JULIUS
CAESAR:
THE LAST DICTATOR

 

 --------------------
 
Home
Introduction
Youth to Consulate
Gaul to the Rubicon
The Civil War
Conspiracy & Death
Aftermath
Legacy & Reform
The Private Man
Battles & Campaigns
Contemporaries
Timeline
Reading & Links

Chapter 3.2: The Civil War

A WORLD WAR, 49-45 BC

The battles of the Civil War were played at throughout the Roman world, from Spain to Africa, Pontus to Greece. Map courtesy of Ancient World Mapping Center.

It took Caesar's augmented legions less than six months - to August, 49 - to break the resistance of the port of Massilia (Marseilles), which had effectively declared for Pompey, and to destroy Pompey's armies in Spain. In Rome the depleted Senate had elected Caesar dictator. The office of dictator - in law, an emergency measure in which one man only ran the state for a maximum of six months - had lapsed until the dreaded Sulla had reinstituted it after his own March on Rome, in Caesar's youth. In only eleven days in Rome in December, 49, Caesar took firm charge of the Roman state. He was lawfully elected as Consul. He filled vacant priesthoods and arranged for the celebration of deferred religious festivals. The chronic sickness of the economy and its disintegration since the Civil War began had led many to call for the immediate abolition of standing debt, which would have exacerbated the economic collapse. Caesar, using dictatorial powers, issued a well-considered edict obliging creditors to accept in settlement land at prewar values (assessed by independent arbitrators) and ensured that interest already be paid would be deducted from all capital debts. He had, throughout 49, used his powers to grant long-deferred citizenship rights to Latin communities and localities in Cisalpine Gaul and Spain. He issued grain to the people of Rome and, in late December, laid down the dictatorship and left to join his armies in Brundisium to go after Pompey. For the rest of his life, Caesar would hold the offices of Consul or Dictator. Neither office apparently altered the power he now wielded.

The type of sailing/galley vessel transported Caesar's legions.

DYRRHACHIUM TO PHARSALUS

In the major port of Brundisium, the lack of shipping was critical. In spite of six months of canvassing throughout Italy, Caesar had transport only for 15,000 legionaries and 6700 cavalry. Nevertheless, he crossed the Adriatic with part of his army in January, 48, under the noses of Bibulus (Caesar's old enemy and co-consul) and his navy, patrolling the Adriatic in the hopes of preventing Caesar's crossing. Not to be caught a second time, Bibulus increased patrols along the whole coast of the Adriatic so successfully that the balance of the army under Antony could not cross over from Italy until April 10, a three-months' delay. This left Caesar insecurely on the Balkan Peninsula, outnumbered by Pompey's forces by as much as seven to one.

Although Caesar's unlooked-for appearance on the coast of Epirus had momentarily panicked Pompey's army, Pompey refused Caesar's peace overtures and succeeded in reaching the fortified and well-supplied city of Dyrrhachium before Caesar. Impatiently then desperately waiting for the balance of his legions, Caesar is reported to have attempted to sneak back to Brundisium himself to fetch them on a storm-tossed boat, promising the unhappy captain that he could succeed because he carried "Caesar and Caesar's luck." When Antony and the legions finally rejoined him in April, Caesar's forces totaled about 34,000 infantry and 1,400 cavalry; Gelzer estimates that Pompey's troops probably outnumbered Caesar's by 25%. A series of skirmishes and an eventual siege around Dyrrhachium - Caesar attempted to block in Pompey's entire army with fortifications that eventually exceeded 22 square miles - were without military success. Caesar was also operating with diminishing supplies for his army while Pompey could be comfortably resupplied by sea.

Pompey broke through Caesar's siege lines in July, and Caesar, with supplies almost exhausted, withdrew southeastward into Thessaly. Pompey followed and, on August 9, 48 BC, the armies met on the plains of Pharsalus described by Paterculus as "…that day of carnage so fatal to the Roman name, when so much blood was shed on either side, the clash of arms between the two heads of the state, the extinction of one of the two luminaries of the Roman world." Velleius Paterculus, 2.52.

It seems that both commanders were determined to make Pharsalus the definitive battle of the war. Pompey apparently clearly saw that Caesar's greatest weakness was supply; he could have merely starved out Caesar's army and would almost certainly have bought victory with these tactics. Unfortunately, the clamoring Senators with him wanted action, and quickly. Apparently against Pompey's better judgment, they insisted that Pompey stand and fight Caesar. There are hints that Pompey's army was so confident of victory that it had made every preparation for eventual triumph. Cicero writes that there had been much talk at Pompey's headquarters of revenge and proscriptions, once Caesar was disposed of. From the sources, it is clear that Pompey and the Senate had, from almost the moment of Caesar's invasions, planned the same kinds of vengeful proscriptions against the 'rebels' as Sulla had made infamous 30 years earlier. If Pompey's army had won at Pharsalus, Caesar himself and all his followers would have been proscribed and destroyed. A major quarrel developed in the last war council about who would be eligible for the praetorship; others of the Boni squabbled about who would take over Caesar's position as Pontifex Maximus. Caesar's forces were outnumbered at Pharsalus but his confidence was apparently unshaken. As he later wrote dryly in The Civil War, "…they all thought only of offices, financial rewards, vengeance on their personal enemies and of how to exploit their victory instead of how to win it."

THE BATTLE OF PHARSALUS

Outline of the Battle of Pharsalus, August, 48 BC., from RedRampant.com.

On the morning of August 9, Caesar, who had sought to lure Pompey to battle for days and was finally giving up, planning to again move his army eastwards, saw the massing of opposing armies. He realized that Pompey's reluctance to fight had been overcome. By all accounts he was also able, with the prescience of genius, to deduce what Pompey's battle-plan would be and to prepare his own counterstrokes accordingly. When Pompey massed his cavalry on his left wing to destroy Caesar's forces, Caesar placed cohorts of infantry to meet them and held hidden units in reserve. With orders to strike at the faces of the young Pompeians, Caesar's legions panicked Pompey's cavalry, which broke and fled. Caesar then threw in reinforcements and outflanked Pompey's entire army.

 

" Pompey, as soon as our men had forced the trenches, mounting his horse, and stripping off his general's habit, went hastily out of the back gate of the camp, and galloped with all speed to Larissa. Nor did he stop there, but with the same dispatch, collecting a few of his flying troops, and halting neither day nor night, he arrived at the seaside, attended by only thirty horse, and went on board a victualing barque, often complaining, as we have been told, that he had been so deceived in his expectation, that he was almost persuaded that he had been betrayed by those from whom he had expected victory, as they began the fight. "

 
  Caesar, The Civil War, III.96  

When night fell on August 9, the bulk of Pompey's allied armies were entirely routed and Pompey and the senators were fleeing for refuge. The balance of his legions surrendered to Caesar the next day. As Caesar inspected the thousands of slain, Suetonius famously quotes him saying "They would have it so. I, Gaius Caesar, should have been condemned despite all my achievements, had I not appealed to my army for help." Following the battle, he sought out and pardoned hundreds of opponents, including Brutus, son of his longtime mistress, Servilia, who would head his assassins in later years.

CAESAR IN EGYPT

Pompey and a small party fled by ship to Egypt while Caesar slowly followed by land. On September 28, 48 BC, upon his arrival in Egypt, Pompey was summoned by ministers of Ptolemy XIII and assassinated at the command of the young pharaoh's ministers. Apparently the Egyptians thought that Caesar would be placated if they removed his inconvenient rival. When Caesar reached Alexandria on October 2, he was outwardly horrified and is said to have shed tears when shown Pompey's severed head. He was possibly relieved; he had far more pressing political concerns.

Hostile Republican forces still remained in parts of Africa and Spain. Caesar's arrangements in and control over Rome were being challenged and he was badly in need of money for his troops. Egypt was the richest country in the ancient world and ripe for persuasion. Caesar, claiming a large debt owed to him by the Egyptian government (which he badly needed for his own mopping-up operations) stayed in Alexandria and found himself in the middle of a power struggle between young Ptolemy and parties supporting his elder sister, Cleopatra. For a variety of political reasons, not least perhaps because he had become infatuated with the young Queen, Caesar chose to support Cleopatra. The king's party almost immediately besieged him and his small forces in Alexandria. For roughly five months, Ptolemy's army hemmed Caesar in. During frequent skirmishes Caesar was nearly killed on more than one occasion.

PPurported bust of the Greek queen, Cleopatra, circa 1st century BC. Cleopatra VII was the descendant of Greek, not Egyptian, rulers.

Reinforcements finally arrived from Asia Minor in March 47. On March 27, Caesar won a great victory against Ptolemy's forces on the Nile. He installed Cleopatra as sole queen and left Egypt for Asia Minor at the beginning of June. Shortly thereafter, she gave birth to a son she claimed was Caesar's and whom she named after him. The boy was nicknamed Caesarion.

Before returning to deal with Rome, Caesar was determined to crush all surviving military resistance and for this he needed money. In Asia Minor were lately-rebellious kings who had raised money for Pompey. Caesar viewed these funds as due to him and intended to get them. As Gelzer writes,

 

" For Caesar publicly declared that only two things were needed to rule, soldiers and money, and armies could only be held together with money… since the Roman citizen force had inevitably changed into an army of professional soldiers, the imperator with his veterans took the political place of the patron and his clients. What some had feared and others aspired to, for decades, was fully realized in the person of Caesar; the conqueror or Gaul whom the old powers refused to recognize overwhelmed all resistance and, on the strength of an authority based solely on the loyalty of his soldiers, was reaching for the government of the Empire."

 
  Gelzer, Caesar: Politician and Statesman  

In the last five years of his life, Caesar prevailed in Civil Wars in Asia and Spain, conquered Egypt, rose to undreamed-of power in the Roman state, rent the fabric of the mos maiorum, was honored like a god for the first time in Roman history, and murdered by his closest associates when they believed he sought the power in name which he already held in fact. For Caesar, as later said of the murdered “Now he belongs to the ages.” The question of the precise nature of Caesar's contribution to the ages has been debated since his death. He is viewed as the callous destroyer of the Republic; as the far-sighted realist who saw clearly the need for one-man rule to fulfill Rome's Imperial destiny; as the reformer who fought the decay of the status quo; as the megalomaniac who leveled Rome’s foundations for his own glory. He was, to some extent, all of these things. Today, there are those who admire him and those who despise him, but no historian of Roman (and European) history can afford to ignore him.  

PHARNACES AND THE BATTLE OF ZELA: CAME, SAW, CONQUERED

When Caesar left Cleopatra in an Egypt firmly under Rome’s protection in June, 47 BC, he intended to crush all remaining Republican resistance in Asia. Pharnaces, king of the Cimmerian Bosporus (the Crimea), had been a client of Pompey’s. Taking advantage of the confusion of Civil War, Pharnaces had landed on the north coast of Asia Minor to win back his father’s empire, threatening Roman territories in Pontus and Bithynia (and incidentally, causing the long delay in sending reinforcements to Caesar in Alexandria). Proceeding from Egypt towards Pontus, Caesar met with defeated client-kings who had allied with Pompey during the late Civil War, forgiving the majority for their opposition (most prominently pardoning Gaius Cassius and Marcus Junius Brutus, who would spearhead his assassination). He rewarded those who had sent him assistance in Egypt with citizenship and tax exemptions. 

Caesar arrived in late July in the vicinity of Pharnaces’ forces near the Pontic town of Zela. Suetonius continues, ”Five days after his arrival [approximately August 1, 47], and four hours after catching site of Pharnaces, Caesar won a crushing victory at Zela; and commented drily on Pompey’s good fortune in having built up his reputation for generalship by victories over such poor stuff as this.” Over a year later, at Caesar’s Pontic triumph, one of the decorated wagons carried only a simple three word inscription, now part of the legend, describing the swift savagery of Caesar’s victory: VENI, VIDI, VICI ("I came, I saw, I conquered").

Leaving Asia under Caesarian control, Caesar took ship for Rome, landing at Tarentum on September 24, 47. Civil unrest had been increasing in the city for months. Caesar had again been appointed dictator when the news of Pharsalus reached the Senate in Rome. He had left Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony) as his magister equitum (Master of the Horse) to control the city. Antony had permitted conflicts between his followers and Dolabella's to lead to street fighting and riot in which as many as 800 Romans were murdered. Antony had also made himself notorious by parading through Italia in a chariot drawn by lions (he claimed to be a descendant of Hercules) with a motley assortment of whores, his favorite mistress, and drunken companions. Apparently, Caesar was the only man who could control Antony, and for that, he needed to be on the spot.

Caesar’s stay in Italy was also intended to prepare him for continuing the war in Africa, where a coalition of Pompeian senators, including Cato, still held out. He dropped the inept Antony (who did not serve him again in a significant position for two years), arranged for future elections of consuls and magistrates, and briskly proceeded both to raise money for his African campaign and quell a veterans’ mutiny on the Campus Martius.

One of his more controversial measures was to substantially raise the number of Senators, both to fill the depleted ranks after the defeat of Pompey and to add his own supporters. Suddenly, instead of the august patricians of the Senate house, Rome buzzed that centurions, men without name or reputation, even barbarians (supposedly in hairy breeches, although more likely provincial Roman citizens) were sitting in the hallowed halls of the Senate. Cicero's letters seethe with contempt for the no-name Caesarian partisans now serving with Senatorial aristocrats. But this was the first step towards the policy that Augustus would fully implement, of breaking the hold on Senatorial power of those few Republican families, and opening it to merchants and provincials.

During this and other brief trips to Rome, Caesar also saw to the massive rebuilding campaign he had begun years before out of his private funds. He restored the Curia Hostilis (the Senate house), completed the great Basilica Julia, and further completed the vast complex of temples, markets, and meeting halls known as the Forum Julium, just outside the traditional forum. In it he built a temple to his alleged ancestor, Venus (The Temple of Venus Genetrix) as he had vowed on the morning of his battle with Pompey at Pharsalus. Before leaving for Africa in December, 47, he again resigned the dictatorship and set sail with six legions, five of recruits, and 2,000 cavalry. The remaining Republican senators who had supported Pompey had yet to admit complete defeat.

Coin minted to pay Caesar's troops during the Civil War. The elephant (of Africa) treads on the serpent.

The main force of the Senatorial armies was stationed near Utica in what is now Morocco. Caesar's smaller force was outnumbered by the senatorial armies, commanded by Scipio and Labienus, and in confederacy with Juba, king of Numidia. Caesar’s troops slowly joined him and, at the Battle of Thapsus n April 6, 46 BC, he defeated the Pompeians so effectively that Republican opposition in Africa ceased. Cato committed suicide as soon as he heard of the defeat, partly to deny Caesar the pleasure of triumphing over him. Other commanders and leaders fled and were tracked down and killed with the exception of Pompey’s two sons, Gnaeus and Sextus, who successfully reached Spain. 

The battlefields were apparently peaceful: now, for the first time in three years, since he crossed the Rubicon, Caesar had time to take Rome in hand.

  Suzanne Cross © 2001-2008. All Rights Reserved.
No material may be used without the author's permission.