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

unsettled in their belief as to their own indispensableness; too awkward to return to their object, and to bring the negotiation which had missed its course back to the right channel; ashamed, as men, by the fidelity with which the Imperator kept his word even to soldiers who had forgotten their allegiance, and by his generosity which even now granted far more than he had ever promised; deeply affected, as soldiers, when the general presented to them the prospect of their being necessarily mere civilian spectators of the triumph of their comrades, and when he called them no longer "comrades" but "burgesses,"—by this very form of address, which from his mouth sounded so strangely, destroying as it were with one blow the whole pride of their past soldierly career; and, besides all this, under the spell of the man whose presence had an irresistible power—the soldiers stood for a while mute and lingering, till from all sides a cry arose that the general would once more receive them into favour and again permit them to be called Caesar's soldiers. Caesar, after having allowed himself to be sufficiently entreated, granted the permission; but the ringleaders in this mutiny had a third cut off from their triumphal presents. History knows no greater psychological masterpiece, and none that was more completely successful.

Caesar Proceeds to Africa
Conflict at Ruspina

This mutiny operated injuriously on the African campaign, at least in so far as it considerably delayed the commencement of it. When Caesar arrived at the port of Lilybaeum destined for the embarkation the ten legions intended for Africa werefar from being fully assembled there, and it was the experienced troops that were farthest behind. Hardly however had six legions, of which five were newly formed, arrived there and the necessary war-vessels and transports come forward, when Caesar put to sea with them (25 Dec. 707 of the uncorrected, about 8 Oct. of the Julian, calendar). The enemy's fleet, which on account of the prevailing equinoctial gales was drawn up on the beach at the island Aegimurus in front of the bay of Carthage, did not oppose the passage; but, the same storms scattered the fleet of Caesar in all directions, and, when he availed himself of the opportunity of landing not far from Hadrumetum (Susa), he could not disembark more than some 3000 men, mostly recruits, and 150 horsemen. His attempt to capture Hadrumetum strongly occupied by the enemy miscarried; but Caesar possessed himself of the two seaports not far distant from each other, Ruspina (Monastir near Susa) and Little Leptis. Here he entrenched himself; but his position was so insecure, that he kept his cavalry in the ships and the ships ready for sea and provided with a supply of water, in order to re-embark at any moment if he should be attacked by a superior force. This however was not necessary, for just at the right time the ships that had been driven out of their course arrived (3 Jan. 708). On the very following day Caesar, whose army in consequence of the arrangements made by the Pompeians suffered from want of corn, undertook with three legions an expedition into the interior of the country, but was attacked on the march not far from Ruspina by the corps which Labienus had brought up to dislodge Caesar from the coast. As Labienus had exclusively cavalry and archers, and Caesar almost nothing but infantry of the line, the legions were quickly surrounded and exposed to the missiles of the enemy, without being able to retaliate or to attack with success. No doubt the deploying of the entire line relieved once more the flanks, and spirited charges saved the honour of their arms; but a retreat was unavoidable, and had Ruspina not been so near, the Moorish javelin would perhaps have accomplished the same result here as the Parthian bow at Carrhae.

Caesar's Position at Ruspina

Caesar, whom this day had fully convinced of the difficulty of the impending war, would not again expose his soldiers untried and discouraged by the new mode of fighting to any such attack, but awaited the arrival of his veteran legions. The interval was employed in providing some sort of compensation against the crushing superiority of the enemy in the weapons of distant warfare. The incorporation of the suitable men from the fleet as light horsemen or archers in the land-army could not be of much avail. The diversions which Caesar suggested were somewhat more effectual. He succeeded in bringing into arms against Juba the Gaetulian pastoral tribes wandering on the southern slope of the great Atlas towards the Sahara; for the blows of the Marian and Sullan period had reached even to them, and their indignation against Pompeius, who had at that time made them subordinate to the Numidian kings,(48) rendered them from the outset favourably inclined to the heir of the mighty Marius of whose Jugurthine campaign they had still a lively recollection. The Mauretanian kings, Bogud in Tingis and Bocchus in Iol, were Juba's natural rivals and to a certain extent long since in alliance with Caesar. Further, there still roamed in the border-region between the kingdoms of Juba and Bocchus the last of the Catilinarians, that Publius Sittius of Nuceria,(49) who eighteen years before had become converted from a bankrupt Italian merchant into a Mauretanian leader of free bands, and since that time had procured for himself a name and a body of retainers amidst the Libyan quarrels. Bocchus and Sittius united fell on the Numidian land, and occupied the important town of Cirta; and their attack, as well as that of the Gaetulians, compelled king Juba to send a portion of his troops to his southern and western frontiers.

Caesar's situation, however, continued sufficiently unpleasant. His army was crowded together within a space of six square miles; though the fleet conveyed corn, the want of forage was as much felt by Caesar's cavalry as by those of Pompeius before Dyrrhachium. The light troops of the enemy remained notwithstanding all the exertions of Caesar so immeasurably superior to his, that it seemed almost impossible to carry offensive operations into the interior even with veterans. If Scipio retired and abandoned the coast towns, he might perhaps achieve a victory like those which the vizier of Orodes had won over Crassus and Juba over Curio, and he could at least endlessly protract the war. The simplest consideration suggested this plan of campaign; even Cato, although far from a strategist, counselled its adoption, and offered at the same time to cross with a corps to Italy and to call the republicans there to arms— which, amidst the utter confusion in that quarter, might very well meet with success. But Cato could only advise, not command; Scipio the commander-in-chief decided that the war should be carried on in the region of the coast. This was a blunder, not merely inasmuch as they thereby dropped a plan of war promising a sure result, but also inasmuch as the region to which they transferred the war was in dangerous agitation, and a good part of the army which they opposed to Caesar was likewise in a troublesome temper. The fearfully strict levy, the carrying off of the supplies, the devastating of the smaller townships, the feeling in general that they were being sacrificed for a cause which from the outset was foreign to them and was already lost, had exasperated the native population against the Roman republicans fighting out their last struggle of despair on African soil; and the terrorist proceedings of the latter against all communities that were but suspected of indifference,(50) had raised this exasperation to the most fearful hatred. The African towns declared, wherever they could venture to do so, for Caesar; among the Gaetulians and the Libyans, who served in numbers among the light troops and even in the legions, desertion was spreading. But Scipio with all the obstinacy characteristic of folly persevered in his plan, marched with all his force from Utica to appear before the towns of Ruspina and Little Leptis occupied by Caesar, furnished Hadrumetum to the north and Thapsus to the south (on the promontory Ras Dimas) with strong garrisons, and in concert with Juba, who likewise appeared before Ruspina with all his troops not required by the defence of the frontier, offered battle repeatedly to the enemy. But Caesar was resolved to wait for his veteran legions. As these one after another arrived and appeared on the scene of strife, Scipio and Juba lost the desire to risk a pitched battle, and Caesar had no means of compelling them to fight owing to their extraordinary superiority in light cavalry. Nearly two months passed away in marches and skirmishes in the neighbourhood of Ruspina and Thapsus, which chiefly had relation to the finding out of the concealed store-pits (silos) common in the country, and to the extension of posts. Caesar, compelled by the enemy's horsemen to keep as much as possible to the heights or even to cover his flanks by entrenched lines, yet accustomed his soldiers gradually during this laborious and apparently endless warfare to the foreign mode of fighting. Friend and foe hardly recognized the rapid general in the cautious master of fence who trained his men carefully and not unfrequently in person; and they became almost puzzled by the masterly skill which displayed itself as conspicuously in delay as in promptitude of action.

Battle at Thapsus

At last Caesar, after being joined by his last reinforcements, made a lateral movement towards Thapsus. Scipio had, as we have said, strongly garrisoned this town, and thereby committed the blunder of presenting to his opponent an object of attack easy to be seized; to this first error he soon added the second still less excusable blunder of now for the rescue of Thapsus giving the battle, which Caesar had wished and Scipio had hitherto rightly refused, on ground which placed the decision in the hands of the infantry of the line. Immediately along the shore, opposite to Caesar's camp, the legions of Scipio and Juba appeared, the fore ranks ready for fighting, the hinder ranks occupied in forming an entrenched camp; at the same time the garrison of Thapsus prepared for a sally. Caesar's camp-guard sufficed to repulse the latter. His legions, accustomed to war, already forming a correct estimate of the enemy from the want of precision in their mode of array and their ill-closed ranks, compelled—while yet the entrenching was going forward on that side, and before even the general gave the signal— a trumpeter to sound for the attack, and advanced along the whole line headed by Caesar himself, who, when he saw his men advance without waiting for his orders, galloped forward to lead them against the enemy. The right wing, in advance of the other divisions, frightened the line of elephants opposed to it—this was the last great battle in which these animals were employed— by throwing bullets and arrows, so that they wheeled round on their own ranks. The covering force was cut down, the left wing of the enemy was broken, and the whole line was overthrown. The defeat was the more destructive, as the new camp of the beaten army was not yet ready, and the old one was at a considerable distance; both were successively captured almost without resistance. The mass of the defeated army threw away their arms and sued for quarter; but Caesar's soldiers were no longer the same who had readily refrained from battle before Ilerda and honourably spared the defenceless at Pharsalus. The habit of civil war and the rancour left behind by the mutiny asserted their power in a terrible manner on the battlefield of Thapsus. If the hydra with which they fought always put forth new energies, if the army was hurried from Italy to Spain, from Spain to Macedonia, from Macedonia to Africa, and if the repose ever more eagerly longed for never came, the soldier sought, and not wholly without cause, the reason of this state of things in the unseasonable clemency of Caesar. He had sworn to retrieve the general's neglect, and remained deaf to the entreaties of his disarmed fellow-citizens as well as to the commands of Caesar and the superior officers. The fifty thousand corpses that covered the battle-field of Thapsus, among whom were several Caesarian officers known as secret opponents of the new monarchy, and therefore cut down on this occasion by their own men, showed how the soldier procures for himself repose. The victorious army on the other hand numbered no more than fifty dead (6 April 708).

Cato in Utica
His Death

There was as little a continuance of the struggle in Africa after the battle of Thapsus, as there had been a year and a half before in the east after the defeat of Pharsalus. Cato as commandant of Utica convoked the senate, set forth how the means of defence