THIRD BOOK OF THE CIVIL WAR.—C?SAR FOLLOWS POMPEY INTO ILLYRIA.—THE LINES OF PETRA AND THE BATTLE OF PHARSALIA.—B.C. 48.

C?sar begins the last book of his last Commentary by telling us that this was the year in which he, C?sar, was by the law permitted to name a consul. He names Publius Servilius to act in conjunction with himself. The meaning of this is, that, as C?sar had been created Dictator, Pompey having taken with him into Illyria the consuls of the previous year, C?sar was now the only magistrate under whose authority a consul could be elected. No doubt he did choose the man, but the election was supposed to have been made in accordance with the forms of the Republic. He remained at Rome as Dictator for eleven days, during which he made various laws, of which the chief object was to lessen the insecurity caused by the disruption of the ordinary course of things; and then he went down to Brindisi on the track of Pompey. He had twelve legions with him, but was but badly off for ships in which to transport them; and he owns that the health of the men is bad, an autumn in the south of Italy having been very severe{147} on men accustomed to the healthy climate of Gaul and the north of Spain. Pompey, he tells us, had had a whole year to prepare his army,—a whole year, without warfare, and had collected men and ships and money, and all that support which assent gives, from Asia and the Cyclades, from Corcyra, Athens, Bithynia, Cilicia, Ph?nicia, Egypt, and the free states of Achaia. He had with him nine Roman legions, and is expecting two more with his father-in-law Scipio out of Syria. He has three thousand archers from Crete, from Sparta, and from Pontus; he has twelve hundred slingers, and he has seven thousand cavalry from Galatia, Cappadocia, and Thrace. A valorous prince from Macedonia had brought him two hundred men, all mounted. Five hundred of Galatian and German cavalry, who had been left to overawe Ptolemy in Egypt, are brought to Pompey by the filial care of young Cn?us. He too had armed eight hundred of their own family retainers, and had brought them armed. Antiochus of Commagena sends him two hundred mounted archers,—mercenaries, however, not sent without promise of high payment. Dardani,—men from the land of old Troy, Bessi, from the banks of the Hebrus, Thessalians and Macedonians, have all been crowded together under Pompey’s standard. We feel that C?sar’s mouth waters as he recounts them. But we feel also that he is preparing for the triumphant record in which he is about to tell us that all these swarms did he scatter to the winds of heaven with the handful of Roman legionaries which he at last succeeded in landing on the shores of Illyria.{148}

Pompey has also collected from all parts “frumenti vim maximam”—“a great power of corn indeed,” as an Irishman would say, translating the words literally. And he has covered the seas with his ships, so as to hinder C?sar from coming out of Italy. He has eight vice-admirals to command his various fleets,—all of whom C?sar names; and over them all, as admiral-in-chief, is Bibulus, who was joint-consul with C?sar before C?sar went to Gaul, and who was so harassed during his consulship by the C?sareans that he shut himself up in his house, and allowed C?sar to rule as sole consul. Now he is about to take his revenge; but the vengeance of such a one as Bibulus cannot reach C?sar.

C?sar having led his legions to Brindisi, makes them a speech which almost beats in impudence anything that he ever said or did. He tells them that as they have now nearly finished all his work for him;—they have only got to lay low the Republic with Pompey the Great, and all the forces of the Republic—to which, however, have to be added King Ptolemy in Egypt, King Pharnaces in Asia, and King Juba in Numidia;—they had better leave behind them at Brindisi all their little property, the spoils of former wars, so that they may pack the tighter in the boats in which he means to send them across to Illyria,—if only they can escape the mercies of ex-Consul Admiral Bibulus. There is no suggestion that at any future time they will recover their property. For their future hopes they are to trust entirely to C?sar’s generosity. With one shout they declare their readiness to obey him. He takes over{149} seven legions, escaping the dangers of those “rocks of evil fame,” the Acroceraunia of which Horace tells us,—and escaping Bibulus also, who seems to have shut himself up in his ship as he did before in his house during the consulship. C?sar seems to have made the passage with the conviction that had he fallen into the hands of Bibulus everything would have been lost. And with ordinary precaution and diligence on the part of Bibulus such would have been the result. Yet he makes the attempt,—trusting to the Fortune of C?sar,—and he succeeds. He lands at a place which he calls Pal?ste on the coast of Epirus, considerably to the south of Dyrrachium, in Illyria. At Dyrrachium Pompey had landed the year before, and there is now stored that wealth of provision of which C?sar has spoken. But Bibulus at last determines to be active, and he does manage to fall upon the empty vessels which C?sar sends back to fetch the remainder of his army. “Having come upon thirty of them, he falls upon them with all the wrath occasioned by his own want of circumspection and grief, and burns them. And in the same fire he kills the sailors and the masters of the vessels,—hoping to deter others,” C?sar tells us, “by the severity of the punishment.” After that we are not sorry to hear that he potters about on the seas very busy, but still incapable, and that he dies, as it seems, of a broken heart. He does indeed catch one ship afterwards,—not laden with soldiers, but coming on a private venture, with children, servants, and suchlike, dependants and followers of C?sar’s camp. All these, including the children, Bibulus slaughters, down to{150} the smallest child. We have, however, to remember that the story is told by C?sar, and that C?sar did not love Bibulus.

Marc Antony has been left at Brindisi in command of the legions which C?sar could not bring across at his first trip for want of sufficient ship-room, and is pressed very much by C?sar to make the passage. There are attempts at treaties made, but as we read the account we feel that C?sar is only obtaining the delay which is necessary to him till he shall have been joined by Antony. We are told how by this time the camps of C?sar and Pompey have been brought so near together that they are separated only by the river Apsus,—for C?sar had moved northwards towards Pompey’s stronghold. And the soldiers talked together across the stream; “nor, the while, was any weapon thrown,—by compact between those who talked.” Then C?sar sends Vatinius, as his ambassador, down to the river to talk of peace; and Vatinius demands with a loud voice “whether it should not be allowed to citizens to send legates to citizens, to treat of peace;—a thing that has been allowed even to deserters from the wilds of the Pyrenees and to robbers,—especially with so excellent an object as that of hindering citizens from fighting with citizens.” This seems so reasonable, that a day is named, and Labienus,—who has deserted from C?sar and become Pompeian,—comes to treat on one side of the river, and Vatinius on the other. But,—so C?sar tells the story himself,—the C?sarean soldiers throw their weapons at their old general. They probably cannot endure the voice or sight of one whom they regard{151} as a renegade. Labienus escapes under the protection of those who are with him,—but he is full of wrath against C?sar. “After this,” says he, “let us cease to speak of treaties, for there can be no peace for us till C?sar’s head has been brought to us.” But the colloquies over the little stream no doubt answered C?sar’s purpose.

C?sar is very anxious to get his legions over from Italy, and even scolds Antony for not bringing them. There is a story,—which he does not tell himself,—that he put himself into a small boat, intending to cross over to Brindisi in a storm, to hurry matters, and that he encouraged the awe-struck master of the boat by reminding him that he would carry “C?sar and his fortunes.” The story goes on to say that the sailors attempted the trip, but were driven back by the tempest.

At last there springs up a south-west wind, and Antony ventures with his flotilla,—although the war-ships of Pompey still hold the sea, and guard the Illyrian coast. But C?sar’s general is successful, and the second half of the C?sarean army is carried northward by favouring breezes towards the shore in the very sight of Pompey and his soldiers at Dyrrachium. Two ships, however, lag behind and fall into the hands of one Otacilius, an officer belonging to Pompey. The two ships, one full of recruits and the other of veterans, agree to surrender, Otacilius having sworn that he will not hurt the men. “Here you may see,” says C?sar, “how much safety to men there is in presence of mind.” The recruits do as they have undertaken, and give themselves{152} up;—whereupon Otacilius, altogether disregarding his oath, like a true Roman, kills every man of them. But the veterans, disregarding their word also, and knowing no doubt to a fraction the worth of the word of Otacilius, run their ship ashore in the night, and, with much fighting, get safe to Antony. C?sar implies that the recruits even would have known better had they not been sea-sick; but that even bilge-water and bad weather combined had failed to touch the ancient courage of the veteran legionaries. They were still good men—“item conflictati et tempestatis et sentin? vitiis.”

We are then told how Metellus Scipio, coming out of Syria with his legions into Macedonia, almost succeeds in robbing the temple of Diana of Ephesus on his way. He gets together a body of senators, who are to give evidence that he counts the money fairly as he takes it out of the temple. But letters come from Pompey just as he is in the act, and he does not dare to delay his journey even to complete so pleasant a transaction. He comes to meet Pompey and to share his command at the great battle that must soon be fought. We hear, too, how C?sar sends his lieutenants into Thessaly and ?tolia and Macedonia, to try what friends he has there, to take cities, and to get food. He is now in a land which has seemed specially to belong to Pompey; but even here they have heard of C?sar, and the Greeks are simply anxious to be friends with the strongest Roman of the day. They have to judge which will win, and to adhere to him. For the poor Greeks there is much difficulty in forming a judgment.{153} Presently we shall see the way in which C?sar gives a lesson on that subject to the citizens of Gomphi. In the mean time he joins his own forces to those lately brought by Antony out of Italy, and resolves that he will force Pompey to a fight.

We may divide the remainder of this last book of the second Commentary into two episodes,—the first being the story of what occurred within the lines at Petra, and the second the account of the crowning battle of Pharsalia. In the first Pompey was the victor,—but the victory, great as it was, has won from the world very little notice. In the second, as all the world knows, C?sar was triumphant and henceforward dominant. And yet the affair at Petra should have made a Pharsalia unnecessary, and indeed impossible. Two reasons have conspired to make Pompey’s complete success at Petra unimportant in the world’s esteem. This Commentary was written not by Pompey but by C?sar; and then, unfortunately for Pompey, Pharsalia was allowed to follow Petra.

It is not very easy to unravel C?sar’s story of the doings of the two armies at Petra. Nor, were this ever so easy, would our limits or the purport of this little volume allow us to attempt to give that narrative in full to our readers. C?sar had managed to join the legions which he had himself brought from Italy with those which had crossed afterwards with Antony, and was now anxious for a battle. His men, though fewer in number than they who followed Pompey, were fit for fighting, and knew all the work of soldiering. Pompey’s men were for the most part beginners;—but{154} they were learning, and every week added to their experience was a week in Pompey’s favour. With hope of forcing a battle, C?sar managed to get his army between Dyrrachium, in which were kept all Pompey’s stores and wealth of war, and the army of his opponent, so that Pompey, as regarded any approach by land, was shut off from Dyrrachium. But the sea was open to him. His fleet was everywhere on the coast, while C?sar had not a ship that could dare to show its bow upon the waters.

There was a steep rocky promontory some few miles north of Dyrrachium, from whence there was easy access to the sea, called Petra, or the rock. At this point Pompey could touch the sea, but between Petra and Dyrrachium C?sar held the country. Here, on this rock, taking in for the use of his army a certain somewhat wide amount of pasturage at the foot of the rock, Pompey placed his army, and made intrenchments all round from sea to sea, fortifying himself, as all Roman generals knew how to do, with a bank and ditch and twenty-four turrets and earthworks that would make the place absolutely impregnable. The length of his lines was fifteen Roman miles,—more than thirteen English miles,—so that within his works he might have as much space as possible to give him grass for his horses. So placed, he had all the world at his back to feed him. Not only could he get at that wealth of stores which he had amassed at Dyrrachium, and which were safe from C?sar, but the coasts of Greece, and Asia, and Egypt were open to his ships. Two things only were wanting to him,—sufficient grass{155} for his horses, and water. But all things were wanting to C?sar,—except grass and water. The Illyrian country at his back was one so unproductive, being rough and mountainous, that the inhabitants themselves were in ordinary times fed upon imported corn. And Pompey, foreseeing something of what might happen, had taken care to empty the storehouses and to leave the towns behind him destitute and impoverished.

Nevertheless C?sar, having got the body of his enemy, as it were, imprisoned at Petra, was determined to keep his prisoner fast. So round and in front of Pompey’s lines he also made other lines, from sea to sea. He began by erecting turrets and placing small detachments on the little hills outside Pompey’s lines, so as to prevent his enemy from getting the grass. Then he joined these towers by lines, and in this way surrounded the other lines,—thinking that so Pompey would not be able to send out his horsemen for forage; and again, that the horses inside at Petra might gradually be starved; and again “that the reputation,”—“auctoritatem,”—“which in the estimation of foreign nations belonged chiefly to Pompey in this war, would be lessened when the story should have been told over the world that Pompey had been besieged by C?sar, and did not dare to fight.”

We are, perhaps, too much disposed to think,—reading our history somewhat cursorily,—that C?sar at this time was everybody, and that Pompey was hardly worthy to be his foe. Such passages in the Commentary as that above translated,—they are not many, but a few suffice,—show that this idea is erroneous. Up{156} to this period in their joint courses Pompey had been the greater man; C?sar had done very much, but Pompey had done more—and now he had on his side almost all that was wealthy and respectable in Rome. He led the Conservative party, and was still confident that he had only to bide his time, and that C?sar must fall before him. C?sar and the C?sareans were to him as the spirits of the Revolution were in France to Louis XVI., to Charles X., and to Louis-Philippe, before they had made their powers credible and formidable; as the Reform Bill and Catholic Emancipation were to such men as George IV. and Lord Eldon, while yet they could be opposed and postponed. It was impossible to Pompey that the sweepings of Rome, even with C?sar and C?sar’s army to help them, should at last prevail over himself and over the Roman Senate. “He was said at that time,” we are again translating C?sar’s words, “to have declared with boasts among his own people, that he would not himself deny that as a general he should be considered to be worthless if C?sar’s legions should now extricate themselves from the position in which they had rashly entangled themselves without very great loss”—“maximo detrimento”—loss that should amount wellnigh to destruction. And he was all but right in what he said.

There was a great deal of fighting for the plots of grass and different bits of vantage-ground,—fighting which must have taken place almost entirely between the two lines. But C?sar suffered under this disadvantage, that his works, being much the longest,{157} required the greatest number of men to erect them and prolong them and keep them in order; whereas Pompey, who in this respect had the least to do, having the inner line, was provided with much the greater number of men to do it. C?sar’s men, being veterans, had always the advantage in the actual fighting; but in the mean time Pompey’s untried soldiers were obtaining that experience which was so much needed by them. Nevertheless Pompey suffered very much. They could not get water on the rock, and when he attempted to sink wells, C?sar so perverted the water-courses that the wells gave no water. C?sar tells us that he even dammed up the streams, making little lakes to hold it, so that it should not trickle down in its underground courses to the comfort of his enemies; but we should have thought that any reservoirs so made must soon have overflown themselves, and have been useless for the intended purpose. In the mean time C?sar’s men had no bread but what was made of a certain wild cabbage,—“chara,”—which grew there, which they kneaded up with milk, and lived upon it cheerfully, though it was not very palatable. To show the Pompeians the sort of fare with which real veterans could be content to break their fasts, they threw loaves of this composition across the lines; for they were close together, and could talk to each other, and the Pompeians did not hesitate to twit their enemies with their want of provisions. But the C?sareans had plenty of water,—and plenty of meat; and they assure C?sar that they would rather eat the bark off the trees than allow the Pompeians to escape them.{158}

But there was always this for C?sar to fear,—that Pompey should land a detachment behind his lines and attack him at the back. To hinder this C?sar made another intrenchment, with ditch and bank, running at right angles from the shore, and was intending to join this to his main work by a transverse line of fortifications running along that short portion of the coast which lay between his first lines and the second, when there came upon him the disaster which nearly destroyed him. While he was digging his trenches and building his turrets the fighting was so frequent that, as C?sar tells us, on one day there were six battles. Pompey lost two thousand legionaries, while C?sar lost no more than twenty; but every C?sarean engaged in a certain turret was wounded, and four officers lost their eyes. C?sar estimates that thirty thousand arrows were thrown upon the men defending this tower, and tells us of one Sc?va, an officer, who had two hundred and thirty holes made by these arrows in his own shield.[12] We can only surmise{159} that it must have been a very big shield, and that there must have been much trouble in counting the holes. C?sar, however, was so much pleased that he gave Sc?va a large sum of money,—something over ￡500, and, allowing him to skip over six intermediate ranks, made him at once first centurion—or Primipilus of the legion. We remember no other record of such quick promotion—in prose. There is, indeed, the well-known case of a common sailor who did a gallant action and was made first-lieutenant on the spot; but that is told in verse, and the common sailor was a lady.

Two perfidious Gauls to whom C?sar had been very kind, but whom he had been obliged to check on account of certain gross peculations of which they had been guilty, though, as he tells us, he had not time to punish them, went over to Pompey, and told Pompey all the secrets of C?sar’s ditches, and forts, and mounds,—finished and unfinished. Before that, C?sar assures us, not a single man of his had gone over to the enemy, though many of the enemy had come to him. But those perfidious Gauls did a world of mischief. Pompey, hearing how far C?sar was from having his works along the sea-shore finished, got together a huge fleet of boats, and succeeded at night in throwing a large body of his men ashore between C?sar’s two lines, thus dividing C?sar’s forces, and coming upon them in their weakest{160} point. C?sar admits that there was a panic in his lines, and that the slaughter of his men was very great. It seems that the very size of his own works produced the ruin which befel them, for the different parts of them were divided one from another, so that the men in one position could not succour those in another. The affair ended in the total rout of the C?sarean army. C?sar actually fled, and had Pompey followed him we must suppose that then there would have been an end of C?sar. He acknowledges that in the two battles fought on that day he lost 960 legionaries, 32 officers, and 32 standards.

And then C?sar tells us a story of Labienus, who had been his most trusted l............