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Histories by Tacitus

Biography

Publius Cornelius Tacitus, generally referred to simply as Tacitus, was a Roman statesman and historian. He lived from 56 to 120 AD. Like many Roman writers he had an eminent career in politics and public service. He started his career under the emperor Vespasian (ruled 69 to 79) and entered political life as a quaestor in 81 or 82 under Titus (ruled 79 to 81). He became praetor under Domitian (ruled 81 to 96) in 88 and then a quindecimvir, a member of the priestly college in charge of the Sibylline Books and the Secular Games.

Tacitus gained acclaim as a lawyer and as an orator, then served in the provinces from about 89 to about 93, either in command of a legion or in a civilian post. He became suffect consul (someone appointed to replace an elected consul who had vacated their office before the completion of their year-long term) in 97, during the short reign of Nerva (ruled 96 to 98).

It was about this point that he embarked on a career as a writer, producing two historical monographs – a biography of his father-in-law Julius Agricola which, because the latter had served as governor of Britain, contains much interesting information about the tribes and geography of ancient Britain; and the Germania, an ethnographic study of the tribes of Germany, both published in 98.

Tacitus returned to public life during the reign of the emperor Trajan (98 to 117). In 100 he and his friend, Pliny the Younger, prosecuted Marius Priscus (proconsul of Africa) for corruption. Priscus was found guilty and sent into exile. Pliny wrote in a letter a few days later that Tacitus had spoken ‘with all the majesty which characterises his usual style of oratory’.

Tacitus spent the next decade or so researching his two major works, the Histories and the Annals but in 112 to 113 was back in public service, recorded as holding the highest civilian governorship, of the Roman province of ‘Asia’ i.e. western Turkey. He probably died in the 120s, though the precise date is not known.

The point of recounting all this is to emphasise that Tacitus understood military and political power from the inside. He was a noted public speaker, lawyer and prosecutor, and held senior administrative posts. This profound understanding of all aspects of the Roman political system explains why Tacitus’s histories feel so authoritative and rich. He is speaking from deep experience of how Roman government worked, along with all the scheming, backstabbing and politicking which accompanied it.

The Histories

Together, the Histories and Annals were designed to give a continuous, year-by-year history of Rome under the rule of the first 12 emperors, from the death of Augustus to the death of Domitian i.e. from 14 to 96 AD, taking in the ten emperors in between (Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian).

Tacitus composed the Annals second but they deal with the earlier period, Augustus to Nero (14 to 68). He composed the Histories first but they deal with the later period, Galba to Domitian (68 to 96).

Both books are missing large sections. The Annals is missing a big chunk in the middle, covering the last two years of Tiberius, the entire reign of Caligula (37 to 41) and the first six years of Claudius (41 to 47). Very frustrating.

But the Histories are even more mutilated. Originally 12 or 14 books in length, all that survive are the first four books and part of the fifth so that, instead of the 30 or so years from 68 to 96, all we have is just the first two years of his intended period, namely a brief summary of 68, all of 69 and some of 70.

The 1964 Penguin Classics paperback translation by British historian Kenneth Wellesley (1911 to 1995) is 260 pages long. That’s a lot of pages for just 2 years, so straightaway you know the Histories are going to cover the period in great detail.

If it’s a shame that we’ve lost most of the Histories and thus Tacitus’s accounts of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, looking on the bright side, what we do have is a detailed account of a pivotal moment, the so-called Year of Four Emperors, 69 AD, when, following Nero’s suicide in June 68, four successive military leaders contested the imperial throne.

Nero was the last representative of the Julio-Claudian dynasty which had ruled Rome since 27 BC, but it was not only a dynasty that was overthrown; such was the chaos that it looked to contemporaries as if the unified, centralised structure of the Roman Empire itself might come to an end.

Four emperors died violently:

  • Nero in June 68, suicide (1. 4)
  • Galba in January 69, murdered by soldiers (1.41)
  • Otho in April 69, suicide (2.49)
  • Vitellius in December 69, murdered by soldiers (3.85)

Synopsis

Nero overthrown

In summer 68 reports reached Nero that the governor of the province of Gallia Lugdunensis, Gaius Julius Vindex, had rebelled against him. In order to gain support Vindex declared he was rebelling in support of the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, Servius Sulpicius Galba. The commander of the Germania Superior army, Lucius Verginius Rufus, remained loyal to Nero and led his army against Vindex and appears to have beaten him at the battle of Vesontio, where Vindex was killed. But in the meantime, momentum had shifted to Galba. Other army leaders swung behind him and the senate declared for him. Abandoned by the legions in Italy, Nero fled to a villa outside Rome and, hearing hostile troops approaching, committed suicide rather than be dragged back to Rome and executed.

Reign of Servius Sulpicius Galba (8 June 68 to 15 January 69)

So the senate declared for Galba and he undertook the long march from Spain to the capital, where he was acclaimed emperor in June 68. However, Galba was:

  • old – he was 70 when he came to power
  • ruled badly and inconsistently, swayed by a cabal of corrupt advisers
  • didn’t pay the army as generously as it was expecting, especially the all-important Praetorian Guard which, as a result, turned against him (1.4)c

More importantly, on 1 January 69, the same day that Galba took the office of consul alongside Titus Vinius, the legions of Upper Germany refused to swear loyalty to the new emperor. They toppled the statues of Galba and demanded that a new emperor be chosen. The following day, the soldiers of Lower Germany also refused to swear their loyalty and proclaimed the governor of their province, Aulus Vitellius, as emperor.

In a bid to secure his position, on 10 January Galba held a ceremony to adopt the 31-year-old Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus as his successor but it didn’t work. Just 5 days later, on 15 January, Galba was murdered by the Praetorian Guard (1.41). His successor, Piso, fled to the Temple of Vesta, but was dragged out and killed (1.43). Their heads were cut off and paraded round on pikes.

Reign of Marcus Otho (15 January to 16 April 69)

Tacitus’s account describes in detail how his successor, Marcus Otho, based in Rome, organised the conspiracy to assassinate Galba. Otho had been close to the centre of power for over a decade. He had initially been a friend and courtier of the young Nero, but Nero had an affair with and eventually married his wife, Poppaea Sabina, so had had Otho was dispatched to be governor the remote province of Lusitania in 58.

According to Tacitus Otho ruled Lusitania moderately for a decade. In the turmoil of summer 68, Otho allied himself with Galba, who was governor of neighbouring, Hispania Tarraconensis, and he accompanied Galba on his march to Rome, not unreasonably expecting a reward for his support. He was, therefore, aggrieved when Galba overlooked him to adopt Piso.

However, all these personal motives were dwarfed when Otho, now appointed emperor, read Galba’s imperial correspondence and for the first time realised the scale of the revolt of the army in Germany. Vitellius was leading his legions on a march on Rome à la Galba. Otho made an effort to negotiate, offering Vitellius a share in ruling the empire. When this was rejected, he assembled a fleet to control the coast and led his legions north where they undertook savage attacks on the civilians in the region.

Tacitus gives a detailed account of the movements of the legions of the various armies, Vitellius’s under the ambitious Aulus Caecina Alienus, Otho’s under Suetonius Paulinus. Paulinus defeated Caecina at a battle near Cremona but Caecina was then joined by the other Vitellian army led by Fabius Valens for the key battle of the campaign which took place at Bedriacum on 14 April 69.

It was a disaster for Otho’s forces, with the historian Dio Cassius claiming that 40,000 Roman soldiers were killed on both sides. (Tacitus makes the interesting point that in a civil war there’s less point, in fact it’s illegal, to take prisoners and ransom to their families, as you can in war against foreigners. So you might as well just kill them.) The next day Otho’s forces surrendered and swore allegiance to Vitellius (2.45).

Otho had retained substantial forces at his main base at Brixellum, a few miles from the battlefield and they advised him to fight on but Otho, reluctant to be responsible for more Roman lives lost, chose to commit suicide. Otho was mocked during his life for his debauched lifestyle and flamboyant homosexuality. But his suicide struck the true Roman Stoic note and was remembered and praised. Tacitus treats Otho’s death nobly and gives him a stirring speech to his men (2.46 to 49):

It may be that others have held the principate longer, but I shall make sure that no one quits it more courageously.

(A note on the Roman cult of suicide: Tacitus claims that a number of troops committed suicide beside Otho’s funeral pyre, and at the other Othonian camps both high and low committed suicide in order ‘to share his glory.’)

Reign of Aulus Vitellius (19 April to 20 December 69)

With Otho dead, Vitellius continued his march on Rome, where he made a triumphal entry and was recognized as emperor by the Senate. Tacitus then enjoys himself hugely recounting the multiple instances of Vitellius’s disgraceful debauchery, spending fortunes on games and entertainments, listening to whoever flattered him most, letting the troops he’d brought to the capital run rampant and lose all discipline. Among the numerous executions and appointments, Vitellius failed to defuse the long-running rivalry between the two generals who had won his victory at Bedriacum, Caecina and Valens.

Indeed, as Tacitus repeatedly points out, it proved to be easier to claim the throne than to hold onto it. Vitellius’s claim was soon challenged by the legions stationed in the East (Judaea and Egypt) who proclaimed their commander, Titus Flavius Vespasian, emperor instead.

Vespasian had a formidable reputation as a military commander, having played a key role in Claudius’s invasion of Britain in 43, and he was involved in suppressing the Jewish rebellion (which had started in 66) when Nero committed suicide.

Leaving his son (and future emperor) Titus, in charge of the siege of the Jews in Jerusalem, Vespasian recruited the governor of Syria, Mucianus, and Marcus Antonius Primus, a general in Pannonia, to his cause, and sent them to march on Rome, the third such march by Roman legions in 12 months.

Vespasian himself was in Egypt securing its vital grain supply when his troops entered Italy from the north-east under Primus’s leadership. With his determination, personal courage and charisma, Primus emerges as the ‘hero’, as Wellesley puts it, of book 3 of the Histories. After a confused series of clashes and manoeuvres, Primus’s legions defeated Vitellius’s army at the second battle of Bedriacum on 24 October 69. They then stormed and sacked the nearby town of Cremona in scenes of chaos, rapine and then fire. Tacitus is ashamed of the utter destruction wrought by Roman troops on a venerable Roman city (3.33).

Meanwhile the two generals who had led Vitelius to the throne, Caecina and Valens, both abandoned him in different ways. Caecina led the first Vitellian forces north but betrayed them and his emperor by going over to the Vespasians. Valens was slow to leave Rome and when he learned of the defeat of the Vitellians at Bedriacum he abandoned his legions and took ship to Monaco, with a plan to enter Narbonensian Gaul and raise a general rebellion of the Gaulish and German tribes against Vespasian. As Tacitus comments, this would have been catastrophic if it had succeeded (3.41) but it didn’t. Valens’s ship was overtaken by a flotilla of fast Vespasian galleys. With his capture the wind went out of the Vitellian forces:

With the capture of Valens the whole Roman world rallied to the winning side. (3.44)

Tacitus emphasises that Vitellius still had ample forces around Rome and if he had crossed the Apennines to attack the exhausted Flavian troops before reinforcements had arrived, could quite possibly have won. But he hadn’t a clue about military matters and surrounded himself with flattering courtiers who refused admittance to the centurions and commanders who could have given him sound advice (3.56).

Tacitus describes the confused scenes in Rome when Vitellius came down from the palace dressed in black, made an impassioned speech to the people, but was prevented by them, the Praetorian Guard and the German auxiliaries, from abdicating as he wanted to. (3.67-68) If his wish had been carried out much bloodshed and destruction would have been avoided.

If Vitellius had found it as easy to convert his follower as to give way himself, the army of Vespasian would have entered the capital without bloodshed. (3.66)

But Vitellius’s supporters’ obstinacy meant that the Flavian forces had to fight their way into Rome, destroying property and spreading carnage as they went.

The extraordinary story of Sabinus and Domitian

Vespasian had an older brother, Titus Flavius Sabinus, who had had a successful public career. Throughout the year he had remained in Rome as successive rulers rose and fell. Staying with him was his nephew, Vespasian’s younger son, Domitian. Tacitus tell us that Vitellius was well aware of their presence but took no action against them so that his, Vitellius’s, extended family, living in various provinces, would also be unharmed.

But Sabinus wasn’t stupid and had reached out to the anti-Vitellian factions in the nobility and, when news came that Vitellius had abdicated, he mobilised these individuals and cohorts (‘the leading senators, a number of knights and representatives of the urban troops and of the watch’) and they declared for Vespasian as emperor. Then came the news that Vitellius had been forced to remain in power and the position of Sabinus’s little troupe became desperate. Scuffles between the opposing forces turned into fighting and Sabinus led his force up to the Capitoline Hill where they barricaded themselves in, where he was joined by his family and Domitian.

There followed an intense siege of the hill by the pro-Vitellian forces (3.71). Nobody knows whether it was the attackers or defenders who resorted to fire but somehow a fire started and spread to surrounding buildings, above all the venerable Temple to Jupiter the Best and Greatest. This ancient building, full of tributes and testimonials from centuries of Roman history and military achievement, was burned to the ground.

This was the most lamentable and appalling disaster in the whole history of the Roman commonwealth. (3.72)

Eventually the Vitellians stormed the hill, while panic-stricken Flavians fled or hid or disguised themselves. Sabinus was seized along with his lieutenant, Quintius Atticus, put in chains and dragged before the now-powerless emperor who spoke calmly to them but was unable to stop them being dragged off by the impassioned mob, which stabbed and hacked Sabinus to death, cut off his head and threw his body onto the Gemonian Steps. Thus the end of a great Roman patriot, one among thousands of victims of Vitellius’s inability to rein in his own followers.

The fate of his nephew, Vespasian’s son and the future emperor Domitian, is even more colourful. As the besiegers broke in, Domitian hid in the house of the caretaker of the temple. Helped by a freedman he put on ‘a linen mantle’ and pretended to be a priest in order to get through the lines and then hide at the house of one of the family dependants. Once Vespasian was in power, Domitian demolished the caretaker’s house and built a small temple to Jupiter the Preserver. When he himself became emperor, he had a bigger temple erected to Jupiter the Guardian, with a statue depicting himself ‘under the protecting arm of the god’ (3.74).

So Primus’s legions were forced to fight their way into Rome with much bloodshed and destruction and, seizing the forlorn emperor-in-name-only Vitellius, they dragged him to the same Gemonian Steps where Sabinus’s body had been thrown a few days earlier, and there hacked him to death, on 20 December 69.

Throughout book 3 Tacitus describes how the Flavian side, although generally victorious in battle, was guilty of disagreement and delay, especially how Primus waited for the arrival of Mucianus and his Syrian troops. Other leaders heard of Vitellius’s abdication and thought the war was over. Tacitus finds it hard to apportion blame, but the combined effect was delay which was ‘fatal’ and had ‘tragic’ consequences of ‘unrelieved disaster’ i.e. the siege of the Capitol, the burning of the temple, the execution of Sabinus, and the eventual storming of Rome. The advance guard attacked the city walls on the evening of 19 December 68.

Next day the Flavian armies forced entry to the city at various gates amid scenes of rape and massacre. Tacitus vividly describes how the fighting took place in front of the entire population which watched it like spectators applauding a mock battle in the arena (3.83). Next day Domitian came out of hiding and was awarded the title Caesar but real power rested with the head of the conquering army, Antonius Primus. Within a few days the governor of Syria, Municianus arrived, and power shifted to him as official representative of Vespasian. Tacitus shows how the day-to-day business of politics i.e. speechifying, backstabbing, conspiring, senators prosecuting each other, carried on unchanged.

Reign of Vespasian (July 69 to June 79)

Vespasian ruled for ten years, establishing the Flavian dynasty (which lasted 27 years) which consisted of himself, his eldest son Titus (79 to 81) and second son, Domitian (81 to 96), survivor of the escapades on the Capitoline Hill. In fact Vespasian was the first Roman emperor to be succeeded by his biological son; the succession of emperors in the Julio-Claudian dynasty had all been by adoption. Vespasian:

  • reformed Rome’s financial system of Rome
  • brought the campaign against the Jews to a successful conclusion with the sack of Jerusalem in 70 and the mass suicide of Jewish resisters at Masada in 74
  • initiated ambitious construction projects including commissioning the Flavian Amphitheatre, better known today as the Roman Colosseum

Civilis’ revolt

But Tacitus doesn’t get round to any of this in what we have of his account. Instead, book 4 of his narrative focuses on developments in Germany. Here, months before the Flavian forces had even triumphed in Italy, a Romanised Batavian prince named Gaius Julius Civilis led a rebellion of German and Gaulish tribes which, at one point, threatened the complete independence of Gaul from Rome.

Tacitus describes the complex sequence of events by which Civilis united the tribes and then their attacks on Roman strongholds (notably the long siege of the Roman camp of Vetera), along with the appalling mismanagement on the Roman side, punctuated by mutinies by dissident soldiers (4.12 to 37).

Back in Rome

Tacitus cuts back to Rome to describe the start of the new year (70 AD) and the nominal consulships of Vespasian and his son Titus. However, as both were still absent in the East, it was Vespasian’s 18-year-old Domitian who found himself titled ‘Caesar’ and officiating at the first meetings of the Senate. Tacitus lists the usual senate business of making speeches, arguing about who was guilty of what crimes and betrayals during the reigns of Nero, Galba, Otho and Vitellius, feuds and prosecutions.

Vespasian, still in Egypt supervising Rome’s corn supply, was told bad things about Domitian arrogating too much power to himself, which threatened to turn him against his son, but this is the peg for Titus to make a speech asking clemency for his brother, on the basis that emperor’s needed to keep family close and well as the only true support they had (4.52). Tacitus then describes the reconsecration of the great temple of Jupiter (4.53).

More Civilis’ revolt

The interlude in Rome over, Tacitus returns to Julius Civilis’s rebellion on the Rhine (4.55 to 80). This continues to be very complex, in terms of the continually changing alliance between the tribes and their leaders (Civilis, Classicus, Tutor), the multiple military encounters at different locations, and the fact that one Roman legion is persuaded to defect to the tribals.

Despite setbacks the Romans won a hard-fought battle when the German coalition (the Batavi, Ubii, Lingones, Bructeri and Tencteri) attacked the Roman camp at Augusta Treverorum (Trier). The Roman commander was Quintus Petillius Cerealis who rallied his troops to hold the narrow bridge over the Rhine before counter-attacking and destroying the German camp (4.77). But there were other German and Gaulish forces scattered around the Rhineland, not least in Cologne, so the war was far from over.

Book 4 ends with a few short passages describing Vespasian’s ongoing sojourn in Egypt and some anthropology about the origin of the popular god Serapis, but the war on the Rhine far from resolved.

Book 5

The Jews

The fifth book, of which only the first 26 chapters survive, opens by ignoring the situation in Germany and shifting the scene about 2,000 miles East to Jerusalem. The Jews had risen against Roman rule in 66 AD. Tacitus picks up the story at the start of 70 AD as Vespasian dispatches Titus to Judaea to undertake the siege of Jerusalem. This would fall amid general bloodshed in August of that year although Tacitus’s history breaks off before then.

First though Tacitus treats his readers to an extended history of the Jews, review of their religion and traditions which, as Wellesley puts it, is a ‘fascinating farrago of truth and lies’ (introduction, page 14). But Tacitus gets it right about the Jews’ seven-day week, their monotheism, their fierce attachment to discriminatory customs such as circumcision, eschewing pork, not ‘marrying out’ and so on.

All this leads up to a description of Titus, having pacified the rest of Judaea, arriving before the impressive walled city of Jerusalem which itself contains the citadel within a city of the Temple complex. The city is packed with refugees from the other Jewish cities Roman armies had reduced, and Titus sets about mounting a siege in the approved Roman fashion. (5.13)

Back to Civilis’ revolt

At this point the text leaves Titus to return to the war in Germany. Here there are many more battles and skirmishes between Civilis’s tribes and Romans, including a close escape when Cerealis’s camp is invaded. But the Romans survived and attacked the island in the Rhine estuary where the Batavians lived, devastating it.

As summer turned into autumn Cerealis kept up a flow of secret correspondence with the Germans offering them peace and a return to the status quo ante. The chiefs of the German tribes are coming to realise that they cannot defeat the Romans and have been led into a ruinous unwinnable war by Civilis. The narrative breaks off as Civilis calls Cerealis to a conference at either side of a ruined bridge at Nabalia and begins to justify his actions…

In other words we don’t get to see Titus conclude the siege of Jerusalem or Vespasian set sail for, let alone arrive at, Rome.

The Agricola

In 78 Vespasian appointed as governor of Britain Gnaeus Julius Agricola, who aggressively expanded Roman territory far into Scotland. In the same year the young historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus married Agricola’s daughter. Twenty years later, in an act of filial duty, Tacitus wrote a biography of Agricola which survives in its entirety and contains much invaluable information about the first century British, their tribes and customs. This book, the Agricola, was published around 98 AD. It was the first of his historical works.

Tacitus shares his editorial decisions

A very winning habit of Tacitus’s is to share with the reader the balance of the evidence in front of him and his opinions about it, particularly when it is questionable. He steps out of his narrative, as it were, and we get a strong sense of his personality, brisk, logical, hard-headed:

  • Though I feel that a wilful search for old wives’ tales and the use of fiction to divert the reader is quite inappropriate in a serious work of this type, I hesitate all the same to be sceptical about events widely believed and handed down. (2.50)
  • Historians of this war who wrote during the Flavian dynasty have flatteringly described the motives of these men as ‘concern for peace’ and ‘patriotism’. My own view is that in addition to a natural instability of character and the cheapening of loyalty which was a consequence of their betrayal of Galba, a jealous fear that rivals would outpace them in Vitellius’s affections induced them to ruin Vitellius himself. (2.101)
  • I find that some widely read historians vouch for the truth of the following story…(3.51)

Tacitus tells us (3.25) that for the detail of the fighting he follows the account of Lucius Vipstanus Messalla, a Roman of senatorial status, who was directly involved in the war, being temporary commander of the legion VII Claudia stationed in Moesia which entered the civil war on the Flavian side, and who wrote an account of the war once it was over. This history is now lost but young Tacitus befriended the older man and used it as one of the prime sources for this history.

Sententiae

Sententia is the Roman word for the kind of pithy general statement about human life, the universe etc that we call by the names proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims or apophthegms. The plural form is sententiae. 1) A sententia is a general reflection on life which can arise from the previous narrative, acting as a kind of summary, summarising events or someone’s character in a pithy generalisation. So after describing the differing views among the army and its commanders in the East, he summarises:

Thus there were good men and bad, but for a variety of reasons and with equal enthusiasm all of them wanted war. (2.7)

2) A bit more squarely in the definition is this example where Tacitus describes the feverish rumours in Rome as Vitellius marched against Otho and then explains it by using a generalisation that his elite, crowd-despising, aristocratic audience would heartily endorse:

The cheers and cries of the crowd followed the usual pattern of flattery in being overdone and insincere…The passion for self-abasement operated as it does among domestic slaves, for each individual was prompted by selfishness and the decencies of public life now meant nothing. (1.89)

Hear hear, old chap. In fact the emptiness of public acclamation and the crassly craven behaviour of all mobs is a recurring theme and you can hear in Tacitus’s voice the scorn of a republican lamenting the hollow mob rule which the imperial form of government encouraged:

  • This was merely the accepted tradition whereby any emperor, no matter who he was, was acclaimed with extravagant applause and empty demonstration. (1.32)
  • [The defeated Othonian army turn on their leaders, blaming everyone except themselves.] This, of course, is typical of the mob. (2.44)
  • [On the entry of the despicable Vitellius into Rome] The lower classes are irresponsible and unable to discriminate between counterfeit and true. Adept in offering the usual flattery, they shouted and yelled their approval. (2.90)
  • In moments of fear the voice of wisdom and the gossip of the mob are listened to with equal alacrity. (3.58)

3) Or a sententia can be included in a flow of argument as a kind of proof. An author may cite a sententia summarising a common opinion or experience, with a view to winning the reader over to his point of view or recruiting the reader to his framework, his analysis:

  • Suspicion and hatred must always be the reaction of rulers towards the man talked of as the next in succession. (p.35)
  • Man’s character is such that he will always prefer to believe in mysteries. (1.22)
  • The ordinary man always goes from one emotional extreme to the other. (2.29)
  • Men are more inclined to repay injury than kindness. (4.3)
  • As good men derive their effectiveness from their virtues, so those who are really evil, derive theirs from their vices. (3.77)

This type assert a view of human nature or society which he uses as evidence to bolster his interpretation.

4) Or Tacitus may sometimes be consciously creating new generalisations to express his point of view. This was part of the new, briefer, more pithy style expected of Silver Age authors. (In Latin literature the Golden Age is said to have lasted from 70 BC to 18 AD, especially the long reign of Augustus, 27 BC to 14 AD; while the Silver Age is said to be the period from about 18 to 133 AD.)

Cicero write long, flowing, declamatory prose. Tacitus also writes long sentences, but more packed with information than concern for writerly balance. And they are frequently punctuated by shorter, pithy reflections and summaries. With sententia:

  • No one has ever made good use of power evilly gained. (1.30)
  • As is so often the case with brazen falsehoods, certain individuals asserted that they had been present when the deed was done and had witnessed it. (p.40)
  • Once killing starts it is difficult to draw the line. (1.39)
  • Discipline, however inflexible in peace-time, is relaxed in civil conflicts, where agents are ready to discourage disloyalty on either side, and treachery goes unpunished. (1.51)
  • There are always courtiers who keep an eye open for an emperor’s displeasure. (2.38)
  • Revolution and strife put tremendous power into the hands of evil men, whereas peace and quiet call for good lives [or ‘the practice of virtue]. (4.1)

Tacitus frequently made me smile with his droll comments on human nature. On several occasions emperors tried to smother bad news about defeats in the field, but banning rumour only ’caused it to multiply’. (3.54) That Homo sapiens, eh? Those mobs, those crowds, those foolish fickle humans.

Pithy

Sometimes Tacitus is just wonderfully brief and punchy.

  • A war of boundless havoc seemed imminent. (3.15)
  • Venutius inherited the throne, and we the fighting. (3.45)
  • [Of Vitellius] Emperor no longer, he was merely the cause of the fighting. (3.70)

Conclusions

1. Instability of the emperor

Tacitus draws the major conclusion from all these events right at the beginning: the revolt of Gaius Julius Vindex and then Galba revealed the secret of the principate which had been concealed throughout the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which was that: it was possible for an emperor to be chosen from outside Rome (1.4). More specifically, it set the pattern for centuries to come, of new emperors being acclaimed by provincial armies then marching on Rome to establish their claim.

For some periods of time ‘dynasties’ endured which ordered the succession through biological or adopted relatives. But throughout 400 year history of the Roman Empire from this year onwards, simmering beneath the appearance of stability, was the threat of the violent rise of a provincial leader to overthrow the central imperial power.

2. Instability of the army

The second conclusion, closely related to the first, is that the troops were motivated not by ideology or loyalty but, above all, by the promise of loot. Time after time in the 280 pages of this narrative, commanders, governors and emperors are threatened by their own men, surrounded, mobbed, shouted at, with the soldiers’ goal almost always being the same: loot. Vitellius was unable to control the praetorian guard or German auxiliaries in Rome, and then Antonius Primus was unable to stop the sack and fire and massacre of the triumphant army as it ransacked every house looking for valuables or women to rape.

As the narrative proceeds Tacitus gives evermore examples of the terrible discipline into which all the legions and cohorts, on all sides, seemed to fall.

The troops clamoured for immediate action and threatening their officers had by now become a habit. (4.34)

3. Permanent war

Stepping back a bit, I might be missing the wood for the trees because I suppose the biggest take home from this long text is that Rome was a military empire engaged in almost constant warfare. All of Rome’s politicians and statesmen were expected to take command of armies engaged in real warfare at the drop of a hat (even Cato in North Africa, even Cicero during his year in Asia). It was a militaristic culture in which the activity of war dominated all aspects of politics and culture to an extent I don’t think we moderns can really understand.

Reading experience and translations

Once you bed down into it, Tacitus’s account is gripping. He is, after all, reporting a very dramatic series of events:

The story upon which I embark is one full of incident, marked by bitter fighting, rent by treason and even in peace, sinister. (1.2)

The course of events allows him to stage melodramatic scenes and give stirring speeches to key characters at decisive moments. But he is a master of narrative. Possibly because the subject matter itself is gripping and fast-moving, but I found the Histories a much more enjoyable read than the more diffuse and sometimes repetitive Annals (all those informers, all those treason trials, all those forced suicides – even Tacitus himself admitted to getting bored with his own narrative).

Take the couple of chapters describing the abortive rising of Sabinus and the other pro-Flavians when they thought Vitellius had abdicated, which leads into the siege of the Capitoline Hill, the fire destroying the Temple of Jupiter, Sabinus arrest and lynching and the daredevil escape of young Domitian. This is a wonderfully dramatic and exciting story and Tacitus tells it clearly and vividly.

Some of the narrative’s power must be down to Wellesley’s translation which enlivens the bare Latin with colloquial English phrases (‘old wives’ tales’, ‘run for the hills’, ‘discipline went to pieces’ 4.1, ‘he was the last man to make trouble’, 4.38, ‘Marcellus looking daggers, Crispus all smiles’ 4.43) which really bring the narrative to life, giving it a more popular, colourful vibe than I suspect a literal translation would.

Also, it appears that at least some of the pithiness which I so enjoy derives from Wellesley. Here’s Anthony Kline’s translation of the first phrase of book 3 chapter 79. I assume Kline gives a literal translation of the Latin which explains why it is rather flat and factual.

Antonius reached Saxa Rubra (nine miles north of Rome) by the Flaminian Way late at night but now too late to bring relief.

And here’s Wellesley’s version:

The night was far advanced before Antonius, marching to the rescue down the Flaminian Way, reached Saxa Rubra. It was too late. (3.79)

You can see that Wellesley has altered it in several ways, two of which stand out. 1) ‘The night was far advanced’ sounds like a boy’s own adventure trope, on a par with ‘It was a dark and stormy night…’ It introduces a dash of Victorian adventure story flavour. 2) Where Kline has the flat ‘but now too late to bring relief’ Wellesley makes this phrase into a separate, clipped sentence, creating the taut, laconic style of a thriller. He does this throughout the text, sprinkling tough punchy little sentences which convey an enjoyable sense of narrative threat and suspense:

The explosion was not long in coming. (4.32)

In other words, Wellesley’s translation (as far as I can tell) tends to turn Tacitus into a gripping adventure story and ripping yarn, which is part of what makes his version such a compelling read. Along with Rolfe Humphries’ Englishing of Lucretius and Peter Green’s versions of Ovid, it’s one of the most enjoyable translations I’ve read.

Credit

The Histories of Tacitus, translated by Kenneth Wellesley, was published by Penguin Books in 1964. All quotes are from the 1986 revised paperback edition.

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Posted by Simon on January 4, 2023

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2023/01/04/tacitus-histories/

The African War 46 BC

Context

After the death of Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey) in September 48 BC, forces loyal to his cause (the ‘Pompeians’) rallied in north Africa (modern-day Tunisia). They were given support by King Juba of Numidia.

Caesar, arriving back in Rome from the East (whose pacification, starting in Egypt, moving through Syria and into Turkey, are described in The Alexandrine War), quelled a mutiny in Campania. He took steps to relieve debtors. Loyal followers were given rewards i.e. governorships and priesthoods. Some were enrolled in the senate to fill gaps. Repentant Pompeians were forgiven i.e. there was no bloodbath as under the dictators earlier in the century, Sulla or Marius.

At the very end of 47 BC Caesar was elected consul and sailed to Africa to defeat this last holdout of Pompeians. The Pompeian forces were led by Quintus Caecilius Metellus Scipio, along with Titus Labienus, Publius Attius Varus, Lucius Afranius, Marcus Petreius and the brothers Sextus and Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey’s sons). They key port of Utica was held by Caesar’s old foe, Cato the Younger and the Pompeians had a key ally in King Juba I of Numidia.

The African War consists of 98 ‘chapters’ taking up 48 pages of a Penguin paperback.

The African War

Map of the Roman province of Africa showing the towns and cities mentioned in the text

1 to 6: Arrival

Caesar assembles an army from different contingents at Lilybaeum, a port on Sicily. Leaving a Caesarian governor in place, he embarks and sails for Africa. The crossing takes three days and his ships are scattered by winds.

3 to 6: Arrival at Hadrumetum, an important port 50 miles down the Tunisian coast from the ruins of Carthage. Its commandant Caius Considius Longus refuses to negotiate. Caesar sends a prisoner with a message. When Considius asks who it’s from, the messenger replies ‘From the commander-in‑chief, Caesar.’ Then Considius retorted: ‘There is but one commander-in‑chief of the Roman people at the moment, namely Scipio’ and has the messenger executed in front of him.

Caesar rides round the walls and lands his 3,000 or so infantry but rather than lay a siege, knowing other Pompeian forces (Gnaius Piso with 3,000 Moorish troops) are approaching, Caesar makes a fighting withdrawal to Ruspina. Meaning that he had barely left his makeshift camp before Numidian cavalry mount a surprise attack and threaten to overwhelm his rearguard until he sends in Gaulish cavalry, who rout him. But for the entire march his rearguard is subject to lightning attacks.

7 to 19: Operations near Ruspina

Caesar advances to Leptis which he secures but doesn’t let his cavalry ashore. He sends back to Sicily for reinforcements, sends a contingent to find the transport ships which have gone astray, and another detachment of ships to the island of Cercina, which he hears has a large supply of corn.

Next day he returns to Ruspina. He is waiting for the arrival his missing transports. The enemy, led by Meanwhile the enemy, led by Labienus​ and the two Pacidei, arrive and line up for battle. Caesar deploys his men in a single line with archers in front and cavalry on the wings. Quite quickly Caesar’s force is surrounded and forms into a circle. Labienus rides up and down his front line mocking the Caesarians until one veteran centurion of the Tenth Legion confronts him and throws a spear which transfixes his horse. Caesar turns his legions round and tries to make for the camp but fresh enemy reinforcements arrive. He orders his men to make one last attack and throws his last cohorts into the field, driving the enemy back off the plain, then withdrawing in good order to his own fort

The Penguin edition notes that the historians Dio Cassius and Appian both say this battle was a big defeat, with the Caesarians taking heavy losses and being forced onto a hilltop where they would have been cut to pieces had both Marcus Petreius and Labienus not both been injured.

The account gives Labienus’s reasons for feeling confident, including the rumour that three legions had mutinied back in Rome, listing the mixed forces at his command, then recapping the facts about this battle, namely it was fought on 6 January 46, on the sixth day after Caesar disembarked, on a wide flat plain, from 11 in the morning till sunset.

19 to 36: Waiting at Ruspina

Caesar hears that Scipio is approaching with the main forces (8 legions and 3,000 cavalry (and so builds up the defences at Ruspina, bringing more men from the ships (Gallic and Rhodian rowers and marines, archers of all nations). He sets up smithies to manufacture arrows, javelins and sling shot.

Corn is an issue. The enemy have gathered all there is to collect into strongholds and then laid waste and ravaged the land around.

There’s a kind of interlude or digression in which we are shown Cato (who, it will be remembered, had always been against Caesar and bore some of the responsibility for the civil war by constantly blocking Caesar’s conciliatory offers). Anyway Cato is now in charge of the city of Utica and the text gives us a lengthy speech in which he reminds Pompey’s son, Gnaeus, of his father’s immense military achievements, and encourages him to emulate them. Thus inspired Gnaeus sets off from Utica with 30 ships and a force of 2,000 slaves and freemen to invade the kingdom of Mauretania (to the west of Africa i.e. the coast of modern day Algeria. He is approaching the town of Ascurum when the inhabitants sally forth in force and crush his forces, causing them to flee in panic to their ships, and once embarked they sail all the way to the Balearic Islands.

Meanwhile Scipio leaves Utica and marches via Hadrumetum to join Labienus. The text dwells on Caesar’s shortage of corn and fodder for the horses. Seasoned veterans take to feeding the horses seaweed cleaned in fresh water.

Meanwhile King Juba decides to join the Pompeians and gathers infantry and cavalry to march east and join Scipio. But this leaves his own kingdom undefended, and Bochus, king of West Mauretania, joins with the Roman bankrupt and mercenary Publius Sittius, to attack Juba’s kingdom in the west. They attack Cirta, the richest town in the kingdom. When it refuses to yield, they take it by storm and slaughter the entire population and set about ravaging the land. When Juba hears this he understandably decides he has to defend his own country, and so withdraws his forces from Scipio’s army and returns west, though he leaves 30 elephants.

Some nobles (does this mean Romans of the equites class) come to Caesar, telling him Scipio’s forces are devastating the land and begging him to save them.

Farms were being burned to the ground, fields stripped, herds plundered or butchered, towns and strongholds destroyed and abandoned, and the principal citizens either murdered or held in chains, and their children haled off to slavery on the pretext of being hostages.

Caesar had been planning to winter his troops (it is January) but decides to commence his campaign and sends for reinforcements from Sicily. While Caesar continues fortifying his camp and building causeways to the sea to allow safe disembarkation, a passage is devoted to Scipio’s attempts to train his elephants, difficult beasts.

A digression for the sad story of the Titius brothers who are aboard one of the many troop and transport ships which get scattered en route to Africa, are captured by Pompeian forces, taken before Scipio who has them executed. Why is this tragic little story included?

Cavalry squadrons from both sides skirmish and sometimes talk. Labienus tries to take the town of Leptis which is held by a Caesarian commander. At one point his horse is hit by a javelin from a scorpion and they retreat.

Scipio brings his forces out to face Caesar’s camp every day, with no response, each day becoming more mocking and scornful, till one day he deploys his entire force. Detailed description of how Caesar orders the foragers back inside the camp and deploys a minimum of cavalry but doesn’t offer battle. There’s a page describing Caesar’s motivations and the reason for his confidence which includes the solidity of the camp’s defences and the power of his own reputation. What’s striking about it, though, is its weakness. These are not very effective reasons, and neither is the claim that he didn’t want to win victory over a mere ‘remnants of his enemies’.

This passage lacks the vigour and unstoppable logic of the same kind of thing found in the Gallic Wars i.e. it doesn’t feel at all by Caesar, but very much like an apologist cooking up reasons to defend his actions.

Anyway, Scipio hangs round then withdraws his army into his camp and gives a pep talk. Meanwhile, allegedly, Caesar’s numbers are augmented by a steady stream of Gaelutian deserters. The text claims this is because many of them were done kindness by Marius, to whom they have heard Caesar is kin.

[Caesar’s aunt, Julia, was married to Marius. The editor of the Penguin edition, Jane F. Gardner, speculates that these Gaelutians, or this forebears, had served Marius in the war against Jugurtha, and so had entered into a patron-client relationship with him, which they thought still bound them to his kin, Caesar.]

When they’re Africans, he gives them letters to their kin and sends them back to their territories to recruit.

A little fuss about Acylla. A deputation come from the town and offer Caesar their allegiance and their store of corn so Caesar gratefully sends Gaius Messius to take it, and he arrives just before Considius Longus the Pompeian commander of Hadrumetum.

So this long sequence amounts to Caesar establishing his beachhead and resisting the temptation to battle till he is ready. He sends Gaius Sallustius Crispus to the island of Cercina which he takes without a fight and loads its store of corn aboard ship to be sent to Caesar. And the proconsul Alienus embarks two legions, 800 Gallic cavalry and 1,000 archers and slingers from Sicily and they arrive soon after with Caesar. Two reasons to be cheerful.

Puzzled why Caesar isn’t giving battle or moving about the country, Scipio sends two Gaetulians to pretend to be deserters, find out Caesar’s intentions and report back. In fact once in the presence of Caesar they confess their mission and say they and their countrymen want to desert, and also remember the kindness done them by Caesar’s kinsman Marius. Caesar welcomes them and they are joined by a steady trickle of deserters from Scipio’s legions.

Slow developments: Cato is recruiting more and more forces in Utica; a deputation arrives from Thysdra saying ships with a huge amount of wheat have arrived from Italy; in the west Publius Sittius invades King Juba’s territory and takes a town.

37 to 48: Operations near Uzitta

Instructing the ships to return to Sicily to collect the rest of his army, in the middle of the night of 25 January Caesar strikes camp and moves his army quietly along the coast to an area where a large plain is bounded by a semi-circular ridge.

[I tell you what would be fabulously use in this, the Civil War and the Gallic War – photographs. If the editor/translator had been paid to go out to the locations of these towns or battles and taken photos of the sites. The cumulative effect of all these descriptions is to make you realise how very poor words are at conveying landscape.]

Caesar advances along the ridge taking abandoned forts. The last one is held by Numidians. There is a fight between the cavalry forces. Caesar sent cavalry down into the plain where they massacred some more cavalry, putting Scipio’s forces to flight. A passage reflecting on the bodies of the Gaulish and German dead cavalry and why they had followed Labienus from Gaul.

[One of the subsidiary dramas of the civil war is the way that Labienus went from being Caesar’s right-hand man and most dependable lieutenant in Gaul, to defecting to Pompey at the outbreak of war, and now, commanding the forces directly opposing Caesar in Africa. What were the thoughts of both men about this turn of events?]

Next day Caesar advances his complete army down the ridge, into the foothills and slowly out onto the plain. Scipio advances his army but uses the town of Uzitta as a bulwark for his centre and stops in that position. Caesar realises he can’t fight both an army and storm a town at the same time. After facing each other all day in the African heat, the armies both withdraw and Caesar orders his men to extend their fortifications. Much time spent building camps and fortifications.

The narrative has a habit of cutting away to other developments going on at the same time, and as a result the author deploys the word interim a lot, which Gardner translates as ‘meanwhile’. So:

Meanwhile the Pompeian Considius is still besieging the town of Acylla, held by Gaius Messius. When he hears of Scipio’s cavalry’s defeat (the dead Germans and Gauls) he abandons the siege, burned his corn, spoiled his oil, marched through Juba’s territory to give Scipio some of his forces, then retreated with the rest to hold Hadrumetum.

Caesar is still suffering the problem that troop ships are being blown off course. Several are captured by Pompeian ships. Once contained veteran troops who are brought before Scipio. He very decently offers to spare their lives if they will join him. A centurion of the 14th Legion refuses, says he’s loyal to Caesar, tells Scipio to lay down his arms, and offers to take on Scipio’s strongest cohort with just ten colleagues.

Infuriated, Scipio has the centurion executed on the spot and all the other veterans taken outside the town walls and there tortured to death. Caesar is upset and angry because he had posted lookouts along the coast to spot his ships and they had failed. He has them all dismissed.

Unseasonal weather: rainstorms which flood Caesar’s camp, the men already hard pressed for provisions.

Meanwhile King Juba received a request from Scipio to join him and, leaving a force under Saburra to combat Sittius, marched to join Scipio with 3 legions, 800 cavalry, Numidian riders without bridles, light infantry and 30 elephants. Now there had been much rumour, paranoia and fear among the soldiers about the threat of Juba’s vast forces, but when they lined up with Scipio’s the next morning, the Caesareans were not impressed, all their fears dispelled, and morale restored.

49 to 66: Caesar takes the offensive

Now Scipio has the maximum force available to him battle can’t be far off. Caesar pushes to secure all the forts lining the ridge surrounding the plain, but Labienus beats him to the last in the series. It is reached by going down into a rocky ravine and up the other side and Labienus set an ambush with cavalry hiding behind the heights. But some of Labienus’s men bolted, giving away the plan, so the entire force ends up turning tail and Caesar’s force kills them and occupies the last fort.

Caesar decides to build ‘two containing walls’ across the plain from his main camp to the town of Uzitta. The aim was to protect his flanks as he advanced towards the town and make it easier for the enemy to defect and desert. As usual I found it difficult to envision the position of these walls, and impossible to understand their purpose, and difficult to understand how long walls can be constructed while part of his force stood in front of them skirmishing with barbarian cavalry and light infantry.

That evening, as Caesar is withdrawing his forces to the main camp, the massed forces of Juba, Scipio and Labienus attack and drive Caesar’s cavalry back, but Caesar quickly reverses the direction of march, turns his legions around and they stop and then rout the Pompeians, fighting them back to their camp with much loss of life. Only nightfall prevented Scipio and Labienus falling into his hands, and in the aftermath lots of Pompeian troops defect to Caesar.

Ships carrying the Tenth and Eighth legions arrive. Recalling the disorder and mutiny of some legions in Campania and Sicily, Caesar now assembles the entire army and makes a page-long speech singling out some five officers who have incited mutiny or, in the case of Gaius Avienus, brought over a ship filled entirely with household slaves rather than soldiers – dishonourably discharges them from the army and sends them back to Italy accompanied by just one slave.

Meanwhile the messages Caesar had sent via friendly Gaetulians have borne fruit and the entire people rises up against Juba, who is obliged to withdraw some of his forces from Scipio in order to put down the rebellion.

Caesar’s ‘lines of fortification’ are now complete and he brings up troops and siege engines to attack the defenders of Uzitta. More Gaetulians, specifically about 1,000 cavalry, defect to him.

A digression on Juba’s arrogant behaviour in ordering a Roman officer not to fraternise but worse, ordering Scipio not to wear a red cloak like himself. To think of freeborn Romans taking orders from a barbarian!

Next day Scipio comes out with all his forces yet again. Caesar lines his men up in front of his fortifications and they stand staring at each other. The town is incorporated into Scipio’s line so Caesar is reluctant to attack because, once he’s passed the town, he knows the legions inside it will come out and attack his rear. Impasse.

The text gives a detailed breakdown of the deployment of both forces but, as there is no battle, who really cares. Instead, as Caesar is packing up and withdrawing his army, some of Scipio’s Numidian cavalry attack. Caesar’s Gaetulians respond, counter attack but go too far, across some marshy ground on the battlefield and are quickly surrounded. His cavalry are mauled before making it back to camp as night falls.

Next day dawns and both generals have their soldiers continuing to develop their fortifications.

Caesarian ships arrive and anchor off Leptis. Pompeian Varus attacks them, setting fire to the transports and capturing dome five-bank warships. As soon as he heard this Caesar rode the 6 miles to the harbour, ordering all his ships to meet him there. Alarmed, Varus turned his fleet back towards Hadrumetum; Caesar pursued and captured a quinquereme and trireme. Varus’s fleet makes it into the harbour at Hadrumetum and Caesar can’t follow because of an adverse wind but sets fire to all the transports anchored outside.

In the captured ship are some Roman nobles. Caesar executes on man he had pardoned in Spain, only to have him go join Pompey in Pharsalus, and then come here to serve Varus. Another noble he spared because he honestly claimed to have been taken prisoner and had no time to escape.

Caesar discovered secret underground stores of corn and sent men to fetch them. Learning of this Labienus set an ambush for next time they did it, deploying cavalry and light infantry. Learning of this Caesar lulled him into a false sense of security, then deployed three legions and all his cavalry behind the foraging party. When Labienus attacked the latter, the Caesarian cavalry attacked, when the main body of Labienus’s cavalry came to their help Caesar revealed his three legions and Labienus withdrew.

Next day King Juba had all the Numidians who had fled their posts during the failed ambush crucified.

67 to 78: The Pompeians lose the initiative

Lack of corn prompts Caesar to abandon his camp, burning it, assigning garrisons to the three friendly towns of Leptis, Ruspina and Acylla, setting his ships to blockage Hadrumetum and Thapsus. He marches with the remainder to Aggar, where he establishes a new camp, and goes successfully foraging for food. By ‘foraging’ I take it the text means stealing food from all the inhabitants of the region.

Scipio follows. Caesar captures Zeta, leaves a garrison and is minded to attack Scipio’s forces which are themselves foraging when more legions appear. As he marches back towards Aggar past Scipio’s camp, the latter attacks. Fierce fighting, the Numidian cavalry attacking if he retreats but pulling back if he stands. It takes all night to slowly retreat back to his camp while fighting off the skirmishing Numidians.

The Africans’ tactics of constant skirmishing but retreat as soon as the infantry offer engagement, requires a completely new set of tactics, and so Caesar personally sets about retraining his troops.

How many feet they were to retreat from the enemy; the manner in which they must wheel round upon their adversary; the restricted space in which they must offer him resistance — now doubling forward, now retiring and making feint attacks; and almost the spot from which, and the manner in which they must discharge their missiles — these were the lessons he taught them.

Caesar imports elephants from Italy for his troops and horses to get used to, for the troops to learn the weak spots of and practice throwing untipped javelins at. And has to accustom the legions to this new, sneaky, guileful, tricky opponent.

A deputation from the town of Vaga arrives to ask for Caesar’s protection. Soon after which a refugee arrives to declare that Juba had hastened to the town to stop it being occupied, stormed it, slaughtered the entire population, and abandoned it for his troops to plunder.

On 21 March Caesar holds the traditional purification ceremony of the army. Apparently, this had something to do with marking the start of the campaigning season although, as we’ve seen, Caesar campaigned throughout the winter. Next day he marches to Scipio’s camp and presents his army in battle array, but Scipio doesn’t rise to the bait.

Next day he marches to Sarsura. Labienus attacks the rearguard, capturing many camp followers then attacking the troops themselves, but Caesar had anticipated this and stationed men without baggage in the rear who promptly turned, raised standards, and scared Labienus off.

At Sursura Caesar slaughtered the entire Pompeian garrison. Caesar distributed corn to the army then marched on to Thysdra but finds no water and so retires to Aggar.

The town of Thabena revolts against Juban rule, massacres its garrison and asks for Caesar’s protection, so he sends a detachment to take it. At the same time more troop transports arrive from Italy, some 4,000 infantry, 1,000 slingers, 400 cavalry, so Caesar assembles his force and marches to a plain two miles from Scipio’s camp.

It’s near a town named Tegea. Scipio brings his men out of his camp, deploying them. Time passes. Eventually a cavalry skirmish develops in which both sides send in reinforcements, but Caesar has the best of it, his cavalry pursuing the enemy three miles up into the hills and killing many before returning.

But Caesar can’t get the enemy to fight. He realises two things: that they lack confidence in their own abilities and so are relying on Caesar’s shortage of water to wear him down. And so on 4 April, by night, he left the camp by Aggar and marched 16 miles to Thapsus, which Vergilius was holding with a large garrison.

Scipio follows him and now, according to the narrative, is forced to give battle. Why? ‘To avoid the utter humiliation of losing Vergilius and those most staunch supporters of his cause — the men of Thapsus’.

79 to 86: The battle of Thapsus

Caesar advances to Thapsus and begins to invest the town. Scipio follows and finally encamps 8 miles south. Thapsus is on a promontory with a big salt lake to its south, creating a narrow land corridor. Because Caesar had blocked this Scipio went up and round the western side of the lake.

Map of the battle of Thapsus, 6 April 46 BC

Scipio’s men give signs of agitation behind their fortifications and this incites Caesar’s forces. It’s an oddity of this battle that Caesar does everything in his power and even gets his centurions to try and restrain the men, but then a bugler gives the signal to advance and the cohorts run forward charging, and Caesar gives in to fortune and destiny.

Sling shots terrify the elephants. The Moorish cavalry panics and flees. (Digression to describe the action of one brave legionary who attacks a furious elephant to stop it trampling to death a camp follower.) The garrison of Thapsus emerge from their fortifications and wade through the water to join their comrades but are beaten back by slings and arrows.

The retreating Pompeians arrive at Scipio’s base camp but discover there is no one there to rally them. They run to Juba’s camp to discover it is in enemy hands. The Scipionians drop their arms and beg for mercy but Caesar’s men’s blood is up and they massacre them to a man, despite Caesar’s orders to stop, and even wound eminent nobles and knights on Caesar’s own side.

In the way of these kinds of texts, the casualties are given and seem a) suspiciously round figures and b) ludicrously one sided. Thus, 5,000 of the enemy are killed to Caesar’s 50 dead and a few wounded. He captures 64 elephants. What I want to know is what happened to Scipio, Labienus and Juba who all disappear from the narrative.

(Plutarch, in his life of Caesar, 53, says: ‘Thus in a brief portion of one day he made himself master of three camps [Scipio’s, Juba’s and Afranius’s) and slew fifty thousand of the enemy, without losing as many as fifty of his own men’.)

Next day Caesar lines his whole army up in front of Thapsus and calls on Vergilius to surrender but there is no reply. Next day he gives rewards and praise to the bravest fighters, then leaves a commander to besiege Thapsus and one to besiege Thysdra, while he proceeds to Utica.

87 to 98: Final stages of the campaign

Scipio’s retreating forces arrive at the town of Parada. The people have heard of Caesar’s victory and so refuse the Pompeians entry but the Pompeians storm it, pile up logs in the forum, burn the town’s precious belongings, then tie up townspeople and throw them into the flames.

Cato the Younger was governor of Utica. He didn’t trust either the senate of 300 or so eminent Romans or the townspeople. The latter he forced into a trench in front of the town, the latter he kept under guard. When Scipio’s cavalry arrived they attacked the townspeople in the trench but were beaten off. So instead the cavalry break into the town and plunder and loot it. Cato could only stop them by promising 100 sesterces each, joined by a Roman noble Faustus Sulla, who gave them money, then they rode off west to join King Juba.

Cato assembles the Three Hundred (presumably meaning the town’s senate or leading figures) and persuades them to free their slaves in order to join the defence of the town. Only some comply. Many want to flee, so Cato sets about carefully and methodically putting ships at the disposal of the fleeers. He assigns his children to the care of his questor, then withdraws to his bedroom, where he runs himself through with a sword. When his slaves and friends run in and try to patch him up, Cato pulls at the wound and his guts with his own hands, killing himself. Yuk.

These last acts of his management of the town and suicide are described in detail in Plutarch’s life of Cato. The townspeople opposed him but came to respect his rectitude.

His deputy, Lucius Caesar, opens the town gates and welcomes Caesar’s forces. Caesar marches through the territory picking off towns which now throw themselves open to him, including Usseta and Hadrumetum, finally arriving at Utica as it got dark. Along the way he met and pardoned a suite of Roman nobles who had been holding the town against him.

Next morning Caesar assembled the 300 and upbraided them for opposing him. They were trembling all expecting to die but Caesar forgives them, albeit on the harsh condition that all shall love all their properties, confiscated by the state. If any buy them back, they shall hold their property secure and the fee amount to their fine. He imposed a group fine on the 300 of 200 million sesterces.

King Juba flies west, hiding in farmhouses during the day, till he arrives at the town of Zama. Now he had built a huge pyre here and threatened the people with burning them on it with the result that, no surprisingly, they refuse to let him in. Neither will they hand over his treasure or wife and children so Juba ends up taking refuge with Marcus Petreius in a country villa.

The people of Zama send an envoy to Caesar begging his protection so he sets off. Some of the king’s cavalry officers approach him asking for forgiveness and he forgives them all. This is excellent policy because, as word spreads of his clemency, more and more towns surrender to him and senior officers come over.

Considius, who had been holding Thysdra for the Pompeians, hearing of their defeat at Thapsus, takes treasure and slips out of the town with a small entourage of barbarians. But somewhere along the trail the Gauls cut him down, stole the gold and absconded.

At which point, realising it is all over, Vergilius asks safe conduct for him and his family, then surrenders Thapsus.

King Juba, with no army to command and abandoned by his people, resolves on suicide. There are a number of versions: some say he and Petreius agreed to duel, he easily killed Petreius then stabbed himself; or Petreius killed him then stabbed himself; or they killed each other at the same time; or they both committed suicide.

Meanwhile, in the west, Sittius routed the army of Juba’s general, Saburra, killing the general. Then he heard of the 1,000 cavalry under Faustus Sulla and Afranius, fresh from sacking Utica and being paid off and planning to take ship to Spain, last holdout of the Pompeians. Sittius ambushes them, killing a great number but taking alive Faustus and Afranius. A few days later, in some obscure affray, they were killed. Caesar pardoned their children and let them keep their property.

Scipio, Damasippus, Torquatus and Plaetorius Rustianus were making for Spain aboard warships. After a stormy passage they were carried towards Royal Hippo, where Sittius had his fleet at that time. Outnumbered as they were by the latter, Scipio’s vessels were surrounded and sunk and Scipio and the others all perished. [Other accounts say that, after losing the naval engagement Scipio also committed suicide by stabbing himself with his sword.]

Having entered Juba’s royal town of Zama, Caesar holds an auction of King Juba’s belongings and gives the citizens of Zama rewards for resisting their king. He declared the kingdom a Roman province, appointing Gaius Sallustius proconsul, awarding western Numidia to King Bochus. Sittius founds a colony there. (This Sallustius is the same man who in the late 40s retired from public life and wrote monographs in the Jugurthan War and the Cataline Conspiracy.)

At Utica Caesar sold the property of commanders under Juba and Petreius, imposed fines on the towns which held out against them but took steps to make sure they weren’t plundered. On Leptis he imposes a fine of 3 million pounds of oil a year.

On 13 June Caesar set sail from Utica, arriving at Caralis on Sardinia. Here he punishes the people of Sulci for rebelling against him, then set sail along the coast of Italy and arrived safely back in Rome.

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by Simon on June 17, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Africa, Ancient history, War
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Posted by Simon on June 17, 2022

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2022/06/17/the-african-war/

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