Never before had so many Roman troops faced each other on a
single battlefield. Never before had two of Rome’s greatest generals fought it
out like this. Pompey, conqueror of the East, fifty-seven, a former young
achiever who had made history in his twenties, a multimillionaire, an excellent
military organizer, a master strategist, coming off a victory, with the larger
army. Caesar, conqueror of the West, who had celebrated his fifty-second
birthday only three weeks before in the month that would eventually bear his
name, who had been nearly forty before he made his first military mark, an
original tactician and engineering genius with a mastery of detail, a commander
with dash, the common touch, luck, and the smaller but more experienced army.
Plutarch was to lament that, combined, two such famous,
talented Roman generals and their seventy thousand men could have conquered the
old enemy Parthia for Rome, could have marched unassailed all the way to India.
Instead, here they were, bent on destroying each other.
It probably occurred to Centurion Crastinus that he might
know some of the 1st Legion centurions across the field, might have served with
them, might have drunk with them and played dice with them somewhere on his
legionary travels. He would have watched them talking to their men, animatedly
passing on instructions. They were easy enough to spot; like him, they wore a
transverse crest on their helmets. It made them easy to identify for their own
men, and marked them as targets for the opposition. Centurions were the key to
an army’s success in battle. Crastinus knew it, and Caesar knew it. The 10th
Legion’s six tribunes were back between the lines. Young, rich, spoiled members
of the Equestrian Order, few had the respect of the enlisted men. From later
events it is likely that one of the 10th’s tribunes, Gaius Avienus, had done
nothing but complain since they set sail from Brindisi that Caesar had forced
him to leave all his servants behind.
This day would be decided by the centurions and their
legionaries, the rank and file, and as Crastinus had told Caesar, he was
determined to acquit himself honorably. Four hundred fifty yards away, men of
the first rank of the 1st Legion would have been looking at Crastinus and
setting their sights on making a trophy of his crested helmet. The man who took
that to his tribune after the battle, preferably with Crastinus’s severed head
still in it, could expect a handsome reward. Without doubt they looked confident,
these legionaries of the 1st. Crastinus may have imagined they thought they
were something special, Pompey’s pets. Crastinus would see how confident they
looked in an hour or so.
Around the centurion, his men would have been becoming
impatient, knowing in their bones that this day would not be like the others
when they’d stood and stared at their opponents for hours on end before
marching back to camp at sunset. This day the air was electric, and the tension
would have been getting to some of them, wanting to move, to get started.
As if in answer, trumpets sounded behind the ranks across
the field. Many of Pompey’s men were more than nervous; the centurions of the
newer units were having trouble maintaining their formations, so Pompey decided
not to waste any time. Moments before, the thousands of cavalry horses banked
up on the extreme left of Pompey’s line had been waiting restlessly, some
neighing, some pawing the ground, some fidgeting and hard to control. Now, with
a cacophony of war cries, their riders were urging them forward. Within
seconds, seven thousand horses and riders were charging across the wheat field.
Behind Crastinus, trumpets of his own side sounded. In
response, Caesar’s German and Gallic cavalry lurched forward to meet the Pompeian
charge, with their auxiliary light infantry companions running after them. The
Battle of Pharsalus had begun.
On Pompey’s side, his thirty-six hundred archers and
slingers dashed out from behind the lines and formed up in the open to the rear
of their charging cavalry. On command, the bowmen let loose volleys of arrows
that flew over the heads of their galloping troopers and dropped among Caesar’s
charging cavalry.
The infantry of both sides remained where they were in their
battle lines, and watched with morbid fascination as their cavalry came
together on the eastern side of the battlefield. General Labienus would have
been at the head of his German and Gallic cavalry, cutting down any Caesarian
trooper who ventured near him, and issuing a stream of orders.
For a short while Caesar’s cavalry held its ground, but with
their men falling in increasing numbers, they began to give way. At least two
hundred of Caesar’s cavalrymen were soon dead or seriously wounded, and
Labienus saw the time had come to execute the maneuver that Pompey had planned.
Leaving the allied cavalry to deal with Caesar’s troopers, probably under the
direction of his colleague General Marcus Petreius, he led his German and
Gallic cavalry around the perimeter of the fighting and charged toward the
exposed flank and rear of the 10th Legion.
Caesarian auxiliaries scattered from the path of the
cavalry, and the men of the 10th Legion on the extreme right were forced to
swing around and defend themselves as Labienus’s troopers surged up to them. As
Labienus urged more squadrons to ride around behind the 10th and as they came
to the legion’s third line, Caesar, not many yards away, barked an order.
Trumpets sounded, and the reserve cohorts of the fourth line
suddenly jumped to their feet and dashed forward behind their standards,
slamming into the unsuspecting cavalrymen before they even saw them. The men of
the reserve cohorts had been given explicit instructions not to throw their
javelins but to use them instead like spears, thrusting them overarm up into
the faces of the cavalrymen. According to Plutarch, Caesar said, when issuing
the order for the tactic, “Those fine young dancers won’t endure the steel
shining in their eyes. They’ll fly to save their handsome faces.”
Now Caesar’s shock troops mingled with the surprised Germans
and Gauls at close quarters, pumping their javelins as instructed, taking out
eyes, causing horrific facial injuries and fatalities with every strike. The
congested cavalry had come to a dead stop, compressed between the rear ranks of
the 10th and the reserve cohorts. There were so many of them there was nowhere
for the riders to go; they merely provided sitting targets for the men of the
reserve cohorts as they swarmed among them.
As many as a thousand of Labienus’s best cavalrymen were
killed in this counterstroke. The panic that was created quickly spread to the
allied cavalrymen behind them. Seeing the carnage, with Labienus’s big,
longhaired riders falling like ninepins or reeling back and trying to protect
their faces from the javelin thrusts instead of pressing home the now stalled
attack, the allied riders disengaged from Caesar’s cavalry, turned, and
galloped from the battlefield, heading in terror for the hills.
This allowed Caesar’s cavalry to join the reserve cohorts
against Labienus’s men, and despite the general’s best efforts to rally his
troopers, the combination of infantry and cavalry was too much for them and
they broke and followed the allied cavalry toward the high country. Labienus
had no choice but to pursue his own men, with hopes of trying to regroup.
As Caesar’s cavalry chased Labienus and his troopers all the
way to the hills, Pompey’s left flank was exposed. With a cheer, Caesar’s
reserve cohorts spontaneously rushed forward to the attack in the wake of their
victory over the cavalry. All that stood in their way were Pompey’s archers and
slingers. These men of Caesar’s strategic reserve, high on their bloody success
against the mounted troops, quickly crossed the ground separating the two
groups, neutralizing the effectiveness of the archers’ arrows and the slingers’
lead shot. The slingers were armed merely with their slingshots. The archers,
men from Crete, Pontus, Syria, and other eastern states, were armed, apart from
their bows and arrows, only with swords. In close-quarters combat they were no
competition for legionaries whose specialty was infighting. As the slingers
ran, the archers bravely stood their ground and tried to put up a fight, but
they were soon mowed down like hay before the scythe.
Now Caesar issued another order. His red banner dropped. The
trumpets of the first and second infantry lines sounded “Charge.”
In the very front rank, on the right of Caesar’s line,
Centurion Crastinus raised his right hand, clutching a javelin now. Caesar
would later be told of his words. “Come on, men of my cohort, follow me!” he
bellowed. “And give your general the service you have promised!”
With that, he dashed forward. All around him, the men of
Caesar’s front line roared a battle cry and leaped forward, javelins raised in
their right hands for an overarm throw when the order came to let fly.
Ahead, to the surprise of Crastinus and his comrades,
Pompey’s front line didn’t budge. Pompey’s men were under orders to stand still
and receive Caesar’s infantry charge, instead of themselves charging at
Caesar’s running men, as was the norm in battles of the day. According to
Caesar, this tactic had been suggested to Pompey by Gaius Triarius, one of his
naval commanders. Pompey, lacking confidence in his infantry and anxious to
give them an edge in the contest, had grabbed at the idea, which was intended
to make Caesar’s troops run twice as far as usual and so arrive out of breath
at the Pompeian line.
Caesar was later scathing of the tactic. He was to write
that the running charge fired men’s enthusiasm for battle, and that generals
ought to encourage this, not repress it. In fact, Pompey’s tactic did have
something going for it, as his troops would present a solid barrier of
interlocked shields against Caesar’s puffing, disorderly men, who had to break
formation to run to the attack. It may have been effective against
inexperienced troops, but in the middle of the battlefield Centurion Crastinus
and his fellow centurions of the first rank drew their charging cohorts to a
halt. The entire charge came to a stop. For perhaps a minute the Caesarian
troops paused in the middle of the wheat field, catching their breath; then,
led by Crastinus, they resumed the charge with a mighty roar.
On the run, the front line let fly with their javelins. At
the same time, in Pompey’s front line, centurions called an order: “Loose!” The
men of Pompey’s front line launched their own javelins with all their might,
then raised their shields high to receive the Caesarian volley. Then, with
javelins hanging from many a shield, they brought them down again, locking them
together just in time to receive the charge. With an almighty crash Caesar’s
front line washed onto the wall of Pompeian shields. Despite the impact of the
charge, Pompey’s line held firm.
Now, standing toe to toe with their adversaries, Caesar’s
men tried to hack a way through the shield line. On Caesar’s right wing,
Centurion Crastinus, repulsed in his initial charge, was moving from cohort to
cohort as his men tried to break through the immovable 1st Legion line, urging
on his legionaries at the top of his voice above the din of battle. Crastinus
threw himself at the shield line, aiming to show his men how to reach over the
top of an enemy shield and strike at the face of the soldier on the other side
with the point of his sword. As he did, he felt a blow to the side of the head.
He never even saw it coming. The strength suddenly drained from his legs. He
sagged to his knees. His head was spinning. Dazed, he continued to call out to
his men to spur them on.
As he spoke, a legionary of the 1st Legion directly opposite
him in the shield line moved his shield six inches to the left, opening a small
gap. In a flash he had shoved his sword through the gap with a powerful forward
thrust that entered the yelling Gaius Crastinus’s open mouth. According to
Plutarch, the tip of the blade emerged from the back of Crastinus’s neck. The
soldier of the 1st withdrew his bloodied sword and swiftly resealed the gap in
the shield line. His action had lasted just seconds. No doubt with a crude
cheer from the nearby men of the 1st Legion, Centurion Crastinus toppled
forward into the shield in front of him, then slid to the ground.
It was a stalemate at the front line. Neither side was
making any forward progress. But on Caesar’s right, the reserve cohorts, fresh
from the massacre of Pompey’s archers and slingers, were swinging onto the
flank and rear of the 1st Legion.
Pompey had seen his cavalry stroke destroyed in minutes, had
seen the cavalry he’d been depending on for victory flee the field. And now his
ever-dependable 1st Legion was in difficulty. If the 1st couldn’t hold, no one
could. Without a word, he turned his horse around and galloped back toward the
camp on the hill. A handful of startled staff rode after him.
Plutarch says that as Pompey reached the camp’s praetorian
gate, looking pale and dazed, he called to the centurions in charge, “Defend
the camp strenuously if there should be any reverse in the battle. I’m going to
check the guard on the other gates.”
Instead of going around the other three gates of the camp as
he’d said, he went straight to his headquarters tent, and there he remained. He
hadn’t wanted this battle, he had known the likely outcome, especially if it
came down to a pure infantry engagement. But expecting something and then
actually experiencing it are two different things. In a military career spanning
thirty-four years Pompey the Great had never once experienced a defeat. And
never once, in all probability, had he put himself in the shoes of men he’d
defeated, and imagined what defeat might feel like. It would have made the
emptiness of failure all the more difficult to comprehend.
The men of the 1st, fighting now on three sides and
outnumbered, were in danger of being surrounded and cut to pieces. No orders
came from Pompey—he’d disappeared. None came from their divisional commander,
the useless General Domitius. Pompey had failed to maintain a reserve, which
might have been thrown into support the 1st now in its time of need. With no
hope of reinforcement, and with self-preservation in mind, the officers of the
1st decided to make a gradual withdrawal, in battle order, in an attempt to
overcome the threat to their rear. Orders rang out, trumpets sang, and
standards inclined toward the rear. Their pride and their discipline intact,
the 1st Legion began to pull back in perfect order, step by step, harried all
the way by the 10th Legion and the reserve cohorts.
Beside the 1st, the 15th Legion did likewise. Away over on
Pompey’s right, General Lentulus, seeing the left wing withdrawing, and with
his own auxiliaries and slingers already in full flight, ordered his
legionaries to emulate the 1st Legion and make an ordered withdrawal, for if
they attempted to hold their ground, the center would give way and the right
wing would be pressed against the Enipeus and surrounded. Like their comrades
of the 1st, the Spanish veterans of the 4th and 6th Legions maintained their
formation as they slowly edged back, pressed by their countrymen of the 8th and
9th. But in the center, the inexperienced youths of the three new Italian
legions began to waver. They tried to follow the example of the legions on the
flanks, but their formations, like their discipline, began to break down.
Now Caesar issued another order. Again his red banner
dropped. Again trumpets sounded “Charge.” Now the men of his third line, who
had been standing, waiting impatiently to join the fray, rushed forward with a
cheer. As the fresh troops of the third line arrived on the scene, the men of
the first and second lines gave way and let them through. The impact of this
second charge shattered what cohesion remained in Pompey’s center. Raw recruits
threw down their shields, turned, and fled toward the camp on the hill they’d
left that morning. Auxiliaries did the same, and the entire center dissolved.
It was barely midday, and the battle was already lost to Pompey’s side. It was
now just a matter of who lived, and who died, before the last blows were
struck.
The 1st Legion stubbornly refused to break, continuing to
fight as it backpedaled across the plain pursued by the men of the 10th Legion
and reserve cohorts. The 15th Legion appears to have broken at this point, with
its men turning and heading for the hills. Over by the Enipeus, General
Lentulus deserted his men and galloped for the camp on the hill. The 4th and
6th Legions, cut off from the rest of the army, withdrew in good order,
fighting all the way, following the riverbank, which ensured they couldn’t be
outflanked on their right. Mark Antony pursued them with the 7th, 8th, and 9th,
and, apparently, with a charge was able to separate two cohorts of the 6th from
their comrades. Surrounded, these men of the 6th, a little under a thousand of
them, resisted for a time, then accepted Antony’s offer of surrender terms.
Meanwhile, two cohorts of the 6th and three of the 4th
continued to escape upriver, with their eagles intact. Antony would later break
off the pursuit and link up with Caesar at Pompey’s camp. These five cohorts of
Pompey’s Spanish troops later found a ford in the river, slid down the bank,
crossed the waterway, then struggled up the far bank. That night they would
occupy a village full of terrified Greeks west of the river before continuing their
flight west the next day.
At the camp on the hill, several thousand more experienced
legionaries of the 15th, the Gemina, and the two legions from Syria had been
regrouped by their tribunes and centurions to make a stand outside the walls.
But as tens of thousands of Pompey’s newer troops and auxiliaries swamped
around them, a number without arms, their standard-bearers having cast away
their standards, and with Caesar’s legions on their heels, they abandoned their
position and withdrew to make a stand on more favorable ground in the hills.
Behind them, many of the men flooding through the gates began looting their own
camp. It seems that the camp’s commander, General Afranius, had already escaped
by this time, spiriting away Pompey’s son Gnaeus, probably as prearranged with
Pompey.
While Pompey’s guard cohorts and their auxiliary supporters
from Thrace and Thessaly put up a spirited defense of the camp, the
overwhelming numbers of the attackers forced them to gradually withdraw from
the walls. With fighting going on inside the camp, young General Marcus
Favonius found Pompey in his headquarters tent. A friend of Marcus Brutus and
an admirer of Cato the Younger, Favonius, who’d been serving on Scipio’s staff
and just been made a major general, was a fervent supporter of Pompey. Now,
horrified by the state in which he found his hero, the young general tried to
rouse his commander from his stupor. “General, the enemy are in the camp! You
must fly!”
Pompey looked at him oddly. All authorities agree on Pompey’s
words at the news: “What! Into the very camp?”
Favonius and Pompey’s chief secretary, Philip, a Greek
freedman, helped their commander to his feet, removed their general’s
identifying scarlet cloak, replacing it with a plain one, then ushered him to the
door. Five horses were waiting outside the tent. According to Plutarch, three
of the four men who accompanied Pompey as he galloped from a rear gate before
Caesar’s troops could reach it were General Favonius; General Lentulus,
commander of the right-wing division; and General Publius Lentulus Spinther.
The fourth man would have been Pompey’s secretary, Philip.
The five riders galloped north toward the town of Larisa,
whose people were sympathetic toward Pompey. On the road, they encountered a
group of thirty cavalrymen. As Pompey’s generals drew their swords to defend
their leader they recognized the cavalry as one of Labienus’s squadrons,
intact, unscathed, and lost. With the troopers gladly joining their commander
to provide a meager bodyguard, the thirty-five riders hurried on.
Many of the men who had found a temporary haven in the camp
now burst out and fled toward Mount Dogandzis, where a number of their
colleagues were already digging in. The 1st Legion, in the meantime, appears to
have withdrawn east. With Caesar summoning the 10th Legion to help him in the
last stages of the battle at the camp, the 1st was able to continue to make its
escape. It appears to have swung around to the south in the night and then,
substantially intact and complete with most of its standards, including its
eagle, marched west to the coast and Pompey’s anchored fleet.
Leaving General Sulla in charge of the continuing fight at
the camp, Caesar regrouped four legions, his veteran 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th,
and set off after Pompey’s men who had fled to the mountain. Upward of twenty
thousand in number, mostly armed, and well officered still, these Pompeians
continued to pose a threat. As scouts reported that these survivors had now
left the mountain and were withdrawing across the foothills toward Larisa,
Caesar determined to cut them off before they reached the town and its
supplies.
Caesar took a shortcut that after a march of six miles
brought his four legions around into the path of the escaping troops in the
late afternoon. He formed up his men into a battle line. Seeing this, the
Pompeians halted on a hill. There was a river running along the bottom of the
hill, and Caesar had his weary troops build a long entrenchment line on the
hillside above the river, to deprive the other side of water. Observing this,
the men on the hill, all exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, and not a few wounded,
sent down a deputation to discuss surrender terms. Caesar sent the deputation
back up the hill with the message that he was willing to accept only an
unconditional surrender. He then prepared to spend the night in the open.
