It took a matter of months to defeat Pompey’s three armies in Spain. But while Caesar drove his legionaries to the physical limits of exhaustion and endurance, the same could not be said of Pompey. In Greece he recruited his army at leisure. His army coffers were in rude health too, as he had forced the tax-farming companies of the east to hand over their gold.66 Despite knowing that Pompey held these major advantages, in the winter of 49–48 BC Caesar returned to Brundisium. Here Mark Antony had collected a fleet, and together they prepared to set sail for the great confrontation with Pompey. The republic had come to a fork in the road: would it fall into the hands of the old guard constitutionalists or to Caesar’s new order – to those protecting the liberty of the élite or that of people?
Although it was the depths of winter and the Adriatic was crawling with Pompey’s ships, Caesar’s fleet, shuttling between the two coasts of Italy and modern-day Albania, outwitted the blockade of his enemies and safely landed seven legions near Dyracchium (Durres). When the rest of his soldiers were delayed by the enemy fleet, Caesar was so determined for them to join him that he disguised himself and forced the captain of a twelve-oared fishing vessel to ferry him back to Italy in the midst of a violent storm.67 Close to being shipwrecked, Caesar gave up the plan and put his trust in his deputy across the water. Mark Antony duly rose to the occasion, ran the gauntlet and successfully ferried over Caesar’s remaining legions.
Once in northern Greece, one principle of war dictated the tactics that both sides adopted: the need for supplies. Pompey was in friendly territory, had secure supply lines and was in control of the seas. Caesar, by contrast, was utterly outnumbered, in enemy territory and had very few supplies. As a result, Pompey wanted to wage a war of attrition, to grind down Caesar’s men by putting off any engagement with them, and to watch starvation destroy all their vigour. Yes, Caesar’s soldiers were experienced and battle-hardened, but the years of war, of long marches, of building camps and besieging cities had taken their toll too. Time and again Caesar tried to lure Pompey into battle to win a quick victory. Time and again Pompey resisted the temptation.
A psychological battle ensued, the Pompeian soldiers testing the endurance of Caesar’s gritty, bloody-minded legionaries. When Caesar besieged Pompey’s camp near Dyrrachium, Pompey thought he had Caesar’s army starved of supplies. However, the soldiers, more wild beast than human, were determined to maintain the blockade in the face of illness, fatigue and extreme privation. They found a solution in a local root called ‘chara’, from which they managed to bake loaves and survive. When the Pompeian army goaded its enemies with taunts of famine, the Caesareans replied by throwing a few loaves over the walls into its camp just to rattle the enemy with their tenacity, just to prove their invincibility, their superhuman powers.68 Nevertheless, the Pompeian legionaries would not be rattled for long.
When Pompey finally engaged his enemy at Dyrrachium, he routed Caesar’s army. The ninth legion took the brunt of the casualties. Crucially, however, Pompey did not drive home his advantage, but let his enemy’s army escape to safety. Distraught at his first defeat in years, Caesar came to a tough realization. He needed to exhaust his enemy, to draw Pompey away from the sea into the mountainous countryside where both armies would be poorly supplied. So Caesar, his risks already running high, gambled on a strategy that approximated to a collective death wish: to march his tired, starving and disease-ridden legions further inland, further into hostile territory, where the chances of finding food were even more remote. In August 48 BC, although the order ran counter to all their instincts, Caesar’s soldiers picked themselves up and pressed on through the rocky, forested hills of Thessaly. En route they took the Greek towns of Gomphi and Metropolis, and plundered them for wine and food. Their health and spirits restored, the legionaries finally set camp near a town called Pharsalus.
Believing that he had his enemy on the run and that he now held all the aces, Pompey was quick to follow Caesar. After his first success in battle, he was jubilant, pumped up, giddy with anticipation of victory. But, as his army too set camp near Pharsalus, Pompey had overlooked his one critical weakness: the value he placed on the opinion of the senatorial establishment. That Achilles heel now became fatally exposed. As the days passed and Pompey did nothing, Cato and his faction ran out of patience and turned on the pressure. Surely Pompey had Caesar just where he wanted him, they pestered. Why wouldn’t their great general simply engage Caesar and deliver the death blow? Was he too old? Had his judgement gone? Or was he just so glad to be the general once again, so drunk on power that he did not even want to win the war, but only to hold on to his glorious command ad infinitum?69
Wearily but with steel, Pompey resisted. All the senators seemed to care about, came his acerbic rebuke, was money and whether or not they missed the fig season in Tusculum! His concern, however, was to minimize the loss of Roman life. The strategy of delay, he insisted, was the best way of ensuring that. Besides, what did they, with their soft, metropolitan manners and worries, know about war? Nothing! But as time wore on, and as the insults and nicknames continued to pique, so Pompey showed signs of caving in.70 Meanwhile, the daily dance was maintained: Caesar and Pompey led out their armies in formation, the bait of battle was offered, and Pompey refused to bite.
On the bright morning of 9 August 48 BC, his supplies again running dangerously low and his strategy failing, Caesar decided to strike camp and march once more inland. But just as the tents were being dismantled and the baggage animals loaded up, scouts rushed in to report that they had noticed something different. Pompey’s line of soldiers had advanced further forward from the rampart than usual.71 The signal was unmistakable. At long last Pompey the Great was ready for battle. The bait had been taken. Caesar was overjoyed, and as a signal to prepare for war he ordered his purple tunic to be hoisted in front of his tent.
The flurry of activity surrounding the two commanders could not have been more different. The politicians in Pompey’s camp cried ‘On to Pharsalus!’ and rubbed their hands at the prospect of witnessing a glorious victory. They argued jovially over who on their triumphant return to Rome would be allocated the priesthoods, who would stand for the offices of praetor and consul, and who would rent which Palatine villa to whom. Caesar and his officers, by contrast, were utterly focused on the task ahead. Buoyed up, they knew they had been handed a life-line. It was one they were now going to seize.72
When the two lines of battle came face to face, the landscape shone with the glitter of their javelins, short swords, bows, slings and quivers full of arrows.73 Caesar’s 22,000 infantry were confronting an army twice that size, while his 1000 cavalry faced an opponent seven times greater. But where his army was smaller, his strategy was shrewder. Seeing that Pompey’s cavalry were all aligned on their general’s left flank, Caesar knew that his old ally’s plan was to encircle one of Caesar’s wings. To neutralize that threat, Caesar took a series of cohorts from each of his legions and from them created a fourth line of infantry. Placing them behind his three existing lines, he gave them the following instructions: on the signal of his flag and not before, they were to advance and engage Pompey’s cavalry. Above all, they were to use their javelins as pikes and thrust up at the faces of the enemy. Victory that day, he told them, depended on their valour.