The situation in Alexandria had been precarious, almost complete lunacy, one might conclude. Fresh from defeating the forces of Pompey the Great in the heart of the Greek lands, the consul Julius Caesar had arrived in Egypt with two understrength legions, the Sixth and the Twenty-Eighth. The men were all Pompeian troops, defeated in battle and now sworn in loyalty to Caesar – all except for a few dozen centurions, like Lucius, pilfered from Caesar’s own legions and assigned to lead their former enemies.
From the start, Caesar found himself in a hazardous position. Upon arriving in Egypt, he was immediately caught up in the inner turmoil between the squabbling heirs of the deceased pharaoh. Through the enchantment of the Egyptian princess Cleopatra, Caesar declared for her, and committed both himself and his men to her cause. This, of course, incensed Cleopatra’s rivals – her siblings – and the Romans immediately fell under siege by the more numerous Alexandrian army.
Lucius had only seen the fabled princess once or twice during the siege, and she had not particularly struck him as anything to bare his sword for. She was short, hook-nosed, with curves a bit too abrupt for his liking. She must have had a devilry in her tongue, however, because she had thoroughly conquered the great Caesar. The famed general was now devoted to putting her on the throne, seemingly ignorant of the odds against him – odds that made some of his blunders in Gaul look like country picnics.
In spite of the fact that Caesar and Cleopatra controlled the vast harbor palace and the great lighthouse out on Pharos Island, they were at a distinct disadvantage. Pharos Island connected to the city by a three quarters of a mile-long, earthen mole, and this was in the hands of the Alexandrians. The mole bisected Alexandria’s vast natural harbor into two distinct harbors – an eastern harbor, where the Roman ships were moored, and a western harbor, where the Alexandrian ships stood at anchor. The mole – or Heptastadion, as it was called by the locals – was an impressive feat of engineering even by Roman standards. One of the palace slaves had told Lucius that it was constructed more than three hundred years ago by the great Alexander himself. Not only did it serve as a causeway between Alexandria and the island, but it also allowed passage of ships between the two harbors by way of two channels carved out of the mole. One channel was at the extreme north end, near the island, and the other was at the extreme south end, near the city. Each channel was surmounted by a bridge that arched over the narrow strip of navigable water. These cuts were all well and good during peaceful times, when Alexandria’s harbor was teeming with merchant shipping. But, at the present, they were a bane to Caesar. With the Alexandrians in command of the mole and the island, and the rest of the city, they could attack the Roman ships at will, threatening Caesar’s only means of resupply – or of escape, should the need arise.
Caesar had but two depleted legions, a little more than three thousand spears. Cleopatra’s siblings had at least five times that. Over the course of several weeks, Roman legionaries had defended the walls of the palace from more than one attack. Lucius had been among them at the head of his century, withstanding a rain of missiles that never seemed to cease and continually countering an imaginative enemy that connived at every means to penetrate the palace defenses. Through every ladder bourn attack, every rush of the battering rams, even a few sorties outside the walls to demolish the enemy’s engines of war, the legions had fought as if they defended the Palatine Hill. But Caesar was never one to remain on the defensive. Though the enemy outnumbered him, he decided to attack. Caesar had concluded that the mole was crucial to his success, and he had resolved to take it.
The ten cohorts of the Sixth Legion were chosen for the assault, Lucius’s among them. Leaving the Twenty-Eighth, a scant few palace guards, and the convalescents to defend the palace, the cohorts boarded their ships in the dead of the night. Biremes and triremes manned by Rhodian sailors that Caesar had brought with him from the Greek isles pushed across and out of the dark bay unnoticed by enemy eyes. There were few senior officers in the undermanned legion, and Centurion Lucius Domitius found himself the senior man aboard his own ship carrying two centuries.
“Why are we leaving the harbor?” the signifer of Lucius’s century asked as they both stood by the rail watching the lights of Alexandria glide silently by. “Caesar lied, didn’t he? We aren’t attacking, we’re fleeing the city. Leaving our comrades behind to the mercy of those Egyptian curs!”
Lucius despised his signifer, and would normally have told him to shut his mouth and concentrate on things he understood, like carrying the century’s standard, but there were too many others who had heard the comment for him to remain silent.
“I don’t know how your precious General Pompey behaved,” Lucius said, his voice thick with scorn, “but in my years under Caesar, I’ve never known him to go back on his word.”
Of course, that was not true. The signifer did not seem to like that answer, either, but Lucius did not care. He did not think much of his signifer, nor of the rest of the men under him. They were all former Pompeian soldiers who had either deserted or been defeated while fighting for Pompey in Greece. With Pompey dead, Caesar – always the politician, always scheming for a leg-up – had adopted them as his own. They were on probation, and their only hope of survival, if they ever made it back to Rome, was to endear themselves to Caesar through unquestioning devotion.
Were it left to Lucius, they would have all been put to death. Now he found himself in command of a century of them, very much against his wishes. In fact, he very nearly had refused to join the expedition. After Pharsalus, his old legion, and many others had headed back to Rome instead of accompanying their general. Only the prospect of riches to be had in Egypt and Syria had goaded Lucius into the foolish decision to volunteer to be an officer in the Sixth. The appointment was only temporary, he kept telling himself.
True to Caesar’s word, the ten cohorts attacked in the morning. The fleet of transports had been taken outside of the bay, not to retreat, but to land on the seaward side of Pharos. This took the small Alexandrian garrison there completely by surprise. The legionaries quickly pushed the stunned defenders back into the small town that occupied the island. The Alexandrian defenders tried to make a stand, some of them taking to the roof tops to throw javelins down at the onrushing Romans, but they could not achieve any kind of organized resistance. They were hacked to pieces, driven from house to bloody house, leaving the formerly quiet seaside village a place of carnage and death. The few that did organize managed to form into rough phalanxes, and these were thrown across several of the narrower streets, hoping to turn them into bottlenecks where the Romans’ numerical superiority would be nullified. But even this did not stop the maddened legionaries, who formed and pressed in with their massive shields. They allowed the jabbing pikes of the phalanxes to penetrate the shield wall and then wrenched the fourteen-foot lances from their owner’s hands, all the while hurling pila over the front ranks to decimate the enemy’s rear. Those pikes that were not torn loose were knocked aside by the short gladii until the Romans were suddenly upon them and among them. One phalanx panicked after another. Each one that fell opened up an avenue for another to be taken from behind. By the time the morning sun peeked over the horizon, Caesar had the town, and the rest of the Alexandrians had surrendered.
Lucius had been at the heart of the combat, spurring his ill-trained century into the breaches and then reforming them to attack the next line of pikemen.
The Alexandrians were of poor caliber, and even the Pompeian legionaries had no trouble in making short work of them, all except for one unusually difficult contingent of Alexandrian regulars defending a strip of beach on the harbor side of the island. This unit had stood its ground after repeated assaults. They were led by a tall, magnificent looking officer wearing a jeweled Egyptian headdress and a glimmering bronze breastplate. The decorative paint around his eyes and the well-manicured beard gave him a dazzling appearance that distracted even Lucius in the heat of battle. His men were not like the other Alexandrians defending the village. They looked more like a royal guard, wearing immaculate bright, white tunics and headdresses and carrying large round shields polished to reflect the sun like mirrors. Under the direction of the dark-eyed officer, the troop of swordsmen had fought off every Roman attack, skillfully hiding behind their shields whenever the Romans threw javelins and then emerging with swishing blades whenever the Romans drew in close. And they had been well-trained in swordplay, beating off every century thrown at them.