It was typical of his tirelessness and attention to detail that, in the press of business, he remembered Cicero. In May he asked Dolabella, who was on his staff, to write a friendly letter to his father-in-law, which he duly did. After itemizing the humiliations and reverses that Pompey had suffered, he advised: “Consult your own best interests and at long last be your own friend rather than anybody else’s.” If there was anything Caesar could do to protect and maintain Cicero’s dignitas, his honor or status, he had only to ask.
This was a well-aimed, and possibly well-informed, intervention. Cicero was not at all happy with his present circumstances. Could Cato have been right, after all? He made little secret of the fact that he now regretted having come to Greece. He could not resist making sarcastic comments and jokes about his colleagues and companions in arms and wandered about the camp looking so glum that he became something of a figure of fun. He criticized Pompey’s plans behind his back and ridiculed the faith he and his supporters placed in prophecies and oracles. Above all, he went on arguing for peace and believed he might have won Pompey over if his confidence had not been boosted by the success at Dyrrachium.
Looking back a couple of years afterwards he summed up his opinions:
I came to regret my action, not so much because of the risk to my personal safety as of the appalling situation which confronted me on arrival. To begin with, our forces were too small and had poor morale. Second, with the exception of the Commander-in-Chief and a handful of others (I am talking about the leading figures), everyone was greedy to profit from the war itself and their conversation was so bloodthirsty that I shuddered at the prospect of victory. What’s more, people of the highest rank were up to their ears in debt. In a word, nothing was right except the cause we were fighting for.
There was talk of a proscription and, shockingly, Atticus had been marked down, perhaps because of his wealth, as a candidate for liquidation.
The climax of the campaign took place on August 9 on a plain near the town of Pharsalus in central Greece. Against his better judgment, although his army was much the larger of the two (perhaps 50,000 strong as compared with Caesar’s force of about 30,000), Pompey at last offered battle. His plan was to outflank and roll up Caesar’s right wing with a strong troop of horses, but Caesar guessed his intentions and placed some cohorts out of sight behind his center. His wing retreated in good order, as it had been instructed to do, and Pompey’s onrushing cavalry was attacked from the side and routed. It was now Caesar’s turn to outflank the enemy center and the rest of the engagement was a massacre. Pompey’s soldiers stood their ground and died patiently, but the non-Roman allies put up no resistance and fled, shouting, “We’ve lost.” Caesar recorded 200 fatalities while some 15,000 of Pompey’s men were killed and 23,000 captured.
When Pompey saw how the battle was going, he withdrew to his camp where he sat speechless and stunned. Nothing in his long, cloudless career had prepared him for such a disaster. He changed out of his uniform and made his escape on horseback. His camp presented a remarkable spectacle. In his history of the war, Caesar described what he found: “[There] could be seen artificial arbors, a great weight of silver plate laid out, tents spread with fresh turf, those of Lucius Lentulus and several others covered with ivy, and many other indications of extravagant indulgence and confidence in victory.” Inspecting the corpses on the battlefield, he remarked bitterly of the optimates: “They insisted on it.”
Cicero was not present at Pharsalus, although it is possible that Quintus was, together with the seventeen-year-old Marcus, who had been given command of a troop of horses in Pompey’s army and was doubtless enjoying the break from his studies in Athens. Being in poor health (whether genuinely or expediently), Cicero stayed behind at Dyrrachium with Cato, who commanded the town’s garrison. Cicero was as annoyingly sarcastic as ever. When someone said optimistically that there was hope yet, for they had seven Eagles left (the legionary standards), he joked bitterly: “Excellent, if we were fighting jackdaws.”
Caesar knew that if the war was to be brought to a rapid conclusion, it was of the utmost importance to capture his defeated rival; so he set off in pursuit of Pompey as he made his way eastwards, destination unknown. Meanwhile the leading survivors of Pharsalus gathered together and sailed the fleet to Corcyra, where they pondered their next move. Caesar’s victory was a devastating blow to the Republicans and it looked as if the war were over. However, this was not necessarily so: Pompey’s fleet still controlled the seas. The province of Africa had been in friendly hands since Curio’s defeat and death. If the defeated Commander-in-Chief managed to elude Caesar, he might well be able to raise another army in Asia Minor.
Cato had not fought at Pharsalus and was unwilling to accept its verdict. The first decision to be made was who should take over from Pompey as Commander-in-Chief. Surprisingly Cato suggested that the commission be offered to Cicero as the senior Roman official present. It is hard to believe that Cato made the invitation other than for form’s sake; even he would have seen something absurd in the distinctly unmilitary orator challenging the greatest general of his day.
Cicero rejected the idea out of hand and explained that he wanted to have nothing further to do with the war. His defeatist attitude enraged Pompey’s eldest son, Cnaeus, who had a short and cruel temper. Apparently Cnaeus and his friends drew their swords and would have cut Cicero down on the spot if Cato had not intervened and, with some difficulty, hustled the elderly statesman out of the camp—and, as it turned out, the war.
Most of the remaining optimates decided that their best course of action was to make their way to the province of Africa. There they gathered—Afranius and Petreius, defeated in Spain, Pompey’s two sons, other flotsam of Caesar’s earlier victories and Cato himself, the moral standard-bearer of resistance. Many of them had been pardoned once and could expect no mercy if they fell into Caesar’s hands a second time. Labienus, Caesar’s old comrade-in-arms who had defected from him after the crossing of the Rubicon, also went to Africa. Their plan was to muster their forces and prepare for an invasion of Italy, a short sail away.
Some fugitives from the catastrophe decided to end their resistance. Chief among them was Marcus Brutus, now about thirty years old. Despite the financial scandal in which he had been involved during Cicero’s governorship of Cilicia a couple of years before, he was in some respects a principled and serious-minded young man who thought long and hard about which side to fight for in the civil war. He had a strong family reason for going over to Caesar, as the youthful Pompey had had his father put to death during the wars of Sulla. However, in his considered opinion Pompey was more in the right than Caesar and Brutus decided that it was his duty to put the public good above his personal interests. Not for nothing was he Cato’s nephew.
After joining the Republican army in Greece, Brutus spent much of his time in camp reading books till late in the evening and writing a digest of the Greek historian Polybius. He took part in the battle at Pharsalus, but came to no harm. There was a reason for this. Caesar was very fond of him, perhaps due to his continuing affection for his former mistress and Brutus’s mother, Servilia, and gave instructions to his officers that he should not be killed. If Brutus gave himself up his life should be spared, and if he resisted he should be left alone. After the rout Brutus managed to escape through a marsh to safety. He traveled by night to the town of Larissa and immediately wrote to Caesar, who was delighted to learn that he was safe and asked Brutus to join him. According to Plutarch, he had no qualms about advising Caesar, correctly as it would turn out, that Pompey would likely flee to Egypt.