Masters of Command by Barry S. Strauss

Author:Barry S. Strauss
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Ancient History, History
ISBN: 9781439164488
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Flight

The sources paint a picture of Pompey in despair, but it is hard to trust them. In all likelihood, he tried to organize the defense of his camp. Legionaries, Thracians, and other non-Roman soldiers manned the ramparts, but few of the soldiers who streamed back from the battlefield joined them: most of them kept running. The midday sun was blazing and even the victors were exhausted, but Caesar urged them to attack. The Caesarians stormed the camp. Pompey’s officers led as many defenders as they could into the hills.

As soon as the fate of his camp was sealed, Pompey rode off through the back gate with a bodyguard of thirty cavalrymen. They headed toward Larissa.

Meanwhile, Caesar’s men were itching to gorge themselves on the luxurious food and to loot the silver plate laid out under ivy-covered bowers in Pompey’s camp. Caesar, however, drove them forward in pursuit—another sign of their discipline. They found the Pompeians on a nearby hill that lacked water, and immediately began to surround it with an earthwork. But the enemy fled and took to the ridges in the direction of Larissa. Caesar would not let them escape. He divided his forces and left most of them to defend his camp and Pompey’s. Taking four legions, he tracked down the enemy to another hill a few miles away, and had his weary men immediately begin building a wall to cut them off. As night began falling, the Pompeians finally sent representatives to negotiate surrender. Caesar offered lenient terms and the enemy surrendered the next morning. Only a few senators had escaped during the night.

The results of Pharsalus were, as often in great battles, lopsided. Caesar lost only 230 men (including 30 officers), according to his claims, but other writers raised the figure to 1,200 men. Caesar says his men killed 15,000 Pompeians and accepted surrender from another 24,000; another eyewitness source estimated Pompey’s losses at only 6,000 men. One thing is certain: the dead included Domitius Ahenobarbus, Caesar’s archenemy, who was killed by Caesar’s cavalry as he fled from Pompey’s camp to the nearby hill. Caesar claimed the honors of victory: 180 military standards and 9 legionary eagles.

The same day that the last Pompeians surrendered, Caesar hurried to Larissa, but Pompey had already escaped. He was fleeing to the coast, ready to board a ship to go east. Pompey had no intention of giving up. Why should he have? He still claimed the title of supreme commander of the Roman state, and he was not without the means of backing it up. He still had about seven thousand soldiers at Dyrrachium. He still commanded a fleet of six hundred warships. He still knew more powerful people who owed him favors than most Romans could ever dream of meeting.

So Pompey slipped out of Caesar’s hands and prepared to continue the struggle. Caesar followed, eager to end the war.

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