A Stamp of the Foot — Caesar III: The Ides of March
Pompey once boasted in the Senate that when war broke out he need only stamp his foot and Italy would fill with armies. Now he stamps, and no one comes. Plutarch writes that Rome looks as though all the cities of Italy had taken to flight. Pompey declares that whoever prefers country and freedom to tyranny should follow him, and whoever stays is an enemy. The consuls flee without even offering the customary sacrifices. Senators snatch whatever comes to hand from their houses, as if they were robbing strangers.
Caesar marches through Italy, and the cities open their gates to him. At Corfinium he besieges Lucius Domitius. Domitius loses hope and asks his physician, a slave, for poison. He drinks it, then hears that Caesar is merciful to prisoners, and regrets it. The physician reassures him: he gave him only a sleeping draught. So Domitius goes to Caesar and receives his word and his freedom. And then he goes back to Pompey.
This clemency is no accident. Pompey declares that enemies are those who have not taken up arms for the state. Caesar says that friends are those who have not declared for anyone. It is the cheapest weapon of civil war: the indifferent are turned into friends without a single blow.
In sixty days Caesar takes the whole of Italy and, as Plutarch writes, does it without bloodshed. In Rome he reaches for the state treasury. The tribune Metellus bars the door and invokes the law. Caesar answers that arms and law do not share a season, and when the delay drags on, he threatens to kill him. And he adds: “Understand, young man, that it is easier for me to do it than to say it.” Metellus leaves, and the money goes to Caesar.
Pompey, meanwhile, has fled Italy. Caesar has no ships, so instead of pursuing him he turns back to Spain, where his legates are stationed.
Suetonius writes that in Spain he won quickly, though the siege of Massilia and a shortage of food delayed him.
In January 48 BC, in the depth of winter, Caesar sails with five legions and six hundred horsemen. The rest of the army is to follow later. Plutarch relates that when the ships were slow to come, Caesar, disguised as a slave, boarded a boat himself one night to fetch them. When the helmsman wanted to turn back before a storm, Caesar threw off the disguise: “Fear not, you carry Caesar and his fortune.”
At Dyrrachium Pompey has the sea and supplies; Caesar has hunger. His soldiers dig up a kind of root, mix it with milk and eat it. Once they bake loaves from it and toss them to the enemy: as long as the earth bears such roots, they will not stop besieging Pompey. Pompey does not let the loaves reach his men, who already fear these savages. In one skirmish Caesar’s army flees, losing thirty-two standards, and Caesar himself nearly dies. Pompey does not pursue. Caesar tells his friends: today the victory would have belonged to the enemy, had they had a commander who knew how to win.
Pompey could simply wait, because time is working against Caesar. But around him seethes a court of officers who call him Agamemnon, king of kings, because he delays battle. In the end he gives in. At Pharsalus in Thessaly, the two greatest armies of Rome face each other. Pompey’s officers are already quarreling over who will replace Caesar as pontifex maximus after the victory, and they send men to Rome to rent houses for the future praetors and consuls.
Caesar knows his weak spot. He knows that Pompey’s cavalry will strike the right wing, where his beloved Tenth Legion stands. So he hides six cohorts behind the wing and drills them in what to do when the horsemen arrive. The rest will be decided in a few hours.
Why did it work? Plutarch explains: Pompey’s horsemen were young, proud of their good looks and little used to wounds. They feared not only death but ugly scars. They turned their heads, shielded their faces and fled, and the infantry was left unprotected.
Caesar enters Pompey’s camp and looks at the fallen. He says, as recorded by Asinius Pollio, his officer: “They wanted this. I, Gaius Caesar, after so many great wars, would have been condemned by their courts had I disbanded my army.” According to Pollio, most of the dead that day were camp servants, killed in the storming of the camp, and no more than six thousand of Pompey’s soldiers fell. Caesar loses thirty centurions and two hundred legionaries. He ordered his men to spare their fellow citizens, and allowed each to save one man on the enemy side.
Among those spared is Brutus. Plutarch writes that Caesar was anxious when Brutus could not be found among the living, and when he was brought in, Caesar was overjoyed beyond measure. Remember that.
Pompey, meanwhile, flees by way of Lesbos to Egypt. He wants to take refuge with the young king, the son of an old friend. The thirteen-year-old Ptolemy is surrounded by advisers, and his tutor Theodotus advises killing the guest and so earning Caesar’s gratitude. They send a small boat. Pompey boards it, repeating to himself the lines of Sophocles: whoever goes to a tyrant becomes his slave, even if he goes as a free man. As the boat reaches the shore, he is cut down by a Roman officer who had once served under him, before his wife’s eyes. He was fifty-eight and had never lost a war before.
Caesar sails after him to Alexandria. He arrives just after his death. On the shore he receives what he came for: Pompey’s head. Plutarch writes that he turned away in horror. He took only the signet ring and wept.