Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (43 page)

torship in 82 BC, ruthlessly proscribing his enemies for execution. He is

supposed to have had on his tombstone an inscription boasting that no

one was a better friend or worse enemy.4

Roman public life was very dangerous in Caesar’s day. Most impor-

tant men had lost relatives or friends during the struggle between Sulla

and Marius. Senators lived with the knowledge that political rivalries

could easily erupt into intimidation, violence, or even warfare itself.

Times were less stable than in earlier centuries, and that meant that

there were greater opportunities for rapid advancement. Pompey the

Great broke almost all the rules in his rise to become Rome’s great-

est general and one of the dominant figures in the state. Ironically, he

would die as a defender of the republic against the rebel Caesar.

The Roman republic was already floundering before Caesar began

his career, let alone by the time he crossed the Rubicon. That does not

mean that its collapse was inevitable, but it did make it a real possibil-

ity. Military dictators do not usually appear unless a state is in serious,

usually long-term, trouble. Napoleon could not have existed without

the chaos of the Revolution and the Terror. However popular a great

and successful military commander may be, the circumstances need to

be right for him to turn against the state that appointed him. Caesar’s

dictatorship was not an instance of the army taking over the state. The

republic’s political leaders also commanded its army, and in 49 BC they

chose to employ the legions to resolve their political rivalry.

There is also another lesson from Caesar’s career. For all his military

success, he failed to find a political solution, and was murdered. There

are limits to what force alone can achieve. Caesar might have preserved

both his life and his rule had he taken greater precautions to protect

himself, and had he maintained control with greater ruthlessness.

208 Goldsworthy

Augustus would do both these things, learning a brutal lesson from the

failure of his adoptive father.

Politics and War

The same men led Rome in both peace and war. Men entering pub-

lic life followed a structured career, the
cursus honorum
, which brought

them a mixture of military and civil posts. Provincial governors com-

bined supreme military, civil, and judicial power within the territory

placed under their command. Magistrates were elected and held office

for a single year. Governors were normally appointed by the Senate

and did not have a fixed term in the post, remaining there until a re-

placement was appointed. They were rarely left in a post for more than

a few years.

Leading an army in a successful war gave a man glory and wealth.

Both brought considerable political advantages, helping him and his

descendants to win office in the future. Annual elections meant that

competition for the approval of voters was frequent. The compara-

tively short terms granted to provincial governors ensured that many

were eager to fight and win a war before they were replaced. It was a

system that had fostered aggressive warfare and expansion throughout

the republican period. It did not do much to encourage long-term plan-

ning or consistency in relations with neighboring peoples.

Caesar came from an aristocratic family that had languished in com-

parative obscurity for a long time. His early career was flamboyant but

in most respects conventional. He saw military service as a junior of-

ficer in Asia Minor in his late teens and won the
corona civica
, Rome’s

highest award for gallantry, which was traditionally given for saving the

life of a fellow citizen. As a private citizen he raised a force to arrest a

group of pirates, and on another occasion did the same to repulse an

attack on the Roman province of Asia by elements of Mithridates of

Pontus’s army. Caesar later served as a military tribune, most probably

in the war against Spartacus. There is no record of any military activ-

ity during his quaestorship. In 61 BC he went to Spain as governor and

led a rapid punitive expedition against Lusitanian tribes. His army was

equivalent in size to three legions.5

The General as State 209

By the time he was forty, Caesar had served for at most six or seven

years in some military capacity or other. This was perhaps a little below

average for a Roman politician, but not excessively so. Although his

record was good, many other men could boast of comparable achieve-

ments. Caesar’s rise up the
cursus honorum
was helped by his military

exploits, but other factors were far more important. He championed

popular causes, won a reputation as an orator and legal advocate, and

spent borrowed money on a staggering scale to advertise himself and

win popularity. As Sallust put it, “ ‘Caesar had accustomed himself to

great effort and little rest; to concentrate on his friends’ business at the

expense of his own, and never to neglect anything which was worth

doing as a favour. He craved great
imperium
, an army, and a new war so

that he could show his talent.”6

The contrast between Pompey’s career and Caesar’s career could

not be more marked. Only six years older, Pompey raised three legions

from his own estates and at his own expense, and rallied to Sulla’s cause

during the civil war. He had no legitimate authority to do this, but his

army was large enough to make his support worth having. All of his

early victories were achieved over Roman enemies, as he mopped up

Sulla’s enemies in Italy and Africa and earned himself the nickname

“the young butcher” for the enthusiasm with which he executed sena-

tors. In 78 BC the Senate employed him to deal with an attempted coup

by the consul Lepidus. After that he was sent to Spain to finish off the

last remnants of Marius’s supporters. He was given proconsular power

by the Senate, but had never held a magistracy and was not even a sena-

tor. In 71 he returned to Rome, demanded and was given the right to

stand for the consulship, and finally became a senator. In 67 and 66 BC he

was given extraordinarily large provincial commands, for the first time

winning victories against genuinely foreign opponents. On his return

to Rome at the end of the decade, he was fabulously wealthy and en-

joyed a record of military success far outstripping any other senator’s.

Caesar wanted a war to win glory to match men like Crassus and

Lucul us, and ideal y Pompey himself. He also needed a war to pay his

massive debts. Late in 60 BC, he formed a secret al iance with Pompey

and Crassus, both of whom were frustrated by their failure to get mea-

sures through the Senate. Caesar became consul for 59 BC, and with their

210 Goldsworthy

backing he forced through the legislation they wanted, as wel as some

of his own. He also secured himself a grand military command, com-

bining the provinces of Cisalpine Gaul and Il yria, which won him an

army of three legions. This was not al ocated by the Senate but given

to him by the vote of the Popular Assembly, which at the same time

granted him five years in the post. Pompey had gained some of his com-

mands in the same way. The Senate did augment Caesar’s province by

adding Transalpine Gaul fol owing the sudden death of its current gov-

ernor. This province included another legion to augment Caesar’s army.

The Shaping of War

Like many successful statesmen, Caesar was an opportunist. When

he went to his province in 58 BC, he needed a war, any war, so long

as it was on a grand scale. His initial plans envisaged a campaign on

the Danube, most likely against the wealthy and powerful Dacian king

Burebista. The unexpected addition of Transalpine Gaul to Caesar’s

command was soon followed by news of the migration of the Helvetii,

a tribe from what is now Switzerland. The migrants wanted to cross

through the Roman province and were seen as a threat by tribes allied

with Rome. Caesar would have been criticized if he had ignored this

problem. In any event, he quickly realized this was an opportunity, and

took swift action. He concentrated his army to meet this threat, and

repulsed the Helvetii. He then left his province to pursue them, eventu-

ally smashing them in battle.

By the end of the campaign, it was too late in the year to think of

mounting an operation in the Balkans. Rather than waste the time,

Caesar decided to attack the German leader Ariovistus. The latter had

originally been invited into Gaul by the Sequani, but had then come

to dominate the tribe and its neighbors. Up to this point, the Romans

had accepted the situation, and in 59 BC Caesar himself had helped

Ariovistus be formally named a “friend and ally of the Roman People.”

Now he argued that the German leader was a serious threat to allied

tribes such as the Aedui. Ariovistus was attacked and defeated. Involve-

ment in the affairs of Gaul offered further opportunities for interven-

tion. In 57 BC, Caesar once again claimed that defending Rome’s allies

The General as State 211

and interests required him to launch another major aggressive war, this

time against the Belgic tribes.

Caesar carefully publicized his achievements in his famous
Commen-

taries
, which seem to have been released as individual books during

the winter months after a campaign.7 These portray a commander al-

ways acting for the good of the republic. They do not mention the

more personal factors that shaped the warfare but instead present a

seamless—and apparently logical—progression from one campaign to

the next. The tribes of Gaul were portrayed as unstable and prone to

internal revolution, but essentially static. In contrast, Caesar depicted

the Germanic tribes as seminomadic pastoralists, always inclined to mi-

grate westward to the better land of Gaul. This invoked memories and

fears of the Cimbri and other tribes that had threatened Italy itself at

the end of the second century BC. The Rhine was presented as the clear

dividing line between the Gauls and the Germans, although Caesar’s

own narrative acknowledges that things were more complicated. This

gave him a clear limit to the land he needed to occupy, and a clear rea-

son for destroying any Germanic groups that moved into Gaul. The

expeditions over the Rhine were brief and never intended to lead to

permanent occupation. They demonstrated that the Romans could

and would cross the river whenever they chose. Doing so by building a

bridge—something beyond the capability of the tribes—reinforced the

point of overwhelming Roman superiority.8

In 56 BC, the fighting was smaller scale, and much of it was carried

out by Caesar’s subordinates at the head of detachments from the

army. This was in part because the largest obvious targets or opponents

had already been dealt with, but mainly because political concerns kept

Caesar in Cisalpine Gaul, as close to Italy as possible. Tensions between

Pompey and Crassus nearly led to the breakdown of their alliance.

Both men traveled to meet with Caesar inside his province, at what is

known as the Conference of Luca. A new deal was made, one conse-

quence of which was the extension of Caesar’s command by five years.

This permitted Caesar far more scope for planning. It is probable

that he was already contemplating an expedition to Britain. In 56 BC

he defeated the Veneti, a tribe that possessed a fleet and might have

hindered the expedition. In 55 BC a campaign against migrating German

212 Goldsworthy

tribes delayed the attack on Britain, so that only a small-scale operation

crossed the channel at the very end of the year. The campaign nearly

ended in disaster when much of the fleet was wrecked in a storm.

Caesar returned the next year with a much bigger force. He achieved

a minor victory, but once again underestimated the power of the Eng-

lish Channel and was nearly stranded on the island. Militarily, the Brit-

ish expeditions achieved very little indeed, at high risk. Politically they

were a staggering success, with the Senate voting Caesar twenty days

of public thanksgiving to mark the victory—a longer period than had

ever been awarded before.9

Caesar’s campaigns were aggressive and opportunistic. However, in

neither their conduct nor their operation were they markedly differ-

ent from Roman warfare in this and earlier periods. Unlike most com-

manders, Caesar had larger forces at his disposal and a longer period

of command. By Roman standards, his campaigns were justified. The

only direct attack on his behavior in Gaul was launched by Cato the

Younger in 55 BC, after Caesar had massacred the migrating German

tribes. Cato’s concern was not with the slaughter itself but that it had

occurred during a truce, and so was a breach of Rome’s much vaunted