XV
In the fall of 47 B.C. the legions began to assemble in Sicily for Caesar’s next big amphibious operation. Why didn’t the civil war end with the death of Pompey? Quite simply, he had been elected Rome’s military commander in chief by the majority of the Senate, to fight the rebel Caesar, and on his demise the exiled senators merely elected a new commander in chief, Pompey’s father-in-law, Scipio, to continue the struggle against Caesar. And now Scipio had assembled an army in North Africa theoretically large enough to reclaim Rome. Caesar could wait for them to invade Italy, or he could take the war to them by invading North Africa. As always, Caesar would take the initiative.
With a long march ahead of them through southern France and Italy, the 13th and 14th Legions set off from eastern Spain, where they’d been stationed since Caesar’s victory there in the spring of 49 B.C. Ahead of them, also marching from Spain, went Spanish cavalry accompanied by the 5th Legion. Pompey’s 5th had been disbanded by Caesar in 49 B.C., but he’d enrolled a new enlistment of the legion in western Spain shortly after. Always a fan of Spanish legionaries, he’d summoned the new 5th for his next offensive.
The two legions that had been garrisoning Sicily for some time, the 19th and the 20th, were not to be included in the invasion force. Made up mostly of former Pompeian troops who’d surrendered at Corfinium in February of 49 B.C., they’d been left behind when Gaius Curio had taken their two ill-fated brother legions to Tunisia and led them to their destruction by the Bagradas River. After that performance, Caesar showed no interest in the two untried units. One had been based for some time at Messina, on the island’s northeastern coast—somewhat belatedly after Admiral Nasidius’s unopposed visit—and as the legions of the invasion force began to arrive at Sicily, the other joined it at the Messina garrison.
Legions hardened by battle experience and emboldened by success, this was what Caesar wanted. The 25th, 26th, and 29th, legions that had taken part in the mutiny after the Battle of Pharsalus, were brought down from their bases in southern Italy, sailing from Reggio to Messina, then marching along the northern coast of Sicily. Caesar had initially left the 28th Legion in Egypt with the 27th and the 37th after he’d placed Cleopatra on the throne, but this legion was now shipped from Alexandria to Sicily to join the task force. And the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Legions packed up their tents on the Field of Mars and began the march from Rome. Meanwhile, the men of the 10th Legion who’d been left behind in their sickbeds at Brindisi in January of 48 B.C. and had been stationed at Brindisi and Vibo in southern Italy after their recovery, now also headed for Sicily. With a head start of a week or so on the main body of the legion, these troops reached their destination before the rest of the 10th.
Caesar had lost faith in Mark Antony, particularly after the inept way he’d handled the mutiny of the 10th, 9th, and 8th Legions at the capital. Antony’s high and mighty attitude annoyed Caesar and many others. Typically, Antony had contracted to buy Pompey’s former house at Rome after it had been confiscated by Caesar, but complained bitterly when required to pay up—he thought Caesar should make a gift of it to him. (The house, in the “Keels” district, would subsequently come into the possession of the emperor Augustus and become an imperial residence used by, among others, Tiberius prior to his becoming emperor.) Antony was sidelined by Caesar, who now appointed himself and Marcus Lepidus as the consuls for the next year and left Antony behind as he set off to commence his latest military campaign. According to Plutarch, Antony later wrote that he’d chosen not to go to North Africa with Caesar, with the excuse that his former services hadn’t been recompensed as they deserved.
Other officers also had come to displease Caesar, while others still had parted company with him to take up senior appointments in the territories he now controlled. But three of his faithful staff officers—Oppius, Pollio, and Sallust—were to accompany him to Africa.
Nothing ever happened quickly enough for Julius Caesar. At least part of his audacity can be attributed to impatience. On December 17 he arrived at the embarkation point, Marsala, Roman Lilybaeum, on the west coast of Sicily. He pitched his tent on the beach, then fretted increasingly as the days passed. The weather was unfavorable. His legions were arriving in Sicily in dribs and drabs, with the majority of his best troops still days and weeks away. The supplies ordered by his new quartermaster, General Granius Petro, were coming in too slowly. And he was limited by insufficient transports to ship his entire force across the Mediterranean to North Africa in one hit. Yet, despite all this, he was determined to commence the offensive on the eve of winter, when the other side wasn’t expecting him. Within a week, good weather arrived. That was all Caesar needed. He launched the operation immediately, just as the year was ending.
It was December 25, 47 B.C., following the Saturnalia, a religious festival that would become Christmas in the Christian era, when all Romans traditionally did no work and spent carefree time at leisure. Caesar set sail from Sicily with his German cavalry bodyguard and elements of six legions, including the cohorts of the 10th Legion that had joined him from southern Italy.
There are many parallels between the civil war of 49–45 B.C. and the Second World War of A.D. 1939–1945. The amphibious landings, the amphibious evacuations. And here was another. On July 10, 1943, at Licata, a little east of Marsala, the Allies began the invasion of Sicily from North Africa, the reverse of Caesar’s invasion of North Africa from Sicily.
Caesar endured a slow crossing of the narrow stretch of the Mediterranean separating Sicily from North Africa, caused by indifferent winds that also scattered his fleet. On December 28 he landed unopposed on the east coast of Tunisia near the small port of Sousse, Roman Hadramentum, with just 3,150 men. Anxiously he waited for his other ships to arrive with the rest of his invasion force, as Pompeian cavalry began to move along the coast toward him.
Sousse closed its gates and the residents prepared to defend their walls, but when the rest of his fleet still didn’t arrive after thirty-six hours Caesar moved on, posting his best men, his few 10th Legion cohorts, as rear guard. A large force of Numidian cavalry now arrived at Sousse and gave chase. But when Caesar’s handful of cavalry charged into them, the Numidians scattered.
On the first day of the new year, Caesar set up camp outside the town of Ruspina. Some two miles from the nearest port, it would become his operational headquarters for the campaign. Today the ruins of Ruspina lie three miles to the west of the modern Tunisian town of al-Munastir. Caesar set up a supply base a few miles away, at Leptis Minor on the coast, and sent his warships looking for the missing transports of the invasion fleet. Early on January 4, most of the missing troopships arrived and disembarked their troops at Leptis Minor. Caesar now had four full legions ashore, the 25th, 26th, 28th, and 29th, as well as most of the 5th and several cohorts of the 10th. The main contingent of the 10th Legion, along with those of the 7th, 8th, and 9th, had yet to reach the embarkation camp in Sicily; they were all still marching down from Rome.
Reinforced, and having come across from Sicily with limited rations, that same day Caesar took 30 mixed cohorts of infantry, including his men of the 10th Legion, supported by 400 cavalry and 150 archers, and advanced inland to cut ripened wheat from the wheat fields that covered the plain around Ruspina. Colonel Pollio accompanied Caesar on several later sorties from Ruspina, so it is probable he also went along on this mission as his second-in-command, and it was from his memoirs that Appian and Plutarch took their version of events on this particular day.
Just before 11.00 A.M., and three miles from his base, Caesar was caught in the open by a large enemy flying column led by his former good friend and deputy and now his implacable enemy Major General Titus Labienus. After commanding Pompey’s cavalry at the Battle of Pharsalus, Labienus had regrouped sixteen hundred of his Gallic and German troopers and taken them to Buthroton, from where they’d been among the first of Pompey’s troops evacuated to Tunisia. Labienus’s force here on the Ruspina plain consisted of his regular cavalry plus local light infantry and archers.
Caesar’s troops, caught tramping along with their helmets slung around their necks, shields over their shoulders, and packs on their back containing scythes and wicker baskets for harvesting wheat, hurriedly donned their helmets on Caesar’s command and formed a skirmish line as Labienus lined up his troops in front of them. For a long time there was a stalemate, with each side trying to stare down the other, before Labienus’s cavalry suddenly spurred their steeds into action and tried to envelop Caesar’s flanks. At the same instant, his Numidian light infantry dashed forward to attack in the center.
The fight dragged on for hours, with Caesar’s force surrounded. Every time one of his cohorts made a sally against Labienus’s cavalry they advanced too far and were almost cut off, so Caesar ordered his men to advance no more than four feet from their line. In the end he had to form an orbis, the circular formation of last resort.
General Labienus rode up and down his line bareheaded, cheering on his men. As recorded by the author of The African War, the work possibly written by and certainly edited by Caesar’s staff officer Aulus Hirtius and added to Caesar’s memoirs, Labienus occasionally yelled caustic comments to Caesar’s troops.
“What do you think you’re doing, recruit?” the general called, fixing his gaze on one particular short, fresh-faced legionary in Caesar’s line. “Little fire-eater, aren’t you? Are you another one who’s had his wits befuddled by Caesar’s fine words? I have to be honest with you, he’s brought you into a desperate situation. I’m sorry for you.”
“I’m no raw recruit, Labienus,” the soldier called back. “I’m a veteran of the Tenth!” A veteran who must have served under the general in Gaul, what was more.
“The Tenth?” Labienus retorted with a laugh in his voice. “I don’t recognize the standards of the Tenth anymore. Let’s see what you’re made of!”
“You’ll soon see what I’m made of,” the 10th Legion man angrily declared, ripping off his helmet. “Here! See my face? Remember it!” With that, he flung the javelin in his right hand with all his might.
The range was extreme, and as the combatants watched the javelin’s flight, as if in a dream, it appeared it would fall short of the target. Instead it plunged into the chest of General Labienus’s charger. The horse reared up in pain and fear, throwing the unprepared Labienus from the saddle. He landed heavily.
A cheer rose from Caesar’s men.
“Maybe that’ll help you recognize a soldier of the Tenth in the future, Labienus,” the legionary called, bringing laughter from his 10th Legion comrades.
As General Labienus lay prostrate on the ground, men of his bodyguard hastily gathered around him. He was moving, dazed, and hurt by the fall as he was carried away. The general’s men continued the attack after he’d gone, but in his absence their enthusiasm waned a little. But at the same time most of Caesar’s surrounded troops were losing heart. The men of the newer legions were constantly looking around for Caesar as he strode around the inside of the circle directing the defense, and many now merely dodged opposition missiles without going on the offensive themselves.
Realizing he had to seize the initiative, Caesar formed his thirty cohorts up so he had fifteen facing one way and the fifteen behind them facing the other. Both groups then charged forward at the same time, on his command, splitting the attacking force in two and breaking the encirclement. Caesar then called his men back, and before the other side could re-form he quickly advanced through one of the gaps he’d opened up and marched for Thapsus at the double.
Caesar’s column had gone only a few miles, harried by Labienus’s troops all the way, when another opposition force swept into its path. Led by the fiery General Marcus Petreius, who’d escaped from Spain with General Afranius and then from Greece with Labienus, this force of sixteen hundred picked Numidian cavalry and a number of light infantry cut off Caesar from his base. Caesar had no choice but make a stand, and to gain the advantage of high ground he edged his beleaguered force to a low, bare hill, the only rise on the otherwise monotonously flat plain.
The battle lasted all through the afternoon, with Caesar surrounded and taking heavy casualties. It was looking like Julius Caesar’s last stand. At one point the eagle-bearer from one of the new legions broke ranks and tried to flee, but Caesar personally grabbed him and spun him around. Plutarch says that Caesar angrily yelled, “Look, that’s the way to the enemy!” and pushed the soldier back toward the fighting.
Aulus Hirtius, who was made a major general this year by Caesar, himself admitted that he hadn’t served in the African campaign. He said that part of what he knew of the campaign he learned from later conversations with Caesar, although he hadn’t made notes, as he had no plans at the time to put the story on record. Hirtius’s other Caesarian writings are at times more deliberately one-eyed than merely inaccurate, and this episode in The African War is no different—it has Caesar’s troops escaping back to Ruspina late in the day after seriously wounding Petreius and victoriously driving off the enemy.
In contrast, Cassius Dio writes that many of Caesar’s men were killed in this action, while Appian says that Caesar’s troops were routed on the plain. Dio’s and Appian’s versions ring truest. Appian also states that Caesar was only saved when, late in the day, as the sun was setting, General Petreius instructed his troops to disengage, adding, “Let’s not rob our commander Scipio of the victory.”
So the Pompeian troops pulled out, and Caesar and his surviving men gratefully stumbled back to their camp in the darkness, carrying their numerous dead and wounded among them. Caesar’s notorious luck had held good yet again. Seventy-five years later, Nero’s chief secretary, the philosopher Seneca, would say that luck never made a man wise, but Julius Caesar learned from his lucky escape on the Ruspina plain. After discovering the inadequacies of the men under his command—other than his few 10th Legion veterans—he wisely decided not to allow himself to be dragged into another major engagement until reinforced by his best legions.
With the winter just around the corner, the two forces faced off. Scipio advanced his army to the vicinity of Thapsus and penned Caesar in an area of six square miles. Over the coming months there were occasional skirmishes, with General Labienus losing a number of German and Gallic cavalrymen in one engagement, but although Scipio frequently lined up his army in battle order, Caesar would not come out and play his game. He kept his troops behind the walls of their defenses and awaited the arrival of reinforcements. Impatient as always, according to the author of The African War he was forever looking out to sea for the arrival of the next convoy, even accusing the navy and the army of deliberately putting off its sailing. In particular Caesar was waiting for his veteran legions. He had little confidence in the newer units, which had already shown their lack of fighting qualities in the battle on the Ruspina plain at the beginning of the month.
In the third week of January a second convoy finally arrived from Sicily and landed the seasick 13th and 14th Legions plus cavalry, auxiliary light infantry, and badly needed supplies. The bloody nose Caesar’s forces had received on the plain outside Ruspina and stories about a huge Pompeian army complete with elephants had caused many of Caesar’s young soldiers to start talking of mutiny rather than take on Scipio’s forces, but now the arrival of these veteran reinforcements bolstered flagging spirits.
Several ships of the second convoy fell into enemy hands, including a troop-carrier with two colonels aboard and a cruiser carrying another pair of colonels, a centurion and the last contingent of young Spanish recruits of the 5th Legion, and a centurion and veterans of the 14th. Most of the senior men were put to death, while the enlisted men were pressed into Scipio’s army.
King Juba was now forced to withdraw most of his troops to put down a rising back in Numidia. Despite his reduced numbers Scipio was prepared to take on Caesar in a full-scale battle, but still Caesar preferred to wait for his favored Spanish legions before he ventured too much too soon. He was moving camp every few days, slowly advancing down the coast toward the town of Uzitta, daily fighting off attacks by detachments of Scipio’s troops. In mid-February, a third convoy arrived, this time bringing the rest of the 10th Legion and the men of the 9th.
Caesar had been seething about the way the 10th had turned against him after Pharsalus and then led the mutiny and looting rampage at Rome. Never one to forget, yet no doubt conscious of warnings from his staff that it might rebound on him if he were to punish the men, he was still determined to make an example of the 10th. So he chose instead to single out several of the legion’s officers for special treatment, having been given a list of the officers who’d encouraged their men to mutiny. One of the culprits seemed particularly determined to earn his commander’s censure—Colonel Gaius Avienus had taken one of the ships in the latest convoy and loaded it with his personal slaves and horses, bringing not a single soldier of the legion with him across from Sicily.
The men of the 10th had gone through a lengthy, hazardous voyage during which their water supply had run out after the convoy shied away from the Tunisian coast on seeing warships in their path. They’d barely had time to reunite with the cohorts of the legion who’d preceded them in the first convoy when, the day following their arrival, Caesar called an assembly of the tribunes and centurions of the 10th and all his other legions now in North Africa. Once the officers, upward of six hundred of them, had lined up, Caesar strode from his praetorium, then stepped up onto the tribunal, looking severe. His words are quoted in The African War.
“I would have thought,” he began, “that people might at long last have put an end to their impertinence and insubordination, and ceased to take advantage of my leniency, moderation, and patience. But since they won’t themselves set any bounds or limits, then I’ll make an example, in accordance with military practice, to teach the others to mend their ways.”
He then called out two tribunes and three centurions of the 10th Legion by name. Looking puzzled and not a little worried, the five nominated officers stepped forward and lined up in front of the tribunal. As they did, they probably noticed the centurions of the guard cohorts on duty taking up positions close by with hands on sword hilts.
“Gaius Avienus,” Caesar now began, glaring down at the spoiled, rich young colonel, “whereas you did in Italy incite the troops of the Roman people to action against the state and did plunder various municipalities, and whereas you have been of no service to either myself or the state, but have, instead of troops, embarked your own slaves and livestock, and have thereby caused the state to be short of troops at a time of crisis—for these reasons, I discharge you with dishonor from my army and order you to remove yourself immediately from Africa.”
Avienus had probably blanched white, while, beside him, the other officers were sweating profusely.
Caesar turned his attention to the second colonel, another wealthy young man in his twenties. “Aulus Fonteius, whereas you have, as a tribune, incited my soldiers to mutiny, and as a citizen, have been disloyal, I dismiss you from my army.”
Now it was the turn of the trio of centurions. All three would have been promoted by General Fabius on the retirement of Centurion Crastinus and other senior centurions of the 10th back in early 49 B.C., but as far as Caesar was concerned not one of them had deserved their promotions. From what he’d come to hear, they’d blatantly curried favor with Fabius to get where they were. “Titus Salienus, Marcus Tiro, Gaius Clusinas, whereas you have obtained your ranks in my army by favor, and not through merit, have shown yourselves neither brave in combat nor loyal in peace, and have directed yourselves to inciting the men to mutiny against their commander rather than to respectful and obedient conduct, I judge you unfit to hold rank in my army. I dismiss you from my service and order you to leave Africa immediately.”
Caesar turned to the centurions of the guard and instructed them to escort these men to a ship. The discharged officers were each permitted to take one personal slave with them but nothing else. And they were to leave the province’s shores that same day.
Caesar was feeling more confident now. He had two of his four best legions with him, plus another seven legions. And the young Spanish recruits of the 5th Legion had sent their tribunes to him to say they wanted the honor of taking on Scipio’s elephants when battle was finally joined. Caesar didn’t hesitate to accept their offer, which made the men of the other units feel a whole lot better about what lay ahead.
In stages of a few miles each day Caesar now advanced down the coast toward Thapsus, a port town that sat on a cape overlooking the sea, about five miles from present-day Teboulba in Tunisia. After each move, he would have his men build a new fortified camp. The troops’ amenities were basic. The latest convoy had replenished their food supplies, but Caesar had made his soldiers come across from Sicily with only basic gear so he could cram as many men as possible on his few ships. Most didn’t even have tents to sleep under, and rigged up flimsy shelters using clothing and pieces of wood.
By the beginning of March, King Juba had returned to Tunisia, bringing three of his four legions back with him to bolster Scipio’s force. Now, outside the village of Uzitta, the opposing armies drew up in lines facing each other, with about 450 yards separating them, in battle order and ready for a full-scale fight. Caesar would have learned from prisoners after the Battle of Pharsalus that Pompey and General Labienus had expected him to place the 10th Legion on the right wing on that occasion and made their dispositions accordingly, so now, as Caesar formed his battle line, he allotted the 10th to the left wing, with the 9th on its immediate right, just to keep Scipio on his toes.
For hour after hour, 130,000 men stood glaring at each other under the North African sun, with neither commander, not Caesar, not the bearded, severe Scipio, wanting to be the one to make the first move. They stood there from morning until late afternoon until finally Caesar began to withdraw his troops to his camp, unit by unit, in formation.
Suddenly General Labienus led the entire Pompeian cavalry force in the direction of Caesar’s camp, as if to cut off his line of retreat. Before Caesar could order any counteraction, some of his cavalry and auxiliary light infantry launched an attack from his left wing of their own accord. A swift fight ensued, before the Pompeians sent Caesar’s men into retreat, killing twenty-eight and wounding a number of the others. Nightfall saved Caesar from any further embarrassment. Scipio let him withdraw into his camp. The stalemate continued.
In mid-March Caesar welcomed the men of the 7th and 8th Legions as they arrived in the next convoy from Sicily. Now he had all four of his fractious veteran Spanish legions back with him. Knowing how inexperienced the men of his newer legions were and after the reverse he’d suffered at the Battle of the Ruspina Plain back in January, he personally led the newer units in a new training regime.
Described in The African War as acting like the trainer of new gladiators, Caesar showed the young legionaries exactly how many feet to retire before they suddenly wheeled around as a group and counterattacked, how to advance and retire alternately, how to make feint attacks, and how to defend themselves in close-quarters combat. When drilling them on throwing their javelins, he would mark a spot on the ground as their target. To help the men of the 5th Legion accustom themselves to anti-elephant tactics, he shipped four or five elephants over from Italy, animals originally taken to Rome by Pompey some years before. While the youngsters of the 5th trained with the beasts at every opportunity, Caesar had no intention of employing his own pachyderms in battle—he is said to have considered the lumbering, tusked bull elephants a menace to both sides.
On March 21 Caesar led his army in the Lustration Exercise, the religious ceremony performed by the Roman military in March of each year during which the standards of the legions were purified, dressed in garlands, and sprinkled with perfumed oil. Traditionally this ceremony marked the beginning of the annual campaigning season, and the men of the legions considered it bad luck if the Lustration wasn’t performed prior to launching the latest campaign. Now Caesar began his offensive in earnest. Taking the village of Sarsusa, he slaughtered its small Pompeian garrison. The next day, shadowed by Scipio, he marched on the town of Thysdra, but it was well defended, and without a water supply in the vicinity he decided against a siege and withdrew to Aggar.
Despite the risk of being intercepted by patrolling enemy warships, Caesar’s troopships continued to maintain a shuttle service from Sicily, and another convoy now arrived, bringing four thousand men from all his legions who’d previously been on the sick list or on leave, plus four hundred cavalry and a thousand archers and slingers. Adding these reinforcements to his task force, Caesar formed up his army two miles from Scipio’s camp, near the town of Tegea. Again Scipio brought his army out in battle order, but following a stuttering cavalry action with first one side retreating, then the other, Caesar withdrew his main force to camp at about 4:00 P.M. after seeing no advantage.
On April 4, in the small hours of the morning, in one of his typical night marches Caesar hiked his legions sixteen miles down the coast from Aggar, making camp within sight of Thapsus as dawn broke. He then began digging trench lines with the intention of cutting off the town’s Pompeian garrison from Scipio and the rest of his army.
To relieve the town, Scipio marched his forces up from the south to within eight miles of Thapsus and established two large camps covering a corridor between an extensive salt lake, the Marsh of Moknine, and the coast—one camp for his army, the other for King Juba’s Numidian troops. The next day, leaving some troops with General Afranius at his camp, Scipio moved most of his forces closer to Thapsus. After swinging west around the lake in the night, his men were seen to be busy setting up a new camp as the sun came up, about a mile and a half from Caesar’s fortifications. Tactically this was a clever move—Scipio could now trap Caesar on the peninsula, between the camps of Juba and Afranius at the southern end and his new position, which covered access from the west.
Caesar being Caesar, he was quick to turn a disadvantage into an advantage. Seeing the construction work under way at Scipio’s camp, Caesar decided to attack immediately, before the Pompeians could finish their defenses. He quickly formed three battle lines outside Thapsus. This time he returned the 10th Legion to its customary right-wing position, placing the 7th beside it. (Not the 2nd, as The African War records at one point. The 2nd Legion was in western Spain throughout this period. A copyist at some stage erroneously wrote II instead of VII when identifying the legion beside the 10th.) The 8th and 9th Legions went on his left wing. It was a given that the less experienced legions would take the center as always, but now that he had the luxury of deploying eleven legions, Caesar strengthened his center with the veteran 13th and 14th. If he maintained the lineup he’d used several weeks before, Caesar placed the 25th and the 29th to the left of these two legions and the 28th and the 26th on the other side, next to the 7th. As he had planned for some time, the 5th Legion was split in two—half its cohorts went on each extreme wing, along with cavalry and slingers, ready to take on King Juba’s sixty elephants. (The African War says Caesar left two entire legions guarding his camp, but this is probably propaganda. Auxiliaries would have guarded the camp.)
Caught still building his latest camp, Scipio had little choice but to send his army into the field or risk his incomplete fortifications being stormed. Scipio’s exact deployment is unknown. He placed his ten legions and King Juba’s three legions in the center of his line, distributing his cavalry and light infantry on the wings along with his war elephants—thirty of which were placed on each side. These beasts were complete with armored howdahs on their backs, or “castles” as the Romans called them, each containing two to three javelin throwers. A Numidian mahout, or driver, sat, sidesaddle, at each elephant’s neck, driving his charge with a long crook that looked like a modern-day hockey stick.
Among Scipio’s legions were the 1st, which had escaped almost intact from Greece, and the three cohorts of the 4th and two of the 6th that had escaped with it. Scipio, and Cato the Younger, who had taken command at the provincial capital, Utica, modern Utique, along the coast, had recruited twelve thousand locals into their existing legions, some of them former slaves, and this insulted the proud Spaniards of the 4th and the 6th to the extent that some of them had defected to Caesar over the past few weeks in disgust.
Scipio also had the two locally raised legions of General Publius Attius Varus that had participated in the brief campaign that had wiped out Caesar’s two legions under the overconfident Gaius Curio two years before. Scipio’s remaining five legions were also made up of locally recruited men, many of them slaves, who had no combat experience whatsoever. The men of King Juba’s three legions were highly experienced and supremely confident. Principally responsible for Curio’s defeat, the Numidian legionaries boasted haughtily to the men of the 1st, 4th, and 6th that they had fought forty-two battles over the years without suffering a single defeat.
In addition to his sixty elephants, Scipio also had tens of thousands of lightly armed Numidian auxiliaries and upward of ten thousand cavalry. Some fifteen hundred of these cavalrymen were General Labienus’s tough German and Gallic troopers who’d served with him for years and come through the campaign in Gaul and the Battles of Dyrrhachium and Pharsalus with him. Another fifteen hundred were Numidians trained and led by General Petreius using Roman-style equipment and tactics, while the rest, seven thousand of them, were wild Numidians riding without either saddles or bridles, which made them of questionable value in a battle against Roman heavy infantry. Pitted against them, Caesar had at least three thousand cavalry of quality, his Germans, Gauls, and now, too, Spaniards.
From subsequent events it is likely that the 1st Legion took Scipio’s right wing, not facing Caesar’s 10th as it had at Farsala. The inexperienced legions and Juba’s troops would have held the center. The 4th and the 6th Legions probably took the left of the line. In part compensation for desertions from the 4th and 6th, Scipio had taken several hundred men of the 5th and the 14th Legions prisoner after their troopships had been captured, and they now stood in his front line. But how well they would fight, looking across the void separating them from their friends and relatives in their own legions as they did now, would have been anyone’s guess. Like most Roman legionaries on the battlefield that day they would have silently said the legionary’s prayer, then gritted their teeth and waited for “Charge” to be sounded.
Even though Scipio had thirteen legions at his disposal and his total force numbered in the region of eighty thousand men, only the four thousand or so legionaries of the 1st, 4th, and 6th Legions had the sort of experience that Caesar’s best troops possessed. Only troops of one of Caesar’s legions, the new recruits of the 5th, had never seen action, while the men of the 10th and their fellow Spanish legionaries had achieved legendary status in Roman military circles.
Exactly where in his line General Scipio located himself we don’t know. He probably kept well away from King Juba. The king was a cruel, arrogant brute of a man who’d shown Scipio and most of his fellow noble Romans little respect. Juba’s only friend among the Roman ranks was General Petreius, a man with a similar abrasive nature. After his troops had annihilated Curio’s army, Juba had been contemptuous of Roman force of arms. Weeks before, when he’d seen Scipio wearing his scarlet general’s cloak, Juba had exploded with indignation and declared that only he was entitled to wear scarlet cloaks. Scipio, himself a proud and arrogant man, knew he needed Juba if he was to overcome Caesar. So, swallowing his pride, he lay aside his scarlet cloak and took to wearing a white one, which he sported today.
Scipio, like his son-in-law Pompey before the Battle of Pharsalus, knew that to win he could not rely on his infantry. Like Pompey, he decided to focus on his cavalry superiority. His battle plan earlier, outside Uzitta, had been to outflank Caesar’s outnumbered infantry with cavalry, then surround them and pick them off, the way his cavalry general Labienus had almost terminated Caesar’s career weeks earlier on the bare plain outside Ruspina. It seems that he had a similar plan here at Thapsus. But here, his freedom of movement was restricted. His line, as it extended in front of Thapsus, was hemmed in by the sea on one side and the salt lake on the other. And part of his army was still frantically working on camp defenses, as Caesar and his officers were well aware—they could see men rushing in and out of the open camp gateways in disorganized confusion.
Plutarch quotes two quite different accounts of Caesar’s activities on the day of the Battle of Thapsus. One goes like this. Caesar had dismounted. He was walking along his front line, exhorting his troops to fight well when the time came. But his men were so keen to come to grips with the Pompeians, seeing the obvious consternation in their rear, that cohorts started to advance of their own accord, and their centurions had to hurry out in front of them to stop them. Caesar himself yelled to these impatient legionaries that the battle would not be won by an impromptu advance—the men had to wait until he judged the time and the circumstances right. Then, men of the 10th on the right wing made their trumpeters sound “Charge.” The troops here surged forward, and the rest of the line followed suit. Realizing he couldn’t stop the snowball, Caesar signaled “Good luck” to his men— how, we’re not told—then mounted up and charged into the fray himself.
Plutarch says that several other sources had it that Caesar was in fact immobilized on the morning of the battle by one of his epileptic fits. It was said to have struck just as the battle was about to begin, and, feeling it coming on, he quickly had himself taken back to his camp, leaving his subordinates in charge of the battle. Depending on their type, epileptic fits usually strike without warning. But Caesar also suffered from severe headaches, and these may have served to warn him of an impending attack. And, in partial epileptic attacks, the victim remains conscious. Whatever the nature of Caesar’s particular affliction, he was highly self-conscious about these fits, the first of which had hit him while he was at Córdoba some years earlier. People of the time associated epilepsy with insanity, and Caesar never spoke or wrote of his affliction himself.
Most of his officers likewise respected his memory and made no mention of his illness in their writings, particularly if it meant revealing he was incapacitated at the commencement of one of his greatest battles. The facts that the battle began almost accidentally and that the officers weren’t able to rein in the troops suggest that perhaps Caesar was indeed not present at the outset, that he was laid low by his epilepsy and only came back onto the scene later.
One way or another, the attack began with an unauthorized charge by Caesar’s troops. On the extremities of the two wings, Caesar’s slingers disconcerted the mighty elephants with their lead projectiles; then the men of the 5th Legion charged into the cavalry and elephant formations. On Caesar’s right wing, Scipio’s left, the elephants turned and stampeded ahead of the charge of the 5th and then the 10th Legion, trampling the auxiliary troops lined up behind them. The Numidian cavalry formed up farther back broke up and fled as the elephants careered in through the unfinished gateways of Pompey’s camp and began to trample everything and everyone in their path.
This left the way open for cohorts of the 5th Legion to get behind Scipio’s left wing while the 10th attacked from the front. Virtually surrounded, it was Pharsalus all over again for the men of the legions on the Pompeian left. Up against the tough, disciplined 1st Legion, the progress of the 8th and 9th Legions on the far wing wasn’t as dramatic, but it didn’t have to be. As the Pompeian left swiftly unraveled, the rest of Scipio’s line dissolved, with groups of soldiers fleeing in all directions, some into Scipio’s new camp, many to the camps of Afranius and Juba to the south of the peninsula.
At the Battle of Pharsalus, those inexperienced troops who had sought safety in the camp had paid the price. It was the same here. Caesar’s legionaries swept in through the open gateways of Scipio’s incomplete camp and massacred everyone they found, soldiers and unarmed camp followers alike. Caesar’s troops then pushed on to Juba’s camp and eventually smashed their way in there, too.
Thousands of Pompeian soldiers in Juba’s camp threw down their arms and tried to surrender. But they, along with colonels and generals, were butchered, whether armed or not. Caesarian troops ignored their officers’ orders to stop, killing in an indiscriminate frenzy of blood. Several of Caesar’s own colonels were killed or wounded here by their own troops, who angrily labeled them “agitators.” It’s possible these were officers who’d worked against the mutineers at Farsala and Rome and that their assailants included men of the 10th who were settling old scores.
Despite the apparent simplicity of the action, like the Battle of Pharsalus before it, the Battle of Thapsus raged all day, lasting until nightfall, with a series of actions taking place all over the coastal plain around Thapsus. Some accounts say that fifty thousand Pompeian troops were killed. The more authoritative reports put the number at five thousand to ten thousand, with Caesar’s losses ranging from fifty to several hundred. In anyone’s language it was a comprehensive victory for Caesar.
As at Farsala, most of the Pompeian generals escaped. Farther up the coast, the port town of Utique was still in Pompeian hands, under the firm command of Cato the Younger. Thousands of soldiers as well as numerous generals and senators flocked to it to escape on the many ships sheltering there. Once all the leading figures had escaped, along with the 1st Legion, which had withdrawn to Utique substantially intact, the principled Cato took his own life. Caesar was later to write a bitter condemnation of him in hisAnti-Cato.
General Afranius escaped west into Mauretania with a thousand troops, possibly including men of the 4th and 6th Legions, aiming to get away to Spain. His small force was ultimately ambushed, and most of its members, including Afranius, were taken prisoner. It appears that Caesar subsequently had Afranius executed for breaking the parole he’d given after surrendering in Spain. Officially, Afranius was killed by Caesarian troops who got out of hand, along with the young Lucius Caesar, Caesar’s second cousin who’d acted as an envoy between Pompey and Caesar just after Caesar crossed the Rubicon.
As Caesar mopped up all resistance in Tunisia, with one town after another surrendering to him over the next three weeks, King Juba fled to Zama, one of his two capitals, in Numidia, accompanied by General Petreius. With Caesar’s cavalry patrols everywhere, the pair hid in farmhouses by day and traveled at night. But when they reached Zama the inhabitants closed the city gates to them. Juba and Petreius dined together that night, then fought a fatal duel. The survivor committed suicide.
General Labienus, Pompey’s cavalry commander, who had recovered from the fall outside Ruspina, managed to escape from Tunisia by sea and head for Spain, as did the chief Pompeian commander, Scipio, and a number of other officers, including General Publius Varus. Scipio’s convoy of twelve undecked ships was soon caught in a storm and blown into the harbor at Annaba, also known as Bône—Roman Hippo Regius—on the coast of Algeria, only to find a large number of Caesar’s warships also sheltering there. Trapped, Scipio took his own life. But Generals Labienus and Varus succeeded in reaching the Balearic Isles off the Spanish coast, together with the 1st Legion.
Prior to the Battle of Thapsus, Gnaeus, Pompey’s eldest son, had tried to take Mauretania with a motley force of two thousand men, many of them slaves. Repulsed by the garrisons of the local monarchs, he’d sailed to the Balearic Isles, joining his younger brother Sextus, who was hiding there. Now, landing at Cádiz in southwestern Spain with the 1st Legion and other escapees from Africa, the Pompey brothers declared that there, in Spain, they would continue the war against Caesar.