Warlords of Republican Rome

Caesar Versus Pompey

Nic Fields

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781935149064
• eBook ISBN: 9781783460922
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The war between Caesar and Pompey was one of the defining moments in Roman history. The clash between these great generals gripped the attention of their contemporaries and it has fascinated historians ever since. These powerful men were among the dominant personalities of their age, and their struggle for supremacy divided Rome. In this original and perceptive study Nic Fields explores the complex, often brutal world of Roman politics and the lethal rivalry of Caesar and Pompey that grew out of it. He reconsiders them as individuals and politicians and, above all, as soldiers. His highly readable account of this contest for power gives a vivid insight into the rise and fall of two of the greatest warlords of the ancient world.

Chapter 1

Republican Legions

The wars fought by early Rome consisted of hit-and-run raids and ambushes, tit-for-tat skirmishes and cattle rustling, with perhaps the occasional battle between armies. The latter were little more than warrior bands formed by an aristocrat, his kin and clients, very much like the ‘private army’ of the Fabii with its 306 ‘clansmen and companions’.² The clan-leader fought for personal glory, his followers out of loyalty to him and the prospect of portable booty. Livy, for instance, constantly refers to Roman plundering, and the predatory behaviour of the Romans is suitably illustrated by the raids and counter-raids conducted against the petty hill-tribes of the Volsci, Aequi, Sabines and Hernici, what he labels the frequent instances of ‘neither assured peace nor open war’.³ However, a major development came with the adoption of the hoplite phalanx, via the Greek colonies of southern Italy, probably some time in the sixth century BC.⁴

Livy, who was writing at the very end of the first century BC, attributes a major reform of Rome’s socio-political and military organisation to the penultimate king, Servius Tullius (traditionally 579–534 BC). A census of all adult male citizens recorded the value of their property and divided them accordingly into classes. The archaeological record does suggest that the Romans adopted hoplite equipment some time in this century, so the annalistic tradition may be broadly accurate. Thus in Livy the Servian classes I, II and III essentially fought with hoplite arms, except that members of class I armed themselves with the clipeus while classes II and III used the scutum.⁵ Classes IV and V were armed as skirmishers, the last class perhaps carrying nothing more than a sling.

This system provided the basis of the comitia centuriata, the assembly at which the citizens voted to declare war or accept a peace treaty, elected the consuls, praetors and censors, the senior magistrates of Rome, and tried capital cases. Gathering on the campus Martius (Field of Mars), an open area outside the original boundary – pomoerium – of the city, its structure exemplified the ideal of a citizen militia in battle array, men voting and fighting together in the same units. This assembly operated on a ‘timocratic principle’, that is to say, only those who could afford arms could vote, which meant the comitia centuriata was in effect an assembly of property-owners-cum-citizen-soldiers. However, the Servian army of Livy does not appear in his battle accounts.

The Legion

The Romans later adopted the manipular legion, either just before or during Rome’s wars with the Samnite confederation.⁶ Although tactically more flexible, the early legion retained many of the aspects of the hoplite phalanx from which it developed. Thus the army remained a provisional militia, and the census recorded those citizens with sufficient property to make them eligible to serve.

Originally the term legio – legion – had meant levy, and obviously referred to the entire citizen force raised by Rome in one year. However, as the number of citizens regularly enrolled for military service increased, the legion became the most important subdivision of the army. By the middle Republic the legion consisted of five elements – namely the heavy infantry hastati, principes and triarii, the light infantry velites, and the cavalry equites – each equipped differently and having specific places in the legion’s tactical formation. Its principal strength was the thirty maniples of its heavy infantry, the velites and equites acting in support of these. These tactical units of some 120 men were deployed in three lines of ten maniples each. It was a force designed for large-scale battles, for standing in the open, moving directly forward and smashing its way frontally through any opposition.

The essential philosophy behind the manipular legion was that of winning a straightforward mass engagement with the enemy. A quick decisive clash with the enemy was desired, and in this role the manipular legion performed very well. The inclusion of allied troops within the armies of this period did not change the essential tactical doctrines. Many allied units were organised and equipped as legions and thus acted in a similar fashion, while the additional light-armed troops or cavalry were deployed to help achieve the same aim of breaking the enemy line. Concerning its actual organisation, we have two accounts. First, the Roman historian Livy, writing more than three centuries after the event, describes the legion of the mid-fourth century BC. Second, the Greek historian Polybios, living and writing in Rome at the time, describes the legion of the mid-second century BC.

Livian Organisation

In his account of the year 340 BC, after the close of the First Samnite War (343–341 BC), and as a preamble to the war against the Latin allies (Latin War, 340–338 BC), Livy offers a brief description of Roman military organisation. He notes that the Romans had formerly fought in hoplite style in a phalanx (introduced as part of the Servian reforms), but recently they had adopted manipular tactics with the legion being split into distinct battle lines. Behind a screen of light-armed troops (leves) the first main line contained maniples (manipuli or ‘handfuls’) of hastati (‘spearmen’), the second line was made up of maniples of principes (‘chief men’), and the third line, made of the oldest and more mature men, consisted of maniples of triarii (‘third rank men’).⁷

All three lines carried the oval-shaped Italic shield, the scutum, and the first and third (and perhaps also the second, but this is not made clear) had the hasta or spear. There is no reference to the pilum, which, if Livy’s account is accepted, may not yet have been introduced. The earliest reference to the pilum belongs to 295 BC during the Third Samnite War (298–290 BC).⁸ One significant problem, however, is the fact that Livy has fifteen maniples in each of the three lines, as opposed to Polybios’ ten maniples. Other groups, whom Livy calls rorarii and accensi, were lightly equipped and formed a final reserve in the rear.⁹

Livy’s account is pleasingly close to that of Polybios and probably derives from the latter, so that its independent value is not great. Moreover, if we choose to accept the evidence of Dionysios of Halikarnassos – namely that long thrusting-spears for hand-to-hand fighting were still being used by the principes during the war with Pyrrhos of Epeiros (Pyrrhic War, 280–275 BC), then Livy dates the manipular system too far back.¹⁰ It seems, therefore, that the transformation from hoplite phalanx to manipular legion was a slow and gradual one, which for Livy was a thing over and done with by the early fourth century BC. For the organisation of the Roman legion solid ground is reached only with Polybios himself.

Polybian Organisation

Polybios breaks off his narrative of the Second Punic War at the nadir of Rome’s fortunes, following the three defeats of the Trebbia, Trasimene and Cannae, and turns to an extended digression on the Roman constitution and the Roman army.¹¹ For us the account of the latter is of inestimable value, not least because the detailed description is provided by a contemporary, himself a former cavalry commander (hipparchos) in the Achaian League, who had seen the Roman army in action against his fellow-Greeks during the Third Macedonian War (171–167 BC) and had perhaps observed its levying and training during his internment in Rome (167–150 BC).

The Roman Art of War

The legion would usually approach the enemy in its standard battle formation, the triplex acies or ‘three lines’, with the normal arrangement having four cohorts in the first line, and three each in the second and third.¹² Moving ahead at a walking pace and normally deployed in four ranks, each cohort advanced alongside its neighbours under the direction of its centurions. During this advance the soldiers had to listen out for orders and make sure they never lost sight of their standards. The six centurions of each cohort were distinguished by helmets with transverse crests so the common soldiers could follow ‘not only their standard, but also the centurion’.¹³ The soldiers were ranged behind him by contubernia, the ‘tentfuls’ of eight men, ten per century.

It may have been necessary at some point for the advance to stop and the cohorts to align themselves before the final approach. Any gaps could be filled in at this time too. And then, at the signal, the soldiers began their attack, probably a short jog of perhaps 40 or 50 metres; running in armour, scutum and pila in hand while in formation, must have been out of the question. As they approached the enemy, they would cast their pila, perhaps at a distance of 15 metres or so, and then draw their gladii and prepare to close. This means the soldiers probably came to a near halt, perhaps involuntarily, to be sure of their neighbours. When writing of ancient warfare, Colonel Charles-Ardant du Picq puts it at its elegant best:

At the moment of getting close to the enemy, the dash slackened of its own accord, because the men of the first rank, of necessity and instinctively, assured themselves of the position of their supports, their neighbours in the same line, their comrades in the second, and collected themselves together in order to be more the masters of their movements to strike and parry …¹⁴

According to Caesar’s own words, the raising of a war-cry was usually associated with the volley of pila and the final charge into contact.¹⁵ At or about the moment of impact, the narrow gaps between the cohorts were filled naturally by men from the rear ranks, and so the two opposing lines stayed face to face, so long as one did not break and allow itself to be struck in a suddenly exposed flank.

The centurions, always leading from the front, urged their men forward and pressed them to come to actual blows, crossing swords themselves when they needed to lead by example. At any place where the line thinned as soldiers pulled out from injury or exhaustion, a second-line cohort would be sent to brace them. In hand-to-hand fighting physical endurance is of the utmost importance and all soldiers in close contact with danger become emotionally if not physically exhausted as the battle proceeds. Du Picq noted the great value of the Roman system in keeping only those units that were necessary at the point of combat, and the rest ‘outside the immediate sphere of moral tension’.¹⁶ The legion, organised into three separate lines, was able to hold two-thirds of its men outside the danger zone – the zone of demoralisation – in which the remaining third was engaged. Ideally, therefore, the front-line cohorts fought the main enemy line to a standstill, but if they were rebuffed or lost momentum or the ranks thinned, the second-line cohorts advanced into the combat zone and the process was repeated. The skill of a Roman commander lay in committing his second and third lines, fresh troops who were both physically and morally fit, at the right time.

The legion had no overall commander, being officered by six military tribunes (tribuni militum)¹⁷ drawn from the aristocracy. Like all senior officers of the army, these men were not professional soldiers but magistrates elected by the citizens in the comitia centuriata. Having served a five-year military apprenticeship – young aristocrats almost certainly fulfilled this obligation serving in the cavalry – they would be eligible for election to the rank of military tribune, a...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology
• The Careers of Pompey and Caesar
• Key to Forenames
• Key to Legionary Titles
• Maps
• Prologue
• 1. Republican Legions
• 2. The Forerunner
• 3. The Rise of Pompey
• 4. Pompey at War
• 5. The Rise of Caesar
• 6. Caesar at War
• 7. Pompey versus Caesar
• 8. Caesar’s Triumph
• 9. Caesar’s Legacy
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography