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

written in 699 or 700 after Caesar's Britannic expedition and before the death of Julia:

-Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati, Nisi impudicus et vorax et aleo, Mamurram habere quod comata Gallia Habebat ante et ultima Britannia-? etc.

Mamurra of Formiae, Caesar's favourite and for a time during the Gallic wars an officer in his army, had, presumably a short time before the composition of this poem, returned to the capital and was in all likelihood then occupied with the building of his much- talked-of marble palace furnished with lavish magnificence on the Caelian hill. The Iberian booty mentioned in the poem must have reference to Caesar's governorship of Further Spain, and Mamurra must even then, as certainly afterwards in Gaul, have been found at Caesar's headquarters; the Pontic booty presumably has reference to the war of Pompeius against Mithradates, especially as according to the hint of the poet it was not merely Caesar that enriched Mamurra.

More innocent than this virulent invective, which was bitterly felt by Caesar (Suet. Caes. 73), is another nearly contemporary poem of the same author (xi.) to which we may here refer, because with its pathetic introduction to an anything but pathetic commission it very cleverly quizzes the general staff of the new regents—the Gabiniuses, Antoniuses, and such like, suddenly advanced from the lowest haunts to headquarters. Let it be remembered that it was written at a time when Caesar was fighting on the Rhine and on the Thames, and when the expeditions of Crassus to Parthia and of Gabinius to Egypt were in preparation. The poet, as if he too expected one of the vacant posts from one of the regents, gives to two of his clients their last instructions before departure:

-Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli-, etc.

11. V. VIII. Clodius

12. In this year the January with 29 and the February with 23 days were followed by the intercalary month with 28, and then by March.

13. -Consul- signifies "colleague" (i. 318), and a consul who is at the same time proconsul is at once an actual consul and a consul's substitute.

14. II. III. Military Tribunes with Consular Powers

Notes for Chapter IX

1. iv. 434

2. Tigranes was still living in February 698 (Cic. pro Sest. 27, 59); on the other hand Artavasdes was already reigning before 700 (Justin, xlii. 2, 4; Plut. Crass. 49).

3. V. IV. Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized, but Expelled by His Subjects

4. V. IV. Military Pacification of Syria

5. V. VII. Repulse of the Helvetii, V. VII. Expeditions against the Maritime Cantons

6. V. VII. Cassivellaunus

7. V. VII. The Carnutes ff.

8. V. II. Renewal of the War

9. V. IV. Difficulty with the Parthians

10. IV. I. War against Aristonicus

11. V. VII. Insurrection

12. V. VIII. Humiliation of the Republicans

13. V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistrates and the Jury-System

14. V. VIII. Humiliation of the Republicans

15. V. VIII. The Aristocracy Submits ff.

16. V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistrates and the Jury-System

17. V. VIII. The Senate under the Monarchy

18. V. II. Mutiny of the Soldiers, V. III. Reappearance of Pompeius

19. V. VII. Alpine Peoples

20. V. IX. Dictatorship of Pompeius

21. -Homo ingeniosissime nequam- (Vellei. ii. 48).

22. V. IX. Debates as to Caesar's Recall

23. IV. X. The Restoration

24. V. II. Beginning of the Armenian War

25. To be distinguished from the consul having the same name of 704; the latter was a cousin, the consul of 705 a brother, of the Marcus Marcellus who was consul in 703.

26. V. IX. Debates ss to Caesar's Recall ff.

27. II. II. Intercession

Notes for Chapter X

1. V. V. Transpadanes

2. V. V. Transpadanes

3. A centurion of Caesar's tenth legion, taken prisoner, declared to the commander-in-chief of the enemy that he was ready with ten of his men to make head against the best cohort of the enemy (500 men; Dell. Afric. 45). "In the ancient mode of fighting," to quote the opinion of Napoleon I, "a battle consisted simply of duels; what was only correct in the mouth of that centurion, would be mere boasting in the mouth of the modern soldier." Vivid proofs of the soldierly spirit that pervaded Caesar's army are furnished by the Reports—appended to his Memoirs—respecting the African and the second Spanish wars, of which the former appears to have had as its author an officer of the second rank, while the latter is in every respect a subaltern camp-journal.

4. V. IX. Debates as to Caesar's Recall

5. IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

6. V. IV. The New Relations of the Romans in the East, V. IV. Galatia

7. V. IV. Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized, but Expelled by His Subjects

8. V. VII. Wars and Revolts There

9. V. IX. Repulse of the Parthians

10. V. IX. Counter-Arrangements of Caesar

11. V. VIII. Settlement of the New Monarchial Rule

12. V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistracies and the Jury-System

13. This number was specified by Pompeius himself (Caesar, B.C. i. 6), and it agrees with the statement that he lost in Italy about 60 cohorts or 30,000 men, and took 25,000 over to Greece (Caesar, B.C. iii. 10).

14. V. VII. With the Bellovaci

15. The decree of the senate was passed on the 7th January; on the 18th it had been already for several days known in Rome that Caesar had crossed the boundary (Cic. ad Att. vii. 10; ix. 10, 4); the messenger needed at the very least three days from Rome to Ravenna. According to this the setting out of Caesar falls about the 12th January, which according to the current reduction corresponds to the Julian 24 Nov. 704.

16. IV. IX. Pompeius

17. IV. XI. Italian Revenues

18. V. VII. Caesar in Spain

19. V. VII. Venetian War ff.

20. III. VI. Scipio Driven Back to the Coast

21. V. X. Caesar Takes the Offensive

22. V. VII. Illyria

23. As according to formal law the "legal deliberative assembly" undoubtedly, just like the "legal court," could only take place in the city itself or within the precincts, the assembly representing the senate in the African army called itself the "three hundred" (Bell. Afric. 88, 90; Appian, ii. 95), not because it consisted of 300 members, but because this was the ancient normal number of senators (i. 98). It is very likely that this assembly recruited its ranks by equites of repute; but, when Plutarch makes the three hundred to be Italian wholesale dealers (Cato Min. 59, 61), he has misunderstood his authority (Bell. Afr. 90). Of a similar kind must have been the arrangement as to the quasi-senate already in Thessalonica.

24. V. X. Indignation of the Anarchist Party against Caesar

25. V. X. The Pompeian Army

26. V. IV. And Brought Back by Gabinius

27. V. X. Caesar's Fleet and Army in Illyricum Destroyed

28. According to the rectified calendar on the 5th Nov. 705.

29. V. X. Result of the Campaign as a Whole

30. The exact determination of the field of battle is difficult. Appian (ii. 75) expressly places it between (New) Pharsalus (now Fersala) and the Enipeus. Of the two streams, which alone are of any importance in the question, and are undoubtedly the Apidanus and Enipeus of the ancients—the Sofadhitiko and the Fersaliti—the former has its sources in the mountains of Thaumaci (Dhomoko) and the Dolopian heights, the latter in mount Othrys, and the Fersaliti alone flows past Pharsalus; now as the Enipeus according to Strabo (ix. p. 432) springs from mount Othrys and flows past Pharsalus, the Fersaliti has been most justly pronounced by Leake (Northern Greece, iv. 320) to be the Enipeus, and the hypothesis followed by Goler that the Fersaliti is the Apidanus is untenable. With this all the other statements of the ancients as to the two rivers agree. Only we must doubtless assume with Leake, that the river of Vlokho formed by the union of the Fersaliti and the Sofadhitiko and going to the Peneius was called by the ancients Apidanus as well as the Sofadhitiko; which, however, is the more natural, as while the Sofadhitiko probably has, the Fersaliti has not, constantly water (Leake, iv. 321). Old Pharsalus, from which the battle takes its name, must therefore have been situated between Fersala and the Fersaliti. Accordingly the battle was fought on the left bank of the Fersaliti, and in such a way that the Pompeians, standing with their faces towards Pharsalus, leaned their right wing on the river (Caesar, B. C. iii. 83; Frontinus, Strat. ii. 3, 22). The camp of the Pompeians, however, cannot have stood here, but only on the slope of the heights of Cynoscephalae, on the right bank of the Enipeus, partly because they barred the route of Caesar to Scotussa, partly because their line of retreat evidently went over the mountains that were to be found above the camp towards Larisa; if they had, according to Leake's hypothesis (iv. 482), encamped to the east of Pharsalus on the left bank of the Enipeus, they could never have got to the northward through this stream, which at this very point has a deeply cut bed (Leake, iv. 469), and Pompeius must have fled to Lamia instead of Larisa. Probably therefore the Pompeians pitched their camp on the right bank of the Fersaliti, and passed the river both in order to fight and in order, after the battle, to regain their camp, whence they then moved up the slopes of Crannon and Scotussa, which culminate above the latter place in the heights of Cynoscephalae. This was not impossible. the Enipeus is a narrow slow-flowing rivulet, which Leake found two feet deep in November, and which in the hot season often lies quite dry (Leake, i. 448, and iv. 472; comp. Lucan, vi. 373), and the battle was fought in the height of summer. Further the armies before the battle lay three miles and a half from each other (Appian, B. C. ii. 65), so that the Pompeians could make all preparations and also properly secure the communication with their camp by bridges. Had the battle terminated in a complete rout, no doubt the retreat to and over the river could not have been executed, and doubtless for this reason Pompeius only reluctantly agreed to fight here. The left wing of the Pompeians which was the most remote from the base of retreat felt this; but the retreat at least of their centre and their right wing was not accomplished in such haste as to be impracticable under the given conditions. Caesar and his copyists are silent as to the crossing of the river, because this would place in too clear a light the eagerness for battle of the Pompeians apparent otherwise from the whole narrative, and they are also silent as to the conditions of retreat favourable for these.

31. III. VIII. Battle of Cynoscephalae

32. With this is connected the well-known direction of Caesar to his soldiers to strike at the faces of the enemy's horsemen. the infantry—which here in an altogether irregular way acted on the offensive against cavalry, who were not to be reached with the sabres—were not to throw their -pila-, but to use them as hand- spears against the cavalry and, in order to defend themselves better against these, to thrust at their faces (Plutarch, Pomp. 69, 71; Caes. 45; Appian, ii. 76, 78; Flor. ii. 12; Oros. vi. 15; erroneously Frontinus, iv. 7, 32). The anecdotical turn given to this instruction, that the Pompeian horsemen were to be brought to run away by the fear of receiving scars in their faces, and that they actually galloped off "holding their hands before their eyes" (Plutarch), collapses of itself; for it has point only on the supposition that the Pompeian cavalry had consisted principally of the young nobility of Rome, the "graceful dancers"; and this was not the case (p. 224). At the most it may be, that the wit of the camp gave to that simple and judicious military order this very irrational but certainly comic turn.

33. V. I. Indefinite and Perilous Character of the Sertorian War

34. [I may here state once