The History of Rome by Theodor Mommsen (autobiographies to read txt) 📕

termination, and would meanwhile support their poorer comrades from the general means; besides, every subaltern officer equipped and paid a trooper out of his own purse.

Field of Caesar's Power
Upper Italy

While Caesar thus had the one thing which was needful— unlimited political and military authority and a trustworthy army ready for the fight—his power extended, comparatively speaking, over only a very limited space. It was based essentially on the province of Upper Italy. This region was not merely the most populous of all the districts of Italy, but also devoted to the cause of the democracy as its own. The feeling which prevailed there is shown by the conduct of a division of recruits from Opitergium (Oderzo in the delegation of Treviso), which not long after the outbreak of the war in the Illyrian waters, surrounded on a wretched raft by the war-vessels of the enemy, allowed themselves to be shot at during the whole day down to sunset without surrendering, and, such of them as had escaped the missiles, put themselves to death with their own hands during the following night. It is easy to conceive what might be expected of such a population. As they had already granted to Caesar the means of more than doubling his original army, so after the outbreak of the civil war recruits presented themselves in great numbers for the ample levies that were immediately instituted.

Italy

In Italy proper, on the other hand, the influence of Caesar was not even remotely to be compared to that of his opponents. Although he had the skill by dexterous manoeuvres to put the Catonian party in the wrong, and had sufficiently commended the rectitude of his cause to all who wished for a pretext with a good conscience either to remain neutral, like the majority of the senate, or to embrace his side, like his soldiers and the Transpadanes, the mass of the burgesses naturally did not allow themselves to be misled by these things and, when the commandant of Gaul put his legions in motion against Rome, they beheld—despite all formal explanations as to law—in Cato and Pompeius the defenders of the legitimate republic, in Caesar the democratic usurper. People in general moreover expected from the nephew of Marius, the son-in-law of Cinna, the ally of Catilina, a repetition of the Marian and Cinnan horrors, a realization of the saturnalia of anarchy projected by Catilina; and though Caesar certainly gained allies through this expectation— so that the political refugees immediately put themselves in a body at his disposal, the ruined men saw in him their deliverer, and the lowest ranks of the rabble in the capital and country towns were thrown into a ferment on the news of his advance,—these belonged to the class of friends who are more dangerous than foes.

Provinces

In the provinces and the dependent states Caesar had even less influence than in Italy. Transalpine Gaul indeed as far as the Rhine and the Channel obeyed him, and the colonists of Narbo as well as the Roman burgesses elsewhere settled in Gaul were devoted to him; but in the Narbonese province itself the constitutional party had numerous adherents, and now even the newly-conquered regions were far more a burden than a benefit to Caesar in the impending civil war; in fact, for good reasons he made no use of the Celtic infantry at all in that war, and but sparing use of the cavalry. In the other provinces and the neighbouring half or wholly independent states Caesar had indeed attempted to procure for himself support, had lavished rich presents on the princes, caused great buildings to be executed in various towns, and granted to them in case of need financial and military assistance; but on the whole, of course, not much had been gained by this means, and the relations with the German and Celtic princes in the regions of the Rhine and the Danube,—particularly the connection with the Noric king Voccio, so important for the recruiting of cavalry,—were probably the only relations of this sort which were of any moment for him.

The Coalition

While Caesar thus entered the struggle only as commandant of Gaul, without other essential resources than efficient adjutants, a faithful army, and a devoted province, Pompeius began it as de facto supreme head of the Roman commonwealth, and in full possession of all the resources that stood at the disposal of the legitimate government of the great Roman empire. But while his position was in a political and military point of view far more considerable, it was also on the other hand far less definite and firm. The unity of leadership, which resulted of itself and by necessity from the position of Caesar, was inconsistent with the nature of a coalition; and although Pompeius, too much of a soldier to deceive himself as to its being indispensable, attempted to force it on the coalition and got himself nominated by the senate as sole and absolute generalissimo by land and sea, yet the senate itself could not be set aside nor hindered from a preponderating influence on the political, and an occasional and therefore doubly injurious interference with the military, superintendence. The recollection of the twenty years' war waged on both sides with envenomed weapons between Pompeius and the constitutional party; the feeling which vividly prevailed on both sides, and which they with difficulty concealed, that the first consequence of the victory when achieved would be a rupture between the victors; the contempt which they entertained for each other and with only too good grounds in either case; the inconvenient number of respectable and influential men in the ranks of the aristocracy and the intellectual and moral inferiority of almost all who took part in the matter—altogether produced among the opponents of Caesar a reluctant and refractory co-operation, which formed the saddest contrast to the harmonious and compact action on the other side.

Field of Power of the Coalition
Juba of Numidia

While all the disadvantages incident to the coalition of powers naturally hostile were thus felt in an unusual measure by Caesar's antagonists, this coalition was certainly still a very considerable power. It had exclusive command of the sea; all ports, all ships of war, all the materials for equipping a fleet were at its disposal. The two Spains—as it were the home of the power of Pompeius just as the two Gauls were the home of that of Caesar— were faithful adherents to their master and in the hands of able and trustworthy administrators. In the other provinces also, of course with the exception of the two Gauls, the posts of the governors and commanders had during recent years been filled up with safe men under the influence of Pompeius and the minority of the senate. The client-states throughout and with great decision took part against Caesar and in favour of Pompeius. The most important princes and cities had been brought into the closest personal relations with Pompeius in virtue of the different sections of his manifold activity. In the war against the Marians, for instance, he had been the companion in arms of the kings of Numidia and Mauretania and had reestablished the kingdom of the former;(5) in the Mithradatic war, in addition to a number of other minor principalities spiritual and temporal, he had re-established the kingdoms of Bosporus, Armenia, and Cappadocia, and created that of Deiotarus in Galatia;(6) it was primarily at his instigation that the Egyptian war was undertaken, and it was by his adjutant that the rule of the Lagids had been confirmed afresh.(7) Even the city of Massilia in Caesar's own province, while indebted to the latter doubtless for various favours, was indebted to Pompeius at the time of the Sertorian war for a very considerable extension of territory;(8) and, besides, the ruling oligarchy there stood in natural alliance—strengthened by various mutual relations— with the oligarchy in Rome. But these personal and relative considerations as well as the glory of the victor in three continents, which in these more remote parts of the empire far outshone that of the conqueror of Gaul, did perhaps less harm to Caesar in those quarters than the views and designs—which had not remained there unknown—of the heir of Gaius Gracchus as to the necessity of uniting the dependent states and the usefulness of provincial colonizations. No one of the dependent dynasts found himself more imminently threatened by this peril than Juba king of Numidia. Not only had he years before, in the lifetime of his father Hiempsal, fallen into a vehement personal quarrel with Caesar, but recently the same Curio, who now occupied almost the first place among Caesar's adjutants, had proposed to the Roman burgesses the annexation of the Numidian kingdom. Lastly, if matters should go so far as to lead the independent neighbouring states to interfere in the Roman civil war, the only state really powerful, that of the Parthians, was practically already allied with the aristocratic party by the connection entered into between Pacorus and Bibulus,(9) while Caesar was far too much a Roman to league himself for party-interests with the conquerors of his friend Crassus.

Italy against Caesar

As to Italy the great majority of the burgesses were, as has been already mentioned, averse to Caesar—more especially, of course, the whole aristocracy with their very considerable following, but also in a not much less degree the great capitalists, who could not hope in the event of a thorough reform of the commonwealth to preserve their partisan jury-courts and their monopoly of extortion. Of equally anti-democratic sentiments were the small capitalists, the landholders and generally all classes that had anything to lose; but in these ranks of life the cares of the next rent-term and of sowing and reaping outweighed, as a rule, every other consideration.

The Pompeian Army

The army at the disposal of Pompeius consisted chiefly of the Spanish troops, seven legions inured to war and in every respect trustworthy; to which fell to be added the divisions of troops— weak indeed, and very much scattered—which were to be found in Syria, Asia, Macedonia, Africa, Sicily, and elsewhere. In Italy there were under arms at the outset only the two legions recently given off by Caesar, whose effective strength did not amount to more than 7000 men, and whose trustworthiness was more than doubtful, because—levied in Cisalpine Gaul and old comrades in arms of Caesar—they were in a high degree displeased at the unbecoming intrigue by which they had been made to change camps,(10) and recalled with longing their general who had magnanimously paid to them beforehand at their departure the presents which were promised to every soldier for the triumph. But, apart from the circumstance that the Spanish troops might arrive in Italy with the spring either by the land route through Gaul or by sea, the men of the three legions still remaining from the levies of 699,(11) as well as the Italian levy sworn to allegiance in 702,(12) could be recalled from their furlough. Including these, the number of troops standing at the disposal of Pompeius on the whole, without reckoning the seven legions in Spain and those scattered in other provinces, amounted in Italy alone to ten legions(13) or about 60,000 men, so that it was no exaggeration at all, when Pompeius asserted that he had only to stamp with his foot to cover the ground with armed men. It is true that it required some interval—though but short—to render these soldiers available; but the arrangements for this purpose as well as for the carrying out of the new levies ordered by the senate in consequence of the outbreak of the civil war were already everywhere in progress. Immediately after the decisive decree of the senate (7 Jan. 705), in the very depth of winter the most eminent men of the aristocracy set out to the different districts, to hasten the calling up of recruits and the preparation of arms. The want of cavalry was much felt, as for this arm they had been accustomed to rely wholly on the provinces and especially on the Celtic contingents; to make at least a beginning, three hundred gladiators belonging to Caesar were taken from the fencing-schools of Capua and mounted—a step which however met with so general disapproval, that Pompeius again broke up this troop and levied in room of it 300 horsemen from the mounted slave-herdmen of Apulia.

The state-treasury was at a low ebb as usual; they busied themselves in supplementing the inadequate amount of cash out of the local treasuries and even from the temple-treasures of the -municipia-.

Caesar Takes the Offensive

Under these circumstances the war opened at the beginning of January 705. Of troops capable of marching Caesar had not more than a legion—5000 infantry and 300 cavalry—at Ravenna, which was by the highway some 240 miles distant from Rome; Pompeius had two weak legions—7000 infantry and a small squadron of cavalry— under the orders of Appius