26
ALTHOUGH it was the depth of winter Caesar determined to cross the Adriatic as soon as possible. Undoubtedly he knew that Pompey was still in eastern Greece, and Pompey will equally have heard of Caesar’s arrival at Brundisium from his agents in the port. But Pompey was unlikely to believe that his enemy would dream of crossing the stormy Adriatic—harassed by the dreaded northerly (the modern Bora) and guarded also by his fleet under Caesar’s long-term enemy and one-time fellow consul, Bibulus.
However Caesar was disappointed to find that there were not enough ships available to transport all the men he needed, and dismayed to find the low morale and poor health of the troops. The epic marches down the length of Italy, short rations, and ill health had reduced his army by many thousands (there had been desertions as well). They were also daunted by the thought of a dangerous sea-crossing, followed by further campaigning—once more against their fellow Romans, so with little chance of profit. Arms and equipment were short and the commissariat was a far call from that which had operated in Gaul. Caesar’s instinct (almost invariably right in such matters) was to act, to move at once before poor morale should weaken into indiscipline and shortage of food turn into actual privation. The answer, it seemed to him, was to sail as soon as possible, seize the ports and towns in Epirus, the eastern coast of Greece, and rearm and revictual at Pompey’s expense before the latter could move back across Greece to check him. A week in Brundisium was enough to tell him that Pompey’s fleet was not keeping a tight blockade of the coast, being confident that no invading army would try to cross at that time of the year. But although the weather was often bad, Caesar knew that even in December/January calms intervened long enough to make the seventy-mile crossing feasible. He had hoped for more ships and more men, but all that he could muster was some 15,000 legionaries and 600 cavalry. As he was fond of saying, “Luck is the greatest power in all things and especially in war,” adding, “Luck can be given a helping hand.” It was here that in character he scored over Pompey, for the latter, a master planner and organizer, was accustomed to the deliberate, almost “set-piece” battles of the East and not to the rough-and-tumble impromptus with which Caesar had grown familiar in Gaul. An enforced delay due to bad weather held up the first invasion fleet and, while the troops were waiting aboard in harbor, two more depleted legions arrived, so that it was with about 20,000 men that he finally set sail early in January 48.
Landing unopposed on the coast of Epirus, and undetected by any ships of Pompey’s fleet, he moved rapidly toward Apollonia, a number of almost undefended small towns automatically coming over to what was, for the moment at least, the strongest side. Bibulus, waiting with the bulk of the Pompeian fleet at Corfu to guard the coast of Greece, flew into a rage when he learned of the landing and put to sea at once, determined to catch the invaders on the beachhead. He failed in this, but managed to fall in with the empty ships as they headed back to Italy to collect further troops. For the first time in his life he had some small revenge on Caesar—capturing thirty of the ships and killing all their crews. Ashamed at having failed in his main duty of preventing the invasion, he determined to see that no more ships got through and that the coast was tightly blockaded. In this he was successful, isolating Caesar from Mark Antony and his other lieutenants in Italy, preventing the, much-needed reinforcements from arriving, and sowing some doubt in Caesar’s mind as to whether he had been abandoned by his supporters in the homeland. It was three months before Antony was able to join him, bringing a further three legions and 800 cavalry.
Being master of Apollonia and another major town, Oricum, Caesar now turned to the politics of peace. He had been enjoined by both senate and popular assembly, and indeed all the people of Italy, to bring the matter to a conclusion without any further bloodshed. Civil war, they had clearly indicated, was not wanted and peace was desired by all. As bearer of his proposals to Pompey he sent the latter’s former adjutant, Vibullius Rufus, who had been taken prisoner first of all at Corfinium, released and then captured once again in Spain. Caesar’s proposals were that both sides should disarm, their respective generals taking an oath to do so in front of their assembled troops, and that the operation should be concluded within three days. Since neither he nor Pompey had been able to reach an agreement, the whole matter should next be referred to the senate and the popular assembly. In this way the public interest would be served and both leaders must accept their decision.
There can be no doubt that Caesar was accurately expressing the wishes of the people in these simple proposals, which also conformed exactly to his own wishes. Having eliminated Pompey’s power in Spain, having all Italy behind him (including the city of Rome and its magistrates), and himself holding the rank of consul, Caesar was politically in so superior a position that he could hardly be challenged. Pompey, on the other hand, was faced with the fact that his army and his supporters were seriously disturbed by Caesar’s unexpected arrival in Greece, and that if he refused the proposals it would be tantamount to accepting the blame for the continuation of the war. Nevertheless, on receiving the message as he was making for Dyrrachium (Durazzo), he was compelled to turn them down. For the first time since Caesar had crossed the Rubicon, Pompey was now technically and morally in the wrong.
Dyrrachium, the main seaport on the Greek mainland looking toward Corfu, and almost impregnable by reason of the broad marshlands that surrounded it, was the favorite debarkation port for Roman armies and the starting point of the Via Egnatia, the road that ran across Greece to Thessalonica. Caesar well knew that this was Pompey’s main base and commissariat center, and he was eager to reach it before his opponent. The conflict now turned into what amounted to a race to get to Dyrrachium first, both armies traveling by forced marches night and day, the men hardly pausing to eat, stragglers falling behind to die in the harsh wintry weather, and both sides destroying the country through which they passed in order to deny it to the other. “If he or Caesar,” wrote Appian, “saw dust or smoke in the distance each reckoned that this marked the passage of their foe, and urged on their troops even faster.”
It was Pompey who just managed to reach Dyrrachium first, thus fending Caesar away from his main store and supply base and preserving for himself the port from which he hoped ultimately to launch his attack on Italy. Caesar was forced to take up his stance on the north bank of the Apsus near Apollonia, while Pompey advanced against him as far as the river; and thus the two sides lay for several weeks facing each other without any major move being made. Caesar for his part was still waiting for his reinforcements from Italy, and Pompey was training his recruits up to a condition where he hoped they would match Caesar’s battle-hardened veterans. By March Caesar was deeply worried by the lack of word from Italy, let alone the long-expected reinforcements, and began to wonder if he had been betrayed. He decided, as so often, that no one but himself could deal with an unknown and somewhat intangible situation. He remembered his earlier crossing of the Adriatic in a small boat and decided to repeat it. Plutarch tells the story:
At last he resolved upon a most hazardous experiment, and embarked, without anyone’s knowledge, in a boat of twelve oars to cross over to Brundisium, though the sea was at that time covered with a vast fleet of the enemies. He got on board in the night time, in the dress of a slave, and throwing himself down like a person of no consequence, lay along the bottom of the vessel. The river Anius was to carry them down to sea, and there used to blow a gentle gale every morning from the land, which made it calm at the mouth of the river by driving the waves forward: but this night there had blown a strong wind from the sea, which overpowered that from the land, so that where the river met the influx of the seawater and the opposition of the waves, it was extremely rough and angry; and the current was beaten back with such a violent swell that the master of the boat could not make good his passage, but ordered his sailors to tack about and return. Caesar, upon this, discovers himself, and taking the man by the hand, who was surprised to see him there, said “Go on, my friend, and fear nothing: you carry Caesar and his fortune in your boat.” The mariners, when they heard that, forgot the storm, and laying all their strength to their oars, did what they could to force their way down the river. But when it was to no purpose, and the vessel now took in much water, Caesar finding himself in such danger in the very mouth of the river, much against his will permitted the master to turn back. When he was come to land, his soldiers ran to him in a multitude, reproaching him for what he had done, and indignant that he should think himself not strong enough to get a victory by their sole assistance, but must disturb himself, and expose his life for those who were absent, as if he could not trust those who were with him.
Approaches were made to Caesar by members of Pompey’s party suggesting to him that they might be prepared to lift the blockade of the coastline, although they could still hold out no prospects of a positive response by Pompey to his peace proposals. But Caesar realized that, although the blockade was preventing his reinforcements from crossing the Adriatic, it was causing great hardship and difficulty to the blockading fleet. Pompey’s men could not get ashore either for stores or water so long as he maintained his grasp on the coast, and he decided to make no concession, since they themselves had little to offer him. (He had already managed to get a staff officer across with a message to Antony stressing the urgent need for reinforcements, and the latter was preparing to leave with a convoy while his legate Gabinius, mistrusting the sea crossing, was marching his troops round from Italy through Illyria.)
Remembering the mood of the Pompeian soldiers in Spain, Caesar used the long period of inaction to try and undermine the morale of his enemy. Before Ilerda there had been informal talks between individual soldiers and centurions, and here in Greece these were soon followed by discussions between members of Caesar’s staff and their opposite numbers in Pompey’s army. The latter’s staff, however, finally realized the danger and decided to prevent any further fraternization; a rain of missiles was directed at some of Caesar’s officers as they were attempting to address some Pompeian troops. Labienus, Caesar’s former right-hand man, finally broke up this informal meeting by shouting out: “Stop talking about any agreement! There can be no peace as far as we’re concerned until the head of Caesar has been brought to us!”
Bibulus, worn out by his exertions on the wintry Adriatic, died of illness—but the blockade still continued. And then there came a day when the fleet of Antony was seen off the Illyrian coast, driven by the wind past Dyrrachium to fetch up some thirty miles to the north of Caesar, safe from the enemy. A few days later their forces were united and Caesar now had at his disposal some 34,000 soldiers and 1,400 cavalry—sufficient to enable him to initiate some action, even though still considerably outnumbered by Pompey’s forces. Pompey however, true to his nature, had no intention of moving out to give battle, but was content to stay within his long fortifications, hoping that sickness and shortage of food would gradually wear down Caesar’s troops until they could be dispatched with ease or forced to surrender. He saw the treacherous marshlands around Apollonia as his greatest ally.
Caesar was well aware that time was on the side of his enemy, and that Pompey could wait as long as he pleased, with his supplies to hand and his fleet in command of the sea, while his own troops, already short of provisions and without the comfort of a garrison town behind them would gradually disintegrate. Action suited his nature, but it was clear in any case that it was up to him to make a move. Pompey had advanced a little north of the Apsus and Caesar followed suit, offering battle—which was refused. He now decided on a bold stroke and took his army round behind Pompey’s lines, suddenly interposing himself between Pompey and his base of Dyrrachium. The latter, outgeneraled, realized Caesar’s intentions too late. He was forced to move his army onto a rocky plateau south of Caesar, whence he maintained his connection with Dyrrachium by sea. Despite the magnitude of the task, Caesar called on his veterans to surround the enemy with encircling fortifications (such as veterans from Gaul will have well remembered), while Pompey, in order to extend his already overextended enemy, built a semicircle of fourteen miles of fortification around his own troops. Throughout the spring and well into the summer the long chess game between the two masters carried on with move and countermove, Caesar seeking to complete the encirclement of his enemy while the latter blocked him wherever possible. The old master showed that he had lost none of his cunning in this positional warfare and, as events were to show, could even turn the tables on his younger opponent.
In the middle of July, when Caesar’s investing forces were stretched to their utmost capacity, and when he was planning to arrange a break into Dyrrachium with the aid of traitors in the city, Pompey suddenly struck at the southernmost point of Caesar’s line where it hinged upon the sea. He burst through, driving the Caesarians in flight, and set about consolidating his position and establishing a new camp on the spot. At a single blow the months of work that had gone into investing the Pompeian army were nullified. In a desperate attempt to conceal the gravity of this defeat from his troops Caesar attacked a legion that had become isolated in the enemy’s camp. He was on the point of taking possession of it when the sudden appearance of Pompey, coming up in support with some five legions, caused a panic among Caesar’s forces. They turned and fled, at least one thousand men were lost and—that gauge of morale—thirty-two standards. Coming at such a moment, when Caesar’s main strategy had been smashed, this flight and these losses suggested that the end might be in sight.
From within his interior lines of communication Pompey looked set to lash out and destroy the whole Caesarian army. It may be that he did not realize the full gravity of what had happened, or it may be that his nature was always to “Hasten slowly,” but Pompey failed to take immediate advantage of the day’s events. Caesar regrouped and the success was not followed up. After a desolate night, in which Caesar felt that he had entirely mishandled the campaign and that he should have marched deep into Greece rather than linger by the sea where Pompey had all the advantages, he roused himself next morning. He then gave his troops one of those speeches which, although we have his quoted words, can only be imagined in terms of its effect upon his hearers. The previous night he had privately said to his staff, “The war would have been won today if the enemy had a man who knew how to conquer.” Now he reminded his troops of their successes throughout the long campaign, with Italy rid of the enemy and Pompey’s forces in Spain completely worsted; the hostile sea was safely crossed, and all that they had now suffered was but one reversal of fortune. “If things do not always fall right, Luck can be given a helping hand.” Discipline was quickly restored when the runaway standard bearers were simply demoted (rather than executed) and no one else was blamed. Appian tells us that “his army was so moved by his moderation that they asked to march immediately against the enemy.”
Caesar had other plans for them. He had thought things out in the night, and was not going to waste any further time on trying to patch up an operation that had gone wrong. He was not a believer in that “Consistency which,” as Bernard Berenson observed, “requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago” and had changed his whole plan of campaign. He urged his men to restrain their eagerness for battle until such time as he should call on them to show it. During the night he had the whole of his army move out quietly by various routes deep into Greece. At dawn next day Pompey was left to contemplate the ravaged entrenchments surrounding him and the empty land where his enemy had previously been.