Marching With Caesar-Antony and Cleopatra: Part II-Cleopatra by R.W. Peake

Author:R.W. Peake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: rome, julius caesar, cleopatra, ancient warfare, roman legions, mark antony, caesar augustus

One thing about Octavian; he does not move often, but when he does, it is with blinding speed. Now that he made up his mind to move, he wasted no time. Establishing his forward base on the island of Corcyra, we were now essentially pinned between Octavian to the north and Agrippa to the south. Still, Antonius refused to unleash his fleet. Keeping it penned safely behind a row of ships linked together by a huge chain, much as was done at Brundisium in the first civil war, our fleet was safe but impotent. Ahenobarbus at least had the foresight to establish a pair of forts on both sides of the inlet, emplacing a disproportionately large number of artillery pieces in each one. A fire was kept perpetually burning in each, with a large stockpile of combustible ammunition, ready to rain fire down on the heads of any of Octavian’s ships that were foolish enough to try to run the gauntlet. Duty in the two forts was rotated, with a Cohort in each fort standing duty for a day at a time, while Octavian and Agrippa’s ships cruised back and forth out in the open water in plain view from the watchtowers placed at each fort. Occasionally, they would venture just within artillery range of our larger ballistae, but after the first time or two, the men learned not to waste their ammunition, recognizing that the enemy was testing our defenses.

Then, Octavian made his next move, after a probing attack on the inlet, which was easily repulsed, landing his army at a spot about five miles north of our position, near a town called Toryne. There was a shallow bay there, suitable for beaching the bulk of his fleet, despite the fact that it was not nearly as protected from the spring storms as our bay. Overlooking the bay was a high flat-topped hill a few hundred feet high and it was on this height that Octavian constructed his camp. Immediately, our cavalry scouts returned with a report and for the first time we learned the size and composition of Octavian’s forces. After the briefing, I returned to call a meeting of the Legion’s Centurions, minus Metellus’ Cohort, which was still on detached duty.

“Octavian has eight Legions, plus five Praetorian Cohorts,” I reported.

The Centurions treated this as good news, at least until some of the more observant took notice of my grim expression.

“Primus Pilus, we outnumber them by a huge amount. Why are you looking as if you just ate a lemon?”

“Because they’re all Italians, they’re all veterans, and I suspect that there are a fair number of them that were with us not that long ago.”

This quieted them immediately. One recurring topic of conversation among the few veteran Legions remaining in Antonius’ army concerned the quality of the men filling the ranks of the new Legions that were raised in the East. After the first Parthian campaign, when we combed the region to fill our ranks, we had essentially picked the cream of the Roman citizens that populated the regions on the far side of Our Sea.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.