Part XIX - Caesar in the South
Aaand...what a year 2022 has been. Hopefully 2023 gives me a bit more 'breathing space' - but I do intend to actually finish this TL soon!
Whatever Caesar’s private motive may have been for taking arms against his country, he embarked in an enterprise of a nature the most dangerous: and had Petreius conducted himself in any degree suitable to the reputation which he had formerly acquired, the contest would in all probability have terminated in favour of public freedom
Suetonius, On Caesar
Although the Battle of the Pines could have been an even worse defeat for the Senatorialists, it was still a considerable loss in terms of both manpower and – that resource always vital in civil wars – prestige. The leadership of Marcus Petreius and Titus Labienus deserves credit for salvaging an orderly withdrawal from what could have been an utter rout; but it was not enough to stabilise the Senatorialist position.
The remains of the army staggered back towards the key Senatorialist stronghold of Capua, a moderately wealthy town some miles from Vesuvius; the famed luxury resort, haunt of the ultra-rich and fleshpot of ill-repute Baiae and, rather more critically, the ports of Puteoli, Misenum and to a lesser extent Naples.
This entire area can be considered the main Senatorialist stronghold in Italy, notwithstanding the weakly garrisoned ports of Brundisium and Arminum. Through Puteoli in particular, the Senate had access to grain, gold and other supplies needed for the war effort – as well as, a cynic might plausibly argue, the possibility of an escape route.
Furthermore, almost every Roman of standing had at least one villa in the area, and many had several. Capua itself was filled with relatives of the Senatorialists – wives, children, elderly parents and the like – and equally filled with the accumulated wealth of the Roman elite.
However, despite its strategic importance, the area was only weakly defended; the bulk of the Senatorialist forces being positioned in Terracina. And Caesar – keen tactician that he was – realised that should he take Capri and other towns – or even deny access to the ports – he would have dealt the Senate a blow from which it would struggle to recover. More to the point, he realised that this was a task well within his reach.
Glittering with wealth the coast may have been, but only a few dozen miles inland the picture was very different. This region of Italy had always been poor, and seething with barely concealed hatred of Rome. During the Social War, an event well within living memory, the core of the rebellion had been in this very region, led by the Samnites – an ancient people with an equally antique legacy of anti-Roman feeling – and it had been in the city of Nola where the last embers of Italian independence had finally been extinguished.
Now, with different Roman factions at each other’s throats, and Italy herself collapsed into anarchy, these embers began to smoulder once more. After the Battle of the Pines, thousands more flocked to join Caesar’s army, prompted by a heady cocktail of the prospect of vengeance, loot and glory. Caesar was, after all, a known partisan of the long-dead Marius; one of the few aristocratic Romans the locals had respected.
This was not, perhaps, altogether to Caesar’s advantage – he had no desire to set himself up as the leader of a mob of rebellious peasants – some of whom had a taste for horrific atrocities against especially unpopular Roman landowners – still less to be appearing to lead a revolt against his own city. At the same time, this was an asset he could not afford to ignore. Barely two days after the Battle of the Pines, his army – swelling by the day – was en route to Vesuvius. Proud Roman he might have been, but Caesar was not a man to throw away any advantage.
Realising that they could not hope to defend every critical town, Marcus Petreius and Titus Labienus opted to split their forces purely between Capua and Puteoli; ignoring the pleas for help – and howls of outrage – from other local leaders. Petreius in particular saw his popularity plummet as his soldiers briskly appropriated whatever movable valuables they could – from gold and grain to oils, fabrics, and Cicero’s collection of priceless literature – and moved it into Capri for ‘safekeeping’. Cicero, in particular, was outraged when he heard that his own villa had been ransacked, and Lucullus – never one to assign charitable motives to a partisan of Pompey – threatened to prosecute him for theft when he heard that his own infamously grandiose mansion had been almost emptied. Catalus and Lepidus went even further, publicly urging Torquatus to order Petreius’ recall and investigation for corruption, denouncing him as little more than a brigand. To his credit, Torquatus refused, and snapped that any man leaving his army to safeguard his valuables would be considered a deserter, if not a traitor. Figulus and Celer, to their credit, backed up their commander, spoke in favour of Petreius, and rebuked their fellow nobiles by reminding them that the local farmers, townsfolk and merchants had suffered, proportionally, far greater losses.
Even worse, though, in the eyes of his peers was Petreius’ high-handed treatment of many of their relatives. Aware that they would prove valuable hostages in the hands of Caesar, he had hundreds of them placed into ‘protective custody’ and escorted to the now rather overcrowded and cramped Capri – earning him another vicious missive from Cicero, who implied that his daughter Tullia had been insulted, dishonoured and humiliated by being ‘all but dragged from her family home and the masks of her ancestors’. The implication that the daughter of a Consul would be treated so is hard to believe, and might best be described as the panic of a doting father for his beloved daughter.
There is no question that Marcus Petreius, in short, was severely stressed and overworked, and it is perhaps of little surprise that, at the start of September, he fell badly ill. Unfortunately for Petreius’ posthumous reputation, a number of ancient writers – most notably Suetonius but also Sallust and Varro – appear to have taken the side of the senators he dispossessed. He was probably no great military commander, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion he was merely making the best of a bad situation, and doing what he could to retain the south for the very senators who were demanding his recall.
With Petreius confined to his sickbed, his deputy, Labienus, took control – just as Caesar’s army marched into the city of Nola, which had opened his gates without a whisper of defiance.
Pausing only to enjoy a celebratory banquet and reassure various local magnates of his respect for life, honour and property, he next marched on the towns of Acerrae and Atella – both of which, again, offered no resistance. In Atella, indeed, seven Senators, who from age or infirmity had remained in the city, were publicly pardoned by Caesar. Embracing each of them, he urged them to join with the Decemvirate, and then released all of them, laden with gold. Munificent such a gesture undoubtedly was, but it was also a masterful political stroke; offering even the most invertate of Catiline’s opponents the prospect of a peaceful surrender. His strict discipline and crucifixions of runaway and rebellious slaves, who mistook the civil war as an opportunity to rob, rape and murder their masters, further burnished his name.
Caesar’s strategy was clear; aiming to split communications between the two Senatorial strongholds of Capua and Puteoli, and then defeat them in detail. Time was, perhaps, not entirely on his side – between them, Petreius and Labienus had scoured the countryside for food, and he was aware that the main Senatorialist army up at Terracina might descend upon him at any time.
Labienus, however, in Puteoli, resisted the temptation to march out; no matter how many towns fell to Caesar. Safe behind the walls of Puteoli, and well stocked with food and water, he knew that Caesar, should he besiege either stronghold, would be opening himself up to an attack from the other. According to Sallust, he recalled the example of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus. He had, so it is said, earned the scornful nickname of “Cunctator” for refusing to engage in rash action against the Carthaginian warlord Hannibal – yet his tactics, unglamorous though they were, had in the end resulted in victory.
Frustrated, at the end of September Caesar descended upon Naples – which likewise surrendered without a fight. Still Labienus remained within his walls. Caesar’s demand for a surrender was met with the famous retort of:
Even the might of a son of Venus cannot avail against the walls of Puteoli.
Caesar supposedly found this message amusing due to its mixture of sacrilege, defiance and flattery. In return, he famously sent another message, complimenting Labienus on his courage and asking him to dinner. Labienus, with equal insouciance, supposedly sent Caesar a basket of delicacies; apologising for his unavoidable absence and granting him the use of his own villa, which has it happened was located close to Naples.
Sadly for the more romantically minded amongst us, there is no evidence for the famous story that the two men fought a personal duel outside the walls of Puteoli in which each wounded and then spared the other; nor that Caesar prevented one of his archers from shooting Labienus; nor that Labienus, hearing that Caesar was ill with malaria, sent his personal physician to attend to him. Such stories were first recorded more than eight hundred years after the events they purport to describe and can be safely discarded as fiction.
As these two young men – both ferociously brave, both hungry for glory, both military geniuses, and both destined to make the world shake in decades to come – traded polite notes and invitations, the situation in Capua was deteriorating rapidly. The sickness of Marcus Petreius left no one in clear control of the garrison there, and with so many influential men and women crammed into the town the politicking and bickering between various leaders soon paralysed any effective military coordination. Caesar’s undeniable success in forcing the surrender of most the region further devastated morale. Had Caesar, indeed, marched on Capua it is entirely possible the gates would have been flung open for him.
As the middle of October approached, Caesar had, to a large degree achieved most of his initial objectives. Campania was, almost entirely, denied to the Senatorialists, and the Senatorial army at Terracina now faced the spectre of an army to both their north and south. Finally, the looting of the area by Caesar’s troops – however much he may publicly have decried it, and however many of his own men he executed for engaging in freelance robbery, rape and destruction – swelled his coffers considerably.
It was, perhaps, fortunate for Labienus that towards the end of October, two pieces of news reached Caesar. Catiline was dead, murdered by his own supporters. And the Senatorial army at Terracina was marching north.
Whatever Caesar’s private motive may have been for taking arms against his country, he embarked in an enterprise of a nature the most dangerous: and had Petreius conducted himself in any degree suitable to the reputation which he had formerly acquired, the contest would in all probability have terminated in favour of public freedom
Suetonius, On Caesar
Although the Battle of the Pines could have been an even worse defeat for the Senatorialists, it was still a considerable loss in terms of both manpower and – that resource always vital in civil wars – prestige. The leadership of Marcus Petreius and Titus Labienus deserves credit for salvaging an orderly withdrawal from what could have been an utter rout; but it was not enough to stabilise the Senatorialist position.
The remains of the army staggered back towards the key Senatorialist stronghold of Capua, a moderately wealthy town some miles from Vesuvius; the famed luxury resort, haunt of the ultra-rich and fleshpot of ill-repute Baiae and, rather more critically, the ports of Puteoli, Misenum and to a lesser extent Naples.
This entire area can be considered the main Senatorialist stronghold in Italy, notwithstanding the weakly garrisoned ports of Brundisium and Arminum. Through Puteoli in particular, the Senate had access to grain, gold and other supplies needed for the war effort – as well as, a cynic might plausibly argue, the possibility of an escape route.
Furthermore, almost every Roman of standing had at least one villa in the area, and many had several. Capua itself was filled with relatives of the Senatorialists – wives, children, elderly parents and the like – and equally filled with the accumulated wealth of the Roman elite.
However, despite its strategic importance, the area was only weakly defended; the bulk of the Senatorialist forces being positioned in Terracina. And Caesar – keen tactician that he was – realised that should he take Capri and other towns – or even deny access to the ports – he would have dealt the Senate a blow from which it would struggle to recover. More to the point, he realised that this was a task well within his reach.
Glittering with wealth the coast may have been, but only a few dozen miles inland the picture was very different. This region of Italy had always been poor, and seething with barely concealed hatred of Rome. During the Social War, an event well within living memory, the core of the rebellion had been in this very region, led by the Samnites – an ancient people with an equally antique legacy of anti-Roman feeling – and it had been in the city of Nola where the last embers of Italian independence had finally been extinguished.
Now, with different Roman factions at each other’s throats, and Italy herself collapsed into anarchy, these embers began to smoulder once more. After the Battle of the Pines, thousands more flocked to join Caesar’s army, prompted by a heady cocktail of the prospect of vengeance, loot and glory. Caesar was, after all, a known partisan of the long-dead Marius; one of the few aristocratic Romans the locals had respected.
This was not, perhaps, altogether to Caesar’s advantage – he had no desire to set himself up as the leader of a mob of rebellious peasants – some of whom had a taste for horrific atrocities against especially unpopular Roman landowners – still less to be appearing to lead a revolt against his own city. At the same time, this was an asset he could not afford to ignore. Barely two days after the Battle of the Pines, his army – swelling by the day – was en route to Vesuvius. Proud Roman he might have been, but Caesar was not a man to throw away any advantage.
Realising that they could not hope to defend every critical town, Marcus Petreius and Titus Labienus opted to split their forces purely between Capua and Puteoli; ignoring the pleas for help – and howls of outrage – from other local leaders. Petreius in particular saw his popularity plummet as his soldiers briskly appropriated whatever movable valuables they could – from gold and grain to oils, fabrics, and Cicero’s collection of priceless literature – and moved it into Capri for ‘safekeeping’. Cicero, in particular, was outraged when he heard that his own villa had been ransacked, and Lucullus – never one to assign charitable motives to a partisan of Pompey – threatened to prosecute him for theft when he heard that his own infamously grandiose mansion had been almost emptied. Catalus and Lepidus went even further, publicly urging Torquatus to order Petreius’ recall and investigation for corruption, denouncing him as little more than a brigand. To his credit, Torquatus refused, and snapped that any man leaving his army to safeguard his valuables would be considered a deserter, if not a traitor. Figulus and Celer, to their credit, backed up their commander, spoke in favour of Petreius, and rebuked their fellow nobiles by reminding them that the local farmers, townsfolk and merchants had suffered, proportionally, far greater losses.
Even worse, though, in the eyes of his peers was Petreius’ high-handed treatment of many of their relatives. Aware that they would prove valuable hostages in the hands of Caesar, he had hundreds of them placed into ‘protective custody’ and escorted to the now rather overcrowded and cramped Capri – earning him another vicious missive from Cicero, who implied that his daughter Tullia had been insulted, dishonoured and humiliated by being ‘all but dragged from her family home and the masks of her ancestors’. The implication that the daughter of a Consul would be treated so is hard to believe, and might best be described as the panic of a doting father for his beloved daughter.
There is no question that Marcus Petreius, in short, was severely stressed and overworked, and it is perhaps of little surprise that, at the start of September, he fell badly ill. Unfortunately for Petreius’ posthumous reputation, a number of ancient writers – most notably Suetonius but also Sallust and Varro – appear to have taken the side of the senators he dispossessed. He was probably no great military commander, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion he was merely making the best of a bad situation, and doing what he could to retain the south for the very senators who were demanding his recall.
With Petreius confined to his sickbed, his deputy, Labienus, took control – just as Caesar’s army marched into the city of Nola, which had opened his gates without a whisper of defiance.
Pausing only to enjoy a celebratory banquet and reassure various local magnates of his respect for life, honour and property, he next marched on the towns of Acerrae and Atella – both of which, again, offered no resistance. In Atella, indeed, seven Senators, who from age or infirmity had remained in the city, were publicly pardoned by Caesar. Embracing each of them, he urged them to join with the Decemvirate, and then released all of them, laden with gold. Munificent such a gesture undoubtedly was, but it was also a masterful political stroke; offering even the most invertate of Catiline’s opponents the prospect of a peaceful surrender. His strict discipline and crucifixions of runaway and rebellious slaves, who mistook the civil war as an opportunity to rob, rape and murder their masters, further burnished his name.
Caesar’s strategy was clear; aiming to split communications between the two Senatorial strongholds of Capua and Puteoli, and then defeat them in detail. Time was, perhaps, not entirely on his side – between them, Petreius and Labienus had scoured the countryside for food, and he was aware that the main Senatorialist army up at Terracina might descend upon him at any time.
Labienus, however, in Puteoli, resisted the temptation to march out; no matter how many towns fell to Caesar. Safe behind the walls of Puteoli, and well stocked with food and water, he knew that Caesar, should he besiege either stronghold, would be opening himself up to an attack from the other. According to Sallust, he recalled the example of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus. He had, so it is said, earned the scornful nickname of “Cunctator” for refusing to engage in rash action against the Carthaginian warlord Hannibal – yet his tactics, unglamorous though they were, had in the end resulted in victory.
Frustrated, at the end of September Caesar descended upon Naples – which likewise surrendered without a fight. Still Labienus remained within his walls. Caesar’s demand for a surrender was met with the famous retort of:
Even the might of a son of Venus cannot avail against the walls of Puteoli.
Caesar supposedly found this message amusing due to its mixture of sacrilege, defiance and flattery. In return, he famously sent another message, complimenting Labienus on his courage and asking him to dinner. Labienus, with equal insouciance, supposedly sent Caesar a basket of delicacies; apologising for his unavoidable absence and granting him the use of his own villa, which has it happened was located close to Naples.
Sadly for the more romantically minded amongst us, there is no evidence for the famous story that the two men fought a personal duel outside the walls of Puteoli in which each wounded and then spared the other; nor that Caesar prevented one of his archers from shooting Labienus; nor that Labienus, hearing that Caesar was ill with malaria, sent his personal physician to attend to him. Such stories were first recorded more than eight hundred years after the events they purport to describe and can be safely discarded as fiction.
As these two young men – both ferociously brave, both hungry for glory, both military geniuses, and both destined to make the world shake in decades to come – traded polite notes and invitations, the situation in Capua was deteriorating rapidly. The sickness of Marcus Petreius left no one in clear control of the garrison there, and with so many influential men and women crammed into the town the politicking and bickering between various leaders soon paralysed any effective military coordination. Caesar’s undeniable success in forcing the surrender of most the region further devastated morale. Had Caesar, indeed, marched on Capua it is entirely possible the gates would have been flung open for him.
As the middle of October approached, Caesar had, to a large degree achieved most of his initial objectives. Campania was, almost entirely, denied to the Senatorialists, and the Senatorial army at Terracina now faced the spectre of an army to both their north and south. Finally, the looting of the area by Caesar’s troops – however much he may publicly have decried it, and however many of his own men he executed for engaging in freelance robbery, rape and destruction – swelled his coffers considerably.
It was, perhaps, fortunate for Labienus that towards the end of October, two pieces of news reached Caesar. Catiline was dead, murdered by his own supporters. And the Senatorial army at Terracina was marching north.
)
