Part 106

"Cæsar had long ago resolved upon the overthrow of Pompey, as had Pompey, for that matter, upon his. For Crassus, the fear of whom had hitherto kept them in peace, having now been killed in Parthia, if the one of them wished to make himself the greatest man in Rome, he had only to overthrow the other; and if he again wished to prevent his own fall, he had nothing for it but to be beforehand with him whom he feared. Pompey had not been long under any such apprehensions, having till lately despised Cæsar, as thinking it no difficult matter to put down him whom he himself had advanced. But Cæsar had entertained this design from the beginning against his rivals, and had retired, like an expert wrestler, to prepare himself apart for the combat. Making the Gallic wars his exercise-ground, he had at once improved the strength of his soldiery, and had heightened his own glory by his great actions, so that he was looked on as one who might challenge comparison with Pompey. Nor did he let go any of those advantages which were now given him, both by Pompey himself and the times, and the ill government of Rome, where all who were candidates for office publicly gave money, and without any shame bribed the people, who, having received their pay, did not contend for their benefactors with their bare suffrages, but with bows, swords and slings. So that after having many times stained the place of election with the blood of men killed upon the spot, they left the city at last without a government at all, to be carried about like a ship without a pilot to steer her; while all who had any wisdom could only be thankful if a course of such wild and stormy disorder and madness might end no worse than in a monarchy. Some were so bold as to declare openly that the government was incurable but by a monarchy, and that they ought to take that remedy from the hands of the gentlest physician, meaning Pompey, who, though in words he pretended to decline it, yet in reality made his utmost efforts to be declared dictator. {2691} Cato, perceiving his design, prevailed with the Senate to make him sole consul [B. C. 52], that with the offer of a more legal sort of monarchy he might be withheld from demanding the dictatorship. They over and above voted him the continuance of his provinces, for he had two, Spain and all Africa, which he governed by his lieutenants, and maintained armies under him, at the yearly charge of a thousand talents out of the public treasury. Upon this Cæsar also sent and petitioned for the consulship, and the continuance of his provinces. Pompey at first did not stir in it, but Marcellus and Lentulus opposed it, who had always hated Cæsar, and now did everything, whether fit or unfit, which might disgrace and affront him. For they took away the privilege of Roman citizens from the people of New Comum, who were a colony that Cæsar had lately planted in Gaul; and Marcellus, who was then consul, ordered one of the senators of that town, then at Rome, to be whipped [B. C. 51], and told him he laid that mark upon him to signify he was no citizen of Rome, bidding him, when he went back again, to show it to Cæsar. After Marcellus's consulship, Cæsar began to lavish gifts upon all the public men out of the riches he had taken from the Gauls; discharged Curio, the tribune, from his great debts; gave Paulus, then consul, 1,500 talents, with which he built the noble court of justice adjoining the forum, to supply the place of that called the Fulvian. Pompey, alarmed at these preparations, now openly took steps, both by himself and his friends, to have a successor appointed in Cæsar's room, and sent to demand back the soldiers whom he had lent him to carry on the wars in Gaul. Cæsar returned them, and made each soldier a present of 250 drachmas. The officer who brought them home to Pompey, spread amongst the people no very fair or favorable report of Cæsar, and flattered Pompey himself with false suggestions that he was wished for by Cæsar's army; and though his affairs here were in some embarrassment through the envy of some, and the ill state of the government, yet there the army was at his command, and if they once crossed into Italy, would presently declare for him; so weary were they of Cæsar's endless expeditions, and so suspicious of his designs for a monarchy. Upon this Pompey grew presumptuous, and neglected all warlike preparations, as fearing no danger. … Yet the demands which Cæsar made had the fairest colors of equity imaginable. For he proposed to lay down his arms, and that Pompey should do the same, and both together should become private men, and each expect a reward of his services from the public. For that those who proposed to disarm him, and at the same time to confirm Pompey in all the power he held, were simply establishing the one in the tyranny which they accused the other of aiming at. When Curio made these proposals to the people in Cæsar's name, he was loudly applauded, and some threw garlands towards him, and dismissed him as they do successful wrestlers, crowned with flowers. Antony, being tribune, produced a letter sent from Cæsar on this occasion, and read it, though the consuls did what they could to oppose it. But Scipio, Pompey's father-in-law, proposed in the Senate, that if Cæsar did not lay down his arms within such a time, he should be voted an enemy; and the consuls putting it to the question, whether Pompey should dismiss his soldiers, and again, whether Cæsar should disband his, very few assented to the first, but almost all to the latter. But Antony proposing again, that both should lay down their commissions, all but a very few agreed to it. Scipio was upon this very violent, and Lentulus the consul cried aloud, that they had need of arms, and not of suffrages, against a robber; so that the senators for the present adjourned, and appeared in mourning as a mark of their grief for the dissension. Afterwards there came other letters from Cæsar, which seemed yet more moderate, for he proposed to quit everything else, and only to retain Gaul within the Alps, Illyricum, and two legions, till he should stand a second time for consul. Cicero, the orator, who was lately returned from Cilicia, endeavored to reconcile differences, and softened Pompey, who was willing to comply in other things, but not to allow him the soldiers. At last Cicero used his persuasions with Cæsar's friends to accept of the provinces and 6,000 soldiers only, and so to make up the quarrel. And Pompey was inclined to give way to this, but Lentulus, the consul, would not hearken to it, but drove Antony and Curio out of the senate-house with insults, by which he afforded Caesar [then at Ravenna] the most plausible pretence that could be, and one which he could readily use to inflame the soldiers, by showing them two persons of such repute and authority, who were forced to escape in a hired carriage in the dress of slaves. For so they were glad to disguise themselves, when they fled out of Rome. There were not about him at that time [November, B. C. 50] above 300 horse, and 5,000 foot: for the rest of his army, which was left behind the Alps, was to be brought after him by officers who had received orders for that purpose. But he thought the first motion towards the design which he had on foot did not require large forces at present, and that what was wanted was to make this first step suddenly, and so as to astound his enemies with the boldness of it. … Therefore, he commanded his captains and other officers to go only with their swords in their hands, without any other arms, and make themselves masters of Ariminum, a large city cf Gaul, with as little disturbance and bloodshed as possible. He committed the care of these forces to Hortensius, and himself spent the day in public as a stander-by and spectator of the gladiators, who exercised before him. A little before night he attended to his person, and then went into the hall, and conversed for some time with those he had invited to supper, till it began to grow dusk, when he rose from table, and made his excuses to the company, begging them to stay till he came back, having already given private directions to a few immediate friends, that they should follow him, not all the same way, but some one way, some another. He himself got into one of the hired carriages, and drove at first another way, but presently turned towards Ariminum."

_Plutarch, Cæsar (Clough's Dryden's translation)_

ALSO IN _Cæsar, Commentaries on the Civil War, book 1, chapters 1-8._

_T. Arnold, History of the Later Roman Commonwealth, chapter 8 (volume 1)._

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ROME: B. C. 50-49. Cæsar's passage of the Rubicon. Flight of Pompeius and the Consuls from Italy. Cæsar at the capital.

"About ten miles from Ariminum, and twice that distance from Ravenna, the frontier of Italy and Gaul was traced by the stream of the Rubicon. This little river, red with the drainage of the peat mosses from which it descends [and evidently deriving its name from its color], is formed by the union of three mountain torrents, and is nearly dry in the summer, like most of the water courses on the eastern side of the Appenines. In the month of November the winter flood might present a barrier more worthy of the important position which it once occupied; but the northern frontier of Italy had long been secure from invasion, and the channel was spanned by a bridge of no great dimensions. … The ancients amused themselves with picturing the guilty hesitation with which the founder of a line of despots stood, as they imagined, on the brink of the fatal river [in the night of the 27th of November, B. C. 50, corrected calendar, or January 15, B. C. 49, without the correction], and paused for an instant before he committed the irrevocable act, pregnant with the destinies of a long futurity. Cæsar, indeed, in his Commentaries, makes no allusion to the passage of the Rubicon, and, at the moment of stepping on the bridge, his mind was probably absorbed in the arrangements he had made for the march of his legions or for their reception by his friends in Ariminum."

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 14._

After the crossing of the Rubicon there were still more, messages between Cæsar and Pompey, and the consuls supporting the latter. "Each demands that the other shall first abandon his position. Of course, all these messages mean nothing. Cæsar, complaining bitterly of injustice, sends a portion of his small army still farther into the Roman territory. Marc Antony goes to Arezzo with five cohorts, and Cæsar occupies three other cities with a cohort each. The marvel is that he was not attacked and driven back by Pompey. We may probably conclude that the soldiers, though under the command of Pompey, were not trustworthy as against Cæsar. As Cæsar regrets his two legions, so no doubt do the two legions regret their commander. At any rate, the consular forces, with Pompey and the consuls and a host of senators, retreat southwards to Brundusium—Brindisi—intending to leave Italy. … During this retreat, the first blood in the civil war is spilt at Corfinium, a town which, if it now stood at all, would stand in the Abruzzi. Cæsar there is victor in a small engagement, and obtained possession of the town. The Pompeian officers whom he finds there he sends away, and allows them even to carry with them money which he believes to have been taken from the public treasury. Throughout his route southward the soldiers of Pompey—who had heretofore been his soldiers—return to him. Pompey and the consuls still retreat, and still Cæsar follows them, though Pompey had boasted, when first warned to beware of Cæsar, that he had only to stamp upon Italian soil and legions would arise from the earth ready to obey him. He knows, however, that away from Rome, in her provinces, in Macedonia and Achaia, in Asia and Cilicia, in Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa, in Mauritania and the two Spains, there are Roman legions which as yet know no Cæsar. It may be better for Pompey that he should stamp his foot somewhere out of Italy. At any rate he sends the obedient consuls and his attendant senators over to Dyrrhachium in Illyria with a part of his army, and follows with the remainder as soon as Cæsar is at his heels. Cæsar makes an effort to intercept him and his fleet, but in that he fails. Thus Pompey deserts Rome and Italy,—and never again sees the imperial city or the fair land. Cæsar explains to us why he does not follow his enemy and endeavour at once to put an end to the struggle. Pompey is provided with shipping and he is not; and he is aware that the force of Rome lies in her provinces. Moreover, Rome may be starved by Pompey, unless he, Cæsar, can take care that the corn-growing countries, which are the granaries of Rome, are left free for the use of the city."

_A. Trollope, The Commentaries of Cæsar, chapter 9._

Turning back from Brundisium, Cæsar proceeded to Rome to take possession of the seat of government which his enemies had abandoned to him. He was scrupulous of legal forms, and, being a proconsul, holding military command, did not enter the city in person. But he called together, outside of the walls, such of the senators as were in Rome and such as could be persuaded to return to the city, and obtained their formal sanction to various acts. Among the measures so authorized was the appropriation of the sacred treasure stored up in the vaults of the temple of Saturn. It was a consecrated reserve, to be used for no purpose except the repelling of a Gallic invasion which had been, for many generations, the greatest dread of Rome. Cæsar claimed it, because he had put an end to that fear, by conquering the Gauls. His stay at Rome on this occasion (April, B. C. 49) was brief, for he needed to make haste to encounter the Pompeian legions in Spain, and to secure the submission of all the west before he followed Pompeius into the Eastern world.

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 5, chapters 1-4._

ALSO IN J_. A. Froude, Cæsar, chapter 21._

ROME: B. C. 49. Cæsar's first campaign against the Pompeians in Spain. His conquest of Massilia.

In Spain, all the strong forces of the country were commanded by partisans of Pompeius and the Optimate party. Cæsar had already sent forward C. Fabius from Southern Gaul with three legions, to take possession of the passes of the Pyrenees and the principal Spanish roads. Following quickly in person, he found that his orders had been vigorously obeyed. Fabius was confronting the Pompeian generals, Afranius and Petreius at Ilerda (modern Lerida in Catalonia), on the river Sicoris (modern Segre), where they made their stand. They had five legions of well-trained veterans, besides native auxiliaries to a considerable number. Cæsar's army, with the reinforcements that he had added to it, was about the same. The Pompeians had every advantage of position, commanding the passage of the river by a permanent bridge of stone and drawing supplies from both banks. Cæsar, on the other hand, had great difficulty in maintaining his communications, and was placed in mortal peril by a sudden flood which destroyed his bridges. Yet, without any general battle, by pure strategic skill and by resistless energy, he forced the hostile army out of its advantageous position, intercepted its retreat and compelled an unconditional surrender. This Spanish campaign, which occupied but forty days, and which was decisive of the contest for all Spain, was one of the finest of Cæsar's military achievements. {2693} The Greek city of Massilia (modern Marseilles), still nominally independent and the ally of Rome, although surrounded by the Roman conquests in Gaul, had seen fit to range itself on the side of Pompeius and the Optimates, and to close its gates in the face of Cæsar, when he set out for his campaign in Spain. He had not hesitated to leave three legions of his moderate army before the city, while he ordered a fleet to be built at Arelates (Arles), for coöperation in the siege. Decimus Brutus commanded the fleet and Trebonius was the general of the land force. The siege was made notable by remarkable engineering operations on both sides, but the courage of the Massiliots was of no long endurance. When Cæsar returned from his Spanish campaign he found them ready to surrender. Notwithstanding they had been guilty of a great act of treachery during the siege, by breaking an armistice, he spared their city, on account, he said, of its name and antiquity. His soldiers, who had expected rich booty, were offended, and a dangerous mutiny, which occurred soon afterwards at Placentia, had this for its main provocation.

_Cæsar, The Civil War, book 1, chapters 36-81, and book 2, chapters 1-22._

ALSO IN _G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 5, chapters 5 and 8._

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapters 15-16._

ROME: B. C. 48. The war in Epirus and Thessaly. Cæsar's decisive victory at Pharsalia.

Having established his authority in Italy, Gaul and Spain, and having legalized it by procuring from the assembly of the Roman citizens his formal election to the consulship, for the year A. U. 706 (B. C. 48), Cæsar prepared to follow Pompeius and the Senatorial party across the Adriatic. As the calendar then stood, it was in January that he arrived at Brundisium to take ship; but the season corresponded with November in the calendar as Cæsar, himself, corrected it soon afterwards. The vessels at his command were so few that he could transport only 15,500 of his troops on the first expedition, and it was with that number that he landed at Palæste on the coast of Epirus. The sea was swarming with the fleets of his enemies, and, although he escaped them in going, his small squadron was caught on the return voyage and many of its ships destroyed. Moreover, the Pompeian cruisers became so vigilant that the second detachment of his army, left behind at Brundisium, under Marcus Antonius, found no opportunity to follow him until the winter had nearly passed. Meantime, with his small force, Cæsar proceeded boldly into Macedonia to confront Pompeius, reducing fortresses and occupying towns as he marched. Although his great antagonist had been gathering troops in Macedonia for months, and now numbered an army of some 90,000 or 100,000 men, it was Cæsar, not Pompeius, who pressed for a battle, even before Mark Antony had joined him. As soon as the junction had occurred he pushed the enemy with all possible vigor. But Pompeius had no confidence in his untrained host. He drew his whole army into a strongly fortified, immense camp, on the sea coast near Dyrrhachium, at a point called Petra, and there he defied Cæsar to dislodge him. The latter undertook to wall him in on the land-side of his camp, by a line of ramparts and towers seventeen miles in length. It was an undertaking too great for his force. Pompeius made a sudden flank movement which disconcerted all his plans, and so defeated and demoralized his men that he was placed in extreme peril for a time. Had the Senatorial chief shown half of Cæsar's energy at that critical moment, the cause of Cæsar would probably have been lost. But Pompeius and his party took time to rejoice over their victory, while Cæsar framed plans to repair his defeat. He promptly abandoned his lines before the enemy's camp and fell back into the interior of the country, to form a junction with certain troops which he had previously sent eastward to meet reënforcements then coming to Pompeius. He calculated that Pompeius would follow him, and Pompeius did so. The result was to give Cæsar, at last, the opportunity he had been seeking for months, to confront with his tried legions the motley levies of his antagonist on an open field. The decisive and ever memorable battle was fought in Thessaly, on the plain of Pharsalia, through which flows the river Enipeus, and overlooking which, from a contiguous height, stood anciently the city of Pharsalus. It was fought on the 9th of August, in the year 48 before Christ. It was a battle quickly ended. The foot-soldiers of Pompeius out-numbered those of Cæsar at least as two to one; but they could not stand the charge which the latter made upon them. His cavalry was largely composed of the young nobility of Rome, and Cæsar had few horsemen with which to meet them; but he set against them a strong reserve of his sturdy veterans on foot, and they broke the horsemen's ranks. The defeat was speedily a rout; there was no rallying. Pompeius fled with a few attendants and made his way to Alexandria, where his tragical fate overtook him. Some of the other leaders escaped in different directions. Some, like Brutus, submitted to Cæsar, who was practically the master, from that hour, of the Roman realm, although Thapsus had still to be fought.

_Cæsar, The Civil War, book 3._

ALSO IN _W. W. Fowler, Julius Cæsar, chapter 16._

_G. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, volume 5, chapters 10-17._

_T. A. Dodge, Cæsar, chapters 31-35._

ROME: B. C. 48-47. Pursuit or Pompeius to Egypt. His assassination. Cæsar at Alexandria, with Cleopatra. The rising against him. His peril. His deliverance.

See ALEXANDRIA: B. C. 48-47.

ROME: B. C. 47-46. Cæsar's overthrow or Pharnaces at Zela. His return to Rome. The last stand or his opponents in Africa. Their defeat at Thapsus.