The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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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.