Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome (24 page)

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eventually bear his name, who had been nearly forty before he made his first military mark, an original tactician and engineering genius with a mastery of detail, a commander with dash, the common touch, luck, and the smaller but more experienced army.

Plutarch was to lament that, combined, two such famous, talented Roman generals and their seventy thousand men could have conquered the old enemy Parthia for Rome, could have marched unassailed all the way to India. Instead, here they were, bent on destroying each other.

It probably occurred to Centurion Crastinus that he might know some of the 1st Legion centurions across the field, might have served with them, might have drunk with them and played dice with them somewhere on his legionary travels. He would have watched them talking to their men, animatedly passing on instructions. They were easy enough to spot; like him, they wore a transverse crest on their helmets. It made them easy to identify for their own men, and marked them as targets for the opposition. Centurions were the key to an army’s success in battle. Crastinus knew it, and Caesar knew it. The 10th Legion’s six tribunes were back between the lines. Young, rich, spoiled members of the Equestrian Order, few had the respect of the enlisted men. From later events it is likely that one of the 10th’s tribunes, Gaius Avienus, had done nothing but complain since they set sail from Brindisi that Caesar had forced him to leave all his servants behind.

This day would be decided by the centurions and their legionaries, the rank and file, and as Crastinus had told Caesar, he was determined to acquit himself honorably. Four hundred fifty yards away, men of the first rank of the 1st Legion would have been looking at Crastinus and setting their sights on making a trophy of his crested helmet. The man who took that to his tribune after the battle, preferably with Crastinus’s severed head still in it, could expect a handsome reward. Without doubt they looked confident, these legionaries of the 1st. Crastinus may have imagined they thought they were something special, Pompey’s pets. Crastinus would see how confident they looked in an hour or so.

Around the centurion, his men would have been becoming impatient, knowing in their bones that this day would not be like the others when they’d stood and stared at their opponents for hours on end before marching back to camp at sunset. This day the air was electric, and the tension would have been getting to some of them, wanting to move, to get started.

As if in answer, trumpets sounded behind the ranks across the field.

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decided not to waste any time. Moments before, the thousands of cavalry horses banked up on the extreme left of Pompey’s line had been waiting restlessly, some neighing, some pawing the ground, some fidgeting and hard to control. Now, with a cacophony of war cries, their riders were urging them forward. Within seconds, seven thousand horses and riders were charging across the wheat field.

Behind Crastinus, trumpets of his own side sounded. In response, Caesar’s German and Gallic cavalry lurched forward to meet the Pompeian charge, with their auxiliary light infantry companions running after them.

The Battle of Pharsalus had begun.

On Pompey’s side, his thirty-six hundred archers and slingers dashed out from behind the lines and formed up in the open to the rear of their charging cavalry. On command, the bowmen let loose volleys of arrows that flew over the heads of their galloping troopers and dropped among Caesar’s charging cavalry.

The infantry of both sides remained where they were in their battle lines, and watched with morbid fascination as their cavalry came together on the eastern side of the battlefield. General Labienus would have been at the head of his German and Gallic cavalry, cutting down any Caesarian trooper who ventured near him, and issuing a stream of orders.

For a short while Caesar’s cavalry held its ground, but with their men falling in increasing numbers, they began to give way. At least two hundred of Caesar’s cavalrymen were soon dead or seriously wounded, and Labienus saw the time had come to execute the maneuver that Pompey had planned. Leaving the allied cavalry to deal with Caesar’s troopers, probably under the direction of his colleague General Marcus Petreius, he led his German and Gallic cavalry around the perimeter of the fighting and charged toward the exposed flank and rear of the 10th Legion.

Caesarian auxiliaries scattered from the path of the cavalry, and the men of the 10th Legion on the extreme right were forced to swing around and defend themselves as Labienus’s troopers surged up to them. As Labienus urged more squadrons to ride around behind the 10th and as they came to the legion’s third line, Caesar, not many yards away, barked an order.

Trumpets sounded, and the reserve cohorts of the fourth line suddenly jumped to their feet and dashed forward behind their standards, slamming into the unsuspecting cavalrymen before they even saw them. The men of the reserve cohorts had been given explicit instructions not to throw their javelins but to use them instead like spears, thrusting them overarm up into the faces of the cavalrymen. According to Plutarch, Caesar said, when c11.qxd 12/5/01 5:22 PM Page 124

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issuing the order for the tactic, “Those fine young dancers won’t endure the steel shining in their eyes. They’ll fly to save their handsome faces.”

Now Caesar’s shock troops mingled with the surprised Germans and Gauls at close quarters, pumping their javelins as instructed, taking out eyes, causing horrific facial injuries and fatalities with every strike. The congested cavalry had come to a dead stop, compressed between the rear ranks of the 10th and the reserve cohorts. There were so many of them there was nowhere for the riders to go; they merely provided sitting targets for the men of the reserve cohorts as they swarmed among them.

As many as a thousand of Labienus’s best cavalrymen were killed in this counterstroke. The panic that was created quickly spread to the allied cavalrymen behind them. Seeing the carnage, with Labienus’s big, long-haired riders falling like ninepins or reeling back and trying to protect their faces from the javelin thrusts instead of pressing home the now stalled attack, the allied riders disengaged from Caesar’s cavalry, turned, and galloped from the battlefield, heading in terror for the hills.

This allowed Caesar’s cavalry to join the reserve cohorts against Labienus’s men, and despite the general’s best efforts to rally his troopers, the combination of infantry and cavalry was too much for them and they broke and followed the allied cavalry toward the high country. Labienus had no choice but to pursue his own men, with hopes of trying to regroup.

As Caesar’s cavalry chased Labienus and his troopers all the way to the hills, Pompey’s left flank was exposed. With a cheer, Caesar’s reserve cohorts spontaneously rushed forward to the attack in the wake of their victory over the cavalry. All that stood in their way were Pompey’s archers and slingers. These men of Caesar’s strategic reserve, high on their bloody success against the mounted troops, quickly crossed the ground separating the two groups, neutralizing the effectiveness of the archers’ arrows and the slingers’ lead shot. The slingers were armed merely with their sling-shots. The archers, men from Crete, Pontus, Syria, and other eastern states, were armed, apart from their bows and arrows, only with swords. In close-quarters combat they were no competition for legionaries whose specialty was infighting. As the slingers ran, the archers bravely stood their ground and tried to put up a fight, but they were soon mowed down like hay before the scythe.

Now Caesar issued another order. His red banner dropped. The trumpets of the first and second infantry lines sounded “Charge.”

In the very front rank, on the right of Caesar’s line, Centurion Crastinus raised his right hand, clutching a javelin now. Caesar would later be told of his words. “Come on, men of my cohort, follow me!” he bellowed.

“And give your general the service you have promised!”

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With that, he dashed forward. All around him, the men of Caesar’s front line roared a battle cry and leaped forward, javelins raised in their right hands for an overarm throw when the order came to let fly.

Ahead, to the surprise of Crastinus and his comrades, Pompey’s front line didn’t budge. Pompey’s men were under orders to stand still and receive Caesar’s infantry charge, instead of themselves charging at Caesar’s running men, as was the norm in battles of the day. According to Caesar, this tactic had been suggested to Pompey by Gaius Triarius, one of his naval commanders. Pompey, lacking confidence in his infantry and anxious to give them an edge in the contest, had grabbed at the idea, which was intended to make Caesar’s troops run twice as far as usual and so arrive out of breath at the Pompeian line.

Caesar was later scathing of the tactic. He was to write that the running charge fired men’s enthusiasm for battle, and that generals ought to encourage this, not repress it. In fact, Pompey’s tactic did have something going for it, as his troops would present a solid barrier of interlocked shields against Caesar’s puffing, disorderly men, who had to break formation to run to the attack. It may have been effective against inexperienced troops, but in the middle of the battlefield Centurion Crastinus and his fellow centurions of the first rank drew their charging cohorts to a halt. The entire charge came to a stop. For perhaps a minute the Caesarian troops paused in the middle of the wheat field, catching their breath; then, led by Crastinus, they resumed the charge with a mighty roar.

On the run, the front line let fly with their javelins. At the same time, in Pompey’s front line, centurions called an order: “Loose!” The men of Pompey’s front line launched their own javelins with all their might, then raised their shields high to receive the Caesarian volley. Then, with javelins hanging from many a shield, they brought them down again, locking them together just in time to receive the charge. With an almighty crash Caesar’s front line washed onto the wall of Pompeian shields.

Despite the impact of the charge, Pompey’s line held firm.

Now, standing toe to toe with their adversaries, Caesar’s men tried to hack a way through the shield line. On Caesar’s right wing, Centurion Crastinus, repulsed in his initial charge, was moving from cohort to cohort as his men tried to break through the immovable 1st Legion line, urging on his legionaries at the top of his voice above the din of battle. Crastinus threw himself at the shield line, aiming to show his men how to reach over the top of an enemy shield and strike at the face of the soldier on the other side with the point of his sword. As he did, he felt a blow to the side of the head. He never even saw it coming. The strength suddenly drained c11.qxd 12/5/01 5:22 PM Page 126

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from his legs. He sagged to his knees. His head was spinning. Dazed, he continued to call out to his men to spur them on.

As he spoke, a legionary of the 1st Legion directly opposite him in the shield line moved his shield six inches to the left, opening a small gap. In a flash he had shoved his sword through the gap with a powerful forward thrust that entered the yelling Gaius Crastinus’s open mouth. According to Plutarch, the tip of the blade emerged from the back of Crastinus’s neck. The soldier of the 1st withdrew his bloodied sword and swiftly resealed the gap in the shield line. His action had lasted just seconds. No doubt with a crude cheer from the nearby men of the 1st Legion, Centurion Crastinus toppled forward into the shield in front of him, then slid to the ground.

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It was a stalemate at the front line. Neither side was making any forward progress. But on Caesar’s right, the reserve cohorts, fresh from the massacre of Pompey’s archers and slingers, were swinging onto the flank and rear of the 1st Legion.

Pompey had seen his cavalry stroke destroyed in minutes, had seen the cavalry he’d been depending on for victory flee the field. And now his ever-dependable 1st Legion was in difficulty. If the 1st couldn’t hold, no one could. Without a word, he turned his horse around and galloped back toward the camp on the hill. A handful of startled staff rode after him.

Plutarch says that as Pompey reached the camp’s praetorian gate, looking pale and dazed, he called to the centurions in charge, “Defend the camp strenuously if there should be any reverse in the battle. I’m going to check the guard on the other gates.”

Instead of going around the other three gates of the camp as he’d said, he went straight to his headquarters tent, and there he remained. He hadn’t wanted this battle, he had known the likely outcome, especially if it came down to a pure infantry engagement. But expecting something and then actually experiencing it are two different things. In a military career spanning thirty-four years Pompey the Great had never once experienced a defeat. And never once, in all probability, had he put himself in the shoes of men he’d defeated, and imagined what defeat might feel like.

It would have made the emptiness of failure all the more difficult to comprehend.

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The men of the 1st, fighting now on three sides and outnumbered, were in danger of being surrounded and cut to pieces. No orders came from Pompey—he’d disappeared. None came from their divisional commander, the useless General Domitius. Pompey had failed to maintain a reserve, which might have been thrown into support the 1st now in its time of need. With no hope of reinforcement, and with self-preservation in mind, the officers of the 1st decided to make a gradual withdrawal, in battle order, in an attempt to overcome the threat to their rear. Orders rang out, trumpets sang, and standards inclined toward the rear. Their pride and their discipline intact, the 1st Legion began to pull back in perfect order, step by step, harried all the way by the 10th Legion and the reserve cohorts.