The History of Rome, Theodor Mommsen [good english books to read txt] 📗

who chose to survive the fall of the republic and to be reconciled to monarchy. He conceived that, so long as the republic had been merely threatened, it was a right and a duty to compel the lukewarm and bad citizen to take part in the struggle; but that now it was senseless and cruel to compel the individual to share the ruin of the lost republic. Not only did he himself discharge every one who desired to return to Italy; but when the wildest of the wild partisans, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger, insisted on the execution of these people and of Cicero in particular: it was Cato alone who by his moral authority prevented it.

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