope
remained. The mutinous legions of Cassius Longinus had declared for the
Senate. Some remnants of Pompey's troops who had been dismissed after
Lerida had been collected again and joined them; and these, knowing, as
Labienus knew, that they had sinned beyond forgiveness, were prepared
to fight to the last and die at bay.
One memorable scene in the African campaign must not be forgotten.
While Caesar was in difficulty at Ruspinum, and was impatiently waiting
for his legions from Sicily, there arrived a general officer of the
10th, named Caius Avienus, who had occupied the whole of one of the
transports with his personal servants, horses, and other conveniences,
and had not brought with him a single soldier. Avienus had been already
privately noted by Caesar as having been connected with the mutiny in
Campania. His own habits in the field were simple in the extreme, and
he hated to see his officers self-indulgent. He used the opportunity to
make an example of him and of one or two others at the same time.
He called his tribunes and centurions together. "I could wish," he
said, "that certain persons would have remembered for themselves parts
of their past conduct which, though I overlooked them, were known to
me; I could wish they would have atoned for these faults by special
attention to their duties. As they have not chosen to do this, I must
make an example of them as a warning to others.
"You, Caius Avienus, instigated soldiers in the service of the State to
mutiny against their commanders. You oppressed towns which were under
your charge. Forgetting your duty to the army and to me, you filled a
vessel with your own establishment which was intended for the transport
of troops; and at a difficult moment we were thus left, through your
means, without the men whom we needed. For these causes, and as a mark
of disgrace, I dismiss you from the service, and I order you to leave
Africa by the first ship which sails.
"You, Aulus Fonteius [another tribune], have been a seditious and a bad
officer. I dismiss you also.
"You, Titus Salienus, Marcus Tiro, Caius Clusinas, centurions, obtained
your commissions by favor, not by merit. You have shown want of courage
in the field; your conduct otherwise has been uniformly bad; you have
encouraged a mutinous spirit in your companies. You are unworthy to
serve under my command. You are dismissed, and will return to Italy."
The five offenders were sent under guard on board ship, each noticeably
being allowed a single slave to wait upon him, and so were expelled
from the country.
This remarkable picture of Caesar's method of enforcing discipline is
described by a person who was evidently present;[6] and it may be taken
as a correction to the vague stories of his severity to these officers
which are told by Dion Cassius.
[1] _To Atticus_, xi. 7.
[2] Citizens.
[3] Where the African coast turns south from Cape Bon.
[4] "Animum enim altum et erectum prae se gerebat."--_De Bello
Africano_.
[5] Between Carthage and Utica.
[6] _De Bella Africano_, c. 54. This remarkably interesting narrative
is attached to Caesar's _Commentaries_. The author is unknown.