For those who were not Caesar, however, for those who relied upon the law as the bulwark of their liberty and the guarantor of their traditions, all was now confusion. What was an honourable citizen to do? No one could be sure. Old route maps were proving to be treacherous guides. Civil war made of the Republic a disorienting labyrinth, one in which familiar highways might turn suddenly into culs-de-sac, and cherished landmarks into piles of rubble. Cicero, for instance, having finally screwed up the courage to scuttle for Pompey’s camp, still found himself lost. Cato, taking him to one side, told him that his coming had been a terrible mistake and that he would have been ‘more useful to his country and friends staying at home, and remaining neutral’.5 Even Pompey, when he found out that Cicero’s only contributions to the war effort were defeatist witticisms, publicly wished that he would go over to the enemy. Instead, Cicero sat in lugubrious impotence and moped.
But such despair was the privilege of a wealthy intellectual. Few citizens could afford to indulge it. Most sought other ways of making order out of the chaos of the times. There was nothing more upsetting to a Roman than to feel deprived of fellowship, of a sense of community, and rather than endure it he would go to any extreme. But in a civil war to what could a citizen pledge his loyalty? Not his city, nor the altars of his ancestors, nor the Republic itself, for these were claimed as the inheritance of both sides. But he could attach himself to the fortunes of a general, and be certain of finding comradeship in the ranks of that general’s army, and identity in the reflected glory of the general’s name. This was why the legions of Gaul had been willing to cross the Rubicon. What, after nine years’ campaigning, were the traditions of the distant Forum to them, compared to the camaraderie of the army camp? And what was the Republic, compared to their general? There was no one capable of inspiring a more passionate devotion in his troops than Caesar. Amid all the confusion of war it had become perhaps the surest measure of his greatness. Arriving in Spain to take on three veteran Pompeian armies in the summer of 49 BC, he was able to push his soldiers to the extremes of exhaustion and suffering, so that, within months, the enemy had been utterly vanquished. No wonder, when backed by such steel, that Caesar dared to scorn the limits placed on other citizens, and even sometimes those on flesh and blood. ‘Your spirit’, Cicero would later tell him, ‘has never been content within the narrow confines which nature has imposed upon us.’6 But nor were the spirits of the men who followed his star: his legions, he boasted, ‘could tear down the heavens themselves’.7
Here, in the mingling of the souls of Caesar and his army, was the glimpse of a new order. Ties of mutual loyalty had always provided Roman society with its fabric. So they continued to do in time of civil war, but increasingly purged of old complexities and subtleties. Simpler to follow the blast of a trumpet than the swirl of contradictory obligations that had always characterised civilian life. Yet these same obligations, comprised as they were of centuries of taboos and traditions, were not lightly to be set aside. Without them the Republic, at least as it had been constituted for centuries, would die. The checks and balances that had always served to temper the Romans’ native love of glory, and divert it into courses beneficial to their city, might soon fall away. An ancient inheritance of customs and laws might be forever lost. Already, in the first months of the civil war, the ruinous consequences of such a catastrophe could be glimpsed. Political life still subsisted, but as a grisly parody of itself. The arts of persuasion were increasingly being abandoned as resorts to violence and intimidation took their place. The ambitions of magistrates, no longer dependent upon votes, could now be paid for with their fellow citizens’ blood.
No wonder that many of Caesar’s partisans, freed of the restraints and inhibitions of tiresome convention, should have grown intoxicated by a world in which it appeared that there were no limits to what they might achieve. But some reached out too far, too fast – and paid the price. Curio, as dashing and impetuous as ever, led two legions to disaster in Africa; disdaining to flee, he died alongside his men, who perished packed so tightly around him that their corpses were left standing like sheaves of corn in a field. Caelius, still fatally addicted to intrigue, returned to his political roots and attempted to force through Catiline’s old programme of cancelling debts. When he was expelled from Rome he raised a pro-Pompeian revolt in the countryside, only to be captured and killed; a squalid end. Antony, alone of the three friends who had fled to Caesar, managed not to stumble. This reflected not any great sure-footedness but rather a preoccupation with other concerns. Even though Caesar had left him in command of Italy, Antony devoted most of his energies to billeting a harem of actresses on senators, vomiting in the popular assembly, or – a favourite party trick – dressing up as the wine god Dionysus and driving a chariot hitched to lions. Yet in the field there was no more natural soldier, and Caesar could forgive steel and élan any amount of vulgarity. Hence Antony’s rapid promotion. He was an officer worthy of the men he commanded. When Caesar finally took the fight to Pompey in early 48 BC, crossing the Adriatic in the dead of winter, Antony dodged storms and the Pompeian fleet to bring him four extra legions as reinforcements. As the two rival armies sparred nervously with each other, jabbing here, feinting there, he was always in the thick of the action, dashing, tireless, the most glamorous and discussed man on either side.
But something of the monstrous and sinister energy of their general appeared to have imbued all of Caesar’s soldiers. It was as though, like the spirits of the dead, they could subsist on the lifeblood of their foes. Caesar’s old adversary Marcus Bibulus, in command of Pompey’s Adriatic fleet, had ‘slept out on board ship, even in the bitterness of winter, pushing himself to the limits, refusing to delegate, anything to get to grips with his enemy’,8 but still Caesar had succeeded in running his blockade, and had left the shattered Bibulus to expire of a fever. When Pompey, in the war of attrition that followed, aimed to starve his opponents into submission, Caesar’s legions dug up roots and baked them into loaves. These they flung over the enemy barricades as symbols of defiance. No wonder that Pompey’s men found themselves ‘terrified of the ferocity and toughness of their enemy, who seemed more like a species of wild animal than men’;9 nor that their general, when he was shown one of the loaves baked by Caesar’s soldiers, ordered the news of it suppressed.
But Pompey himself, in private, was reassured. He knew that no men, not even Caesar’s, could subsist on roots for ever. Backed by Cato, who continued to mourn the death of every citizen, no matter from which side, he waited for Caesar’s army to fall to pieces. His strategy appeared to be paying off when Caesar in July 48 BC, bruised by a stinging reversal in the no man’s land between the two armies, suddenly abandoned his position on the Adriatic coast and marched east. Now was the moment when Pompey, had he truly been the tyrant of Cicero’s forebodings, could have sailed for Italy unopposed – but he preferred to spare his native land the horrors of invasion. Instead, he too abandoned his fortifications on the coast. Leaving only a small garrison behind under the command of Cato, he set off eastwards after Caesar. Dogging his adversary’s every twist and turn, he emerged from the wilds of the Balkans into northern Greece. Here, around the city of Pharsalus, was flat, open land, perfect for a battle. Caesar was desperate to force a decisive engagement, and drew up his legions within sight of Pompey’s camp. Pompey refused to take the bait. He knew that in everything that counted – money, food supplies, support of the natives – time was on his side. For days Caesar continued to offer battle. For days Pompey remained within his camp.