We fought our way to the south, battling against the elements and geography rather than the enemy who fell back before us. So we advanced through the wake of the destruction which they wrought. Food was scarce and supplies difficult to organise. I have often said that the most important officer in the army is the quartermaster; it was never truer than in Spain.
At last we caught up with Labienus and Pompey on the plain of Munda a few miles out of Cordova. They could avoid battle no longer. We knew it was by Labienus' counsel that they had drawn us so far forward, weakening our army. Gnaeus Pompey would have been rash enough to offer battle weeks before. But Labienus said "no". Perhaps he had been hoping that Caesar's well-known impatience would lead him to make a rash move; there was, after all, no officer who knew Caesar's mind better than Labienus, except myself. And indeed Labienus' strategy had almost worked, for Caesar had been tempted by the notion of trying to outflank the enemy, and had been on the point of essaying this audacious enterprise (which would, of course, have exposed his flank to a counterattack while he was still on the march) when I had urged him that, in accepting the apparent invitation offered by the enemy's movements, he would be falling into a trap laid by Labienus. He was displeased at the suggestion, but one aspect of Caesar's genius (which, as you know, Artixes, I have never denied, and which indeed you Gauls have felt so severely) that never deserted him was his ability to let reason in the last resort speak loud. So, although he was piqued by my suggestion that his judgment was in this instance unsound, he yet gave the matter due consideration, and acted as I had advised. And I am bound to say that he showed no resentment of the fact that my judgment had been better than his, though he did not acknowledge it publicly either. Indeed, when Antony urged the outflanking movement, arguing forcefully that it would surprise the enemy and offer us the chance of a quick victory, Caesar employed my arguments against Antony as if they had been his own. But I suppose that is ever the way of genius, which must always be supreme.
Labienus had chosen their position. One could see it was his work at a glance. They were drawn up on the crest of a rise. Behind them the ground rose gently again towards the little town of Munda. It was not a steep hill, but from the plain we would still have to climb perhaps a hundred feet. That may not sound much, but it is a lot to ask of soldiers attacking a well-armed and well-trained enemy, not deficient in number. Labienus and Pompey had, we were assured, some thirteen legions. These were drawn up in the centre. The Moorish and Spanish auxiliaries, half of them cavalry, were on the wings. The ground was steeper there. There was no choice but to make a frontal attack.
The night before the battle was very cold. It was the day after the Ides of March, and a hard frost. Meteors blazed in the sky. The priests reported that the images of war we carried in our baggage had sweated blood. A deserter assured us that the eagles of the Pompeian legions had dropped the golden thunderbolts from their talons, spread their wings and flown to our camp. When none arrived, the man was soundly whipped. I suppose he was either drunk or demented.
The battle began with a brief cavalry skirmish, which was no more conclusive than such things usually are. Then the lines were locked. It was not a day for manoeuvring, and there was indeed no scope for any clever device. This was a battle, I saw at once, that would be gained by whichever side pounded the hardest. In such battles what matters most is morale. As long as men feel they are supported, they will hold their ground. They know besides, if they are experienced troops, that they have only two choices: to break through, or to engage in that most difficult of movements, an orderly retreat. Two fears dominate the mind of the experienced officer to the exclusion of all else. The first is that his own troops will break through on too narrow a front, with the result that they can be cut off and massacred. The second is that panic will set in. The officer's task therefore is to hold the line steady.
I have never known such fighting as at Munda. Our own troops were wonderfully resolute. They had not marched through Spain, enduring terrible hardships, to lose everything now. On the other hand, I was amazed by the enemy's spirit. This was quite different from anything we had previously encountered in the civil wars; it was as if the hatred which Labienus and Pompey's sons felt for Caesar had communicated itself to the whole army. I saw something else in one of those flashes of insight that can come upon one when nerves and body are fully stretched: this resolution was the justification of the policy of atrocities which the enemy commanders had deliberately pursued. In earlier campaigns the enemy's morale had been undermined by Caesar's declared policy of clemency; that, of course, was what he had intended. Now, as a result of their own actions, they knew that they had put themselves beyond his mercy. For them, as for us, it was a matter of conquest or death.
After some two hours of fighting, we had gained little ground. The enemy had yielded perhaps twenty yards, but their position was if anything stronger than before. A ripple of doubt ran along our lines. At that moment Caesar's self-control snapped.
He yelled: "Soldiers, are you going to betray me now to these boys?" and, snatching up a sword and shield from a wounded soldier, dashed against the enemy line. For a moment he disappeared from my view.
"Save the General," I cried. "Will you let him die alone? Will you be thus disgraced?"
I grabbed a centurion by the shoulder and pointed towards the melee around Caesar.
"There is where the battle must be won. Save the General or die disgraced."
Waving my sword high, but quickly couching it in the attack position, I led a charge of some two hundred men towards where the troops around Caesar were struggling. It turned the issue. For a moment the battle stood still. Then, very slowly and still in good order, the enemy left began to withdraw.
Our position was now one of the greatest danger. I could imagine Labienus smile as he watched the battle develop from his vantage point at the gates of Munda. Another fifty yards, he must have thought, and I shall be able to loose my cavalry on the enemy's flank. I shouted orders to halt the attack and re-form our ranks, but in the noise and press no one heard me or had sufficient self-control to obey. I looked across and up the hill. I could see cohorts of Labienus' cavalry and infantry moving from his right and centre. Our position was more dangerous than ever, and all, I cursed, as a result of Caesar's moment of uncharacteristic panic. (It is fair to say that this may have been the result of an epileptic attack he had suffered a few days before.)
But. . . Caesar always declared that he was a favourite of the gods, and if ever a day proved this to be the case, it was Munda. Labienus' manoeuvre, admirably intelligent though it was, destroyed him. The rapid and unexpected deployment of the troops was remarked and misinterpreted by the men in his front lines. They did not realise that he was about to unleash the blow that would give them victory. Instead, they thought that it was the beginning of a general flight. Panic set in, rapidly as it always does. Except for one legion, which retreated in good order, and died fighting almost to the last man, the army of our enemy disintegrated.
I have never known a battle change so completely in such a short time.
One wing of the enemy army broke, fleeing to the safety of Cordova. The rest were thrown back into the ditch before the walls of Munda. There was no escape. Few prisoners were taken. Our legionaries were determined to make an end of the wars, then and there, that grey afternoon. They could not have been restrained from slaughter, even if that had been Caesar's wish. And it was not. For the first time in the civil wars no quarter was given.
"I have often fought for victory," Caesar said as night fell on the field, whence the groans of the dying and the wounded still prevented the silence of night from descending, "but this is the first time I ever fought for my life."
It was reported that the enemy dead numbered almost thirty thousand. Among them was Labienus himself. I looked on that strong, proud, aggrieved countenance.
"He chose the path he has followed," Caesar said.
That night Octavius came to my tent. He was pale and trembling.
"Well," I said, "that is war, the great destroyer of illusion."
It was not quite the end. The two sons of Pompey had escaped the field. Sextus, it seemed, had found a refuge, none knew where. Gnaeus reached Gibraltar to find that all the ships were in Caesar's hands. He fled back from the coast, into the mountains. There he was discovered by a troop seeking fugitives from the battle. They found him wounded in a cave, deserted by all but a couple of slaves. He demanded clemency. Even in his extremity, I am told, he could not keep a note of arrogance from his voice. He received none. The soldiers made short work of him. As with his father, his head was cut off, and sent to Caesar.
Meanwhile Cordova had been besieged. The walls were stormed. More than twenty thousand soldiers and citizens were put to the sword. Antony was mighty in the slaughter, drunk on wine and blood-lust. The word "clemency" rang in my ears like a mocking bell. We had journeyed far from that dawn on the banks of the Rubicon.
CHAPTER
9
W
hat a strange thing is love, a word we commonly employ as a euphemism for sexual desire. My passion for Octavius had died. Its end was abrupt. A few nights after the sack of Cordova, he came to me in tears. He babbled in confusion. It seemed that Antony (who had been roaring drunk for a week) had tried to ravish him. The boy's tongue stumbled over the story; his beauty fled from him. I was seized with an impulse of cruelty, not tenderness. Even now, I cannot account for the violence of the change in my feeling. I looked on him with contempt, even disgust. He needed my help, perhaps. I had none to offer him. Something in me had snapped.
A few weeks later he left for Greece, to resume his studies, by Caesar's command. He went to join Maecenas; another companion was an ill-bred young officer, by name Marcus Agrippa. Well, I was relieved to see him depart. His presence had begun to embarrass me. There is nothing so dead as an infatuation from which you have recovered. As the months passed, something of tenderness returned. But when we corresponded, there was now a distance between us. There was nothing intimate in our letters, and I knew that when we met again, there would be a gulf between us, like a stretch of inhospitable coastland fringing the sea.
My mother always used to say that lust was a game the gods played to make fools of us, and amuse themselves. When she looked back on her own passion for Caesar, she could no longer understand how it had come about.
Is it the result of a trick of light, of the immediate disposition of limbs, lines, and posture?
How strange to perplex myself with this question now. For me, it has always been inseparable from some idea of degradation. My revulsion of Octavius puzzles me therefore.
Perhaps I was attracted by his freedom from experience. I do not know.
When I look on Artixes, I think this may be possible.
As it happened, I returned to Rome and surprised my wife Longina in bed with a curly headed boy. Both sat up, Longina displaying her delightful breasts. Surprise, then indignation, then fear, as he recognised me, could be read in the boy's face. I had no idea who he was. He looked even younger than my wife. Her tongue flicked her upper lip. Then she smiled.
"Husband," she said. "What a charming surprise," she added in Greek.
"No wonder your freedwomen were alarmed to see me." "They should be whipped for letting you break in on me like this."
She nestled back among the cushions and fluttered her eyelashes at me.
"Fair's fair," she said. "I bet you haven't been faithful to me in Spain. He's a friend of Caesar's," she said to the boy, "and you know what that means. Besides, he's been having the most tremendous thing with Octavius. Does that still go on, husband?"
"I could divorce you," I said.
"Why bother?"
"I could have you whipped yourself. In the days of our ancestors I could have had you put to death."
"Of course you could, but those days have gone. Besides, I know you better than you think. I'm not quite the mophead you take me to be. I've taken the trouble to find out a lot about you, husband, and I could give you quite a long list of your lovers, starting with that famous pair, Clodia and her brother. So don't pretend. Actually, I imagine you're enjoying this as much as I am."
The trouble was, she was right. I found the situation exciting.
"Who's your friend?" I said.
She giggled.
"Can't you guess? We're more alike than you think, husband."
I looked at the boy's tumbling curls, his lustrous eyes, his soft and at that moment trembling mouth. He was slim, and there was a hint of mischief even in his fear.
"Yes," I said, "I see a resemblance."
The boy was Appius Claudius Pulcher, whose father had been consul ten years previously. That father, whom I had known to be proud, corrupt and superstitious (like so many of the clan) had fallen at Pharsalus in the ranks of the Pompeians, though he had despised Pompey himself. He had married his daughter to my cousin, Marcus Brutus, who, disgusted by her infidelity, had put her aside, in order to marry Cato's daughter Porcia, certainly a woman better suited to his priggish nature. This boy must be the fruit of his father's last marriage to a woman half his age whose name I couldn't recall. Appius Claudius Pulcher had hated Caesar. Looking at the boy I couldn't imagine he felt any powerful desire to avenge his father. He probably revelled in his freedom from paternal rebuke, which would certainly have been forthcoming.