Caesar. Life of a Colossus (Adrian Goldsworthy) Yale University Press (69 page)

Ariminum, already infiltrated by his men, did not resist him. For a while he remained there but sent Antony with five cohorts to occupy Arretium (modern Arrezo), despatching three more to Pisaurum, Fanum (modern Fano) and Ancona respectively. There was no fighting. News of the crossing of the Rubicon seems to have reached Rome on about 17 January. Pompey and his leading allies promptly left the city, for Pompey quickly realised that at present he simply did not have the forces to stop Caesar. This meant that Rome had been abandoned by all senior magistrates and so the public life 385

CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP 49 – 44 BC

VENETIA

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Ariminum

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Auxium

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Asculum

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Aternus

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The Italian campaign 49 BC

of the Republic for the moment ceased to be conducted in the proper way. Many uncommitted senators went with them, remembering the bloody entries into Rome made by Marius and Sulla. Others simply left Rome and went to their country houses, planning to keep a low profile. Around this time a number of unofficial envoys came to Caesar at Ariminum. One was Lucius Julius Caesar, son of the former consul who had served as his legate for a number of years. He brought a message from Pompey, assuring Caesar that his actions were not motivated by personal hostility, but were dictated by his duty to the Republic. His old ally urged Caesar to lay down his command voluntarily and prevent civil war. A similar request was brought by the praetor Lucius Roscius. Caesar replied by stating that all he wished was to exercise the rights legally granted to him by the Roman people. His enemies had been raising troops for some time. If they wanted peace then 386

Blitzkrieg: Italy and Spain, Winter–Autumn, 49 bc

Pompey should go to his province, then both of them could lay down their commands and disband their armies – along with all the other troops in Italy – at the same time. Not for the last time he also asked Pompey to come and meet him in person. By 23 January Lucius Caesar the Younger reached Pompey, who was now at Teanum in Apulia. According to Cicero writing two days later, Caesar’s:

terms were accepted with the proviso that he must at once withdraw all his garrisons from the towns which he had occupied outside his province. Once that was done, they replied that we should return to the city and settle the matter in the Senate. I hope at present that it will be possible for us to have peace. For one leader regrets his rash folly and the other his lack of forces.8

Letters were sent to Caesar informing him of the offer – as he himself put it, that he should ‘go back to Gaul, abandon Ariminum and disband his forces’. To him this was an ‘unfair deal’. No date was given for Pompey’s departure to his provinces or his laying the command down and giving up his armies. It was obvious that he was effectively being asked to give up the military advantage he had gained by his sudden invasion. His opponents wanted him to withdraw and then trust to their giving his demands a sympathetic hearing in future meetings of the Senate. There was no reason for Caesar to believe that things would go better for him than they had in the debates of the last eighteen months. Pompey and his allies did not trust Caesar enough to stop raising troops in expectation that he would accept their terms. In return Caeser did not trust them sufficiently to take the first step towards peace and go back to his province. Caesar does seem to have been especially frustrated by Pompey’s reluctance to agree to a face-to-face conference. In the past the two men had got on well and he seems to have been confident that he could reach a genuine agreement with his former son-in-law. Pompey may have been unsure about whether or not he could resist Caesar’s persuasiveness. For a man with a morbid fear of assassination and memories of an earlier and very brutal civil war, it is possible that he was reluctant to risk such a meeting. Yet in the end it was probably more a question of his relationship with Cato and his other new allies. Their alliance was recent, his friendship with Caesar older and of longer duration. Whatever he felt himself, Pompey knew that these men simply would not believe in his good faith and constancy if he privately met Caesar. Cato had already urged the Senate to appoint Pompey as supreme commander until 387

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the crisis was over and the rebellious proconsul defeated. This was rejected by the consuls and ex-consuls who were too proud to be commanded by anyone else. Jealousy and suspicion between allies was as much a hindrance to a negotiated settlement as mistrust between enemies.9

Caesar resumed his advance. A report reached him that Iguvium was held by a garrison of five cohorts under the command of the propraetor Quintus Minucius Thermus, but that the townsfolk favoured him. The two cohorts with him at Ariminum were added to the one stationed in Pisarum and sent under Curio to the town. Thermus retreated, his raw recruits deserted and went home, and Curio’s men were welcomed at Iguvium. Trusting in local goodwill, Caesar pushed on to Auxinum and had soon overrun Picenum, supposedly the heartland of Pompey’s family. There was one small skirmish in which a few prisoners were taken, but the general population was displaying no enthusiasm for rising up against Caesar and his men. The cause against Caesar had little popular appeal and his army was not plundering or doing anything else that might have created hostility. A few of the Pompeian soldiers even chose to join him. Many communities also remembered the gifts Caesar had distributed to them from the profits of Gaul – he took particular satisfaction in reporting that even the town of Cingulum, which had been especially favoured by Labienus, now willingly opened its gates to him.10

By this time it was February and Caesar had reunited the detachments of the
Thirteenth
and been joined by the
Twelfth
. At Asculum another Pompeian garrison fled before him, and it was not until he reached Corfinium that he encountered any serious opposition. In command there was Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had not yet managed to get anywhere near his province. Together with his subordinates he had managed to muster a force of more than thirty cohorts, but these were entirely raw recruits. Pompey had not wanted Ahenobarbus to defend the town, as he had no doubt of the inevitable outcome when such inexperienced troops came up against Caesar’s veterans. He was himself much further south in Apulia with the
First
and
Third
legions, as well as a number of recent levies. However, he had no power to issue orders to Ahenobarbus and could do no more than send letters urging him to abandon the town and join him. Domitius Ahenobarbus was not a man to change his mind too readily and wrote replies imploring Pompey to come to him. There were no similar divisions over strategy for Caesar. He closed on Corfinium, driving off some enemy cohorts which attempted to break down the bridge outside the town. Soon afterwards Antony was sent with a quarter of the army to Sulmo in response to an appeal from the town. 388

Blitzkrieg: Italy and Spain, Winter–Autumn, 49 bc

In another bloodless victory the Pompeian commander was captured, taken to Caesar and promptly allowed to go free. In the meantime the Caesarean army gathered food in preparation for the siege of Corfinium. After three days it received a major boost to its strength when it was joined by the
Eighth
Legion and the twenty-two cohorts raised from Transalpine Gaul and trained and equipped as legionaries. The troops were set to building a line of circumvallation strengthened by forts to surround the town. Before the blockade was complete, Domitius Ahenobarbus received a final letter from Pompey making it clear that he had no intention of marching to relieve Corfinium. Deciding now that the town’s prospects were not good, he publicly announced that help was on its way, while privately planning his own escape. However, his increasingly furtive manner soon revealed the truth to his legionaries. A council was organised consisting of the tribunes, along with the centurions – almost two hundred of these if the thirty-three cohorts were at full strength – and representatives of the ordinary soldiers to debate the matter. Some of the troops were Marsi, who had a close tie to their commander through his family’s estates in the region. At first they were staunchly loyal, even threatening to use force against the other legionaries, but their mood changed when they became convinced that their leader planned to abscond. Ahenobarbus was placed under arrest by his own men, who immediately sent envoys to surrender themselves and the town to Caesar. This was welcome news, since although he had little doubt of the outcome of the siege it would clearly pin him down for several weeks. Instead the matter had been resolved in only seven days. However, he was reluctant to enter the walls immediately, for night was falling and he did not trust his legionaries not to misbehave once they got into the dark streets of the town. So far his army had not plundered or laid waste the lands they passed through, as they had so often done in the past. Instead he had the troops stand to arms in the lines around Corfinium throughout the night to prevent any fugitives from slipping out. Near dawn one of the senior Pompeians, Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, who had been consul in 57 BC, surrendered himself and was soon followed by the remaining senior officers.

Caesar’s portrait of Ahenobarbus is scarcely flattering, but our other sources were even less kind. It was claimed that he had decided to commit suicide and demanded that his physician supply him with poison. However, when he heard that Caesar was not executing his important prisoners, he immediately repented of his rashness and was delighted to be informed by his doctor that he had only taken a harmless draught. Domitius Ahenobarbus 389

CIVIL WAR AND DICTATORSHIP 49 – 44 BC

then went out to surrender to the man whose bitter opponent he had been for at least a decade. Altogether there were fifty senators and equestrians amongst the Pompeians who surrendered, probably on 21 February. Caesar had them brought before him, repeated the charges that he had been unfairly and illegally treated and forced into war, reminding some of them of personal favours he had done them in the past. After that, all were allowed to go free. Caesar had already followed the same policy earlier in the campaign, but never up to this point had so many or so distinguished a group received the benefit of his clemency. Ahenobarbus had brought 6 million sestertii of public money with him to provide pay for his troops. This was handed over to Caesar by the town’s magistrates, but he ordered that it be sent back to his enemy, lest it be thought that ‘he was more restrained in dealing with men’s lives, than their wealth’. The surrendered soldiers were asked to take an oath to him. Soon, these legions would go under Curio’s command to fight for Caesar in Sicily and Africa.11

The clemency of Corfinium became famous, and his moderation formed a central part of Caesar’s propaganda campaign. Everyone had expected him to behave like Sulla or Marius – or even, though few would dare to say it, like the Pompey who had earned the nickname of the ‘young butcher’. Instead his soldiers were kept under tight discipline, did not plunder and only fought when they were themselves resisted. Even his bitterest enemies were allowed to go free, although both Lentulus and Ahenobarbus went straight off to fight against him again. The overwhelming majority of people in Italy were apathetic to the issues about which the Civil War was being waged. Amongst the wider population both Pompey and Caesar were highly respected and seen as great servants of the Republic. If Caesar’s legions had come marauding and slaughtering their way through Italy, then this might well have turned more of the population against him. His policy of clemency made practical sense. Armies failed to spring from the soil of Italy as Pompey had promised just a few months before. One senator acidly suggested that maybe it was about time the great man started stamping his foot. Very early on Pompey had decided that Rome was indefensible. At some point he reached the further conclusion that Caesar could not be beaten in Italy with two veteran, but possibly unreliable, legions, supported by the rawest of recruits. Instead he planned to shift the war away, taking his forces across the sea to Greece where they could be trained and a massive army gathered with the support of the eastern provinces. It was not a popular decision with other senators, and for this reason, as well as wanting to conceal his intentions from Caesar, he at first kept the idea to himself. The stand at 390

Blitzkrieg: Italy and Spain, Winter–Autumn, 49 bc

Corfinium wasted the equivalent of three legions, but Pompey managed to concentrate the remainder of his forces at Brundisium (modern Brindisi). Merchant vessels were requisitioned and the process of shipping men and equipment over the Adriatic begun. It was a long and complex task, but Pompey had always excelled at organisation on a massive scale and set about the task with all his accustomed skill.12