The East, unlike Rome, was familiar with kings. The stern subtleties of republicanism meant little to people who could conceive of no form of government save monarchy, and might on occasion even worship their sovereigns as divine. To the Romans, naturally, this superstition appeared contemptible. All the same, their magistrates had long been awarded their own elevated places in the pantheons of their subjects: their praises had been wafted to the heavens upon dense clouds of incense, their images placed in the temples of strange gods. For the citizen of a republic in which jealousy and suspicion accompanied every parade of greatness, these were heady pleasures – but also perilous ones. Rivals back in Rome were quick to denounce any hint of regal delusion. ‘Remember you are a man’* – this was the warning whispered by a slave into Pompey’s ear at the moment of his most godlike felicity, when the conqueror of the East had ridden in his triumph for the third time through Rome. His enemies, however, had been unwilling to leave a message so vital to the future health of the Republic merely to a slave. Such had been their envy of Pompey that they had deployed all their machinations against him, and thereby driven him into the arms of Caesar. Now those same enemies were his allies in exile. Huddled in Thessalonica, the Senate had to try to swallow its resentment of Pompey’s godlike reputation. After all, they needed it to get them back home.
Fortunately for his cause, the credit of the new Alexander still held good. Even as he stripped the Eastern provinces bare of legions, Pompey sent out imperious summonses to the various potentates he had settled or confirmed on their thrones. The enthusiasm with which these client kings rallied to him suggested that it was Pompey, rather than the Republic, who had been keeping the gorgeous East in fee. Joining the legions of citizen soldiers in Greece were any number of bizarre-looking auxiliaries, led by princes with glamorous and exotically un-Roman names: Deiotarus of Galatia, Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Commagene. No wonder that Pompey, to whose training camp near Thessalonica these panjandrums flocked, began to appear in the light less of a Roman proconsul than of an Eastern king of kings.
Or so Domitius sneered. It was a typically abusive insult from a man whose defeat at Corfinium had done nothing to improve his temper. Yet it struck a chord. A whiff of the Oriental had long attached itself to the great man. Behind his back Cicero had once called him ‘Sampsiceramus’, a barbarously syllabled name suitable to a Persian despot. But this had been satire, and affectionately meant. Now, fretting miserably still in Campania, Cicero no longer saw the joke. It seemed to him that the champion of the Republic was growing altogether too Mithridatic for comfort. He confessed to Atticus that Pompey had revealed to him his strategy for bringing Caesar to his knees, and that it was a terrible one. The provinces were to be occupied; the grain supplies cut off; Italy left to starve. Then carnage. ‘From the very first, Pompey’s plan has been to plunder the whole world, and the seas too, to whip up barbarian kings into a frenzy, to land armed savages on our Italian shores, and to mobilise vast armies.’4 Here, from the pen of the Republic’s most eloquent spokesman, was an echo of prophecies at least a century old. Cicero’s imaginings had caught an apocalyptic fever long endemic among Rome’s subject peoples. Had not the Sibyl foretold that Italy would be raped by her own sons? And Mithridates himself that a great monarch armed with the dominion of the world would emerge triumphant from the East? No wonder, then, when men back in Italy heard news of Pompey’s preparations that they shuddered, despairing of the Republic.
Yet fear of one warlord did little to bolster the image of the other. True, Caesar had a genius for propaganda: he had succeeded brilliantly in quashing fears that he might be planning a bloodbath, and he was assiduous in identifying his own rights with those of a traduced and outraged people. Even so, his mastery of spin could not obscure the fact that he was guilty of the highest treason. In late March, when Caesar finally entered Rome, he found the city sullen and unwelcoming. No matter how many doles of grain he promised the Roman people, they refused to be charmed. The rump of the Senate left in the capital was even less accommodating. When Caesar formally summoned them to hear his self-justifications, hardly anyone showed up.
From those few who had appeared Caesar demanded the right to seize Rome’s emergency funds. After all, he pointed out, there was no longer any need to fear a Gallic invasion, and who could be more deserving of the treasure than himself, the conqueror of Gaul? The senators, cowed and nervous, appeared ready to give in. Then a tribune, Caecilius Metellus, had the nerve to impose his veto. Caesar’s patience gave out. No defence of the rights of the people now. Instead, troops entered the Forum, the temple of Saturn was broken open, the public treasure was seized. When the stubborn Metellus persisted in trying to block this sacrilege Caesar lost his temper again. He warned the tribune to stand aside or be cut down. For nine years Caesar had been accustomed to having his every order obeyed, and he did not have the time or the temperament to moderate this habit of command now. Metellus stood aside. Caesar took the gold.
It was with relief that he returned, after two frustrating weeks in Rome, to his army. As usual he was in a hurry to press on. There were Pompeian legions active in Spain, a fresh campaign to be won. Behind him, in charge of the fractious capital, he left an amenable praetor, Marcus Lepidus. The Senate was completely bypassed. The fact that Lepidus himself was of the very bluest blood, as well as being an elected magistrate, did little to disguise the unconstitutional nature of this appointment. Naturally, there was outrage. Caesar ignored it. The appearance of legality mattered to him, but not so much as the reality of power.
For those who were not Caesar, however, for those who relied upon the law as the bulwark of their liberty and the guarantor of their traditions, all was now confusion. What was an honourable citizen to do? No one could be sure. Old route maps were proving to be treacherous guides. Civil war made of the Republic a disorienting labyrinth, one in which familiar highways might turn suddenly into culs-de-sac, and cherished landmarks into piles of rubble. Cicero, for instance, having finally screwed up the courage to scuttle for Pompey’s camp, still found himself lost. Cato, taking him to one side, told him that his coming had been a terrible mistake and that he would have been ‘more useful to his country and friends staying at home, and remaining neutral’.5 Even Pompey, when he found out that Cicero’s only contributions to the war effort were defeatist witticisms, publicly wished that he would go over to the enemy. Instead, Cicero sat in lugubrious impotence and moped.
But such despair was the privilege of a wealthy intellectual. Few citizens could afford to indulge it. Most sought other ways of making order out of the chaos of the times. There was nothing more upsetting to a Roman than to feel deprived of fellowship, of a sense of community, and rather than endure it he would go to any extreme. But in a civil war to what could a citizen pledge his loyalty? Not his city, nor the altars of his ancestors, nor the Republic itself, for these were claimed as the inheritance of both sides. But he could attach himself to the fortunes of a general, and be certain of finding comradeship in the ranks of that general’s army, and identity in the reflected glory of the general’s name. This was why the legions of Gaul had been willing to cross the Rubicon. What, after nine years’ campaigning, were the traditions of the distant Forum to them, compared to the camaraderie of the army camp? And what was the Republic, compared to their general? There was no one capable of inspiring a more passionate devotion in his troops than Caesar. Amid all the confusion of war it had become perhaps the surest measure of his greatness. Arriving in Spain to take on three veteran Pompeian armies in the summer of 49 BC, he was able to push his soldiers to the extremes of exhaustion and suffering, so that, within months, the enemy had been utterly vanquished. No wonder, when backed by such steel, that Caesar dared to scorn the limits placed on other citizens, and even sometimes those on flesh and blood. ‘Your spirit’, Cicero would later tell him, ‘has neverbeen content within the narrow confines which nature has imposed upon us.’6 But nor were the spirits of the men who followed his star: his legions, he boasted, ‘could tear down the heavens themselves’.7
Here, in the mingling of the souls of Caesar and his army, was the glimpse of a new order. Ties of mutual loyalty had always provided Roman society with its fabric. So they continued to do in time of civil war, but increasingly purged of old complexities and subtleties. Simpler to follow the blast of a trumpet than the swirl of contradictory obligations that had always characterised civilian life. Yet these same obligations, comprised as they were of centuries of taboos and traditions, were not lightly to be set aside. Without them the Republic, at least as it had been constituted for centuries, would die. The checks and balances that had always served to temper the Romans’ native love of glory, and divert it into courses beneficial to their city, might soon fall away. An ancient inheritance of customs and laws might be forever lost. Already, in the first months of the civil war, the ruinous consequences of such a catastrophe could be glimpsed. Political life still subsisted, but as a grisly parody of itself. The arts of persuasion were increasingly being abandoned as resorts to violence and intimidation took their place. The ambitions of magistrates, no longer dependent upon votes, could now be paid for with their fellow citizens’ blood.
No wonder that many of Caesar’s partisans, freed of the restraints and inhibitions of tiresome convention, should have grown intoxicated by a world in which it appeared that there were no limits to what they might achieve. But some reached out too far, too fast – and paid the price. Curio, as dashing and impetuous as ever, led two legions to disaster in Africa; disdaining to flee, he died alongside his men, who perished packed so tightly around him that their corpses were left standing like sheaves of corn in a field. Caelius, still fatally addicted to intrigue, returned to his political roots and attempted to force through Catiline’s old programme of cancelling debts. When he was expelled from Rome he raised a pro-Pompeian revolt in the countryside, only to be captured and killed; a squalid end. Antony, alone of the three friends who had fled to Caesar, managed not to stumble. This reflected not any great sure-footedness but rather a preoccupation with other concerns. Even though Caesar had left him in command of Italy, Antony devoted most of his energies to billeting a harem of actresses on senators, vomiting in the popular assembly, or – a favourite party trick – dressing up as the wine god Dionysus and driving a chariot hitched to lions. Yet in the field there was no more natural soldier, and Caesar could forgive steel and élan any amount of vulgarity. Hence Antony’s rapid promotion. He was an officer worthy of the men he commanded. When Caesar finally took the fight to Pompey in early 48 BC, crossing the Adriatic in the dead of winter, Antony dodged storms and the Pompeian fleet to bring him four extra legions as reinforcements. As the two rival armies sparred nervously with each other, jabbing here, feinting there, he was always in the thick of the action, dashing, tireless, the most glamorous and discussed man on either side.
But something of the monstrous and sinister energy of their general appeared to have imbued all of Caesar’s soldiers. It was as though, like the spirits of the dead, they could subsist on the lifeblood of their foes. Caesar’s old adversary Marcus Bibulus, in command of Pompey’s Adriatic fleet, had ‘slept out on board ship, even in the bitterness of winter, pushing himself to the limits, refusing to delegate, anything to get to grips with his enemy’,8 but still Caesar had succeeded in running his blockade, and had left the shattered Bibulus to expire of a fever. When Pompey, in the war of attrition that followed, aimed to starve his opponents into submission, Caesar’s legions dug up roots and baked them into loaves. These they flung over the enemy barricades as symbols of defiance.No wonder that Pompey’s men found themselves ‘terrified of the ferocity and toughness of their enemy, who seemed more like a species of wild animal than men’;9 nor that their general, when he was shown one of the loaves baked by Caesar’s soldiers, ordered the news of it suppressed.
But Pompey himself, in private, was reassured. He knew that no men, not even Caesar’s, could subsist on roots for ever. Backed by Cato, who continued to mourn the death of every citizen, no matter from which side, he waited for Caesar’s army to fall to pieces. His strategy appeared to be paying off when Caesar in July 48 BC, bruised by a stinging reversal in the no man’s land between the two armies, suddenly abandoned his position on the Adriatic coast and marched east. Now was the moment when Pompey, had he truly been the tyrant of Cicero’s forebodings, could have sailed for Italy unopposed – but he preferred to spare his native land the horrors of invasion. Instead, he too abandoned his fortifications on the coast. Leaving only a small garrison behind under the command of Cato, he set off eastwards after Caesar. Dogging his adversary’s every twist and turn, he emerged from the wilds of the Balkans into northern Greece. Here, around the city of Pharsalus, was flat, open land, perfect for a battle. Caesar was desperate to force a decisive engagement, and drew up his legions within sight of Pompey’s camp. Pompey refused to take the bait. He knew that in everything that counted – money, food supplies, support of the natives – time was on his side. For days Caesar continued to offer battle. For days Pompey remained within his camp.
But in his council of war tempers were fraying. The senators in Pompey’s train, impatient for action, wanted Caesar and his army wiped out. What was wrong with their generalissimo? Why would he not fight? The answer was all too readily to hand, bred of decades of suspicion and resentment: ‘They complained that Pompey was addicted to command, and took pleasure in treating former consuls and praetors as though they were slaves.’10 So wrote his not unsympathetic adversary, who could give orders to his subordinates as he pleased and not be jeered at for it. But this was because Caesar, whatever he pretended otherwise, was not fighting as the champion of the Republic. Pompey was. To him, it was a title that meant everything. Now his colleagues, as jealous of overweening greatness as they had always been, demanded that he demonstrate his fitness to lead them by bowing to the wishes of the majority – let him crush Caesar once and for all! Pompey, reluctantly, gave way. The orders went out. Battle was to be joined the following day. Pompey the Great, by staking his own and the Republic’s future upon a single throw, had finally proved himself a good citizen.
But that night, as his fellow senators ordered victory banquets prepared and decked their tents with laurel, and quarrelled over who should inherit Caesar’s high priesthood, Pompey had a dream. He saw himself entering his great theatre on the Campus Martius, climbing the steps that led to the temple of Venus, and there, to the cheers and applause of the Roman people, dedicating the spoils of all his many victories to the goddess. It was enough to make him wake up in a cold sweat. Other men might have been cheered by such a vision, but Pompey remembered that Caesar was descended from Venus, and so he dreaded that all his laurels and greatness were on the point of being lost to him for ever, and becoming his rival’s.
And so it proved. The next morning, despite outnumbering the enemy more than two to one, it was Pompey’s army that was shattered and rolled back. Their opponents had been ordered not to throw their javelins, but to keep them as spears, aiming and stabbing them at the faces of the enemy cavalry, who were noblemen all, and vain of their good looks. Caesar, once the dandy nonpareil himself, had formulated the perfect tactic. Pompey’s cavalry turned and fled. Next, his loosely armed slingers and archers were cut down. Domitius, leading the left wing, was killed as his legions buckled. Caesar’s men, outflanking Pompey’s line of battle, then attacked from the rear. By midday the battle was over. That evening it was Caesar who sat down in Pompey’s tent and ate the victory meal prepared by Pompey’s chef, off Pompey’s silver plate.
But as twilight deepened and stars began to blaze in the burning August night, he rose and returned to the battlefield. All around him were piles of Roman dead, and the cries of the wounded echoed across the plain of Pharsalus. ‘They were the ones who wanted this,’11 said Caesar, in mingled bitterness and grief, surveying the slaughter-ground. But he was wrong. No one had wanted the slaughter. That was the tragedy. Nor was it concluded yet. Caesar’s victory had been shattering, but the agony of the Republic appeared no nearer to a resolution. Rome and the world had fallen into the conqueror’s hands. So it seemed. But what was he to do with them? What could he do? After the cataclysm, how and what was Caesar to rebuild?
To the remnants of Pompey’s army, he displayed his celebrated clemency. Of those who accepted it, no one gave him greater joy than Marcus Brutus. After the battle Caesar had ordered a special search to be made for the son of his old flame, fearing for his safety. Once Brutus had been found unscathed, he was welcomed into the ranks of Caesar’s most intimate advisers. This was an appointment made of personal affection, but also calculation. Brutus was a widely respected man, and Caesar hoped that his recruitment might encourage other, more die-hard opponents to seek a similar reconciliation. He would not be entirely disappointed. Cicero, who had not been at Pharsalus, having stayed behind with Cato on the Adriatic coast, was one of those who decided that the war was as good as over. It almost cost him a lynching – only the intervention of Cato prevented him from being run through by a Pompeian sword. Cato himself, naturally, refused to countenance any thought of surrender. Instead, embarking with his garrison, he set sail for Africa. This alone ensured that the war would continue. As a mark of his indomitability, Cato announced that not only would he continue to grow his hair and beard in mourning, but that he would never again lie down to eat. For a Roman, this was a grim resolution indeed.
And then, of course, there was Pompey. He too remained on the loose. After Pharsalus he had galloped out of the back gates of his camp to the Aegean coast, and from there, avoiding the bounty-hunters who were already buzzing on his trail, commandeered a ship to take him to Mitylene. It was here that he had left Cornelia, in the shadow of its theatre, the model for his own, and a reminder of happier days. Now, wounded by his first taste of defeat, Pompey needed the comfort that only his wife could provide. She did not disappoint. Her father the pornographer may have been a disgrace to his ancestors, but Cornelia, when brought the news of Pharsalus, knew precisely what was expected of her. A swoon, a wiping away of tears, a run through the streets of Mitylene, and Cornelia was in her husband’s arms. Pompey, a seasoned hand at playing the antique hero, was jolted by her performance into giving one of his own: a stern lecture on the importance of never abandoning hope. He may even have believed it. Yes, a battle had been lost – but not the East, and therefore not the war. True, many of the kings who owed Pompey their thrones had been at Pharsalus and either perished or surrendered – but not all. One in particular had been absent, and he was the ruler of the kingdom in the Mediterranean that was the richest in money, provisions and ships. Furthermore, he was only a boy, and his sister, who wanted the throne for herself, was in open rebellion against him, leaving his country easy meat for the master of the East. Or so Pompey hoped. The order was given. His small fleet headed south. Barely a month after Pharsalus, Pompey moored off the flat coast of Egypt.
Emissaries were sent to the King. After a few days spent bobbing at anchor off the sand bars, on 28 September 48 BC Pompey saw a small fishing boat rowing towards his ship across the shallows. He was hailed in Latin, then a second time in Greek, and invited to board the boat. Pompey did so, having first embraced Cornelia and kissed her goodbye. As he was rowed towards the shore he attempted to engage his companions in conversation, but no one would answer him. Unsettled, Pompey looked towards the shore. There he could see the King, Ptolemy XIII, a boy dressed in his diadem and purple robes, waiting. Pompey was comforted. When he felt the keel of the boat run against the sand he rose to his feet. As he did so, suddenly, a Roman renegade drew a sword and ran him through the back. More blades were drawn. The blows rained down. ‘And Pompey, drawing his toga over his face with both hands, endured them all, nor did he say or do anything unworthy, only gave a faint groan.’12 And so perished Pompey the Great.
Cornelia, stranded on the deck of the trireme, saw it all. But there was nothing she or any of the crew could do, not even when they saw the Egyptians decapitate the man who had so recently been the greatest in the Roman Republic, and leave his naked body as jetsam on the shore. Instead, his followers had to turn and escape to open sea, leaving only one of Pompey’s freedmen, who had accompanied his former master in the fishing boat, to prepare a pyre. In this labour, according to Plutarch’s weird and haunting account, he happened to be joined by an old soldier, a veteran of Pompey’s first campaigns; and together the two men completed their pious task. Once the body had been burned a stone cairn was raised to mark the site, but the dunes soon engulfed it, and the memory of it was lost. Nothing beside remained. Boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretched far away.