However this may be, on the 4th Jan. 706(28) Caesar set sail

with six legions greatly thinned by toil and sickness and 600 horsemen

from Brundisium for the coast of Epirus. It was a counterpart

to the foolhardy Britannic expedition; but at least the first throw

was fortunate. The coast was reached in the middle of the Acroceraunian

(Chimara) cliffs, at the little-frequented roadstead of Paleassa

(Paljassa). The transports were seen both from the harbour of Oricum

(creek of Avlona) where a Pompeian squadron of eighteen sail was lying,

and from the headquarters of the hostile fleet at Corcyra;

but in the one quarter they deemed themselves too weak,

in the other they were not ready to sail, so that the first freight

was landed without hindrance. While the vessels at once returned

to bring over the second, Caesar on that same evening scaled

the Acroceraunian mountains. His first successes were as great

as the surprise of his enemies. The Epirot militia nowhere

offered resistance; the important seaport towns of Oricum

and Apollonia along with a number of smaller townships were taken,

and Dyrrhachium, selected by the Pompeians as their chief arsenal

and filled with stores of all sorts, but only feebly garrisoned,

was in the utmost danger.

Caesar Cut Off from Italy

But the further course of the campaign did not correspond

to this brilliant beginning. Bibulus subsequently made up in some measure

for the negligence, of which he had allowed himself to be guilty,

by redoubling his exertions. He not only captured nearly thirty

of the transports returning home, and caused them with every living

thing on board to be burnt, but he also established along

the whole district of coast occupied by Caesar, from the island Sason

(Saseno) as far as the ports of Corcyra, a most careful watch,

however troublesome it was rendered by the inclement season

of the year and the necessity of bringing everything necessary

for the guard-ships, even wood and water, from Corcyra; in fact

his successor Libo--for he himself soon succumbed to the unwonted

fatigues--even blockaded for a time the port of Brundisium,

till the want of water again dislodged him from the little island

in front of it on which he had established himself. It was

not possible for Caesar's officers to convey the second portion

of the army over to their general. As little did he himself

succeed in the capture of Dyrrhachium. Pompeius learned through

one of Caesar's peace envoys as to his preparations for the voyage

to the Epirot coast, and, thereupon accelerating his march,

threw himself just at the right time into that important arsenal.

The situation of Caesar was critical. Although he extended his range

in Epirus as far as with his slight strength was at all possible,

the subsistence of his army remained difficult and precarious,

while the enemy, in possession of the magazines of Dyrrhachium

and masters of the sea, had abundance of everything. With his army

presumably little above 20,000 strong he could not offer battle

to that of Pompeius at least twice as numerous, but had to deem himself

fortunate that Pompeius went methodically to work and, instead

of immediately forcing a battle, took up his winter quarters

between Dyrrhachium and Apollonia on the right bank of the Apsus,

facing Caesar on the left, in order that after the arrival

of the legions from Pergamus in the spring he might annihilate

the enemy with an irresistibly superior force. Thus months passed.

If the arrival of the better season, which brought to the enemy

a strong additional force and the free use of his fleet, found Caesar

still in the same position, he was to all appearance lost,

with his weak band wedged in among the rocks of Epirus between

the immense fleet and the three times superior land army of the enemy;

and already the winter was drawing to a close. His sole hope

still depended on the transport fleet; that it should steal

or fight its way through the blockade was hardly to be hoped for;

but after the first voluntary foolhardiness this second venture

was enjoined by necessity. How desperate his situation appeared

to Caesar himself, is shown by his resolution--when the fleet

still came not--to sail alone in a fisherman's boat across the Adriatic

to Brundisium in order to fetch it; which, in reality, was only abandoned

because no mariner was found to undertake the daring voyage.

Antonius Proceed to Epirus

But his appearance in person was not needed to induce

the faithful officer who commanded in Italy, Marcus Antonius,

to make this last effort for the saving of his master. Once more

the transport fleet, with four legions and 800 horsemen on board

sailed from the harbour of Brundisium, and fortunately a strong

south wind carried it past Libo's galleys. But the same wind,

which thus saved the fleet, rendered it impossible for it to land

as it was directed on the coast of Apollonia, and compelled it

to sail past the camps of Caesar and Pompeius and to steer

to the north of Dyrrhachium towards Lissus, which town

fortunately still adhered to Caesar.(29) When it sailed

past the harbour of Dyrrhachium, the Rhodian galleys started

in pursuit, and hardly had the ships of Antonius entered

the port of Lissus when the enemy's squadron appeared before it.

But just at this moment the wind suddenly veered, and drove

the pursuing galleys back into the open sea and partly

on the rocky coast. Through the most marvellous good fortune

the landing of the second freight had also been successful.

Junction of Caesar's Army

Antonius and Caesar were no doubt still some four days' march

from each other, separated by Dyrrhachium and the whole army

of the enemy; but Antonius happily effected the perilous march

round about Dyrrhachium through the passes of the Graba Balkan,

and was received by Caesar, who had gone to meet him, on the right bank

of the Apsus. Pompeius, after having vainly attempted to prevent

the junction of the two armies of the enemy and to force the corps

of Antonius to fight by itself, took up a new position at Asparagium

on the river Genusus (Skumbi), which flows parallel to the Apsus

between the latter and the town of Dyrrhachium, and here remained

once more immoveable. Caesar felt himself now strong enough

to give battle; but Pompeius declined it. On the other hand Caesar

succeeded in deceiving his adversary and throwing himself unawares

with his better marching troops, just as at Ilerda, between

the enemy's camp and the fortress of Dyrrhachium on which it rested

as a basis. The chain of the Graba Balkan, which stretching

in a direction from east to west ends on the Adriatic

in the narrow tongue of land at Dyrrhachium, sends off--fourteen miles

to the east of Dyrrhachium--in a south-westerly direction a lateral

branch which likewise turns in the form of a crescent towards the sea,

and the main chain and lateral branch of the mountains enclose

between themselves a small plain extending round a cliff on the seashore.

Pompeius now took up his camp, and, although Caesar's army kept

the land route to Dyrrhachium closed against him, he yet with the aid

of his fleet remained constantly in communication with the town

and was amply and easily provided from it with everything needful;

while among the Caesarians, notwithstanding strong detachments

to the country lying behind, and notwithstanding all the exertions

of the general to bring about an organized system of conveyance

and thereby a regular supply, there was more than scarcity, and flesh,

barley, nay even roots had very frequently to take the place

of the wheat to which they were accustomed.

Caesar Invests the Camp of Pompeius

As his phlegmatic opponent persevered in his inaction, Caesar

undertook to occupy the circle of heights which enclosed the plain

on the shore held by Pompeius, with the view of being able at least

to arrest the movements of the superior cavalry of the enemy

and to operate with more freedom against Dyrrhachium, and if possible

to compel his opponent either to battle or to embarkation. Nearly

the half of Caesar's troops was detached to the interior;

it seemed almost Quixotic to propose with the rest virtually

to besiege an army perhaps twice as strong, concentrated in position,

and resting on the sea and the fleet. Yet Caesar's veterans by infinite

exertions invested the Pompeian camp with a chain of posts

sixteen miles long, and afterwards added, just as before Alesia,

to this inner line a second outer one, to protect themselves

against attacks from Dyrrhachium and against attempts to turn

their position which could so easily be executed with the aid

of the fleet. Pompeius attacked more than once portions

of these entrenchments with a view to break if possible the enemy's line,

but he did not attempt to prevent the investment by a battle;

he preferred to construct in his turn a number of entrenchments

around his camp, and to connect them with one another by lines.

Both sides exerted themselves to push forward their trenches

as far as possible, and the earthworks advanced but slowly amidst

constant conflicts. At the same time skirmishing went on

on the opposite side of Caesar's camp with the garrison of Dyrrhachium;

Caesar hoped to get the fortress into his power by means

of an understanding with some of its inmates, but was prevented

by the enemy's fleet. There was incessant fighting at very different

points--on one of the hottest days at six places simultaneously--

and, as a rule, the tried valour of the Caesarians had the advantage

in these skirmishes; once, for instance, a single cohort

maintained itself in its entrenchments against four legions

for several hours, till support came up. No prominent success

was attained on either side; yet the effects of the investment came

by degrees to be oppressively felt by the Pompeians. The stopping

of the rivulets flowing from the heights into the plain compelled them

to be content with scanty and bad well-water. Still more severely felt

was the want of fodder for the beasts of burden and the horses,

which the fleet was unable adequately to remedy; numbers of them died,

and it was of but little avail that the horses were conveyed by the fleet

to Dyrrhachium, because there also they did not find sufficient fodder.

Caesar's Lines Broken

Caesar Once More Defeated

Pompeius could not much longer delay to free himself

from his disagreeable position by a blow struck against the enemy.

He was informed by Celtic deserters that the enemy had neglected

to secure the beach between his two chains of entrenchments

600 feet distant from each other by a cross-wall, and on this

he formed his plan. While he caused the inner line of Caesar's

entrenchments to be attacked by the legions from the camp,

and the outer line by the light troops placed in vessels

and landed beyond the enemy's entrenchments, a third division

landed in the space left between the two lines and attacked

in the rear their already sufficiently occupied defenders.

The entrenchment next to the sea was taken, and the garrison fled

in wild confusion; with difficulty the commander of the next trench

Marcus Antonius succeeded in maintaining it and in setting

a limit for the moment to the advance of the Pompeians; but;

apart from the considerable loss, the outermost entrenchment

along the sea remained in the hands of the Pompeians and the lin

was broken through. Caesar the more eagerly seized the opportunity,

which soon after presented itself, of attacking a Pompeian legion,

which had incautiously become isolated, with the bulk

of his infantry. But the attacked offered valiant resistance,

and, as the ground on which the fight took place had been several times

employed for the encampment of larger and lesser divisions

and was intersected in various directions by mounds and ditches,

Caesar's right wing along with the cavalry entirely missed its way;

instead of supporting the left in attacking the Pompeian legion,

it got into a narrow trench that led from one of the old camps

towards the river. So Pompeius, who came up in all haste

with five legions to the aid of his troops, found the two wings

of the enemy separated from each other, and one of them

in an utterly forlorn position. When the Caesarians saw him advance,

a panic seized them; the whole plunged into disorderly flight;

and, if the matter ended with the loss of 1000 of the best soldiers

and Caesar's army did not sustain a complete defeat, this was due

simply to the circumstance that Pompeius also could not freely

develop his force on the broken ground, and to the further fact that,

fearing a stratagem, he at first held back his troops.

Consequences of Caesar's Defeats

But, even as it was, these days were fraught with mischief.

Not only had Caesar endured the most serious losses and forfeited

at a blow his entrenchments, the result of four months of gigantic

labour; he was by the recent engagements thrown back again exactly

to the point from which he had set out. From the sea he was

more completely driven than ever, since Pompeius' elder son Gnaeus

had by a bold attack partly burnt, partly carried off, Caesar's

few ships of war lying in the port of Oricum, and had soon afterwards

also set fire to the transport fleet that was left behind in Lissus;

all possibility of bringing up fresh reinforcements to Caesar

by sea from Brundisium was thus lost. The numerous Pompeian cavalry,

now released from their confinement, poured themselves over

the adjacent country and threatened to render the provisioning

of Caesar's army, which had always been difficult, utterly impossible.

Caesar's daring enterprise of carrying on offensive operations

without ships against an enemy in command of the sea and resting

on his fleet had totally failed. On what had hitherto been

the theatre of war he found himself in presence of an impregnable

defensive position, and unable to strike a serious blow either

against Dyrrhachium or against the hostile army; on the other hand

it depended now solely on Pompeius whether he should proceed

to attack under the most favourable circumstances an antagonist

already in grave danger as to his means of subsistence. The war

had arrived at a crisis. Hitherto Pompeius had, to all appearance,

played the game of war without special plan, and only adjusted

his defence according to the exigencies of each attack; and this was

not to be censured, for the protraction of the war gave him opportunity

of making his recruits capable of fighting, of bringing up his reserves,

and of bringing more fully into play the superiority of his fleet

in the Adriatic. Caesar was beaten not merely in tactics

but also in strategy. This defeat had not, it is true,

that effect which Pompeius not without reason expected; the eminent

soldierly energy of Caesar's veterans did not allow matters

to come to an immediate and total breaking up of the army

by hunger and mutiny. But yet it seemed as if it depended solely

on his opponent by judiciously following up his victory

to reap its full fruits.

War Prospects of Pompeius

Scipio and Calvinus

It was for Pompeius to assume the aggressive; and he was resolved

to do so. Three different ways of rendering his victory fruitful

presented themselves to him. The first and simplest was not to desist

from assailing the vanquished army, and, if it departed,

to pursue it. Secondly, Pompeius might leave Caesar himself

and his best troops in Greece, and might cross in person, as he had

long been making preparations for doing, with the main army to Italy,

where the feeling was decidedly antimonarchical and the forces

of Caesar, after the despatch of the best troops and their brave

and trustworthy commandant to the Greek army, would not be

of very much moment. Lastly, the victor might turn inland,

effect a junction with the legions of Metellus Scipio, and attempt

to capture the troops of Caesar stationed in the interior.

The latter forsooth had, immediately after the arrival of the second

freight from Italy, on the one hand despatched strong detachments

to Aetolia and Thessaly to procure means of subsistence for his army,

and on the other had ordered a corps of two legions under Gnaeus

Domitius Calvinus to advance on the Egnatian highway towards Macedonia,

with the view of intercepting and if possible defeating in detail

the corps of Scipio advancing on the same road from Thessalonica.

Calvinus and Scipio had already approached within a few miles

of each other, when Scipio suddenly turned southward and, rapidly

crossing the Haliacmon (Inje Karasu) and leaving his baggage there

under Marcus Favonius, penetrated into Thessaly, in order to attack

with superior force Caesar's legion of recruits employed

in the reduction of the country under Lucius Cassius Longinus.

But Longinus retired over the mountains towards Ambracia to join

the detachment under Gnaeus Calvisius Sabinus sent by Caesar

to Aetolia, and Scipio could only cause him to be pursued

by his Thracian cavalry, for Calvinus threatened his reserve

left behind under Favonius on the Haliacmon with the same fate

which he had himself destined for Longinus. So Calvinus and Scipio

met again on the Haliacmon, and encamped there for a considerable time

opposite to each other.

Caesar's Retreat from Dyrrachium to Thessaly

Pompeius might choose among these plans; no choice was left to Caesar.

After that unfortunate engagement he entered on his retreat to Apollonia.

Pompeius followed. The march from Dyrrhachium to Apollonia

along a difficult road crossed by several rivers was no easy task

for a defeated army pursued by the enemy; but the dexterous leadership

of their general and the indestructible marching energy of the soldiers

compelled Pompeius after four days' pursuit to suspend it as useless.

He had now to decide between the Italian expedition and the march

into the interior. However advisable and attractive the former

might seem, and though various voices were raised in its favour,

he preferred not to abandon the corps of Scipio, the more especially

as he hoped by this march to get the corps of Calvinus into his hands.

Calvinus lay at the moment on the Egnatian road at Heraclea Lyncestis,

between Pompeius and Scipio, and, after Caesar had retreated

to Apollonia, farther distant from the latter than from the great army

of Pompeius; without knowledge, moreover, of the events at Dyrrhachium

and of his hazardous position, since after the successes achieved

at Dyrrhachium the whole country inclined to Pompeius and the messengers

of Caesar were everywhere seized. It was not till the enemy's

main force had approached within a few hours of him that Calvinus

learned from the accounts of the enemy's advanced posts themselves

the state of things. A quick departure in a southerly direction

towards Thessaly withdrew him at the last moment from imminent

destruction; Pompeius had to content himself with having

liberated Scipio from his position of peril. Caesar had meanwhile

arrived unmolested at Apollonia. Immediately after the disaster

of Dyrrhachium he had resolved if possible to transfer the struggle

from the coast away into the interior, with the view of getting beyond

the reach of the enemy's fleet--the ultimate cause of the failure

of his previous exertions. The march to Apollonia had only been intended

to place his wounded in safety and to pay his soldiers there,

where his depots were stationed; as soon as this was done,

he set out for Thessaly, leaving behind garrisons in Apollonia,

Oricum, and Lissus. The corps of Calvinus had also put itself

in motion towards Thessaly; and Caesar could effect a junction

with the reinforcements coming up from Italy, this time by the land-route

through Illyria--two legions under Quintus Cornificius--still more easily

in Thessaly than in Epirus. Ascending by difficult paths in the valley

of the Aous and crossing the mountain-chain which separates Epirus

from Thessaly, he arrived at the Peneius; Calvinus was likewise

directed thither, and the junction of the two armies was thus accomplished

by the shortest route and that which was least exposed to the enemy.

It took place at Aeginium not far from the source of the Peneius.

The first Thessalian town before which the now united army appeared,

Gomphi, closed its gates against it; it was quickly stormed and given up

to pillage, and the other towns of Thessaly terrified by this example

submitted, so soon as Caesar's legions merely appeared before the walls.

Amidst these marches and conflicts, and with the help of the supplies--

albeit not too ample--which the region on the Peneius afforded,

the traces and recollections of the calamitous days through which

they had passed gradually vanished.

The victories of Dyrrhachium had thus borne not much immediate fruit

for the victors. Pompeius with his unwieldy army and his numerous

cavalry had not been able to follow his versatile enemy

into the mountains; Caesar like Calvinus had escaped from pursuit,

and the two stood united and in full security in Thessaly.

Perhaps it would have been the best course, if Pompeius had now

without delay embarked with his main force for Italy, where success

was scarcely doubtful. But in the meantime only a division

of the fleet departed for Sicily and Italy. In the camp of the coalition

the contest with Caesar was looked on as so completely decided

by the battles of Dyrrhachium that it only remained to reap the fruits

of victory, in other words, to seek out and capture the defeated army.

Their former over-cautious reserve was succeeded by an arrogance

still less justified by the circumstances; they gave no heed

to the facts, that they had, strictly speaking, failed in the pursuit,

that they had to hold themselves in readiness to encounter

a completely refreshed and reorganized army in Thessaly,

and that there was no small risk in moving away from the sea,

renouncing the support of the fleet, and following their antagonist

to the battlefield chosen by himself. They were simply resolved

at any price to fight with Caesar, and therefore to get at him

as soon as possible and by the most convenient way. Cato took up

the command in Dyrrhachium, where a garrison was left behind

of eighteen cohorts, and in Corcyra, where 300 ships of war were left;

Pompeius and Scipio proceeded--the former, apparently, following

the Egnatian way as far as Pella and then striking into the great road

to the south, the latter from the Haliacmon through the passes

of Olympus--to the lower Peneius and met at Larisa.

The Armies at Pharsalus

Caesar lay to the south of Larisa in the plain--which extends

between the hill-country of Cynoscephalae and the chain of Othrys

and is intersected by a tributary of the Peneius, the Enipeus--

on the left bank of the latter stream near the town of Pharsalus;

Pompeius pitched his camp opposite to him on the right bank

of the Enipeus along the slope of the heights of Cynoscephalae.(30)

The entire army of Pompeius was assembled; Caesar on the other hand

still expected the corps of nearly two legions formerly detached

to Aetolia and Thessaly, now stationed under Quintus Fufius Calenus

in Greece, and the two legions of Cornificius which were sent

after him by the land-route from Italy and had already arrived

in Illyria. The army of Pompeius, numbering eleven legions

or 47,000 men and 7000 horse, was more than double that of Caesar

in infantry, and seven times as numerous in cavalry; fatigue

and conflicts had so decimated Caesar's troops, that his eight legions

did not number more than 22,000 men under arms, consequently

not nearly the half of their normal amount. The victorious army

of Pompeius provided with a countless cavalry and good magazines had

provisions in abundance, while the troops of Caesar had difficulty

in keeping themselves alive and only hoped for better supplies

from the corn-harvest not far distant. The Pompeian soldiers,

who had learned in the last campaign to know war and trust their leader,

were in the best of humour. All military reasons on the side

of Pompeius favoured the view, that the decisive battle should not be

long delayed, seeing that they now confronted Caesar in Thessaly;

and the emigrant impatience of the many genteel officers and others

accompanying the army doubtless had more weight than even such reasons

in the council of war. Since the events of Dyrrhachium

these lords regarded the triumph of their party as an ascertained fact;

already there was eager strife as to the filling up of Caesar's

supreme pontificate, and instructions were sent to Rome

to hire houses at the Forum for the next elections. When Pompeius

hesitated on his part to cross the rivulet which separated

the two armies, and which Caesar with his much weaker army

did not venture to pass, this excited great indignation; Pompeius,

it was alleged, only delayed the battle in order to rule somewhat longer

over so many consulars and praetorians and to perpetuate his part

of Agamemnon. Pompeius yielded; and Caesar, who under the impression

that matters would not come to a battle, had just projected

a mode of turning the enemy's army and for that purpose was on the point

of setting out towards Scotussa, likewise arrayed his legions for battle,

when he saw the Pompeians preparing to offer it to him on his bank.

The Battle

Thus the battle of Pharsalus was fought on the 9th August 706,

almost on the same field where a hundred and fifty years before

the Romans had laid the foundation of their dominion in the east.(31)

Pompeius rested his right wing on the Enipeus; Caesar opposite

to him rested his left on the broken ground stretching in front

of the Enipeus; the two other wings were stationed out in the plain,

covered in each case by the cavalry and the light troops.

The intention of Pompeius was to keep his infantry on the defensive,

but with his cavalry to scatter the weak band of horsemen which,

mixed after the German fashion with light infantry, confronted him,

and then to take Caesar's right wing in rear. His infantry

courageously sustained the first charge of that of the enemy,

and the engagement there came to a stand. Labienus likewise dispersed

the enemy's cavalry after a brave but short resistance,

and deployed his force to the left with the view of turning

the infantry. But Caesar, foreseeing the defeat of his cavalry,

had stationed behind it on the threatened flank of his right wing

some 2000 of his best legionaries. As the enemy's horsemen,

driving those of Caesar before them, galloped along and around the line,

they suddenly came upon this select corps advancing intrepidly

against them and, rapidly thrown into confusion by the unexpected

and unusual infantry attack,(32) they galloped at full speed

from the field of battle. The victorious legionaries cut to pieces

the enemy's archers now unprotected, then rushed at the left wing

of the enemy, and began now on their part to turn it. At the same time

Caesar's third division hitherto reserved advanced along

the whole line to the attack. The unexpected defeat of the best arm

of the Pompeian army, as it raised the courage of their opponents,

broke that of the army and above all that of the general. When Pompeius,

who from the outset did not trust his infantry, saw the horsemen

gallop off, he rode back at once from the field of battle to the camp,

without even awaiting the issue of the general attack ordered by Caesar.

His legions began to waver and soon to retire over the brook

into the camp, which was not accomplished without severe loss.

Its Issue

Flight of Pompeius

The day was thus lost and many an able soldier had fallen,

but the army was still substantially intact, and the situation

of Pompeius was far less perilous than that of Caesar after the defeat

of Dyrrhachium. But while Caesar in the vicissitudes of his destiny

had learned that fortune loves to withdraw herself at certain moments

even from her favourites in order to be once more won back

through their perseverance, Pompeius knew fortune hitherto

only as the constant goddess, and despaired of himself and of her

when she withdrew from him; and, while in Caesar's grander nature

despair only developed yet mightier energies, the inferior soul

of Pompeius under similar pressure sank into the infinite abyss

of despondency. As once in the war with Sertorius he had been

on the point of abandoning the office entrusted to him in presence

of his superior opponent and of departing,(33) so now, when he saw

the legions retire over the stream, he threw from him the fatal

general's scarf, and rode off by the nearest route to the sea,

to find means of embarking there. His army discouraged and leaderless--

for Scipio, although recognized by Pompeius as colleague in supreme

command, was yet general-in-chief only in name--hoped to find protection

behind the camp-walls; but Caesar allowed it no rest; the obstinate

resistance of the Roman and Thracian guard of the camp was speedily

overcome, and the mass was compelled to withdraw in disorder

to the heights of Crannon and Scotussa, at the foot of which

the camp was pitched. It attempted by moving forward along these hills

to regain Larisa; but the troops of Caesar, heeding neither

booty nor fatigue and advancing by better paths in the plain,

intercepted the route of the fugitives; in fact, when late

in the evening the Pompeians suspended their march, their pursuers

were able even to draw an entrenched line which precluded

the fugitives from access to the only rivulet to be found

in the neighbourhood. So ended the day of Pharsalus. The enemy's army

was not only defeated, but annihilated; 15,000 of the enemy

lay dead or wounded on the field of battle, while the Caesarians missed

only 200 men; the body which remained together, amounting still

to nearly 20,000 men, laid down their arms on the morning after

the battle only isolated troops, including, it is true, the officers

of most note, sought a refuge in the mountains; of the eleven eagles

of the enemy nine were handed over to Caesar. Caesar,

who on the very day of the battle had reminded the soldiers

that they should not forget the fellow-citizen in the foe,

did not treat the captives as did Bibulus and Labienus;

nevertheless he too found it necessary now to exercise some severity.

The common soldiers were incorporated in the army, fines

or confiscations of property were inflicted on the men of better rank;

the senators and equites of note who were taken, with few exceptions,

suffered death. The time for clemency was past; the longer

the civil war lasted, the more remorseless and implacable it became.

The Political Effects of the Battle of Pharsalus

The East Submits

Some time elapsed, before the consequences of the 9th of August 706

could be fully discerned. What admitted of least doubt,

was the passing over to the side of Caesar of all those

who had attached themselves to the party vanquished at Pharsalus

merely as to the more powerful; the defeat was so thoroughly

decisive, that the victor was joined by all who were not willing

or were not obliged to fight for a lost cause. All the kings,

peoples, and cities, which had hitherto been the clients of Pompeius,

now recalled their naval and military contingents and declined

to receive the refugees of the beaten party; such as Egypt, Cyrene,

the communities of Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia and Asia Minor, Rhodes,

Athens, and generally the whole east. In fact Pharnaces

king of the Bosporus pushed his officiousness so far, that on the news

of the Pharsalian battle he took possession not only of the town

of Phanagoria which several years before had been declared free

by Pompeius, and of the dominions of the Colchian princes confirmed

by him, but even of the kingdom of Little Armenia which Pompeius

had conferred on king Deiotarus. Almost the sole exceptions

to this general submission were the little town of Megara

which allowed itself to be besieged and stormed by the Caesarians,

and Juba king of Numidia, who had for long expected, and after the victory

over Curio expected only with all the greater certainty, that his kingdom

would be annexed by Caesar, and was thus obliged for better or for worse

to abide by the defeated party.

The Aristocracy after the Battle of Pharsalus

In the same way as the client communities submitted to the victor

of Pharsalus, the tail of the constitutional party--all who had

joined it with half a heart or had even, like Marcus Cicero

and his congeners, merely danced around the aristocracy like the witches

around the Brocken--approached to make their peace with the new monarch,

a peace accordingly which his contemptuous indulgence readily

and courteously granted to the petitioners. But the flower

of the defeated party made no compromise. All was over

with the aristocracy; but the aristocrats could never become converted

to monarchy. The highest revelations of humanity are perishable;

the religion once true may become a lie,(34) the polity once fraught

with blessing may become a curse; but even the gospel that is past

still finds confessors, and if such a faith cannot remove mountains

like faith in the living truth, it yet remains true to itself

down to its very end, and does not depart from the realm of the living

till it has dragged its last priests and its last partisans

along with it, and a new generation, freed from those shadows of the past

and the perishing, rules over a world that has renewed its youth.

So it was in Rome. Into whatever abyss of degeneracy the aristocratic

rule had now sunk, it had once been a great political system;

the sacred fire, by which Italy had been conquered and Hannibal

had been vanquished, continued to glow--although somewhat dimmed

and dull--in the Roman nobility so long as that nobility existed,

and rendered a cordial understanding between the men of the old regime

and the new monarch impossible. A large portion of the constitutional

party submitted at least outwardly, and recognized the monarchy

so far as to accept pardon from Caesar and to retire as much as possible

into private life; which, however, ordinarily was not done

without the mental reservation of thereby preserving themselves

for a future change of things. This course was chiefly followed

by the partisans of lesser note; but the able Marcus Marcellus,

the same who had brought about the rupture with Caesar,(35)

was to be found among these judicious persons and voluntarily

banished himself to Lesbos. In the majority, however, of the genuine

aristocracy passion was more powerful than cool reflection;

along with which, no doubt, self-deceptions as to success

being still possible and apprehensions of the inevitable

vengeance of the victor variously co-operated.

Cato

No one probably formed a judgment as to the situation of affairs

with so painful a clearness, and so free from fear or hope

on his own account, as Marcus Cato. Completely convinced

that after the days of Ilerda and Pharsalus the monarchy was inevitable,

and morally firm enough to confess to himself this bitter truth

and to act in accordance with it, he hesitated for a moment whether

the constitutional party ought at all to continue a war, which would

necessarily require sacrifices for a lost cause on the part of many

who did not know why they offered them. And when he resolved

to fight against the monarchy not for victory, but for a speedier

and more honourable fall, he yet sought as far as possible to draw

no one into this war, who chose to survive the fall of the republic

and to be reconciled to monarchy. He conceived that, so long

as the republic had been merely threatened, it was a right and a duty

to compel the lukewarm and bad citizen to take part in the struggle;

but that now it was senseless and cruel to compel the individual

to share the ruin of the lost republic. Not only did he himself

discharge every one who desired to return to Italy; but when the wildest

of the wild partisans, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger, insisted

on the execution of these people and of Cicero in particular:

it was Cato alone who by his moral authority prevented it.

Pompeius

Pompeius also had no desire for peace. Had he been a man

who deserved to hold the position which he occupied, we might suppose

him to have perceived that he who aspires to a crown cannot return

to the beaten track of ordinary existence, and that there is

accordingly no place left on earth for one who has failed.

But Pompeius was hardly too noble-minded to ask a favour,

which the victor would have been perhaps magnanimous enough

not to refuse to him; on the contrary, he was probably too mean

to do so. Whether it was that he could not make up his mind

to trust himself to Caesar, or that in his usual vague

and undecided way, after the first immediate impression of the disaster

of Pharsalus had vanished, be began again to cherish hope, Pompeius

was resolved to continue the struggle against Caesar and to seek

for himself yet another battle-field after that of Pharsalus.

Military Effects of the Battle

The Leaders Scattered

Thus, however much Caesar had striven by prudence and moderation

to appease the fury of his opponents and to lessen their number,

the struggle nevertheless went on without alteration. But the leading

men had almost all taken part in the fight at Pharsalus;

and, although they all escaped with the exception of Lucius Domitius

Ahenobarbus, who was killed in the flight, they were yet scattered

in all directions, so that they were unable to concert a common plan

for the continuance of the campaign. Most of them found their way,

partly through the desolate mountains of Macedonia and Illyria,

partly by the aid of the fleet, to Corcyra, where Marcus Cato

commanded the reserve left behind. Here a sort of council

of war took place under the presidency of Cato, at which Metellus Scipio,

Titus Labienus, Lucius Afranius, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger

and others were present; but the absence of the commander-in-chief

and the painful uncertainty as to his fate, as well as the internal

dissensions of the party, prevented the adoption of any common

resolution, and ultimately each took the course which seemed to him

the most suitable for himself or for the common cause. It was in fact

in a high degree difficult to say among the many straws

to which they might possibly cling which was the one

that would keep longest above water.

Macedonia and Greece

Italy

The East

Egypt

Spain

Africa

Macedonia and Greece were lost by the battle of Pharsalus.

It is true that Cato, who had immediately on the news of the defeat

evacuated Dyrrhachium, still held Corcyra, and Rutilius Lupus

the Peloponnesus, during a time for the constitutional party.

For a moment it seemed also as if the Pompeians would make a stand

at Patrae in the Peloponnesus; but the accounts of the advance

of Calenus sufficed to frighten them from that quarter. As little

was there any attempt to maintain Corcyra. On the Italian

and Sicilian coasts the Pompeian squadrons despatched thither

after the victories of Dyrrhachium(36) had achieved not unimportant

successes against the ports of Brundisium, Messana and Vibo,

and at Messana especially had burnt the whole fleet in course

of being fitted out for Caesar; but the ships that were thus active,

mostly from Asia Minor and Syria, were recalled by their communities

in consequence of the Pharsalian battle, so that the expedition

came to an end of itself. In Asia Minor and Syria there were

at the moment no troops of either party, with the exception

of the Bosporan army of Pharnaces which had taken possession,

ostensibly on Caesar's account, of different regions belonging

to his opponents. In Egypt there was still indeed a considerable

Roman army, formed of the troops left behind there by Gabinius(37)

and thereafter recruited from Italian vagrants and Syrian

or Cilician banditti; but it was self-evident and was soon

officially confirmed by the recall of the Egyptian vessels,

that the court of Alexandria by no means had the intention

of holding firmly by the defeated party or of even placing

its force of troops at their disposal. Somewhat more favourable

prospects presented themselves to the vanquished in the west.

In Spain Pompeian sympathies were so strong among the population,

that the Caesarians had on that account to give up the attack

which they contemplated from this quarter against Africa,

and an insurrection seemed inevitable, so soon as a leader of note

should appear in the peninsula. In Africa moreover the coalition,

or rather Juba king of Numidia, who was the true regent there,

had been arming unmolested since the autumn of 705. While the whole

east was consequently lost to the coalition by the battle

of Pharsalus, it might on the other hand continue the war

after an honourable manner probably in Spain, and certainly in Africa;

for to claim the aid of the king of Numidia, who had for a long time

been subject to the Roman community, against revolutionary fellow-

burgesses was for Romans a painful humiliation doubtless, but by no means

an act of treason. Those again who in this conflict of despair

had no further regard for right or honour, might declare themselves

beyond the pale of the law, and commence hostilities as robbers;

or might enter into alliance with independent neighbouring states,

and introduce the public foe into the intestine strife; or, lastly,

might profess monarchy with the lips and prosecute the restoration

of the legitimate republic with the dagger of the assassin.

Hostilities of Robbers and Pirates

That the vanquished should withdraw and renounce the new monarchy,

was at least the natural and so far the truest expression of their

desperate position. The mountains and above all the sea had been

in those times ever since the memory of man the asylum not only

of all crime, but also of intolerable misery and of oppressed right;

it was natural for Pompeians and republicans to wage a defiant war

against the monarchy of Caesar, which had ejected them,

in the mountains and on the seas, and especially natural for them

to take up piracy on a greater scale, with more compact organization,

and with more definite aims. Even after the recall of the squadrons

that had come from the east they still possessed a very considerable

fleet of their own, while Caesar was as yet virtually without

vessels of war; and their connection with the Dalmatae who had risen

in their own interest against Caesar,(38) and their control

over the most important seas and seaports, presented the most

advantageous prospects for a naval war, especially on a small scale.

As formerly Sulla's hunting out of the democrats had ended

in the Sertorian insurrection, which was a conflict first waged

by pirates and then by robbers and ultimately became a very serious war,

so possibly, if there was in the Catonian aristocracy or among

the adherents of Pompeius as much spirit and fire as in the Marian

democracy, and if there was found among them a true sea-king,

a commonwealth independent of the monarchy of Caesar and perhaps a match

for it might arise on the still unconquered sea.

Parthian Alliance

Far more serious disapproval in every respect is due to the idea

of dragging an independent neighbouring state into the Roman civil war

and of bringing about by its means a counter-revolution;

law and conscience condemn the deserter more severely than the robber,

and a victorious band of robbers finds its way back to a free

and well-ordered commonwealth more easily than the emigrants who are

conducted back by the public foe. Besides it was scarcely probable

that the beaten party would be able to effect a restoration in this way.

The only state, from which they could attempt to seek support,

was that of the Parthians; and as to this it was at least doubtful

whether it would make their cause its own, and very improbable

that it would fight out that cause against Caesar.

The time for republican conspiracies had not yet come.

Caesar Pursues Pompeius to Egypt

While the remnant of the defeated party thus allowed themselves

to be helplessly driven about by fate, and even those

who had determined to continue the struggle knew not how or where

to do so, Caesar, quickly as ever resolving and quickly acting,

laid everything aside to pursue Pompeius--the only one of his opponents

whom he respected as an officer, and the one whose personal capture

would have probably paralyzed a half, and that perhaps

the more dangerous half, of his opponents. With a few men

he crossed the Hellespont--his single bark encountered in it a fleet

of the enemy destined for the Black Sea, and took the whole crews,

struck as with stupefaction by the news of the battle of Pharsalus,

prisoners--and as soon as the most necessary preparations were made,

hastened in pursuit of Pompeius to the east. The latter had gone

from the Pharsalian battlefield to Lesbos, whence he brought away

his wife and his second son Sextus, and had sailed onward round

Asia Minor to Cilicia and thence to Cyprus. He might have joined

his partisans at Corcyra or Africa; but repugnance toward his

aristocratic allies and the thought of the reception which awaited him

there after the day of Pharsalus and above all after his disgraceful

flight, appear to have induced him to take his own course

and rather to resort to the protection of the Parthian king

than to that of Cato. While he was employed in collecting money

and slaves from the Roman revenue-farmers and merchants in Cyprus,

and in arming a band of 2000 slaves, he received news that Antioch

had declared for Caesar and that the route to the Parthians

was no longer open. So he altered his plan and sailed to Egypt,

where a number of his old soldiers served in the army and the situation

and rich resources of the country allowed him time and opportunity

to reorganize the war.

In Egypt, after the death of Ptolemaeus Auletes (May 703)

his children, Cleopatra about sixteen years of age and Ptolemaeus Dionysus

about ten, had ascended the throne according to their father's will

jointly, and as consorts; but soon the brother or rather his guardian

Pothinus had driven the sister from the kingdom and compelled her

to seek a refuge in Syria, whence she made preparations

to get back to her paternal kingdom. Ptolemaeus and Pothinus

lay with the whole Egyptian army at Pelusium for the sake

of protecting the eastern frontier against her, just when Pompeius

cast anchor at the Casian promontory and sent a request to the king

to allow him to land. The Egyptian court, long informed of the disaster

at Pharsalus, was on the point of refusing to receive Pompeius;

but the king's tutor Theodotus pointed out that, in that case

Pompeius would probably employ his connections in the Egyptian army

to instigate rebellion; and that it would be safer, and also preferable

with regard to Caesar, if they embraced the opportunity of making away

with Pompeius. Political reasonings of this sort did not readily fail

of their effect among the statesmen of the Hellenic world.

Death of Pompeius

Achillas the general of the royal troops and some of the former soldiers

of Pompeius went off in a boat to his vessel; and invited him

to come to the king and, as the water was shallow, to enter their barge.

As he was stepping ashore, the military tribune Lucius Septimius

stabbed him from behind, under the eyes of his wife and son

who were compelled to be spectators of the murder from the deck

of their vessel, without being able to rescue or revenge

(28 Sept. 706). On the same day, on which thirteen years before

he had entered the capital in triumph over Mithradates,(39)

the man, who for a generation had been called the Great and for years

had ruled Rome, died on the desert sands of the inhospitable

Casian shore by the hand of one of his old soldiers. A good officer

but otherwise of mediocre gifts of intellect and of heart,

fate had with superhuman constancy for thirty years allowed him

to solve all brilliant and toilless tasks; had permitted him to pluck

all laurels planted and fostered by others; had brought him

face to face with all the conditions requisite for obtaining

the supreme power--only in order to exhibit in his person an example

of spurious greatness, to which history knows no parallel.

Of all pitiful parts there is none more pitiful than that of passing

for more than one really is; and it is the fate of monarchy

that this misfortune inevitably clings to it, for barely once

in a thousand years does there arise among the people a man

who is a king not merely in name, but in reality. If this disproportion

between semblance and reality has never perhaps been so abruptly marked

as in Pompeius, the fact may well excite grave reflection that it was

precisely he who in a certain sense opened the series of Roman monarchs.

Arrival of Caesar

When Caesar following the track of Pompeius arrived in the roadstead

of Alexandria, all was already over. With deep agitation

he turned away when the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man,

who had been his son-in-law and for long years his colleague

in rule, and to get whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt.

The dagger of the rash assassin precluded an answer to the question,

how Caesar would have dealt with the captive Pompeius; but, while

the humane sympathy, which still found a place in the great soul

of Caesar side by side with ambition, enjoined that he should

spare his former friend, his interest also required that he should

annihilate Pompeius otherwise than by the executioner.

Pompeius had been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler

of Rome; a dominion so deeply rooted does not perish

with the ruler's death. The death of Pompeius did not break up

the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged, incapable,

and worn-out chief in his sons Gnaeus and Sextus two leaders,

both of whom were young and active and the second was a man

of decided capacity. To the newly-founded hereditary monarchy

hereditary pretendership attached itself at once like a parasite,

and it was very doubtful whether by this change of persons Caesar

did not lose more than he gained.

Caesar Regulates Egypt

Meanwhile in Egypt Caesar had now nothing further to do,

and the Romans and the Egyptians expected that he would

immediately set sail and apply himself to the subjugation of Africa,

and to the huge task of organization which awaited him after the victory.

But Caesar faithful to his custom--wherever he found himself

in the wide empire--of finally regulating matters at once and in person,

and firmly convinced that no resistance was to be expected

either from the Roman garrison or from the court, being, moreover,

in urgent pecuniary embarrassment, landed in Alexandria

with the two amalgamated legions accompanying him to the number

of 3200 men and 800 Celtic and German cavalry, took up his quarters

in the royal palace, and proceeded to collect the necessary sums of money

and to regulate the Egyptian succession, without allowing himself

to be disturbed by the saucy remark of Pothinus that Caesar

should not for such petty matters neglect his own so important affairs.

In his dealing with the Egyptians he was just and even indulgent.

Although the aid which they had given to Pompeius justified

the imposing of a war contribution, the exhausted land was spared

from this; and, while the arrears of the sum stipulated for in 695(40)

and since then only about half paid were remitted, there was required

merely a final payment of 10,000,000 -denarii- (400,000 pounds).

The belligerent brother and sister were enjoined immediately

to suspend hostilities, and were invited to have their dispute

investigated and decided before the arbiter. They submitted;

the royal boy was already in the palace and Cleopatra also presented

herself there. Caesar adjudged the kingdom of Egypt, agreeably

to the testament of Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister

Cleopatra and Ptolemaeus Dionysus, and further gave unasked

the kingdom of Cyprus--cancelling the earlier act of annexation(41)--

as the appanageof the second-born of Egypt to the younger children

of Auletes, Arsinoe and Ptolemaeus the younger.

Insurrection in Alexandria

But a storm was secretly preparing. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city

as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian capital in the number

of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring commercial spirit,

in skill of handicraft, in taste for science and art: in the citizens

there was a lively sense of their own national importance,

and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any rate

a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their

street riots as regularly and as heartily as the Parisians

of the present day: one may conceive their feelings, when they saw

the Roman general ruling in the palace of the Lagids and their kings

accepting the award of his tribunal. Pothinus and the boy-king,

both as may be conceived very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory

requisition of old debts and with the intervention in the throne-

dispute which could only issue, as it did, in favour of Cleopatra,

sent--in order to pacify the Roman demands--the treasures

of the temples and the gold plate of the king with intentional

ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing

indignation the Egyptians--who were pious even to superstition,

and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence of their court

as if it were a possession of their own--beheld the bare walls

of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their king.

The Roman army of occupation also, which had been essentially

denationalized by its long abode in Egypt and the many intermarriages

between the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which moreover

numbered a multitude of the old soldiers of Pompeius and runaway

Italian criminals and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Caesar,

by whose orders it had been obliged to suspend its action

on the Syrian frontier, and at his handful of haughty legionaries.

The tumult even at the landing, when the multitude saw the Roman axes

carried into the old palace, and the numerous cases in which

his soldiers were assassinated in the city, had taught Caesar

the immense danger in which he was placed with his small force

in presence of that exasperated multitude. But it was difficult

to return on account of the north-west winds prevailing at this season

of the year, and the attempt at embarkation might easily become

a signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not

the nature of Caesar to take his departure without having accomplished

his work. He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements

from Asia, and meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show

of the utmost self-possession. Never was there greater gaiety

in his camp than during this rest at Alexandria; and while

the beautiful and clever Cleopatra was not sparing of her charms

in general and least of all towards her judge, Caesar also appeared

among all his victories to value most those won over beautiful women.

It was a merry prelude to graver scenes. Under the leadership

of Achillas and, as was afterwards proved, by the secret orders

of the king and his guardian, the Roman army of occupation

stationed in Egypt appeared unexpectedly in Alexandria; and as soon as

the citizens saw that it had come to attack Caesar, they made

common cause with the soldiers.

Caesar in Alexandria

With a presence of mind, which in some measure justifies

his earlier foolhardiness, Caesar hastily collected his scattered men;

seized the persons of the king and his ministers; entrenched himself

in the royal residence and the adjoining theatre; and gave orders,

as there was no time to place in safety the war-fleet stationed

in the principal harbour immediately in front of the theatre,

that it should be set on fire and that Pharos, the island

with the light-tower commanding the harbour, should be occupied

by means of boats. Thus at least a restricted position for defence

was secured, and the way was kept open to procure supplies

and reinforcements. At the same time orders were issued

to the commandant of Asia Minor as well as to the nearest

subject countries, the Syrians and Nabataeans, the Cretans

and the Rhodians, to send troops and ships in all haste to Egypt.

The insurrection at the head of which the princess Arsinoe

and her confidant the eunuch Ganymedes had placed themselves,

meanwhilehad free course in all Egypt and in the greater part

of the capital. In the streets of the latter there was daily fighting,

but without success either on the part of Caesar in gaining freer scope

and breaking through to the fresh water lake of Marea which lay behind

the town, where he could have provided himself with water and forage,

or on the part of the Alexandrians in acquiring superiority

over the besieged and depriving them of all drinking water; for,

when the Nile canals in Caesar's part of the town had been spoiled

by the introduction of salt water, drinkable water was unexpectedly found

in wells dug on the beach.

As Caesar was not to be overcome from the landward side,

the exertions of the besiegers were directed to destroy his fleet

and cut him off from the sea by which supplies reached him.

The island with the lighthouse and the mole by which this was connected

with the mainland divided the harbour into a western and an eastern half,

which were in communication with each other through two arched openings

in the mole. Caesar commanded the island and the east harbour,

while the mole and the west harbour were in possession

of the citizens; and, as the Alexandrian fleet was burnt,

his vessels sailed in and out without hindrance. The Alexandrians,

after having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships from the western

into the eastern harbour, equipped with the remnant of their arsenal

a small squadron and with this blocked up the way of Caesar's vessels,

when these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion

that had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian mariners

of Caesar mastered the enemy. Not long afterwards, however,

the citizens captured the lighthouse- island,(42) and from that point

totally closed the narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour

for larger ships; so that Caesar's fleet was compelled

to take its station in the open roads before the east harbour,

and his communication with the sea hung only on a weak thread.

Caesar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly

by the superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun

the unequal strife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island

closed the inner harbour against it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss

of the roadstead would have debarred Caesar wholly from the sea.

Though the brave legionaries, supported by the dexterity

of the Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto decided these conflicts

in favour of the Romans, the Alexandrians renewed and augmented

their naval armaments with unwearied perseverance; the besieged

had to fight as often as it pleased the besiegers, and if the former

should be on a single occasion vanquished, Caesar would be

totally hemmed in and probably lost.

It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover

the lighthouse island. The double attack, which was made by boats

from the side of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard,

in reality brought not only the island but also the lower part

of the mole into Caesar's power; it was only at the second arch-

opening of the mole that Caesar ordered the attack to be stopped,

and the mole to be there closed towards the city by a transverse wall.

But while a violent conflict arose here around the entrenchers,

the Roman troops left the lower part of the mole adjoining

the island bare of defenders; a division of Egyptians landed there

unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Roman soldiers and sailors

crowded together on the mole at the transverse wall, and drove

the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea. A part

were taken on board by the Roman ships; the most were drowned.

Some 400 soldiers and a still greater number of men belonging

to the fleet were sacrificed on this day; the general himself,

who had shared the fate of his men, had been obliged to seek refuge,

in his ship, and when this sank from having been overloaded with men,

he had to save himself by swimming to another. But, severe as was

the loss suffered, it was amply compensated by the recovery

of the lighthouse-island, which along with the mole as far as

the first arch-opening remained in the hands of Caesar.

Relieving Army from Asia Minor

At length the longed-for relief arrived. Mithradates of Pergamus,

an able warrior of the school of Mithradates Eupator, whose natural son

he claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army--

the Ityraeans of the prince of the Libanus,(43) the Bedouins

of Jamblichus, son of Sampsiceramus,(44) the Jews under the minister

Antipater, and the contingents generally of the petty chiefs

and communities of Cilicia and Syria. From Pelusium, which Mithradates

had the fortune to occupy on the day of his arrival, he took

the great road towards Memphis with the view of avoiding

the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing the Nile

before its division; during which movement his troops received

manifold support from the Jewish peasants who were settled

in peculiar numbers in this part of Egypt. The Egyptians,

with the young king Ptolemaeus now at their head, whom Caesar

had released to his people in the vain hope of allaying the insurrection

by his means, despatched an army to the Nile, to detain Mithradates

on its farther bank. This army fell in with the enemy

even beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews'-camp, between Onion

and Heliopolis; nevertheless Mithradates, trained in the Roman fashion

of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful conflicts gained

the opposite bank at Memphis. Caesar, on the other hand, as soon as

he obtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed a part

of his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Marea to the west

of Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile

to meet Mithradates advancing up the river.

Battle at the Nile

The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it.

Caesar then marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated,

overthrew, notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front,

the Egyptian vanguard at the first onset, and immediately stormed

the Egyptian camp itself. It lay at the foot of a rising ground

between the Nile--from which only a narrow path separated it--

and marshes difficult of access. Caesar caused the camp to be assailed

simultaneously from the front and from the flank on the path

along the Nile; and during this assault ordered a third detachment

to ascend unseen the heights behind the camp. The victory was complete

the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who did not fal

beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in the attempt to escape

to the fleet on the Nile. With one of the boats, which sank

overladen with men, the young king also disappeared in the waters

of his native stream.

Pacificatin of Alexandria

Immediately after the battle Caesar advanced at the head

of his cavalry from the land-side straight into the portion

of the capital occupied by the Egyptians. In mourning attire,

with the images of their gods in their hands, the enemy received him

and sued for peace; and his troops, when they saw him return as victor

from the side opposite to that by which he had set forth, welcomed him

with boundless joy. The fate of the town, which had ventured

to thwart the plans of the master of the world and had brought him

within a hair's-breadth of destruction, lay in Caesar's hands;

but he was too much of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with

the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots. Caesar--pointing

to their city severely devastated and deprived of its granaries,

of its world-renowned library, and of other important public buildings

on occasion of the burning of the fleet--exhorted the inhabitants

in future earnestly to cultivate the arts of peace alone, and to heal

the wounds which they had inflicted on themselves; for the rest,

he contented himself with granting to the Jews settled in Alexandria

the same rights which the Greek population of the city enjoyed,

and with placing in Alexandria, instead of the previous Roman army

of occupation which nominally at least obeyed the kings of Egypt,

a formal Roman garrison--two of the legions besieged there,

and a third which afterwards arrived from Syria--under a commander

nominated by himself. For this position of trust a man

was purposely selected, whose birth made it impossible for him

to abuse it--Rufio, an able soldier, but the son of a freedman.

Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemaeus obtained the sovereignty

of Egypt under the supremacy of Rome; the princess Arsinoe

was carried off to Italy, that she might not serve once more as a pretext

for insurrections to the Egyptians, who were after the Oriental fashion

quite as much devoted to their dynasty as they were indifferent

towards the individual dynasts; Cyprus became again a part

of the Roman province of Cilicia.

Course of Things during Caesar's Absence in Alexandria

This Alexandrian insurrection, insignificant as it was in itself

and slight as was its intrinsic connection with the events

of importance in the world's history which took place at the same time

in the Roman state, had nevertheless so far a momentous influence

on them that it compelled the man, who was all in all and without whom

nothing could be despatched and nothing could be solved,

to leave his proper tasks in abeyance from October 706 up to March 707

in order to fight along with Jews and Bedouins against a city rabble.

The consequences of personal rule began to make themselves felt.

They had the monarchy; but the wildest confusion prevailed everywhere,

and the monarch was absent. The Caesarians were for the moment,

just like the Pompeians, without superintendence; the ability

of the individual officers and, above all, accident

decided matters everywhere.

Insubordination of Pharnaces

In Asia Minor there was, at the time of Caesar's departure for Egypt,

no enemy. But Caesar's lieutenant there, the able Gnaeus Domitius

Calvinus, had received orders to take away again from king Pharnaces

what he had without instructions wrested from the allies of Pompeius;

and, as Pharnaces, an obstinate and arrogant despot like his father,

perseveringly refused to evacuate Lesser Armenia, no course remained

but to march against him. Calvinus had been obliged to despatch

to Egypt two out of the three legions left behind with him and formed

out of the Pharsalian prisoners of war; he filled up the gap

by one legion hastily gathered from the Romans domiciled in Pontus

and two legions of Deiotarus exercised after the Roman manner,

and advanced into Lesser Armenia. But the Bosporan army,

tried in numerous conflicts with the dwellers on the Black Sea,

showed itself more efficient than his own.

Calvinus Defeated at Nicopolis

Victory of Caesar at Ziela

In an engagement at Nicopolis the Pontic levy of Calvinus

was cut to pieces and the Galatian legions ran off; only the one old

legion of the Romans fought its way through with moderate loss.

Instead of conquering Lesser Armenia, Calvinus could not even prevent

Pharnaces from repossessing himself of his Pontic "hereditary states,"

and pouring forth the whole vials of his horrible sultanic caprices

on their inhabitants, especially the unhappy Amisenes

(winter of 706-707). When Caesar in person arrived in Asia Minor

and intimated to him that the service which Pharnaces had rendered

to him personally by having granted no help to Pompeius could not be

taken into account against the injury inflicted on the empire,

and that before any negotiation he must evacuate the province of Pontus

and send back the property which he had pillaged, he declared himself

doubtless ready to submit; nevertheless, well knowing how good reason

Caesar had for hastening to the west, he made no serious preparations

for the evacuation. He did not know that Caesar finished

whatever he took in hand. Without negotiating further,

Caesar took with him the one legion which he brought from Alexandria

and the troops of Calvinus and Deiotarus, and advanced against

the camp of Pharnaces at Ziela. When the Bosporans saw him approach,

they boldly crossed the deep mountain-ravine which covered their front,

and charged the Romans up the hill. Caesar's soldiers

were still occupied in pitching their camp, and the ranks wavered

for a moment; but the veterans accustomed to war rapidly rallied

and set the example for a general attack and for a complete victory

(2 Aug. 707). In five days the campaign was ended--an invaluable piece

of good fortune at this time, when every hour was precious.

Regulation of Asia Minor

Caesar entrusted the pursuit of the king, who had gone home by way

of Sinope to Pharnaces' illegitimate brother, the brave Mithradates

of Pergamus, who as a reward for the services rendered by him in Egypt

received the crown of the Bosporan kingdom in room of Pharnaces.

In other respects the affairs of Syria and Asia Minor were peacefully

settled; Caesar's own allies were richly rewarded, those of Pompeius

were in general dismissed with fines or reprimands. Deiotarus alone,

the most powerful of the clients of Pompeius, was again confined

to his narrow hereditary domain, the canton of the Tolistobogii.

In his stead Ariobarzanes king of Cappadocia was invested with

Lesser Armenia, and the tetrarchy of the Trocmi usurped by Deiotarus

was conferred on the new king of the Bosporus, who was descended

by the maternal side from one of the Galatian princely houses

as by the paternal from that of Pontus.

War by Land and Sea in Illyria

Defeat of Gabinius

Naval Victory at Tauris

In Illyria also, while Caesar was in Egypt, incidents of a very grave

nature had occurred. The Dalmatian coast had been for centuries

a sore blemish on the Roman rule, and its inhabitants had been

at open feud with Caesar since the conflicts around Dyrrhachium;

while the interior also since the time of the Thessalian war,

swarmed with dispersed Pompeians. Quintus Cornificius

had however, with the legions that followed him from Italy,

kept both the natives and the refugees in check and had

at the same time sufficiently met the difficult task of provisioning

the troops in these rugged districts. Even when the able

Marcus Octavius, the victor of Curicta,(45) appeared with a part

of the Pompeian fleet in these waters to wage war there against Caesar

by sea and land, Cornificius not only knew how to maintain himself,

resting for support on the ships and the harbour of the Iadestini

(Zara), but in his turn also sustained several successful engagements

at sea with the fleet of his antagonist. But when the new governor

of Illyria, the Aulus Gabinius recalled by Caesar from exile,(46)

arrived by the landward route in Illyria in the winter of 706-707

with fifteen cohorts and 3000 horse, the system of warfare

changed. Instead of confining himself like his predecessor

to war on a small scale, the bold active man undertook at once,

in spite of the inclement season, an expedition with his whole force

to the mountains. But the unfavourable weather, the difficulty

of providing supplies, and the brave resistance of the Dalmatians,

swept away the army; Gabinius had to commence his retreat,

was attacked in the course of it and disgracefully defeated

by the Dalmatians, and with the feeble remains of his fine army

had difficulty in reaching Salonae, where he soon afterwards died.

Most of the Illyrian coast towns thereupon surrendered to the fleet

of Octavius; those that adhered to Caesar, such as Salonae

and Epidaurus (Ragusa vecchia), were so hard pressed by the fleet

at sea and by the barbarians on land, that the surrender

and capitulation of the remains of the army enclosed in Salonae

seemed not far distant. Then the commandant of the depot at Brundisium,

the energetic Publius Vatinius, in the absence of ships of war caused

common boats to be provided with beaks and manned with the soldiers

dismissed from the hospitals, and with this extemporized

war-fleet gave battle to the far superior fleet of Octavius

at the island of Tauris (Torcola between Lesina and Curzola)--

a battle in which, as in so many cases, the bravery of the leader

and of the marines compensated for the deficiencies of the vessels,

and the Caesarians achieved a brilliant victory. Marcus Octavius

left these waters and proceeded to Africa (spring of 707);

the Dalmatians no doubt continued their resistance for years

with great obstinacy, but it was nothing beyond a local mountain-warfare.

When Caesar returned from Egypt, his resolute adjutant had already got rid

of the danger that was imminent in Illyria.

Reorganization of the Coalition in Africa

All the more serious was the position of things in Africa,

where the constitutional party had from the outset of the civil war

ruled absolutely and had continually augmented their power.

Down to the battle of Pharsalus king Juba had, properly speaking,

borne rule there; he had vanquished Curio, and his flying horsemen

and his numberless archers were the main strength of the army;

the Pompeian governor Varus played by his side so subordinate

a part that he even had to deliver those soldiers of Curio,

who had surrendered to him, over to the king, and had to look on

while they were executed or carried away into the interior of Numidia.

After the battle of Pharsalus a change took place. With the exception

of Pompeius himself, no man of note among the defeated party

thought of flight to the Parthians. As little did they attempt to hold

the sea with their united resources; the warfare waged by Marcus Octavius

in the Illyrian waters was isolated, and was without permanent success.

The great majority of the republicans as of the Pompeians

betook themselves to Africa, where alone an honourable

and constitutional warfare might still be waged against the usurper.

There the fragments of the army scattered at Pharsalus, the troops

that had garrisoned Dyrrhachium, Corcyra, and the Peloponnesus,

the remains of the Illyrian fleet, gradually congregated;

there the second commander-in-chief Metellus Scipio,

the two sons of Pompeius, Gnaeus and Sextus, the political leader

of the republicans Marcus Cato, the able officers Labienus,

Afranius, Petreius, Octavius and others met. If the resources

of the emigrants had diminished, their fanaticism had, if possible,

even increased. Not only did they continue to murder their prisoners

and even the officers of Caesar under flag of truce, but king Juba,

in whom the exasperation of the partisan mingled with the fury

of the half-barbarous African, laid down the maxim that in every

community suspected of sympathizing with the enemy the burgesses

ought to be extirpated and the town burnt down, and even practically

carried out this theory against some townships, such as the unfortunate

Vaga near Hadrumetum. In fact it was solely owing to the energetic

intervention of Cato that the capital of the province itself

the flourishing Utica--which, just like Carthage formerly,

had been long regarded with a jealous eye by the Numidian kings--

did not experience the same treatment from Juba, and that measures

of precaution merely were taken against its citizens,

who certainly were not unjustly accused of leaning towards Caesar.

As neither Caesar himself nor any of his lieutenants undertook

the smallest movement against Africa, the coalition had full time

to acquire political and military reorganization there. First of all,

it was necessary to fill up anew the place of commander-in-chief

vacant by the death of Pompeius. King Juba was not disinclined

still to maintain the position which he had held in Africa

up to the battle of Pharsalus; indeed he bore himself no longer

as a client of the Romans but as an equal ally or even as a protector,

and took it upon him, for example, to coin Roman silver money

with his name and device; nay, he even raised a claim to be the sole

wearer of purple in the camp, and suggested to the Roman commanders

that they should lay aside their purple mantle of office.

Further Metellus Scipio demanded the supreme command for himself,

because Pompeius had recognized him in the Thessalian campaign

as on a footing of equality, more from the consideration that he was

his son-in-law than on military grounds. The like demand was raised

by Varus as the governor--self-nominated, it is true--of Africa,

seeing that the war was to be waged in his province. Lastly the army

desired for its leader the propraetor Marcus Cato. Obviously

it was right. Cato was the only man who possessed the requisite

devotedness, energy, and authority for the difficult office;

if he was no military man, it was infinitely better to appoint

as commander-in-chief a non-military man who understood how to listen

to reason and make his subordinates act, than an officer of untried

capacity like Varus, or even one of tried incapacity like Metellus

Scipio. But the decision fell at length on this same Scipio,

and it was Cato himself who mainly determined that decision.

He did so, not because he felt himself unequal to such a task,

or because his vanity found its account rather in declining

than in accepting; still less because he loved or respected Scipio,

with whom he on the contrary was personally at variance,

and who with his notorious inefficiency had attained a certain importance

merely in virtue of his position as father-in-law to Pompeius;

but simply and solely because his obstinate legal formalism chose

rather to let the republic go to ruin in due course of law

than to save it in an irregular way. When after the battle of Pharsalus

he met with Marcus Cicero at Corcyra, he had offered to hand over

the command in Corcyra to the latter--who was still from the time

of his Cilician administration invested with the rank of general--

as the officer of higher standing according to the letter of the law,

and by this readiness had driven the unfortunate advocate,

who now cursed a thousand times his laurels from the Arnanus,

almost to despair; but he had at the same time astonished all men

of any tolerable discernment. The same principles were applied now,

when something more was at stake; Cato weighed the question

to whom the place of commander-in-chief belonged, as if the matter

had reference to a field at Tusculum, and adjudged it to Scipio.

By this sentence his own candidature and that of Varus were set aside.

But he it was also, and he alone, who confronted with energy

the claims of king Juba, and made him feel that the Roman nobility

came to him not suppliant, as to the great-prince of the Parthians,

with a view to ask aid at the hands of a protector, but as entitled

to command and require aid from a subject. In the present state

of the Roman forces in Africa, Juba could not avoid lowering

his claims to some extent; although he still carried the point

with the weak Scipio, that the pay of his troops should be charged

on the Roman treasury and the cession of the province of Africa

should be assured to him in the event of victory.

By the side of the new general-in-chief the senate of the "three hundred"

again emerged. It established its seat in Utica, and replenished

its thinned ranks by the admission of the most esteemed

and the wealthiest men of the equestrian order.

The warlike preparations were pushed forward, chiefly through

the zeal of Cato, with the greatest energy, and every man capable

of arms, even the freedman and Libyan, was enrolled in the legions;

by which course so many hands were withdrawn from agriculture

that a great part of the fields remained uncultivated, but an imposing

result was certainly attained. The heavy infantry numbered fourteen

legions, of which two were already raised by Varus, eight others

were formed partly from the refugees, partly from the conscripts

in the province, and four were legions of king Juba armed

in the Roman manner. The heavy cavalry, consisting of the Celts

and Germans who arrived with Labienus and sundry others incorporated

in their ranks, was, apart from Juba's squadron of cavalry equipped

in the Roman style, 1600 strong. The light troops consisted

of innumerable masses of Numidians riding without bridle or rein

and armed merely with javelins, of a number of mounted bowmen,

and a large host of archers on foot. To these fell to be added Juba's

120 elephants, and the fleet of 55 sail commanded by Publius Varus

and Marcus Octavius. The urgent want of money was in some measure

remedied by a self-taxation on the part of the senate, which was

the more productive as the richest African capitalists had been

induced to enter it. Corn and other supplies were accumulated

in immense quantities in the fortresses capable of defence;

at the same time the stores were as far as possible removed

from the open townships. The absence of Caesar, the troublesome temper

of his legions, the ferment in Spain and Italy gradually raised

men's spirits, and the recollection of the Pharsalian defeat

began to give way to fresh hopes of victory.

The time lost by Caesar in Egypt nowhere revenged itself

more severely than here. Had he proceeded to Africa immediately

after the death of Pompeius, he would have found there a weak,

disorganized, and frightened army and utter anarchy among the leaders;

whereas there was now in Africa, owing more especially to Cato's energy,

an army equal in number to that defeated at Pharsalus, under leaders

of note, and under a regulated superintendence.

Movements in Spain

A peculiar evil star seemed altogether to preside over this African

expedition of Caesar. He had, even before his embarkation for Egypt,

arranged in Spain and Italy various measures preliminary and preparatory

to the African war; but out of all there had sprung nothing but mischief.

From Spain, according to Caesar's arrangement, the governor

of the southern province Quintus Cassius Longinus was to cross

with four legions to Africa, to be joined there by Bogud

king of West Mauretania,(47) and to advance with him towards

Numidia and Africa. But that army destined for Africa

included in it a number of native Spaniards and two whole legions

formerly Pompeian; Pompeian sympathies prevailed in the army

as in the province, and the unskilful and tyrannical behaviour

of the Caesarian governor was not fitted to allay them. A formal revolt

took place; troops and towns took part for or against the governor;

already those who had risen against the lieutenant of Caesar

were on the point of openly displaying the banner of Pompeius;

already had Pompeius' elder son Gnaeus embarked from Africa for Spain

to take advantage of this favourable turn, when the disavowal

of the governor by the most respectable Caesarians themselves

and the interference of the commander of the northern province

suppressed just in right time the insurrection. Gnaeus Pompeius,

who had lost time on the way with a vain attempt to establish himself

in Mauretania, came too late; Gaius Trebonius, whom Caesar

after his return from the east sent to Spain to relieve Cassius

(autumn of 707), met everywhere with absolute obedience. But of course

amidst these blunders nothing was done from Spain to disturb

the organization of the republicans in Africa; indeed in consequence

of the complications with Longinus, Bogud king of West Mauretania,

who was on Caesar's side and might at least have put some obstacles

in the way of king Juba, had been called away with his troops to Spain.

Military Revolt in Campania

Still more critical were the occurrences among the troops

whom Caesar had caused to be collected in southern Italy, in order

to his embarkation with them for Africa. They were for the most part

the old legions, which had founded Caesar's throne in Gaul, Spain,

and Thessaly. The spirit of these troops had not been improved

by victories, and had been utterly disorganized by long repose

in Lower Italy. The almost superhuman demands which the general

made on them, and the effects of which were only too clearly apparent

in their fearfully thinned ranks, left behind even in these men of iron

a leaven of secret rancour which required only time and quiet

to set their minds in a ferment. The only man who had influence

over them, had been absent and almost unheard-of for a year;

while the officers placed over them were far more afraid of the soldiers

than the soldiers of them, and overlooked in the conquerors

of the world every outrage against those that gave them quarters,

and every breach of discipline. When the orders to embark for Sicily

arrived, and the soldier was to exchange the luxurious ease of Campania

for a third campaign certainly not inferior to those of Spain

and Thessaly in point of hardship, the reins, which had been

too long relaxed and were too suddenly tightened, snapt asunder.

The legions refused to obey till the promised presents

were paid to them, scornfully repulsed the officers sent by Caesar,

and even threw stones at them. An attempt to extinguish the incipient

revolt by increasing the sums promised not only had no success,

but the soldiers set out in masses to extort the fulfilment

of the promises from the general in the capital. Several officers,

who attempted to restrain the mutinous bands on the way, were slain.

It was a formidable danger. Caesar ordered the few soldiers

who were in the city to occupy the gates, with the view of warding off

the justly apprehended pillage at least at the first onset,

and suddenly appeared among the furious bands demanding to know

what they wanted. They exclaimed: "discharge." In a moment

the request was granted. Respecting the presents, Caesar added,

which he had promised to his soldiers at his triumph, as well as

respecting the lands which he had not promised to them

but had destined for them, they might apply to him on the day

when he and the other soldiers should triumph; in the triumph itself

they could not of course participate, as having been previously

discharged. The masses were not prepared for things taking this turn;

convinced that Caesar could not do without them for the African campaign,

they had demanded their discharge only in order that, if it were refused,

they might annex their own conditions to their service. Half unsettled

in their belief as to their own indispensableness; too awkward

to return to their object, and to bring the negotiation

which had missed its course back to the right channel; ashamed, as men,

by the fidelity with which the Imperator kept his word even to soldiers

who had forgotten their allegiance, and by his generosity

which even now granted far more than he had ever promised;

deeply affected, as soldiers, when the general presented to them

the prospect of their being necessarily mere civilian spectators

of the triumph of their comrades, and when he called them no longer

"comrades" but "burgesses,"--by this very form of address,

which from his mouth sounded so strangely, destroying as it were

with one blow the whole pride of their past soldierly career;

and, besides all this, under the spell of the man whose presence

had an irresistible power--the soldiers stood for a while mute

and lingering, till from all sides a cry arose that the general

would once more receive them into favour and again permit them

to be called Caesar's soldiers. Caesar, after having allowed himself

to be sufficiently entreated, granted the permission; but the ringleaders

in this mutiny had a third cut off from their triumphal presents.

History knows no greater psychological masterpiece, and none

that was more completely successful.

Caesar Proceeds to Africa

Conflict at Ruspina

This mutiny operated injuriously on the African campaign,

at least in so far as it considerably delayed the commencement of it.

When Caesar arrived at the port of Lilybaeum destined for the embarkation

the ten legions intended for Africa werefar from being

fully assembled there, and it was the experienced troops

that were farthest behind. Hardly however had six legions,

of which five were newly formed, arrived there and the necessary

war-vessels and transports come forward, when Caesar put to sea with them

(25 Dec. 707 of the uncorrected, about 8 Oct. of the Julian, calendar).

The enemy's fleet, which on account of the prevailing equinoctial gales

was drawn up on the beach at the island Aegimurus in front of the bay

of Carthage, did not oppose the passage; but, the same storms scattered

the fleet of Caesar in all directions, and, when he availed himself

of the opportunity of landing not far from Hadrumetum (Susa),

he could not disembark more than some 3000 men, mostly recruits,

and 150 horsemen. His attempt to capture Hadrumetum strongly occupied

by the enemy miscarried; but Caesar possessed himself of the two seaports

not far distant from each other, Ruspina (Monastir near Susa)

and Little Leptis. Here he entrenched himself; but his position

was so insecure, that he kept his cavalry in the ships and the ships

ready for sea and provided with a supply of water, in order to re-embark

at any moment if he should be attacked by a superior force.

This however was not necessary, for just at the right time the ships

that had been driven out of their course arrived (3 Jan. 708).

On the very following day Caesar, whose army in consequence

of the arrangements made by the Pompeians suffered from want of corn,

undertook with three legions an expedition into the interior

of the country, but was attacked on the march not far from Ruspina

by the corps which Labienus had brought up to dislodge Caesar

from the coast. As Labienus had exclusively cavalry and archers,

and Caesar almost nothing but infantry of the line, the legions

were quickly surrounded and exposed to the missiles of the enemy,

without being able to retaliate or to attack with success. No doubt

the deploying of the entire line relieved once more the flanks,

and spirited charges saved the honour of their arms; but a retreat

was unavoidable, and had Ruspina not been so near, the Moorish javelin

would perhaps have accomplished the same result here

as the Parthian bow at Carrhae.

Caesar's Position at Ruspina

Caesar, whom this day had fully convinced of the difficulty

of the impending war, would not again expose his soldiers untried

and discouraged by the new mode of fighting to any such attack,

but awaited the arrival of his veteran legions. The interval

was employed in providing some sort of compensation against

the crushing superiority of the enemy in the weapons of distant warfare.

The incorporation of the suitable men from the fleet as light horsemen

or archers in the land-army could not be of much avail. The diversions

which Caesar suggested were somewhat more effectual. He succeeded

in bringing into arms against Juba the Gaetulian pastoral tribes

wandering on the southern slope of the great Atlas towards the Sahara;

for the blows of the Marian and Sullan period had reached even to them,

and their indignation against Pompeius, who had at that time made them

subordinate to the Numidian kings,(48) rendered them from the outset

favourably inclined to the heir of the mighty Marius of whose Jugurthine

campaign they had still a lively recollection. The Mauretanian kings,

Bogud in Tingis and Bocchus in Iol, were Juba's natural rivals

and to a certain extent long since in alliance with Caesar.

Further, there still roamed in the border-region between the kingdoms

of Juba and Bocchus the last of the Catilinarians, that Publius Sittius

of Nuceria,(49) who eighteen years before had become converted

from a bankrupt Italian merchant into a Mauretanian leader

of free bands, and since that time had procured for himself

a name and a body of retainers amidst the Libyan quarrels.

Bocchus and Sittius united fell on the Numidian land, and occupied

the important town of Cirta; and their attack, as well as

that of the Gaetulians, compelled king Juba to send a portion

of his troops to his southern and western frontiers.

Caesar's situation, however, continued sufficiently unpleasant.

His army was crowded together within a space of six square miles;

though the fleet conveyed corn, the want of forage was as much felt

by Caesar's cavalry as by those of Pompeius before Dyrrhachium.

The light troops of the enemy remained notwithstanding all the exertions

of Caesar so immeasurably superior to his, that it seemed almost

impossible to carry offensive operations into the interior

even with veterans. If Scipio retired and abandoned the coast towns,

he might perhaps achieve a victory like those which the vizier of Orodes

had won over Crassus and Juba over Curio, and he could at least

endlessly protract the war. The simplest consideration suggested

this plan of campaign; even Cato, although far from a strategist,

counselled its adoption, and offered at the same time to cross

with a corps to Italy and to call the republicans there to arms--

which, amidst the utter confusion in that quarter, might very well

meet with success. But Cato could only advise, not command; Scipio

the commander-in-chief decided that the war should be carried on

in the region of the coast. This was a blunder, not merely inasmuch as

they thereby dropped a plan of war promising a sure result, but also

inasmuch as the region to which they transferred the war was in dangerous

agitation, and a good part of the army which they opposed to Caesar

was likewise in a troublesome temper. The fearfully strict levy,

the carrying off of the supplies, the devastating of the smaller

townships, the feeling in general that they were being sacrificed

for a cause which from the outset was foreign to them

and was already lost, had exasperated the native population against

the Roman republicans fighting out their last struggle of despair

on African soil; and the terrorist proceedings of the latter against

all communities that were but suspected of indifference,(50)

had raised this exasperation to the most fearful hatred.

The African towns declared, wherever they could venture to do so,

for Caesar; among the Gaetulians and the Libyans, who served in numbers

among the light troops and even in the legions, desertion was spreading.

But Scipio with all the obstinacy characteristic of folly persevered

in his plan, marched with all his force from Utica to appear

before the towns of Ruspina and Little Leptis occupied by Caesar,

furnished Hadrumetum to the north and Thapsus to the south

(on the promontory Ras Dimas) with strong garrisons, and in concert

with Juba, who likewise appeared before Ruspina with all his troops

not required by the defence of the frontier, offered battle repeatedly

to the enemy. But Caesar was resolved to wait for his veteran legions.

As these one after another arrived and appeared on the scene

of strife, Scipio and Juba lost the desire to risk a pitched battle,

and Caesar had no means of compelling them to fight owing

to their extraordinary superiority in light cavalry. Nearly two months

passed away in marches and skirmishes in the neighbourhood

of Ruspina and Thapsus, which chiefly had relation to the finding out

of the concealed store-pits (silos) common in the country,

and to the extension of posts. Caesar, compelled by the enemy's

horsemen to keep as much as possible to the heights or even to cover

his flanks by entrenched lines, yet accustomed his soldiers

gradually during this laborious and apparently endless warfare

to the foreign mode of fighting. Friend and foe hardly recognized

the rapid general in the cautious master of fence who trained his men

carefully and not unfrequently in person; and they became almost puzzled

by the masterly skill which displayed itself as conspicuously

in delay as in promptitude of action.

Battle at Thapsus

At last Caesar, after being joined by his last reinforcements,

made a lateral movement towards Thapsus. Scipio had, as we have said,

strongly garrisoned this town, and thereby committed the blunder

of presenting to his opponent an object of attack easy to be seized;

to this first error he soon added the second still less excusable

blunder of now for the rescue of Thapsus giving the battle,

which Caesar had wished and Scipio had hitherto rightly refused,

on ground which placed the decision in the hands of the infantry

of the line. Immediately along the shore, opposite to Caesar's camp,

the legions of Scipio and Juba appeared, the fore ranks ready

for fighting, the hinder ranks occupied in forming an entrenched camp;

at the same time the garrison of Thapsus prepared for a sally.

Caesar's camp-guard sufficed to repulse the latter. His legions,

accustomed to war, already forming a correct estimate of the enemy

from the want of precision in their mode of array and their

ill-closed ranks, compelled--while yet the entrenching was going forward

on that side, and before even the general gave the signal--

a trumpeter to sound for the attack, and advanced along the whole line

headed by Caesar himself, who, when he saw his men advance

without waiting for his orders, galloped forward to lead them

against the enemy. The right wing, in advance of the other divisions,

frightened the line of elephants opposed to it--this was

the last great battle in which these animals were employed--

by throwing bullets and arrows, so that they wheeled round

on their own ranks. The covering force was cut down, the left wing

of the enemy was broken, and the whole line was overthrown.

The defeat was the more destructive, as the new camp of the beaten army

was not yet ready, and the old one was at a considerable distance;

both were successively captured almost without resistance. The mass

of the defeated army threw away their arms and sued for quarter;

but Caesar's soldiers were no longer the same who had readily refrained

from battle before Ilerda and honourably spared the defenceless

at Pharsalus. The habit of civil war and the rancour left behind

by the mutiny asserted their power in a terrible manner

on the battlefield of Thapsus. If the hydra with which they fought

always put forth new energies, if the army was hurried from Italy

to Spain, from Spain to Macedonia, from Macedonia to Africa, and if

the repose ever more eagerly longed for never came, the soldier sought,

and not wholly without cause, the reason of this state of things

in the unseasonable clemency of Caesar. He had sworn to retrieve

the general's neglect, and remained deaf to the entreaties

of his disarmed fellow-citizens as well as to the commands of Caesar

and the superior officers. The fifty thousand corpses that covered

the battle-field of Thapsus, among whom were several Caesarian officers

known as secret opponents of the new monarchy, and therefore

cut down on this occasion by their own men, showed how the soldier

procures for himself repose. The victorious army on the other hand

numbered no more than fifty dead (6 April 708).

Cato in Utica

His Death

There was as little a continuance of the struggle in Africa

after the battle of Thapsus, as there had been a year and a half before

in the east after the defeat of Pharsalus. Cato as commandant

of Utica convoked the senate, set forth how the means of defence stood,

and submitted it to the decision of those assembled whether

they would yield or defend themselves to the last man--

only adjuring them to resolve and to act not each one for himself,

but all in unison. The more courageous view found several supporters;

it was proposed to manumit on behalf of the state the slaves

capable of arms, which however Cato rejected as an illegal encroachment

on private property, and suggested in its stead a patriotic appeal

to the slave-owners. But soon this fit of resolution in an assembly

consisting in great part of African merchants passed off, and they agreed

to capitulate. Thereupon when Faustus Sulla, son of the regent,

and Lucius Afranius arrived in Utica with a strong division

of cavalry from the field of battle, Cato still made an attempt

to hold the town through them; but he indignantly rejected their demand

to let them first of all put to death the untrustworthy citizens of Utica

en masse, and chose to let the last stronghold of the republicans fall

into the hands of the monarch without resistance rather than to profane

the last moments of the republic by such a massacre. After he had--

partly by his authority, partly by liberal largesses--checked so far

as he could the fury of the soldiery against the unfortunate Uticans;

after he had with touching solicitude furnished to those who preferred

not to trust themselves to Caesar's mercy the means for flight,

and to those who wished to remain the opportunity of capitulating

under the most tolerable conditions, so far as his ability reached;

and after having thoroughly satisfied himself that he could render

to no one any farther aid, he held himself released from his command,

retired to his bedchamber, and plunged his sword into his breast.

The Leaders of the Republicans Put to Death

Of the other fugitive leaders only a few escaped. The cavalry

that fled from Thapsus encountered the bands of Sittius,

and were cut down or captured by them; their leaders Afranius and Faustus

were delivered up to Caesar, and, when the latter did not order

their immediate execution, they were slain in a tumult by his veterans.

The commander-in-chief Metellus Scipio with the fleet of the defeated

party fell into the power of the cruisers of Sittius and,

when they were about to lay hands on him, stabbed himself. King Juba,

not unprepared for such an issue, had in that case resolved to die

in a way which seemed to him befitting a king, and had caused

an enormous funeral pile to be prepared in the market-place

of his city Zama, which was intended to consume along with his body

all his treasures and the dead bodies of the whole citizens of Zama.

But the inhabitants of the town showed no desire to let themselves

be employed by way of decoration for the funeral rites

of the African Sardanapalus; and they closed the gates against

the king when fleeing from the battle-field he appeared, accompanied

by Marcus Petreius, before their city. The king--one of those natures

that become savage amidst a life of dazzling and insolent enjoyment,

and prepare for themselves even out of death an intoxicating feast--

resorted with his companion to one of his country houses,

caused a copious banquet to be served up, and at the close

of the feast challenged Petreius to fight him to death in single combat.

It was the conqueror of Catilina that received his death at the hand

of the king; the latter thereupon caused himself to be stabbed

by one of his slaves. The few men of eminence that escaped,

such as Labienus and Sextus Pompeius, followed the elder brother

of the latter to Spain and sought, like Sertorius formerly,

a last refuge of robbers and pirates in the waters and the mountains

of that still half-independent land.

Regulation of Africa

Without resistance Caesar regulated the affairs of Africa.

As Curio had already proposed, the kingdom of Massinissa was broken up.

The most eastern portion or region of Sitifis was united with the kingdom

of Bocchus king of East Mauretania,(51) and the faithful king Bogud

of Tingis was rewarded with considerable gifts. Cirta (Constantine)

and the surrounding district, hitherto possessed under the supremacy

of Juba by the prince Massinissa and his son Arabion, were conferred

on the condottiere Publius Sittius that he might settle

his half-Roman bands there;(52) but at the same time this district,

as well as by far the largest and most fertile portion

of the late Numidian kingdom, were united as "New Africa"

with the older province of Africa, and the defence of the country

along the coast against the roving tribes of the desert,

which the republic had entrusted to a client-king, was imposed

by the new ruler on the empire itself.

The Victory of Monarchy

The struggle, which Pompeius and the republicans had undertaken

against the monarchy of Caesar, thus terminated, after having lasted

for four years, in the complete victory of the new monarch.

No doubt the monarchy was not established for the first time

on the battle-fields of Pharsalus and Thapsus; it might already

be dated from the moment when Pompeius and Caesar in league

had established their joint rule and overthrown the previous

aristocratic constitution. Yet it was only those baptisms of blood

of the ninth August 706 and the sixth April 708 that set aside

the conjoint rule so opposed to the nature of absolute dominion,

and conferred fixed status and formal recognition on the new monarchy.

Risings of pretenders and republican conspiracies might ensue and provoke

new commotions, perhaps even new revolutions and restorations;

but the continuity of the free republic that had been uninterrupted

for five hundred years was broken through, and monarchy was established

throughout the range of the wide Roman empire by the legitimacy

of accomplished fact.

The End of the Republic

The constitutional struggle was at an end; and that it was so,

was proclaimed by Marcus Cato when he fell on his sword at Utica.

For many years he had been the foremost man in the struggle

of the legitimate republic against its oppressors; he had continued it,

long after he had ceased to cherish any hope of victory.

But now the struggle itself had become impossible; the republic

which Marcus Brutus had founded was dead and never to be revived;

what were the republicans now to do on the earth? The treasure

was carried off, the sentinels were thereby relieved; who could

blame them if they departed? There was more nobility, and above all

more judgment, in the death of Cato than there had been in his life.

Cato was anything but a great man; but with all that short-sightedness,

that perversity, that dry prolixity, and those spurious phrases

which have stamped him, for his own and for all time,

as the ideal of unreflecting republicanism and the favourite of all

who make it their hobby, he was yet the only man who honourably

and courageously championed in the last struggle the great system

doomed to destruction. Just because the shrewdest lie feels itself

inwardly annihilated before the simple truth, and because

all the dignity and glory of human nature ultimately depend

not on shrewdness but on honesty, Cato has played a greater part

in history than many men far superior to him in intellect.

It only heightens the deep and tragic significance of his death

that he was himself a fool; in truth it is just because Don Quixote

is a fool that he is a tragic figure. It is an affecting fact,

that on that world-stage, on which so many great and wise men

had moved and acted, the fool was destined to give the epilogue.

He too died not in vain. It was a fearfully striking protest

of the republic against the monarchy, that the last republican went

as the first monarch came--a protest which tore asunder like gossamer

all that so-called constitutional character with which Caesar

invested his monarchy, and exposed in all its hypocritical falsehood

the shibboleth of the reconciliation of all parties, under the aegis

of which despotism grew up. The unrelenting warfare which the ghost

of the legitimate republic waged for centuries, from Cassius

and Brutus down to Thrasea and Tacitus, nay, even far later,

against the Caesarian monarchy--a warfare of plots and of literature--

was the legacy which the dying Cato bequeathed to his enemies.

This republican opposition derived from Cato its whole attitude--

stately, transcendental in its rhetoric, pretentiously rigid,

hopeless, and faithful to death; and accordingly it began

even immediately after his death to revere as a saint the man

who in his lifetime was not unfrequently its laughing-stock

and its scandal. But the greatest of these marks of respect

was the involuntary homage which Caesar rendered to him, when he made

an exception to the contemptuous clemency with which he was wont

to treat his opponents, Pompeians as well as republicans,

in the case of Cato alone, and pursued him even beyond the grave

with that energetic hatred which practical statesmen are wont to feel

towards antagonists opposing them from a region of ideas

which they regard as equally dangerous and impracticable.