The October Horse (40 page)

“The odd thing is that I think my father would approve,” said Porcia to Brutus when he came to bid her farewell.

“I'm very sure that Caesar wasn't aiming for Cato's approval,” said Brutus.

“Then he misread my father, who esteems valor quite as much as Caesar.”

“Given the hideous hatred between them, Porcia, neither man can read the other.”

Pompey's mansion on the Carinae was knocked down to Mark Antony for thirty million sesterces, but when he casually told the auctioneers that he would defer payment until his finances were more flush, the head of the firm drew him aside.

“I am afraid, Marcus Antonius, that you must pay the entire amount immediately. Orders from Caesar.”

“But it would clean me out!” said Antony indignantly.

“Pay now, or forfeit the property and incur a fine.”

Antony paid, cursing.

Whereas Servilia, new owner of Lentulus Crus's latifundium and several lucrative vineyards in Falernian Campania, fared much better at Caesar's hands.

“Our instructions are to give you a third off the price,” the chief auctioneer said when she presented herself at the booth to make arrangements for payment. She hadn't bothered to use an agent, it was more fun by far to bid in person, especially as she was a women and not supposed to be so publicly forward.

“Instructions from whom?” she asked.

“Caesar, domina. He said you would understand.”

Most of Rome understood, including Cicero, who almost fell off his chair laughing. “Oh, well done, Caesar!” he cried to Atticus (another successful bidder), visiting to give him all the news. “A third off! A third! You have to admit that the man's witty!” The joke, of course, lay in the fact that Servilia's third girl, Tertulla, was Caesar's child.

The witticism hadn't amused Servilia in the least, but her umbrage was not sufficient to spurn the discount. Ten million was ten million, after all.

Gaius Cassius, who bid for nothing, was not amused either. “How dared he draw attention to my wife!” he snarled. “Everyone I meet puns on Tertulla's name!”

More than his wife's relationship to Caesar was annoying Cassius; while Brutus, the same age and at exactly the same level on the cursus honorum, was going to govern Italian Gaul as proconsul, he, Gaius Cassius, had been palmed off with an ordinary propraetorian legateship in Asia Province. Though Vatia the governor was his own brother-in-law, he wasn't one of Cassius's favorite people.

The Sting in Winning

From JANUARY until QUINCTILIS (JULY) of 46 B.C.

[October 282.jpg]

Publius Sittius was a Roman knight from Campanian Nuceria, of considerable wealth and education; among his friends he had numbered Sulla and Cicero. Several unfortunate investments during the years after Pompey the Great and Marcus Crassus had been consuls for the first time had caused him to join Catilina's conspiracy to overthrow Rome's legitimate government; what had attracted him was Catilina's promise that he would bring in a general cancellation of debts. Though Sittius didn't think so at the time, it turned out to be for the best that his financial embarrassments grew too pressing to linger in Italy waiting for Catilina's bid at power. He was forced to flee to Further Spain at the beginning of the Cicero/Hybrida consulship, and when that didn't prove far enough away from Rome, he then migrated to Tingis, the capital of western Mauretania.

This most distressing series of events brought out qualities in Publius Sittius that he never knew he owned; the businessman with a tendency to speculate transformed himself into a sweet-talking, immensely capable freebooter who undertook to reorganize King Bocchus's army, and even to provide the ruler of western Mauretania with a nice little navy. Though Bocchus's kingdom was farther from Numidia than his brother, Bogud's, kingdom of eastern Mauretania, Bocchus was terrified of the expansionist ideas churning around in King Juba of Numidia's head. Juba was determined to be another Masinissa, and since the Roman African province lay on Numidia's eastern borders, the only direction to expand was west.

Once he had Bocchus's forces up to strength, Sittius did the same for Bogud's forces. His rewards were gratifying; money, his own palace in Tingis, a whole harem of delectable women, and no business worries. Definitely the life of a talented freebooter was preferable to flirting with conspiracies in Italy!

When King Juba of Numidia declared for the Republicans after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it was inevitable that Bocchus and Bogud of Mauretania would declare for Caesar. Publius Sittius stepped up Mauretanian military preparedness and sat back to see what would happen. A great relief when Caesar won at Pharsalus, then a huge shock when the Republican survivors of Pharsalus decided to make Africa Province their next focus of resistance. Too close to home!

So Sittius hired a few spies in Utica and Hadrumetum to keep himself informed on Republican doings, and waited for Caesar to invade, as Caesar must.

•      •      •

But Caesar's invasion began unhappily in several ways. He and his first fleet were forced to land at Leptis Minor because every seaport to the north of it was too strongly fortified by the Republicans to think of trying to get ashore. As there were no port facilities at Leptis Minor the ships had to be brought in very close to a long beach and the troops ordered to jump into shallow water, wade ashore. Caesar went first, of course. But his fabled luck deserted him; he jumped, tripped and fell full length in the knee-deep water. A terrible omen! Every single pair of watching eyes widened, a thousand throats gasped, rumbled.

Up he came with the agility of a cat, both hands clenched into fists above his head, sand trickling from them down his arms.

“Africa, I have you in my hold!” he shouted, turning the omen into a propitious one.

Nor had he neglected the old legend that Rome couldn't win in Africa without a Scipio present. The Republicans had Metellus Scipio in the command tent, but Caesar's purely titular second-in-command was Scipio Salvitto, a disreputable scion of the family Cornelius Scipio whom he had plucked out of a Roman brothel. A complete nonsense, Caesar knew; Gaius Marius had conquered in Africa without a Scipio in sight, though Sulla was a Cornelian.

None of which had much significance compared to the fact that his legions were continuing to mutiny. The Ninth and Tenth were joined by the Fourteenth in a mutiny first quelled in Sicily, but which flared up again the moment they were landed in Africa. He paraded them, flogged a few and concentrated upon the five men, including the un-elected tribune of the soldiers Gaius Avienus, who had done most of the damage. The five were put aboard a ship with all their belongings and sent back to Italy, disgraced, discharged and stripped of every entitlement from land to booty.

“If I were a Marcus Crassus, I would decimate you!” he cried to the assembled men. “You deserve no mercy! But I cannot execute men who have fought for me bravely!”

Naturally the news that Caesar's legions were disaffected reached the Republicans; Labienus began to whoop in delight.

“What a situation!” Caesar said to Calvinus, with him as usual. “Of my eight legions, three consist of raw, unblooded recruits, and of my five veteran legions, three are untrustworthy.”

“They'll fight for you with all their customary verve,” Calvinus said comfortably. “You have a genius for handling them that fools like Marcus Crassus never had. Yes, I know you loved him, but a general who decimates is a fool.”

“I was too weak,” Caesar said.

“A comfort to know you have weaknesses, Gaius. A comfort to them as well. They don't think the worse of you for clemency.” He patted Caesar's arm. “There won't be any more mutinies. Go and drill your raw recruits.”

Advice that Caesar followed, to discover that his luck was back. Exercising his three legions of raw recruits, he stumbled by chance upon Titus Labienus and a larger force, and evaded defeat by typical Caesarean boldness. Labienus ceased to whoop.

•      •      •

Reports of all this had percolated to Publius Sittius; he and his two kings began to fear that Caesar, very outnumbered, would be overpowered.

What, wondered Sittius, could Mauretania do to help? Nothing in Africa Province because the Mauretanian army was similar to the Numidian one: it consisted of lightly armed cavalry who fought as lancers rather than at close quarters. Nowhere near enough ships were available to transport troopers and horses a thousand miles by sea. Therefore, Publius Sittius decided, the best thing to do was to invade Numidia from the west and lure King Juba back to defend his own kingdom. That would leave the Republicans very short of cavalry and deny them one of their sources of supplies.

The moment he heard that the impudent Sittius had invaded, Juba panicked and withdrew westward in a hurry.

“I do not know how long we can keep Juba out of the way,” said Sittius in a letter to Caesar, “but my kings and I hope that his absence will at least give you a breathing space.”

•      •      •

A breathing space that Caesar utilized to good effect. He sent Gaius Sallustius Crispus and one legion to the big island of Cercina in the bight, where the Republicans had amassed huge stores of grain. Though it was after harvest time, the African province's grain was denied him, for the Bagradas River's wheat latifundia lay west of the Republican lines; Caesar's territory around Leptis Minor was the poorest land in the province, and south to Thapsus it was even poorer.

“What the Republicans have forgotten,” Caesar said to Sallust, recovered from his stoning at Abella, “is that Gaius Marius settled Cercina with his veterans. My father was the one who did it for him, so the Cercinans know the name of Caesar very well. You have this job, Sallustius, because you can draw the birds down from the trees with words. What you have to do is remind the children and grandchildren of Gaius Marius's veterans that Caesar is Marius's nephew, that their loyalties must lie with Caesar. Talk well, and you won't have to fight. I want the Cercinans to hand over Metellus Scipio's hoard of grain willingly. If we have it, we'll eat for however long we're in Africa.”

While Sallust sailed off with his legion on the short voyage to Cercina, Caesar fortified his position and started to send letters of commiseration to the wheat plutocrats of the Bagradas and the Catada, whom Metellus Scipio was needlessly antagonizing. Having taken sufficient grain to feed his troops without bothering to pay for it, Metellus Scipio, for reasons best known to himself, pursued a scorched-earth policy, burned the fields wherein the coming year's crops were sprouting.

“It rather sounds,” said Caesar to his nephew Quintus Pedius, “as if Metellus Scipio thinks the Republicans are going to lose.”

“Whoever wins must lose,” said Quintus Pedius, a farmer to his very core. “We'd better hope this business finishes itself in time to plant a second time. The bulk of the winter rains are still to come, and burned stubble ploughed in is beneficial.”

“Let's hope Sallustius succeeds” was Caesar's answer.

Two nundinae after his departure, Sallust and his legion were back, Sallust wreathed in smiles. Apprised of the situation, the Cercinans unanimously declared for Caesar, undertook to keep the major part of the grain there, defend it against Republican grain transports when they came, and send it to Caesar as he needed it.

“Excellent!” said Caesar. “Now all we have to do is force a general engagement and get this wretched affair over with.”

Easier said than done. With Juba absent, neither Metellus Scipio in the command tent nor Labienus in the field wanted a general engagement with someone as slippery as Caesar, even if his veterans were disaffected.

Caesar wrote to Publius Sittius and told him to withdraw.

•      •      •

More time actually dragged on than the calendar indicated, for the College of Pontifices at Caesar's direction had declared an intercalation following the month of February: twenty-three extra days. This little month, called Mercedonius, had to be taken into account when both sides said that March seemed as if it would never end. The Republican legions, camped around Hadrumetum, and the Caesarean legions, camped around Leptis Minor, had to suffer two full months of relative inertia while Juba in western Numidia tried to lay his hands on the wily Publius Sittius, who finally received Caesar's letter and withdrew toward the end of March. Juba hurried back to Africa Province.

•      •      •

Even so, Caesar had to force an engagement, the Republicans were so wary of him. They skirmished, then withdrew, skirmished, then withdrew. Very well, they would have it thus! Caesar must attack Thapsus from its landward side. Not very far south of Leptis Minor, the city was already under massive blockade from the sea, but Labienus had fortified it heavily, and it still held out.

Shadowed by Metellus Scipio and Labienus in joint command of the entire Republican army, including Juba and his squadron of war elephants, Caesar marched his legions out of Leptis Minor in the direction of Thapsus at the beginning of April.

A typical feature of that brackish, inhospitable coastline gave Caesar his long-awaited chance: a flat, sandy spit about a mile and a half wide and several miles long. On one side of it lay the sea, on the other a huge salt lagoon. Inwardly exulting, Caesar led his army on to the spit, and kept marching in very tight formation until every man he had was penned into the spit.

What he gambled on was that Labienus wouldn't divine why he marched in a modified agmen quadratum instead of the usual eight-man-wide snake; agmen quadratum was a march in wide columns of troops, which reduced the length of the forces while it increased their breadth. Knowing Labienus, he would simply assume that Caesar expected to be attacked by the shadowing Republican army, and wanted to hustle his men off the spit as quickly as he could. In reality, it was Caesar who intended to attack.

The moment Caesar marched into the spit, Labienus saw what he had to do, and raced to do it. While the bulk of his infantry under Afranius and Juba closed Caesar off from retreat out of the spit, Labienus and Metellus Scipio led the cavalry and the fast-moving veteran legions around the landward side of the lagoon and positioned themselves at the far end of the spit to meet Caesar's advance head-on.

Caesar's bugles sounded: his army promptly split into two halves, with Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus leading the half which reversed its direction and charged at Afranius and Juba behind, while Caesar and Quintus Pedius led the half still moving forward in a charge at Labienus and Metellus Scipio. All Caesar's crack legions were at the head and rear of his army, with the raw recruits in the middle. The moment the two halves went in opposite directions, the recruits were behind the crack troops.

Thapsus, as the battle came to be called, was a rout. All smarting from Caesar's disapproval allied to his clemency, his veterans, particularly the Tenth, fought perhaps better than in all their long careers. By the end of the day, ten thousand Republican dead littered the field, and organized resistance in Africa was over. The most disappointing thing about Thapsus to Caesar was the dearth of prominent captives. Metellus Scipio, Labienus, Afranius, Petreius, Sextus Pompey, the governor Attius Varus, Faustus Sulla and Lucius Manlius Torquatus all fled, as did King Juba.

“I very much fear it will go on somewhere else,” Calvinus said to Caesar afterward. “In Spain, perhaps.”

“If it does, then I'll go to Spain,” Caesar said grimly. “The Republican cause has to die, Calvinus, otherwise the Rome I want to make will revert back to the boni conception of the mos maiorum.”

“Then the one you have to eliminate is Cato.”

“Not eliminate, if by that you mean kill. I don't want any of them dead, but most particularly Cato. The rest may see the error of their ways, Cato never will. Why? Because that part of his mind is missing. Yet he must stay alive, and he must enter my Senate. I need Cato as an exhibit.”

“He won't consent to that.”

“He won't know that he is,” Caesar said positively. “I'm going to write a protocol governing conduct in the Senate and the comitia—no filibustering, for example. Time limits for speeches. And no allegations about fellow members without definite proof.”

“We march for Utica, then?”

“We march for Utica.”