That was how Longus died, one ordinary day when he got careless during his Century’s guard shift, turning his back on the Pompeians, who had sent out a small group of men in the night to hide and wait for just such a moment. They were of course cut down, but the damage was done; Longus and one of his men died, another was wounded. Now there was a vacancy in my Cohort and it did not take long for Celer to try putting forward one of his toadies, his Optio, a man named Scrofa. Scrofa was not a bad Legionary, but there was no way that I was going to allow him to be promoted if I could help it. My choice was Scribonius, but despite my choice carrying some weight, it was not a done deal by any stretch, because he was junior to Scrofa. The only thing Celer and I agreed on was that Longus’ Optio, a wormy little man named Postumus, was completely unacceptable. He was promoted by Longus on the basis of loyalty alone and had been Longus’ confederate in his shakedown schemes. Despite being successful in somewhat curtailing Longus’ habit of disciplining his men excessively as a means of enriching himself, I was unable to stop it completely, something that I was not happy with to say the least. In fact, I suspected that all I did was make Longus and Postumus more creative in their schemes, another reason I was not grief stricken at Longus’ death. Nevertheless, it also created a problem between Celer and me, since we had competing interests. I would be less than honest if I denied that our goals were not the same; we each wanted a man that would be loyal to us, but in my mind, I held the greater right being the Pilus Prior, making it my Cohort, and I still believe that to this day.
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I went to the Primus Pilus, my old commander Gaius Crastinus, making my case for Scribonius, arguing that his record spoke for itself despite his lack of seniority over Scrofa, while Celer argued that Scrofa, being the most senior of the Optios in the Cohort, was the natural choice. Ultimately, it cost me a pretty sum to convince Crastinus to select Scribonius over Scrofa, something that I have never uttered until now, yet I considered it an investment in not just my future, but in the future of Scribonius. Once Scribonius was promoted to take Longus’ position, over his vigorous protests I made Vibius my Optio, a promotion that I did not have to justify to anyone at this point. The added benefit of Scribonius’ promotion was that it made Celer apoplectic with rage. Meanwhile, our larger situation remained desperate, as it became more and more difficult for our foragers to obtain any supplies whatsoever, while Pompey still controlled the seas. The only success we had was in cutting off the forage for his livestock, but his men still ate well, whereas we began a diet of barley bread, something normally reserved for men on punishment. Our contravallation reached a point where it made sense to begin to turn westward, at a place where it would cut Pompey off from one of his best sources of water. The problem for us was that making that turn took us from the protection of the ridgeline that ran north and south, and was across open ground. With the only geographical feature a hill that stood all by itself, it quickly became the focal point of contention between the two armies, as Pompey occupied a smaller mound nearby. The men of the 9th were charged with fortifying this hill but Pompey, also recognizing its importance, committed a large force of slingers and archers to rain continuous death down on our men. The 9th was commanded by Antonius, and the Pompeians made it impossible for them to both defend themselves and to fortify the hill, forcing Caesar to give the command to vacate the position. When the Pompeians saw our men withdrawing, they tried to press the advantage, sending out auxiliaries while bringing up artillery within range to inflict as much damage on the 9th during their retreat as possible. Now Caesar was forced to intervene personally, sending a scratch force of engineers out to throw up a series of hurdles, wicker baskets filled with dirt and buttressed with poles, placing them on the slopes of the hill in an attempt to provide some protection as the 9th gathered their gear and made their withdrawal. Additionally, Caesar ordered the digging of a ditch behind the hurdles to impede the Pompeians in their pursuit, but this backfired, the Pompeians simply using the hurdles to fill in the ditch by pushing them into it. Caesar was forced to stop the 9th in its withdrawal, turn them around and order a countercharge to throw the Pompeians back long enough for the 9th to make good its retreat, with a loss of only about five men. While in the grand scheme of the campaign this qualified as little more than a skirmish, it was the first time since we had landed where Pompey had inflicted what could be called a defeat on Caesar, and the Pompeians celebrated it like the whole war was won. Of course, this was not the case, but it did put even more of a damper on the army, since we now could not use the hill as the pivot point to finish the contravallation. Instead, we had to continue digging to the south to the next hill, a couple miles further along, and in our weakened state because of our supply situation this was a heavy blow indeed. At this point, we were digging up a root that the locals claimed was nutritious and tasted good when ground into a flour then baked into a loaf of what they claimed was bread. I will say that it was better than eating dirt, but just barely. Although we in the Spanish Legions did not have a problem, the new Legions were now faced with deserters at an alarming rate, and apparently, one of those deserters carried one of the loaves to show to Pompey as evidence that we were in desperate straits. Somewhat surprisingly, it actually had the opposite result intended, alarming Pompey that although we were reduced to such measures, we did not show any sign of giving in.
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All was not going Pompey’s way, however. As he had foreseen, Pompey’s men were eating well but his livestock was suffering from lack of forage and were beginning to die off. Additionally, Caesar now ordered work to begin on damming off the rivers flowing to the coast that supplied Pompey with his fresh water, using one of the new Legions and some auxiliary as labor. It took a few weeks, but once it was completed, it forced Pompey to evacuate his livestock, including most importantly his cavalry, by sea back to Dyrrhachium, relieving some of the pressure on our foragers who no longer had to worry about Pompey’s cavalry patrols. Not that it mattered all that much; we had picked the country clean of just about every grain of wheat, every chicken, in fact everything that a hungry Legionary could eat. It was now getting close to summer; we had crossed over from Brundisium more than five months before, meaning the fields of grain that we had protected with our lives were just beginning to ripen, and we knew that shortly our hunger would be a thing of the past. For those of us who were at Avaricum, Alesia, and Ilerda, this was nothing new and nothing that we could not cope with, but it did not stop the Pompeians from using their artillery to fling loaves of bread at us, with taunts about how they were just throwing the leftovers that they did not want at us. Despite our hunger, it made me proud to see that not one man in my Cohort deigned to pick up a loaf, despite it laying there for all to see. I heard that the boys in the new Legions were not so quick to turn their noses up, gobbling up the loaves that the Pompeians flung at them, making me happy that I did not have to worry about disciplining any men for showing such weakness. During the time all of this was taking place, an event happened that, when one reads Caesar’s account of the civil war, is missing and I do not know of any other account. I want to caution you, gentle reader, that this is not a firsthand account, but is what I heard from members of Caesar’s staff who were present, and I trust that what I was told is as close to accurate as it is possible to make it. What I am about to relate is how close Caesar came to being killed and is an example of how, at least in those days, the gods truly did smile on him.