Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 to 53 BC)
Marcus Licinius Crassus was reputed to be the richest man in Rome due to astute property development and loan making. In 73 BC he was given command of the army charged with putting down the Spartacus rebellion. In 70 he served as consul. Well into middle age, he formed the triumvirate with Caesar and Pompey in 60 BC, an uneasy alliance which dominated the 50s. In 54 BC he was tempted to assume leadership of an army sent against the Parthian Empire way out East, where his army was defeated and he met a miserable death.
This is one of the shorter lives, at a mere 33 chapters because we in fact know remarkably little about Crassus and Plutarch, apparently, didn’t either. The account of the Spartacus campaign is far longer than really necessary and a good half of the text deals with his final doomed campaign in Parthia. Of the precise origin of Crassus’s business empire and the complex wheeler-dealing which surrounded the triumvirate, there is disappointingly little. Then again, his grim ending was what Crassus became most famous for and also provided a peg for an orgy of the kind of superstitious omens and finger-wagging moralising that the ancients loved so much. So maybe Plutarch knew his audience.
The life
(Chapter 1) Crassus’s father had been censor and was awarded a triumph for military sucess, giddy heights in Roman society. Yet Marcus was raised in a small house where the family ate meals together. Plutarch thinks this may account for his temperate and moderate behaviour in later life. When one of his older brothers died, Marcus married the widow.
(2) Contrasting with his moderation in all other respects was his greed. Starting with a modest legacy he worked it up into an outrageous fortune: during his consulship he sacrificed the tenth of his goods to Hercules but still had enough left over to feasted the people and then give every Roman enough cash to live on for three months! In 54 BC, before he set out on his ill-fated expedition to Parthia (modern-day Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan), Crassus made an inventory of his property and valued it at 7,100 talents. Compare this with the fine of 20,000 talents which Lucius Cornelius Sulla imposed on all the cities and towns of Asia combined and which they found impossible to pay off.
One of Crassus’s business strategies was to hear about fires in the city, rush to the blaze and make the owners of threatened or burning properties offers they couldn’t refuse. If they sold him their property he promptly deployed his private fire service to save it. ‘In this most of Rome came into his possession’!
Crassus had a number of sayings which have been preserved. He said that people who build houses have no need of enemies since they will ruin themselves by their own efforts. He is also supposed to have said that no-one should be thought rich who couldn’t support an entire army out of their own wealth – a handy definition.
Crassus owned silver mines and much land and the labourers to work it. He owned a huge number of slaves but took care to educate and manage them well.
(3) Crassus’s house was open to all. He gave good dinner parties, not showy, His guests were often ordinary people, not the elite. He lent money without interest, which sounds nice, but demanded it be repaid back at exactly the allotted time. Crassus studied the art of public speaking and was always prepared. Sometimes he was ready to speak when Pompey, Caesar or Cicero were reluctant. He had an open approachable manner and would talk to anyone freely. In this way he cultivated great popularity.
(4) When Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Gaius Marius seized power in 87 BC it quickly became obvious they weren’t seeking what was best for the state but to exterminate their enemies. Among these were Crassus’s father and brother who were both murdered in the Marian purges. Young Marcus fled to Spain with some servants. He found shelter in a cave which Plutarch describes at length, making it sound like a boy’s adventure. A friend living locally, Vibius, tasked a slave with taking Crassus meals every day and leaving them a little distance from the cave.
(5) After a while it occurred to Vibius that young Marcus might want more than just food and so he sent his two prettiest slave women to keep him company.
(6) Marius died soon after regaining power in 87 BC and Rome was ruled for three years by Cinna. When Crassus heard that Cinna was dead (84 BC) he headed back to Italy to join Sulla in his march on Rome. Crassus became jealous of Sulla’s open partiality for young Pompey. This was because the latter had more military experience and also because Sulla disliked Crassus’s obvious greed.
(7) Deciding he couldn’t compete with Pompey, Crassus opted to focus on politics. He ingratiated himself with everyone, had a hand in all business affairs, made himself open and available and friendly and helpful to large numbers of people. It was said that Pompey was most powerful when he was out of Rome on campaign whereas back in Rome he was in Crassus’s shade, because he was aloof and selfish. Pompey was powerful because he had so many contacts, friends and money; but he was inconsistent in his alliances, shifting and switching to whatever suited him.
(8) Description of the Spartacus rebellion. How the gladiators escaped from the training school of Lentulus Batiatus at Capua. 78 gladiators escaped, came across a wagon carrying weapons, raided it and elected three leaders.
(9) How the gladiators defeated the praetor Marcus Claudius Glabur by escaping from a hill top using vine ropes then attacking the Romans from the rear. Local shepherds and peasants joined them. Subsequent victories against Publius Varinus, Lucius Furius and Lucius Cossinius. Spartacus tries to persuade his men to march north and cross the Alps but many prefer ravaging and looting Italy. The Senate sent both that year’s consuls against them, and Gellius massacred a group of Germans, but then Spartacus’s main force defeated the other consul, Lentulus, and went on to destroy the arms of Cassius, the governor of Cisalpine Gaul.
(10) It was at this point that Crassus was appointed to supreme command of the war. I am puzzled by this as we had established that Crassus forebore the military and had chosen to concentrate on civilian power. Crassus deputed Mummius to tail Spartacus but on no account to engage. Instead Mummius seized an opportunity to attack and was repelled and beaten by the insurgents, the legions turning tail and running. When they had reported back to Crassus he had 500 of the first to run away and had them decimated: every tenth man was chosen by lot and publicly humiliated and executed.
Spartacus marched to the Straits and made a deal with Cilician pirates to carry them to Sicily, where they hoped to revive the recently quelled slave rising, but the pirates took their money and abandoned them. Then they turned for the heel of Italy where Crassus had his men erect a ditch and wall forty miles long.
(11) Crassus fell upon a contingent resting by a lake in Lucania but Spartacus came to their rescue. Then there was a battle near a hill where Crassus massacred 12,500 of the rebels. Spartacus retired to the mountains of Petelia, trailed by Roman forces. Then he turned and engaged them, routing them and nearly killing the quaestor.
But this made the rebels over-confident and they turned to confront Crassus’s main army as it was making camp for the night. This developed into a full battle in which the rebels were comprehensively defeated.
Pompey was approaching with a second army and this engaged the stragglers from Spartacus’s force and wiped them out. To Crassus’s immense chagrin Pompey was awarded a magnificent triumph for his victory in Spain against Sertorius while Crassus was given the much more modest ‘ovation’ for a war which all the nobles thought had been dishonourable from start to finish.
(12) Crassus and Pompey were made consuls for the next year but publicly disagreed about everything. However, at one of their last appearances before the people a man leapt onstage and claimed that Jupiter had appeared to him in a dream and told him the consuls mustn’t part without being friends. Characteristically it was Crassus who made the first move and seized Pompey by the hand and praised him.
(13) In 63 Crassus was elected censor but made none of the reforms expected of the post. His colleague in the post strongly objected to Crassus’s policy that Egypt should be annexed by Rome and so the two men resigned their posts.
At the time of the Cataline conspiracy in 63 BC Crassus was accused of being party to the plot, not least by Cicero. This resulted in Crassus’s enmity towards the latter, until his own son, Publius, a devoted follower of the orator, persuaded him to forgive and forget.
(14) In 60 BC Caesar returned from service in Spain and was lobbying to be elected consul for the following year. He persuaded Crassus and Pompey that their enmity was weakening both and letting the party of Cicero and Cato triumph. He proposed they form an alliance, telling each man they’d be stronger together. In reality the person who benefited most was Caesar who was not only elected consult but awarded command in Gaul.
In the spring of 56 arguments threatened to break the triumvirate but Caesar called Pompey, Crassus and a good number of senators to a conference at Luca in north Italy where agreement was reached and the triumvirate reconfirmed. Caesar’s rule in Gaul was extended and the other two were allotted provinces and armies.
(15) On their return to the capital many opponents, led by Cato, interpreted the deal as establishing a tyranny based on armies not on elected office. Cato persuaded Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus to stand for the consulship but this led to growing violence at the hustings, with Pompey’s supporters attacking Ahenobarbus’s entourage, killing some of them, and then attacking the assembly, manhandling Cato out of the forum and so on.
(16) So all their opponents were intimidated into staying at home and Crassus and Pompey were elected consuls. They drew lots for their spheres of influence and Crassus won the East. He was thrilled as he openly boasted of superseding Lucullus and Pompey’s achievements against the enemy kings, Mithridates and Tigranes, and was desperate to take on the Parthian Empire. Critics tried to talk him out of it and then block his path as he departed Rome.
(17) Crassus sailed with a large army to Galatia and overland to the Euphrates, crossing into Parthian territory. When he discovered old King Deiotarus founding a new city, he joked that he was late in life to do such a thing, but the king joked back that Crassus was pretty long in the tooth to be taking on a massive military mission. He was 60 but looked older.
Another bad omen came. Most of the cities of Mesopotamia went over to him when they saw his army. But at one, Zenodotia, ruled by Apollonius the tyrant, a hundred of his soldiers were slain so Crassus let his forces seize and plunder it and sold its inhabitants into slavery. For this his soldiers hailed him ‘Imperator’ but this wasn’t any kind of military triumph, it was massacring civilians, and the fact Crassus let his soldiers call him Imperator, and was pleased by it, was a worrying indication of his lack of experience or of seriousness, of what Plutarch’s calls ‘a paltry spirit’.
Worse, instead of reaching out to Babylon and Seleucia for alliance against Parthia, he spent all his time in the cities which had come over to him in Syria in mercenary not military activity. Thus instead of reviewing his troops and setting up athletic contests for them, he spent his time counting the money and weighing the treasure he’d acquired. He demanded soldiers and supplies from ‘districts and dynasts’ only to change his mind if they paid him off, thus losing their respect.
As they were leaving the temple of Venus, Crassus’s son (who accompanied him on the campaign) stumbled and fell at the gate, and then his father fell over him.
(18) Men come to the camp from the occupied cities and bring eye witness accounts of the strong armour and warlike temper of the Parthians. Word spreads among the troops who become demoralised. Many, including Caius Cassius Longinus, advise calling a halt and reconsidering the entire campaign. The seers keep seeing bad omens.
(19) Artabazes the king of Armenia arrived to ally with Crassus, bringing 6,000 horsemen and promising an additional 10,000 mail-clad horsemen and 30,000 footmen. He advised Crassus to approach Parthia from Armenia, which is hilly so the cavalry, which were Parthia’s sole military strength, would be disadvantaged. But Crassus preferred to march across flat Mesopotamia. Then Plutarch gives an impressive list of bad omens:
- as the army crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma it was daunted by peals of thunder and flashes of lightning; a strong wind destroyed the raft Crassus was crossing on
- the place he intended to camp was hit by two thunderbolts
- one of the general’s horses violently dragged its groom down to the river and disappeared beneath the waves
- the first eagle which was raised aloft, faced about of its own accord
- when the rations were distributed after the crossing of the river, lentils and salt came first, which are traditional Roman signs of mourning
- while addressing his men Crassus made a bad slip, telling them he would destroy the bridge over the river so that none of could return, when he meant there would be no going back – instead of inspiring it demoralised his men
- when he was making the customary sacrifice of purification for the army, and the seer placed the viscera in his hands, Crassus clumsily let them fall to the ground, at which all the bystanders were appalled
It’s impossible to tell whether any of this actually happened or whether, as in Cicero’s definition of inventio as explained in the introduction to Sallust, this is the kind of thing which ought to have happened. In other words, these incidents which read to us like fairy stories and folk tales and tend to undermine Plutarch’s veracity, to the ancient mind did just the opposite, piling up all kinds of appropriate details and omens which made the events more plausible.
(20) Crassus advanced with seven legions of men-at‑arms, nearly 4,000 horsemen and about as many light-armed troops. Scouts reported the land was empty of men but they’d seen the tracks of horsemen who had approached the army but wheeled about and left. Cassius advised caution and recuperating the men in one of the garrison cities while he found out more about the enemy.
You can see how the cumulative effect of the bad omens and the persistent advice Crassus receives, from both Romans and allies, creates a very ominous and dramatic tension in the narrative.
(21) Now aan Osroene chieftain named Ariamnes arrived in the Roman camp who set about deceiving Crassus. He had helped Pompey in his campaigns and now tried to persuade Crassus to abandon the river and venture into the flat plain (best fighting ground for the Parthian cavalry). And encourages him to do it soon before the king’s forces are united.
This was all a lie for the king was at that moment ravaging Armenia for its offers of friendship to Crassus, while he sent Surena forward to make trial of the enemy in battle and to distract them. There follows a brief and preposterously inflated description of Surena, presumably to big him up into a worthy opponent of Crassus. ‘He used to travel on private business with a baggage train of a thousand camels, and was followed by two hundred wagons for his concubine’. 200 wagons for his concubines!
(22) Thus Plutarch claims it was Ariamnes who persuaded Crassus to abandon the river and led him out into a plain which was flat at first but then turned into undulating sand, no trees, no water. Messengers came from Artavasdes II, king of Armenia, saying a) he is being attacked by Hyrodes the Parthian b) for Crassus to come and join him in a united war or c) to make sure he stuck near mountains and hills where the feared cavalry couldn’t operate. [The name Hyrodes is nowadays given as Orodes and he was the second Parthian king of that name, Orodes II.]
Cassius has given up trying to warn Crassus, who was angry with him, and reserved his scorn for the joking joshing Arab who led the army into the wilderness.
(23) In keeping with the steady ratcheting up of tension, Plutarch says that on the fateful day of the disastrous battle, Crassus by mistake didn’t dress in a purple robe but in a black one (which seems wildly unlikely) and that the standard-bearers had great difficulty raising their standards, which seemed to be embedded in the earth. Scouts return to announce that the enemy is coming up in great numbers.
Crassus assembles his men in one long line but then changes his mind and makes them form squares, accompanied by a cavalry squad. The army came to a stream but instead of letting them rest and refresh, Crassus insisted on making them continue on a forced march. They come upon Surena’s advance guard who appear to be surprisingly small, until the war drums of the main force behind them boomed out, disheartening the Romans.
(24) Plutarch describes the battle in detail. The Parthians initially planned to charge until they saw the solidity of the Roman squares. Then they sent cavalry to surround the squares. When light troops ran out to skirmish with them, everyone saw how effective the Parthian arrows were at penetrating armour and the army first started to be scared. Then the Parthians started to fire into the densely packed squares of Romans.
(25) At first Crassus thought they would run out of arrows till he realised they had a camel train carrying bags of extra arrows. He lost heart. He ordered his son on the left wing to attack. Publius Crassus led his wing in pursuit of the Parthians who broke and ran, but only to lure them into an ambush where they were surrounded by Parthian horsemen circling round them and stirring up dust.
Publius roused his cavalry to charge again but their spears could do little against the Parthian breastplates of hide and steel whereas the long Parthian pikes did great damage. Publius’s Gauls put up a good fight, crawling under the Parthian horses to stab them and perishing when horse and rider fell on them. They seized Publius who had been injured and took him to a sandy hill to make a last stand but they were surrounded and annihilated by arrows.
Two Greeks tried to persuade Publius to abandon his troops and come with them to a nearby Greek city but he bade them leave, remaining with his troops. Then he turned his side to his shield bearer and told him to stab him to death. Other nobles also committed suicide. The redoubt was massacred and the victorious Parthians cut off Publius’s head.
(26) Meanwhile Crassus initially thought his son’s charge was successful and the main army weakened as some left to deal with it. But then he received messages begging for help. Conflicted, Crassus ordered the whole army to advance. But the enemy rallied and strengthened, started beating their damn war drums and then rode up with Publius’s head on a pike to taunt him. The army is daunted but this is Crassus’s finest hour, and Plutarch has him delivering a stirring speech invoking Rome’s glorious history of victory whatever the cost.
(27) The slaughter continued until night fell and the Parthians backed away and made camp. Crassus lies on the ground in black despair so his lieutenants decide to retreat, rouse the army and back west despite the lamentations of the wounded they leave to die in the desert. An advance guard under Ignatius reached Carrhae at midnight and told the garrison commander, Coponius, to send out reinforcements to help the stricken army, and so the survivors are all brought within the walls of Carrhae.
(28) At daybreak the Parthians slaughtered all the wounded lying about the plain to the number of 4,000, then surrounded and massacred four cohorts who had got separated from the main body of the Roman army.
Surena isn’t sure whether Crassus is in Carrhae or whether his army has fled further west so he sends attendants up to the wall calling for Crassus or Cassius. Crassus comes to the city walls and the ambassadors propose Crassus accept an honourable truce, sign a peace treaty and leave Mesopotamia. They invite him to a conference with Surena. Crassus agrees.
(29) But having confirmed that Crassus was in the city, Surena changed his tune and surrounded it, with men deputed to mock the Romans and telling them to send Crassus and Cassius out in chains.
Morale collapses and his lieutenants suggest Crassus flee the city abandoning his army. But his closest Greek adviser, Andromachus, is a double agent and reports this to Surena. And when this escape party sets out that night in secret from the city Andromachus treacherously leads them a zigzag route through marshes. Cassius left with 500 cavalry by a different route and made it to Syria. Octavius led 5,000 to a hill country named Sinnaca.
[Only now does it become clear that when Plutarch said Crassus left Carrhae, he meant with a significant armed force (four cohorts of men-at‑arms, a few horsemen all told, and five lictors). Add in Octavius’s forces and you can see that a lot of the army got away. This suggests that Surena wasn’t mounting a very effective siege and throws into doubt the whole story about the Roman army taking refuge in the city.]
Anyway, up come the Parthians and surround Crassus’s force on a hill but Octavius fights his way through to join him.
(30) Surena realised that, with night coming on, the Romans were likely to escape into the hills. So he changed his approach and a) released prisoners who had overheard staged conversations between Surena and lieutenants saying it was time for peace, which softened Crassus up for when b) Surena and lieutenants made their way up the hill under truce, symbolically unstrung his bow and held out his hand, offering peace.
Crassus hesitates to accept but the army rebelled, clashed their shields and insist they will fight no longer. So much against his better judgement Crassus is more or less forced to go down the hill to meet with Surena.
(31) Octavius insists on joining him with his entourage. Then Plutarch gives a detailed description of the scuffle which leads to the fray in which Crassus is killed. Crassus had walked down on foot while Surena had advanced on horseback. He said it ill befitted his opponent to be on foot and offered a fine horse with gold-studded bridle. Surena’s lifted Crassus onto it then ran alongside slapping it to make it ride faster. But Octavius and a tribune seized the bridle to slow it down and keep Crassus in their protection. A scuffled developed and blows were exchanged. Octavius drew his sword and killed one of the grooms but was himself killed. Crassus was killed by a Parthian named Pomaxathres.
Rumour has it that the Parthians cut off Crassus’s head and right hand. Some of the Roman embassy made it back to the hilltop redoubt. That night they tried to sneak away but very few made it out of the desert alive. Most were hunted down and cut to pieces. ‘In the whole campaign, twenty thousand are said to have been killed, and ten thousand to have been taken alive’ – as usual with ancient accounts, these are suspiciously round figures.
(32) Surena sent the head and hand of Crassus to King Hyrodes in Armenia. Then he organised a mock triumph in the city of Seleucia, with a Roman noble forced to wear a dress being set on a horse backwards and mockingly saluted as ‘Crassus’, with lictors on camels and troupes of actors and musicians mocking the fallen Romans.
Plutarch makes a big deal out of the fact that the Parthians discovered in Crassus’s baggage train a copy of the ‘Milesiaca’ by Aristides, a collection of love stories. These are read out and mocked as inappropriate to take on a military campaign, but Plutarch acidly points out that this was rich coming from a leader (Surena) who himself led wagon-loads of concubines and whose train trailed off in the rear into dances, cymbals, lutes, and nocturnal revels with women. Plutarch quotes Aesop’s fable of the two wallets. He is more interested in literary allusions than history per se.
(33) Meanwhile, in faraway Armenia, King Hyrodes was at last reconciled with king Artavasdes II and agreed to receive the latter’s sister as wife for his son Pacorus. Both kings were (supposedly) well educated in Greek literature and when the head of Crassus arrived at the palace, as part of the wedding feast a performance of Euripides’ Bacchae was underway. The messenger threw Crassus’s head on the stage and the lead actor picked it up and addressed it with Euripides’ lines.
Then the man who had actually killed Crassus, Pomaxathres, stepped forward and claimed the head. King Hyrodes was delighted and gave both men rewards. Plutarch moralises: thus was the tragedy of Crassus, as is traditional, followed by farce.
[The later historian, Cassius Dio, claimed that the Parthians poured molten gold into Crassus’s mouth in symbolic mockery of his thirst for wealth. Thus grotesque gossip and macabre stories accrue around famous men.]
The text contains one last afterthought, presumably designed to ram home the perfidious treachery of the wicked orientals: soon afterwards Hyrodes became jealous of Surena’s fine reputation and had him put to death. Then Hyrodes lost his son Pacorus, defeated in battle by the Romans, and became ill, so that another of his sons, Phraates, had his father strangled.
All lives end in death, but this short life feels particularly grim and depressing.
Plutarch’s summary
For Plutarch, Crassus’s fate was:
to the multitude an illustration of the ways of fortune, but to the wise an example of foolish ambition, which would not let him rest satisfied to be first and greatest among many myriads of men, but made him think, because he was judged inferior to two men only, that he lacked everything. (27)
I.e. he was driven to his death because of rivalry with his two partners in the triumvirate, Pompey and Caesar.
Superstitions and omens
It is said that when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept, and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would attend him to a fortunate issue. (8)
When Crassus is marching out of Rome for the East his way is blocked by a critic, Ateius:
Ateius ran on ahead to the city gate, placed there a blazing brazier, and when Crassus came up, cast incense and libations upon it, and invoked curses which were dreadful and terrifying in themselves, and were reinforced by sundry strange and dreadful gods whom he summoned and called by name. The Romans say that these mysterious and ancient curses have such power that no one involved in them ever escapes, and misfortune falls also upon the one who utters them, wherefore they are not employed at random nor by many. And accordingly at this time they found fault with Ateius because it was for the city’s sake that he was angered at Crassus, and yet he had involved the city in curses which awakened much superstitious terror.
There follows a steadily increasing crescendo of bad omens as Crassus’s army advanced into the badlands. Surely these are classic examples of Cicero’s inventio. This is what ought to have happened for the gods are just and send us omens and prophecies and so every fraught event must be accompanied by heavenly signs. Precisely what makes this aspect of these ancient texts ludicrous to us, made them plausible and convincing to most of their readers.
Related links
Roman reviews
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- Rudens (The Rope) by Plautus (c.200 BC)
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- Plutarch
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- From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 138 BC to AD 68 by H. H. Scullard ( 3rd edition 1970)
- Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland (2003) – 1
- Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland (2003) – 2
- The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham (2009)
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- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard (2015) – 2
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard (2015) – 3. The Republic
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The Civil War by Julius Caesar – 1
Fortune, which has great influence in affairs generally and especially in war, produces by a slight disturbance of balance important changes in human affairs.
(The Civil War Book 3 chapter 68)
I picked up this 1967 Penguin paperback of Julius Caesar’s Civil Wars, translated by Jane Gardner, in the sensible A format size (18 cm by 11 cm) with reassuringly browned paper, in a second hand bookshop for just £2. Though nearly 60 years old it has fewer scuff marks and scratches than a book I recently bought ‘new’ from Amazon, ‘destroyer of books’, whose cover was smeared, scuffed and scratched.
This Penguin volume actually contains four ‘books’:
Only the first of these is nowadays thought to have been written by Caesar. The second is generally attributed to one of Caesar’s lieutenants, Aulus Hirtius, who had written the eighth and final book in The Gallic Wars, the final two by someone who was an eye witness but of lower military rank and a lot lower literary ability than Caesar.
However, the four texts are always included together because, whatever their shortcomings, they are clearly conceived as a set, taking the reader through the entire civil war, from Caesar’s crossing the river Rubicon a little south of Ravenna in January 49 BC, through to the final mopping up of Pompeian forces in 45.
Having read numerous accounts of the civil war, I think the single most important fact (which often doesn’t come over) is that within a few weeks of Caesar entering Italy with his army of Gaul, his opponent, Gnaeus Pompeius, fled Rome and fled Italy. We know from Cicero’s letters on the subject that even at the time, his allies and supporters thought this was a mistake and so it proved to be, handing mainland Italy and the capital over to Caesar almost without a fight (this narrative describes a handful of sieges and confrontations before almost all the towns and cities and army units in Italy simply went over to Caesar’s side).
Pompey’s flight a) handed Rome and Italy over to Caesar and b) meant that the civil war would be fought on foreign soil, eventually in all the provinces Rome ruled, meaning (from west to east) Spain, north Africa, the Province (the south of France featuring the major port of Marseilles), Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor.
Despite Caesar defeating Pompey’s main army at the battle of Pharsalus in central Greece in August 48 and Pompey’s flight to Egypt where he was murdered a month later, in September 48 – nonetheless, forces loyal to Pompey and led by his sons fought on in Spain, Africa and Asia. This explains why the civil war(s) continued for another 3 years and why the main text, The Civil War, which ends with the death of Pompey, needed to be continued with the three subsequent shorter texts, and why each of them focuses on a particular arena of the later stages of the war.
Gardner’s introduction
Jane Gardner gets straight to the point with a solid factual introduction to the fraught background to the outbreak of civil war between Caesar and Pompey in 49 BC. I was struck by the way she goes back 80 years to start her historical background with two key events:
1. The killing of Gracchus was the first time the forces competing in the Roman state spilled over into political violence.
2. Marius’s career showed that the system of annually changing magistrates and proconsuls was becoming too limited for Rome’s farflung military needs. (Julius Caesar’s aunt married Marius. His father and brother supported Marius. He grew up in the shadow of Marius’s populares party and narrowly avoided execution when the dictator Sulla, representing the optimates, took power in 82.)
Gardner gives a good brief overview of the events which led to the formation of the Triumvirate which Caesar set up between himself, Pompey and Crassus (60 BC); how he used this to secure his posting as proconsul to Cisalpine Gaul (swiftly expanded to include Transalpine Gaul); how friction in the triumvirate led to its renewal at a big conference at Luca in 56; and how it was undone by two hammerblows:
In Gardner’s hands, the centre of the story is Pompey’s inability to make his mind up. The same self-knowledge teetering on reticence which led him to peacefully disband his army on returning from the East in 62 plays out less positively in his inability to really make his mind up how to behave in the growing political crisis of the late 50s.
In Gardner’s account it is Pompey’s lack of decisiveness which creates the crisis of uncertainty and vacillation which Caesar eventually cuts through by crossing the Rubicon and creating a state of civil war. If Pompey had grasped the nettle and agreed with Caesar’s suggestion that they both lay down their commands at the same time and meet to discuss their issues, peace could have been preserved. But Pompey left it to others – senators such as Marcus Marcellus and Lucius Lentulus – to make proposals and counter-proposals which Caesar found unacceptable, until it was too late.
Eventually Caesar felt his position was so threatened that he decided to make a lightning strike from Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy), where he legitimately held command, into Italy proper, where he very much didn’t. The river Rubicon separated these two territories. So crossing the Rubicon with one of his legions was illegal and universally interpreted as an attack on the government and constitution of Rome.
How it was written
During the eight years of his command in Gaul Caesar had got into the habit of writing commentarii or reports on each campaigning season, summarising his military campaigns, in brisk no-nonsense factual accounts. He had these sent to Rome to, in effect, justify his (often dubious) actions. These were probably dictated to secretaries while he was on the move, amid the numerous other correspondence and paperwork he dealt with. There are eight of them, one for each year of his command, and taken together they make up the document known as The Gallic Wars.
Having established the habit and method for doing this, it seems likely Caesar simply continued it to document the new conflict, which continued more or less without a break from his Gallic campaigns.
The Civil War
Caesar’s paranoia: ‘What is the aim of all these preparations but my destruction?’
At the start of his narrative Caesar deals briefly with the politics, with his offers and attempts at negotiations with the Senate, but it quickly falls into another litany of towns besieged and Pompeian forces which come over to his side, very similar in feel to the Gallic Wars.
Admittedly there isn’t the total destruction, massacres, selling into slavery and hostage-giving which characterised the Gallic Wars. But it is a general’s view of things i.e. a long list of territories and cities and towns which need to be taken and then secured by posting loyal officers in them.
A note on the army
A cohort contained 480 men. A legion contained ten cohorts. When you add in officers, engineers and cavalry (120 men plus horses) a legion numbered about 5,000 men.
The text of The Civil War is divided into three ‘books’, volumes or parts, each of which is further sub-divided into short numbered sections, conventionally referred to as ‘chapters’.
Part 1: The struggle begins (87 chapters)
(N.B. These dramatic titles don’t exist in the original text. They are inventions of the editor of the Penguin edition.)
1 to 6: Intransigence at Rome
Haste and confusion characterised every transaction. (5)
Quick summary of the hasty and confused debates in the Senate at the end of 50 BC, with the anti-Caesar faction calling for JC to be sent an ultimatum to lay down his command before negotiations could begin about his future. Caesar wanted to be allowed to stand for the consulship in his physical absence. He wanted to be elected consul because it would give him immunity from all prosecution for a year. Most of the Senate refused this idea because it was unprecedented and unconstitutional. Caesar read this refusal as a deliberate ploy so that when he laid down his command in Gaul and returned to Rome as a private citizen, he would be vulnerable to prosecution by his many enemies for his many dubious actions in Gaul. Senators like Cato had made it crystal clear he would launch a legal action against Caesar the second he set foot in Italy. Hence Caesar’s demand that he be given a consulship / legal immunity. But the legitimists, traditionalists and his actual enemies all rejected this. Impasse.
Caesar also learned that the end of 50 and start of 49 was seeing widespread conscription of soldiers across Italy. Pompey’s mouthpiece in the Senate, Scipio, tells them Pompey is ready to defend the state. When the Senate meets outside the city (because Pompey as a proconsul [of Spain] is not allowed within the city limits) Pompey tells them he has command of 10 legions and is ready to defend the state. The Penguin notes tell us this presumably means the 2 legions he had withdrawn from Caesar ostensibly to be sent to the East but which hadn’t left Italy yet; seven legions loyal to Pompey in Spain; and one under Domitius. (The fact that so many of Pompey’s legions were in Spain explains why Spain would turn out to be a main crucible of the war).
Caesar goes to some lengths to single out the treatment of the tribunes of the plebs, Mark Antony and Gaius Scribonius Curio. When they continued to lobby the Senate in Caesar’s favour, the most vehement senators threatened them with violence, and they were roughly manhandled out of the building, convincing both to disguise themselves and flee north to join Caesar. In constitutional terms they had been deprived of their right of veto and Caesar tries to give his agenda a gloss of respectability by saying one of his war aims is the restoration of the tribunes’ rights.
Caesar describes his demands as moderate and just, and implies that all his enemies had vested interests of one kind or another, not least securing positions of power from which they could extract bribes. He says all the year’s appointments to governorships, proconsulships and so on were hurried and unconstitutional.
7 to 15: Caesar reacts
Caesar assembles his men and pleads his cause. The Senate has:
So the troops all clamour to right these wrongs and protect his reputation. Caesar moves his legions south to Ariminum just within his province (of Cisalpine Gaul). Here he receives envoys from Pompey who remind him they have been friends and tell him to put his own grievances aside for the good of the state. Caesar adds to his list of grievances:
(9) Caesar makes counter-proposals:
When these demands are presented to Pompey and the consuls at Capua, Pompey replies that Caesar must return to Gaul, disband his army and only then will Pompey go to Spain. But until he does so, the Senate will continue with a general levy of troops throughout Italy (10).
Caesar rejects these demands as unfair, not least because no date would be set for Pompey’s departure, so he would be left in Italy with his two legions indefinitely. And Pompey’s refusal to meet and talk indicates lack of goodwill. So Caesar places cohorts in the towns surrounding Arretium and the narrative becomes a description of towns seized for his side (Pisarum, Faunum, Ancona).
Iguvium comes over to him. He sets off to take Auximum which is held by Attius Varus and the narrative settles down into a long list of small Italian towns and little known Roman officers who hold them. Caesar is at pains to emphasise that when he took towns he thanked the populations and, more often than not, let the officers who’d opposed him go free, as in the case of Lucius Pupius.
(14) The ease with which towns go over to Caesar causes panic at Rome where the two consuls raid the treasury then travel south to join Pompey at Capua, where he is stationed with his two legions. Arguably, the authorities’ abandonment of Rome meant the war was lost from the start.
Caesar continues marching south towards Asculum which was being held by Lentulus Spinther who, hearing of his approach, flees; Lucilius Hirrus similarly abandons Camerinum. But Lentulus rallies the remaining forces of both and takes them to Corfinium, which was being held by Domitius Ahenobarbus.
16 to 23: The siege of Corfinium
Caesar moves with characteristic speed and comes across Domitius’s forces dismantling a bridge over the river before they’ve finished the job, fights them off, and forces them into the town. Domitius is an effective opponent. He reinforces the town defences, sends a message to Pompey telling him to bring legions to surround Caesar, and addresses his men.
Sulmo, a town 7 miles away, is being held by the senator Quintus Lucretius and Attius but Caesar sends Mark Antony there and the townsfolk gladly open their gates and the troops go over to Caesar, who incorporates them into his own forces and lets Attius go free.
Caesar spends days building siege works. Domitius receives a reply from Pompey who refuses to come to his help, saying it would jeopardise his cause and no-one asked him to go to Corfinium. So Domitius deceitfully tells his troops Pompey is on his way, while making a plan with his closest advisors to secretly flee the town.
Word leaks out and the soldiers decide to abandon such a two-faced leader, arrest Domitius and send messages to Caesar saying they’re prepared to surrender. Caesar is wary of sending his troops into the town that night lest they loot it, so he sends the envoys back and maintains the siege. At dawn Lentulus asks for a private interview, is let out of the town and taken to Caesar who takes the opportunity (in the narrative) to reiterate his demands. He:
Are these the demands of ‘a revolutionary proconsul who placed his own dignitas above his country’? Discuss.
In the morning Caesar orders all the senators and magistrates hiding in Corfinium to be brought to him. He protects them from the jeers and insults of the soldiers, berates them for giving no thanks for the benefits he’s brought them and then, quite simply, lets them go. He has all the soldiers in the town swear allegiance to him. The magistrates of the town bring him 6 million sesterces but Caesar simply gives it back to Domitius to prove he is not interested in financial gain.
24 to 29: Pompey leaves Italy
Pompey had already abandoned Rome. Now he moves quickly to Canusium and then onto Brundisium, then, as now, the port for ships to Greece.
Caesar follows him, picking up Pompeian forces who abandon their leaders on the way. Caesar discovers the two consuls and most of Pompey’s army have taken ship for Dyrrachium, leaving Pompey inside Brundisium with 20 cohorts.
Caesar immediately starts building a great breakwater to block the port, but continues to send envoys to Pompey requesting a face-to-face meeting. Characteristically, Pompey doesn’t grasp the nettle but hides behind the constitutional nicety that, in the absence of the 2 consuls (who have fled) he is not authorised to negotiate.
In Caesar’s version, it is Pompey’s inability to take responsibility and engage in the kind of face-to-face discussions they had during the triumvirate which condemns Rome to civil war.
Caesar’s patience wears out, he realises he’s never going to get a sensible reply, and finally decides to conduct an all-out war (26).
The ships which had ferried Pompey’s first contingent to Greece now return and Pompey makes plans to embark the second and final cohort of troops. He fills the town with booby traps and a light guard on the city walls while the rest of the troops embark. At the last minute the guards are called and run down to the port, as the ships are setting off. Caesar’s men scale the walls, are helped by the townspeople to evade the traps, and some make it onto the water and capture two of Pompey’s ships which had gone aground on a breakwater.
Strategically, the best thing for Caesar would have been to pursue Pompey as quickly as possible but for the simple fact that Pompey had commandeered all the ships and waiting for new ones to be sent from Sicily or Gaul would lose the advantage. Meanwhile, most of Pompey’s legions were in Spain where a lot of the country’s nobles owed Pompey big debts of gratitude (for making them Roman citizens).
30 to 33: Caesar’s Senate
Accordingly Caesar sends lieutenants to Sardinia and Sicily which the Pompeian governors promptly flee.
Caesar’s noted enemy, Cato the Younger, governor of Sicily, makes a public speech about how Pompey had deceived him and the Senate into believing they were ready for war when they weren’t at all, and then flees to Africa, where the Pompeian Attius Varrus has taken control.
Having made his deployments Caesar goes to Rome and makes a long repetition of his complains directly to the remaining senators (32). He asks them to join him in governing Rome, otherwise he’ll do it by himself. But no-one volunteers to go as emissary to Pompey as they are afraid, and one of the tribunes has been suborned to filibuster events as long as possible, and so Caesar gives it up as a bad job and heads off for Gaul.
34 to 36: Resistance at Massilia
In the Province Caesar learns that Domitius has seized Massilia. Caesar makes a speech to the elders of Massilia who promise neutrality but meanwhile Domitius takes control, requisitioning ships from neighbouring ports. Caesar orders ships to be built in nearby ports then leaves Gaius Trebonius in charge of the siege of Massilia and marches on towards Spain.
37 to 55: The first Spanish campaign – Ilerda
The complex deployment and redeployment of Pompey’s lieutenants to the different provinces of Spain, which leads up to the siege of Ilerda, held by the Pompeian Lucius Afranius.
This is the first full-blown military encounter of the war and is described in Caesar’s usual technical detail, with siegeworks, attack and counter-attack. The river running past the town, the Sicoris, plays a key role, especially when there’s heavy rainfall and it and another river flood and wash away the bridges, leaving the Roman forces trapped between them, cut off from supplies of corn which, in any case, were short at this time of year. When a train of senators, magistrates, cohorts and cavalry arrive to join Caesar, they are prevented by the flooded rivers and attacked by Afranius’s forces.
All this is talked up by Afranius’s supporters and word spreads to Rome that the war is virtually over, which encouraged more to go over to Pompey’s side. But Caesar has boats made in a lightweight style he had seen in Britain, ferries enough of his troops over the flooded river to set up a base and then build a bridge from both sides. His cavalry attack a party out foraging Pompeians then fight off an enemy cavalry attack.
56 to 58: The naval fight at Massilia
The Pompeians under Domitius had built 17 warships while Caesar’s force under Decimus Brutus had hurriedly built far less at an island near Massilia. Domitius attacks. Caesar describes the composition and strengths of the opposing forces. Despite bad odds Caesar’s forces prevail.
59 to 80: Spain – a war of attrition
The situation swiftly changes:
Afranius and his colleague Petreius worry that they’re going to be cut off and so decide to abandon Ilerda and move deeper into Celtiberia, where the reputation of Pompey will guarantee support. They build a bridge across the Ebro 20 miles away just as the river hemming Caesar in becomes fordable. (To be honest, it is pretty difficult making sense of these complicated and often obscure descriptions of flooded rivers, bridges and fords.)
Caesar’s forces protest that they are hanging around while the enemy gets away, so Caesar selects the weakest to stay behind and guard the camp and the strongest to ford the river, which they just about manage to do. He forms them up and they pursue the fleeing Pompeians. They come up to them within a few miles of mountains, where both sides make camp.
Next day Caesar takes his men by a roundabout route to get to the bridge across the Ebro first. Afranius’s forces at first jeer them for fleeing the battlefield until they slowly realise they are going to be cut off. There follows complex manoeuvring to seize the high ground and the first of the mountain passes. Caesar’s forces massacre some of the Pompeian cavalry. Caesar’s men are all for finishing them off but Caesar thinks he can win without bloodshed and gives himself a speech saying he wants to avoid the deaths of citizens if at all possible. His army mutters and disagrees.
Next day some of the Pompeians are harassed when going to fetch water, so the leaders decide to build a protective rampart from their camp down to the water and go to supervise it. In their absence there is a mutiny with soldiers of all ranks, up to and including Afranius’s own son, fraternising with Caesar’s forces, calling out to friends, asking if they will be well treated if they surrender.
When Afranius hears all this he is ready to fall in with the capitulation. Petreius, on the other hand, stays resolute and with a small cavalry bodyguard descends on the fraternising soldiers, killing as many of Caesar’s as he can. He then tours the army, begging them not to abandon Pompey their leader; has the entire army, by centuries, repledge its oath of allegiance to him; and calls for anyone harbouring Caesarian soldiers to hand them over, before having them publicly executed in front of his soldiers. By terrorising his troops, Afranius restores discipline.
In his own camp Caesar shows his famous clemency, ordering soldiers from the opposing camp to be not punished but protected. And many chose to stay on with his side and Caesar was careful to show them honour. The Pompeians are running out of food and finding it hard to access water so they decide to march back to Ilerda. Caesar harasses their rearguard all the way.
81 to 87: The Pompeians capitulate
Caesar forces the Pompeians to make camp a distance from water, sets up his own camp and starts making siegeworks. On the second day the Pompeians come out to offer battle but a) Caesar doesn’t want unnecessary bloodshed and b) he doesn’t think there’s sufficient space (2 miles) between the camps to enforce a decisive victory. In the event, despite being impressively drawn up, neither side offers battle and at sunset they both withdraw to their camps.
Caesar sends his cavalry ahead to secure the ford over the river Sicoris thus cutting off the Pompeians from their intended route. At which point, starving and thirsty, the Pompeian leaders sue for peace, at a public meeting held in sight of both armies. Caesar makes a long speech in which he recapitulates the wrongs he has endured and the broader historical picture in which he claims that an army has been maintained in Spain (which is at peace and hardly needs it) purely to attack him. He lists other innovations whose sole purpose has been to threaten and attack him at the will of a ‘clique’ in Rome.
In a magnanimous display of clemency Caesar announces his only condition for peace is the disbanding of this Spanish army and everyone can go free. The location of demobilisation is set as the river Var. The Pompeian army cheer, as they had expected punishment of some sort, and clamour to be demobilised sooner rather than later. Caesar promises to supply them corn till they reach the Var and compensate all soldiers for any property lost to his men.
A third of the army was disbanded in the next 2 days, the rest marched under escort to the Var and was disbanded there. Caesar is at pains to convey his consistent humanity and clemency.
Part 2: Securing the West (44 chapters)
1 to 16: The siege of Massilia
Caesar’s lieutenant Gaius Trebonius continues the siege of Massilia. Pompey sends Lucius Nasidius with a fleet of ships to help out. These join forces with Lucius Domitius and Caesar describes a big sea battle which the Caesarean fleet of Decimus Brutus wins.
Caesar gives a very detailed description of the siege works his men build against the wall of Massilia which eventually weaken it. Envoys from the city come out and plead for mercy from Trebonius and beg to wait the return of Caesar. The result is a ceasefire during which both sides slacken off. Until some of the besieged garrison, that is, make a sortie with firebrands and successfully burn down one of the besieging towers. This makes the besiegers return to construction with a vengeance and less inclined to forgiveness.
17 to 21: Spain – surrender of Varro
In Further Spain Pompeian governor Marcus Varro hesitates which side to support until he hears misleading news of Pompeian victories at Ilerda and Massilia, whereupon he comes down fiercely on the Pompeian side, persecuting towns and individuals said to sympathise with Caesar.
Caesar for his part wants to return to Italy but knows he must finish the job in Spain or it will remain a Pompeian stronghold in his rear. In the event the plans of the Pompeian governor Marcus Terentius Varro are overthrown as town after town of Hither Spain declares for Caesar till eventually Varro surrenders to Caesar without a fight all his forces and money.
Caesar holds councils at Corduba and elsewhere, rewarding towns and communities. He puts Quintus Cassius in charge of the province and travels back to Massilia.
22: Massilia capitulates
Two defeats at sea, the undermining of their walls, starvation and an outbreak of pestilence convince the inhabitants of Massilia (called Massiliotes) to surrender. Their governor Lucius Domitius escapes by ship. Caesar accepts Massilia’s submission, leaves two legions to guard it and hastens back to Rome.
23 to 36: Africa – Curio’s campaign
Caesarean Gaius Scribonius Curio’s campaign in Tunisia against the Pompeian Publius Attius Varus. Curio is over-confident of success, only taking 2 of the 4 legions Caesar gave him to Africa. Here he camps opposite Varus’s camp outside Utica and has an initial success when his cavalry routs some of Pompey’s.
Now a lot of Curio’s men came from the Pompeian forces which surrendered at the siege of Corfinium. Varus has one of his men ride up and down opposite Curio’s lines, reminding them of their original oath to Pompey. This gives rise to rumours and dissension within Curio’s army and his advisers are split between forcing an attack on Utica or withdrawing to their original camp, Castra Cornelia, along the coast.
Caesar depicts Curio giving a speech to his advisers saying he’ll take neither course of action, and then addressing his troops at length, saying it was their example of abandoning Pompey which helped turn over Italy to Caesar, how Caesar has won 2 provinces in Spain, plus Massilia, pointing out that they didn’t desert their general Lucius Domitius, it was Lucius Domitius who deserted them. And lastly asking whether he has been a good and fair general to them.
This rouses them so much that on the following day they brave a difficult ravine between the two armies to take Varus’s forces by storm and force him right back, to abandon his camp and take refuge in the town.
37 to 44: Curio’s last stand
Then Curio hears that king Juba of the Numidians is approaching and withdraws his legions from the advanced camp back to Camp Castra, and sends to Sicily for food. The camp would be very well positioned to stand a long siege, but when Curio hears the king himself has been distracted by a tribal war and is only sending his lieutenant, Saburra, with a smaller force he willingly believes it. At nightfall Curio sends all his cavalry to ambush Saburra at the river Bagradas, which they successfully do.
Curio receives the triumphant cavalry back with their prisoners and loot as proof of victory and leads his infantry out in the middle of the night with the plan to force march to attack Saburra while the latter is still in confusion. What he doesn’t know is that King Juba very much is marching his way and that, when he hears of Saburra’s setback, he sends him 2,000 of his best cavalry and continues his infantry march to join him.
With the result that Curio’s force confronts Saburra’s forces in full battle order. Curio is victorious wherever he attacks but a) his on cavalry is slow and tired and b) his men are outnumbered. Reinforcements from the king continually arrive until Curio is surrounded. He sees a nearby hill and orders his men to gather there to make a stand, but enemy cavalry possess it first, at which point Curio’s men give up. His officers encourage him to flee the field but he says he couldn’t face Caesar after losing the army he gave him and so fights on till he’s killed.
Back at Camp Cornelia the rest of Curio’s forces panic and, when the quaestor Marcus Rufus tries to organise an orderly departure by ship, the men panic and swamp the boats, sinking many and discouraging the other ships from coming into harbour. Only a handful of officers and centurions make it aboard and so back to Sicily alive. The rest surrender to Varus.
Next day when King Juba arrives and sees cohorts of survivors in front of Utica he declares them his spoils of war and has them all executed. Varus is too weak and scared to prevent him.
End of Part 2. Part 3 is summarised in the next blog post.
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Posted by Simon on June 10, 2022
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/06/10/the-civil-war-julius-caesar-1/