SECOND BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.--THE TAKING OF MARSEILLES.--VARRO IN
THE SOUTH OF SPAIN.--THE FATE OF CURIO BEFORE UTICA.--B.C. 49.
In his chronicle of the Gallic war, Cæsar in each book completed the
narrative of a year’s campaign. In treating of the civil war he devotes
the first and second books to the doings of one year. There are three
distinct episodes of the year’s campaign narrated in the second;--the
taking of Marseilles, the subjugation of the southern province of
Spain,--if that can be said to be subjugated which gave itself up very
readily,--and the destruction of a Roman army in Africa under the hands
of a barbarian king. But of all Cæsar’s writings it is perhaps the least
interesting, as it tells us but little of what Cæsar did himself,--and
in fact contains chiefly Cæsar’s records of the doings of his
lieutenants by sea and land.
He begins by telling us of the enormous exertions made both by the
besiegers and by the besieged at Massilia, which town was now held by
Domitius on the part of Pompey,--to supplement whom at sea a certain
Nasidius was sent with a large fleet. Young Brutus, as will be
remembered, was attacking the harbour on behalf of Cæsar, and had
already obtained a victory over the Massilians before Nasidius came up;
and Trebonius, also on the part of Cæsar, was besieging the town from
the land. This Decimus Brutus was one of those conspirators who
afterwards conspired against Cæsar and slew him,--and Trebonius was
another of the number. The wise Greeks of the city,--more wise than
fortunate, however,--had explained to Cæsar when he first expressed his
wish to have the town on his side, that really to them there was no
difference between Pompey and Cæsar, both of whom they loved with all
their hearts,--but they had been compelled to become partisans of
Pompey, the Pompeian general Domitius being the first to enter their
town; and now they find themselves obliged to fight as Pompeians in
defence of their wealth and their homes. Thus driven by necessity, they
fight well and do their very best to favour the side which we must
henceforward call that of the Republic as against an autocrat;--for,
during this siege of Marseilles, Cæsar had been appointed Dictator, and
a law to that effect had been passed at Rome, where the passing of such
a law was no doubt easy enough in the absence of Pompey, of the consuls,
and of all the senators who were Pompey’s friends.
The Massilians had now chosen their side, and they do their very best.
We are told that the Cæsarean troops, from the high ground on which
Trebonius had placed his camp, could look down into the town, and could
see “how all the youth who had been left in the city, and all the elders
with their children and wives, and the sentinels of the city, either
stretched their hands to heaven from the walls, or, entering the temples
of the immortal gods, and throwing themselves before their sacred
images, prayed that the heavenly powers would give them victory. Nor was
there one among them who did not believe that on the result of that day
depended all that they had,”--namely, liberty, property, and life; for
the Massilians, doubtless, had heard of Avaricum, of Alesia, and of
Uxellodunum. “When the battle was begun,” says Cæsar, “the Massilians
failed not at all in valour; but, mindful of the lessons they had just
received from their townsmen, fought with the belief that the present
was their only opportunity of doing aught for their own preservation;
and that to those who should fall in battle, loss of life would only
come a little sooner than to the others, who would have to undergo the
same fate, should the city be taken.” Cæsar, as he wrote this, doubtless
thought of what he had done in Gaul when policy demanded from him an
extremity of cruelty; and, so writing, he enhanced the clemency with
which, as he is about to tell us, he afterwards treated the Massilians.
When the time came it did not suit him to depopulate a rich town, the
trade of whose merchants was beneficial both to Rome and to the
Province. He is about to tell us of his mercy, and therefore explains to
us beforehand how little was mercy expected from him. We feel that every
line he writes is weighed, though the time for such weighing must have
been very short with one whose hands were so full as were always the
hands of Cæsar.
Nasidius, whom we may call Pompey’s admiral, was of no use at all. The
Massilians, tempted by his coming, attack bravely the ship which bears
the flag of young Brutus; but young Brutus is too quick for them, and
the unhappy Massilians run two of their biggest vessels against each
other in their endeavour to pin that of the Cæsarean admiral between
them. The Massilian fleet is utterly dispersed. Five are sunk, four are
taken: one gets off with Nasidius, who runs away, making no effort to
fight; who has been sent there,--so Cæsar hints,--by Pompey, not to give
assistance, but only to pretend to give assistance. One ship gets back
into the harbour with the sad tidings; and the Massilians--despairing
only for a moment at the first blush of the bad news--determine that
their walls may still be defended.
The town was very well supplied with such things as were needed for
defence, the people being a provident people, well instructed and
civilised, with means at their command. We are told of great poles
twelve feet long, with sharp iron heads to them, which the besiegers
could throw with such force from the engines on their walls as to drive
them through four tiers of the wicker crates or stationary shields which
the Cæsareans built up for their protection,--believing that no force
could drive a weapon through them. As we read of this we cannot but
think of Armstrong and Whitfield guns, and iron plates, and granite
batteries, and earthworks. These terrible darts, thrown from “balistæ,”
are very sore upon the Cæsareans; they therefore contrive an immense
tower, so high that it cannot be reached by any weapon, so built that
no wood or material subject to fire shall be on the outside,--which they
erect story by story, of very great strength. And as they raise this
step by step, each story is secured against fire and against the enemy.
The reader,--probably not an engineer himself,--is disposed to think as
he struggles through this minute description of the erection which Cæsar
gives, and endeavours to realise the way in which it is done, that Cæsar
must himself have served specially as an engineer. But in truth he was
not at this siege himself, and had nothing to do with the planning of
the tower, and must in this instance at least have got a written
description from his officer,--as he probably did before when he built
the memorable bridge over the Rhine. And when the tower is finished,
they make a long covered way or shed,--musculum or muscle Cæsar calls
it; and with this they form for themselves a passage from the big tower
to a special point in the walls of the town. This muscle is so strong
with its sloping roof that nothing thrown upon it will break or burn it.
The Massilians try tubs of flaming pitch, and great fragments of rock;
but these simply slip to the ground, and are pulled away with long poles
and forks. And the Cæsareans, from the height of their great tower, have
so terrible an advantage! The Massilians cannot defend their wall, and a
breach is made, or almost made.
The Massilians can do no more. The very gods are against them. So they
put on the habit of supplicants, and go forth to the conquerors. They
will give their city to Cæsar. Cæsar is expected. Will Trebonius be so
good as to wait till Cæsar comes? If Trebonius should proceed with his
work so that the soldiers should absolutely get into the town,
then;--Trebonius knows very well what would happen then. A little delay
cannot hurt. Nothing shall be done till Cæsar comes. As it happens,
Cæsar has already especially ordered that the city shall be spared; and
a kind of truce is made, to endure till Cæsar shall come and take
possession. Trebonius has a difficulty in keeping his soldiers from the
plunder; but he does restrain them, and besiegers and besieged are at
rest, and wait for Cæsar.
But these Massilians are a crafty people. The Cæsarean soldiers, having
agreed to wait, take it easily, and simply amuse themselves in these
days of waiting. When they are quite off their guard, and a high wind
favours the scheme, the Massilians rush out and succeed in burning the
tower, and the muscle, and the rampart, and the sheds, and all the
implements. Even though the tower was built with brick, it burns
freely,--so great is the wind. Then Trebonius goes to work, and does it
all again. Because there is no more wood left round about the camp, he
makes a rampart of a new kind,--hitherto unheard of,--with bricks.
Doubtless the Cæsarean soldiers had first to make the bricks, and we can
imagine what were their feelings in reference to the Massilians. But
however that may be, they work so well and so hard that the Massilians
soon see that their late success is of no avail. Nothing is left to
them. Neither perfidy nor valour can avail them, and now again they give
themselves up. They are starved and suffering from pestilence, their
fortifications are destroyed, they have no hope of aid from
without,--and now they give themselves up,--intending no fraud. “Sese
dedere sine fraude constituunt.” Domitius, the Pompeian general, manages
to escape in a ship. He starts with three ships, but the one in which he
himself sails alone escapes the hands of “young” Brutus. Surely now will
Marseilles be treated with worse treatment than that which fell on the
Gaulish cities. But such is by no means Cæsar’s will. Cæsar takes their
public treasure and their ships, and reminding them that he spares them
rather for their name and old character than for any merits of theirs
shown towards him, leaves two legions among them, and goes to Rome. At
Avaricum, when the Gauls had fought to defend their own liberties, he
had destroyed everybody;--at Alesia he had decreed the death of every
inhabitant when they had simply asked him leave to pass through his
camp;--at Uxellodunum he had cut off the hands and poked out the eyes of
Gauls who had dared to fight for their country. But the Gauls were
barbarians whom it was necessary that Cæsar should pacify. The
Massilians were Greeks, and a civilised people,--and might be useful.
Before coming on to Marseilles there had been a little more for Cæsar to
do in Spain, where, as was told in the last chapter, he had just
compelled Afranius and Petreius to lay down their arms and disband their
legions. Joined with them had been a third Pompeian general, one
Varro,--a distinguished man, though not, perhaps, a great general,--of
whom Cæsar tells us that with his Roman policy he veered between
Pompeian and Cæsarean tactics till, unfortunately for himself, he
declared for Pompey and the wrong side, when he heard that Afranius was
having his own way in the neighbourhood of Lerida. But Varro is in the
south of Spain, in Andalusia,--or Bætica, as it was then called,--and in
this southern province of Spain it seems that Cæsar’s cause was more
popular than that of Pompey. Cæsar, at any rate, has but little
difficulty with Varro. The Pompeian officer is deserted by his legions,
and gives himself up very quickly. Cæsar does not care to tell us what
he did with Varro, but we know that he treated his brother Roman with
the utmost courtesy. Varro was a very learned man, and a friend of
Cicero’s, and one who wrote books, and was a credit to Rome as a man of
letters if not as a general. We are told that he wrote 490 volumes, and
that he lived to be eighty-eight,--a fate very uncommon with Romans who
meddled with public affairs in these days. Cæsar made everything smooth
in the south of Spain, restoring the money and treasures which Varro had
taken from the towns, and giving thanks to everybody. Then he went on
over the Pyrenees to Marseilles, and made things smooth there.
But in the mean time things were not at all smooth in Africa. The name
of Africa was at this time given to a small province belonging to the
Republic, lying to the east of Numidia, in which Carthage had stood when
Carthage was a city, containing that promontory which juts out towards
Sicily, and having Utica as its Roman capital. It has been already said
that when Cæsar determined to gain possession of certain provinces of
the Republic before he followed Pompey across the Adriatic, he sent a
lieutenant with three legions into Sicily, desiring him to go on to
Africa as soon as things should have been arranged in the island after
the Cæsarean fashion. The Sicilian matter is not very troublesome, as
Cato, the virtuous man, in whose hands the government of the island had
been intrusted on behalf of the Republic, leaves it on the arrival of
the Cæsarean legions, complaining bitterly of Pompey’s conduct. Then
Cæsar’s lieutenant goes over to Africa with two legions, as commanded,
proposing to his army the expulsion of one Attius Varus, who had,
according to Cæsar’s story, taken irregular possession of the province,
keeping it on behalf of Pompey, but not allowing the governor appointed
by the Republic so much as to put his foot on the shore. This lieutenant
was a great favourite of Cæsar, by name Curio, who had been elected
tribune of the people just when the Senate was making its attempt to
recall Cæsar from his command in Gaul. In that emergency, Curio as
tribune had been of service to Cæsar, and Cæsar loved the young man. He
was one of those who, though noble by birth, had flung themselves among
the people, as Catiline had done and Clodius,--unsteady, turbulent,
unscrupulous, vicious, needy, fond of pleasure, rapacious, but well
educated, brave, and clever. Cæsar himself had been such a man in his
youth, and could easily forgive such faults in the character of one who,
in addition to such virtues as have been named, possessed that farther
and greater virtue of loving Cæsar. Cæsar expected great things from
Curio, and trusted him thoroughly. Curio, with many ships and his two
legions, lands in Africa, and prepares to win the province for his great
friend. He does obtain some little advantage, so that he is called
“Imperator” by his soldiers,--a name not given to a general till he has
been victorious in the field; but it seems clear, from Cæsar’s telling
of the story, that Curio’s own officers and own soldiers distrusted him,
and were doubtful whether they would follow him, or would take
possession of the ships and return to Sicily;--or would go over to
Attius Varus, who had been their commander in Italy before they had
deserted from Pompey to Cæsar. A council of war is held, and there is
much doubt. It is not only or chiefly of Attius Varus, their Roman
enemy, that they are afraid; but there is Juba in their neighbourhood,
the king of Numidia, who will certainly fight for Varus and against
Curio. He is Pompey’s declared friend, and equally declared as Cæsar’s
foe. He has, too, special grounds of quarrel against Curio himself; and
if he comes in person with his army,--bringing such an army as he can
bring if he pleases,--it will certainly go badly with Curio, should
Curio be distant from his camp. Then Curio, not content with his council
of war, and anxious that his soldiers should support him in his desire
to fight, makes a speech to the legionaries. We must remember, of
course, that Cæsar gives us the words of this speech, and that Cæsar
must himself have put the words together.
It is begun in the third person. He,--that is Curio,--tells the men how
useful they were to Cæsar at Corfinium, the town at which they went over
from Pompey to Cæsar. But in the second sentence he breaks into the
first person and puts the very words into Curio’s mouth. “For you and
your services,” he says, “were copied by all the towns; nor is it
without cause that Cæsar thinks kindly of you, and the Pompeians
unkindly. For Pompey, having lost no battle, but driven by the result of
your deed, fled from Italy. Me, whom Cæsar holds most dear, and Sicily
and Africa without which he cannot hold Rome and Italy, Cæsar has
intrusted to your honour. There are some who advise you to desert
me,--for what can be more desirable to such men than that they at the
same time should circumvent me, and fasten upon you a foul crime?... But
you,--have you not heard of the things done by Cæsar in Spain,--two
armies beaten, two generals conquered, two provinces gained, and all
this done in forty days from that on which Cæsar first saw his enemy?
Can those who, uninjured, were unable to stand against him, resist him
now that they are conquered? And you, who followed Cæsar when victory on
his side was uncertain, now that fortune has declared herself, will you
go over to the conquered side when you are about to realise the reward
of your zeal?... But perhaps, though you love Cæsar, you distrust me. I
will not say much of my own deserts towards you,--which are indeed less
as yet than I had wished or you had expected.” Then, having thus
declared that he will not speak of himself, he does venture to say a few
words on the subject. “But why should I pass over my own work, and the
result that has been as yet achieved, and my own fortune in war? Is it
displeasing to you that I brought over the whole army, safe, without
losing a ship? That, as I came, at my first onslaught, I should have
dispersed the fleet of the enemy? That, in two days, I should have been
twice victorious with my cavalry; that I should have cut out two hundred
transports from the enemy’s harbour; that I should have so harassed the
enemy that neither by land nor sea could they get food to supply their
wants? Will it please you to repudiate such fortune and such guidance,
and to connect yourself with the disgrace at Corfinium, the flight from
Italy,”--namely, Pompey’s flight to Dyrrachium,--“the surrender of
Spain, and the evils of this African war? I indeed have wished to be
called Cæsar’s soldier, and you have called me your Imperator. If it
repents you of having done so, I give you back the compliment. Give me
back my own name, lest it seem that in scorn you have called me by that
title of honour.”
This is very spirited; and the merely rhetorical assertion by Cæsar that
Curio thus spoke to his soldiers is in itself interesting, as showing us
the way in which the legionaries were treated by their commanders, and
in which the greatest general, of that or of any age, thought it natural
that a leader should address his troops. It is of value, also, as
showing the difficulty of keeping any legion true to either side in a
civil war, in which, on either side, the men must fight for a commander
they had learned to respect, and against a commander they
respected,--the commander in each case being a Roman Imperator. Curio,
too, as we know, was a man who on such an occasion could use words. But
that he used the words here put into his mouth, or any words like them,
is very improbable. Cæsar was anxious to make the best apology he could
for the gallant young friend who had perished in his cause, and has
shown his love by making the man he loved memorable to all posterity.
But before the dark hour comes upon him the young man has a gleam of
success, which, had he really spoken the words put into his mouth by
Cæsar, would have seemed to justify them. He attacks the army of his
fellow-Roman, Varus, and beats it, driving it back into Utica. He then
resolves to besiege the town, and Cæsar implies that he would have been
successful through the Cæsarean sympathies of the townsmen,--had it not
been for the approach of the terrible Juba. Then comes a rumour which
reaches Curio,--and which reaches Varus too inside the town,--that the
Numidian king is hurrying to the scene with all his forces. He has
finished another affair that he had on hand, and can now look to his
Roman friends,--and to his Roman enemies. Juba craftily sends forward
his præfect, or lieutenant, Sabura, with a small force of cavalry, and
Curio is led to imagine that Juba has not come, and that Sabura has been
sent with scanty aid to the relief of Varus. Surely he can give a good
account of Sabura and that small body of Numidian horsemen. We see from
the very first that Curio is doomed. Cæsar, in a few touching words,
makes his apology. “The young man’s youth had much to do with it, and
his high spirit; his former success, too, and his own faith in his own
good fortune.” There is no word of reproach. Curio makes another speech
to his soldiers. “Hasten to your prey,” he says, “hasten to your glory!”
They do hasten,--after such a fashion that when the foremost of them
reach Sabura’s troops, the hindermost of them are scattered far back on
the road. They are cut to pieces by Juba. Curio is invited by one of his
officers to escape back to his tent. But Cæsar tells us that Curio in
that last moment replied that having lost the army with which Cæsar had
trusted him, he would never again look Cæsar in the face. That he did
say some such words as these, and that they were repeated by that
officer to Cæsar, is probable enough. “So, fighting, he is slain;”--and
there is an end of the man whom Cæsar loved.
What then happened was very sad for a Roman army. Many hurry down to the
ships at the sea; but there is so much terror, so much confusion, and
things are so badly done, that but very few get over to Sicily. The
remainder endeavour to give themselves up to Varus; after doing which,
could they have done it, their position would not have been very bad. A
Roman surrendering to a Roman would, at the worst, but find that he was
compelled to change his party. But Juba comes up and claims them as his
prey, and Varus does not dare to oppose the barbarian king. Juba kills
the most of them, but sends a few, whom he thinks may serve his purpose
and add to his glory, back to his own kingdom. In doing which Juba
behaved no worse than Cæsar habitually behaved in Gaul; but Cæsar always
writes as though not only a Roman must regard a Roman as more than a
man, but as though also all others must so regard Romans. And by making
such assertions in their own behalf, Romans were so regarded. We are
then told that the barbarian king of Numidia rode into Utica triumphant,
with Roman senators in his train; and the names of two special Roman
senators Cæsar sends down to posterity as having been among that base
number. As far as we can spare them, they shall be spared.
Of Juba the king, and of his fate, we shall hear again.