The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

  None of which had much significance compared to the fact that his legions were continuing to mutiny. The Ninth and Tenth were joined by the Fourteenth in a mutiny first quelled in Sicily, but which flared up again the moment they were landed in Africa. He paraded them, flogged a few and concentrated upon the five men, including the unelected tribune of the soldiers Gaius Avienus, who had done most of the damage. The five were put aboard a ship with all their belongings and sent back to Italy, disgraced, discharged and stripped of every entitlement from land to booty.

  “If I were a Marcus Crassus, I would decimate you!” he cried to the assembled men. “You deserve no mercy! But I cannot execute men who have fought for me bravely!”

  Naturally the news that Caesar’s legions were disaffected reached the Republicans; Labienus began to whoop in delight.

  “What a situation!” Caesar said to Calvinus, with him as usual. “Of my eight legions, three consist of raw, unblooded recruits, and of my five veteran legions, three are untrustworthy.”

  “They’ll fight for you with all their customary verve,” Calvinus said comfortably. “You have a genius for handling them that fools like Marcus Crassus never had. Yes, I know you loved him, but a general who decimates is a fool.”

  “I was too weak,” Caesar said.

  “A comfort to know you have weaknesses, Gaius. A comfort to them as well. They don’t think the worse of you for clemency.” He patted Caesar’s arm. “There won’t be any more mutinies. Go and drill your raw recruits.”

  Advice that Caesar followed, to discover that his luck was back. Exercising his three legions of raw recruits, he stumbled by chance upon Titus Labienus and a larger force, and evaded defeat by typical Caesarean boldness. Labienus ceased to whoop.

  Reports of all this had percolated to Publius Sittius; he and his two kings began to fear that Caesar, very outnumbered, would be overpowered.

  What, wondered Sittius, could Mauretania do to help? Nothing in Africa Province because the Mauretanian army was similar to the Numidian one: it consisted of lightly armed cavalry who fought as lancers rather than at close quarters. Nowhere near enough ships were available to transport troopers and horses a thousand miles by sea. Therefore, Publius Sittius decided, the best thing to do was to invade Numidia from the west and lure King Juba back to defend his own kingdom. That would leave the Republicans very short of cavalry and deny them one of their sources of supplies.

  The moment he heard that the impudent Sittius had invaded, Juba panicked and withdrew westward in a hurry.

  “I do not know how long we can keep Juba out of the way,” said Sittius in a letter to Caesar, “but my kings and I hope that his absence will at least give you a breathing space.”

  A breathing space that Caesar utilized to good effect. He sent Gaius Sallustius Crispus and one legion to the big island of Cercina in the bight, where the Republicans had amassed huge stores of grain. Though it was after harvest time, the African province’s grain was denied him, for the Bagradas River’s wheat latifundia lay west of the Republican lines; Caesar’s territory around Leptis Minor was the poorest land in the province, and south to Thapsus it was even poorer.

  “What the Republicans have forgotten,” Caesar said to Sallust, recovered from his stoning at Abella, “is that Gaius Marius settled Cercina with his veterans. My father was the one who did it for him, so the Cercinans know the name of Caesar very well. You have this job, Sallustius, because you can draw the birds down from the trees with words. What you have to do is remind the children and grandchildren of Gaius Marius’s veterans that Caesar is Marius’s nephew, that their loyalties must lie with Caesar. Talk well, and you won’t have to fight. I want the Cercinans to hand over Metellus Scipio’s hoard of grain willingly. If we have it, we’ll eat for however long we’re in Africa.”

  While Sallust sailed off with his legion on the short voyage to Cercina, Caesar fortified his position and started to send letters of commiseration to the wheat plutocrats of the Bagradas and the Catada, whom Metellus Scipio was needlessly antagonizing. Having taken sufficient grain to feed his troops without bothering to pay for it, Metellus Scipio, for reasons best known to himself, pursued a scorched-earth policy, burned the fields wherein the coming year’s crops were sprouting.

  “It rather sounds,” said Caesar to his nephew Quintus Pedius, “as if Metellus Scipio thinks the Republicans are going to lose.”

  “Whoever wins must lose,” said Quintus Pedius, a farmer to his very core. “We’d better hope this business finishes itself in time to plant a second time. The bulk of the winter rains are still to come, and burned stubble ploughed in is beneficial.”

  “Let’s hope Sallustius succeeds” was Caesar’s answer.

  Two nundinae after his departure, Sallust and his legion were back, Sallust wreathed in smiles. Apprised of the situation, the Cercinans unanimously declared for Caesar, undertook to keep the major part of the grain there, defend it against Republican grain transports when they came, and send it to Caesar as he needed it.

  “Excellent!” said Caesar. “Now all we have to do is force a general engagement and get this wretched affair over with.”

  Easier said than done. With Juba absent, neither Metellus Scipio in the command tent nor Labienus in the field wanted a general engagement with someone as slippery as Caesar, even if his veterans were disaffected.

  Caesar wrote to Publius Sittius and told him to withdraw.

  More time actually dragged on than the calendar indicated, for the College of Pontifices at Caesar’s direction had declared an intercalation following the month of February: twenty-three extra days. This little month, called Mercedonius, had to be taken into account when both sides said that March seemed as if it would never end. The Republican legions, camped around Hadrumetum, and the Caesarean legions, camped around Leptis Minor, had to suffer two full months of relative inertia while Juba in western Numidia tried to lay his hands on the wily Publius Sittius, who finally received Caesar’s letter and withdrew toward the end of March. Juba hurried back to Africa Province.

  * * *

  Even so, Caesar had to force an engagement, the Republicans were so wary of him. They skirmished, then withdrew, skirmished, then withdrew. Very well, they would have it thus! Caesar must attack Thapsus from its landward side. Not very far south of Leptis Minor, the city was already under massive blockade from the sea, but Labienus had fortified it heavily, and it still held out.

  Shadowed by Metellus Scipio and Labienus in joint command of the entire Republican army, including Juba and his squadron of war elephants, Caesar marched his legions out of Leptis Minor in the direction of Thapsus at the beginning of April.

  A typical feature of that brackish, inhospitable coastline gave Caesar his long-awaited chance: a flat, sandy spit about a mile and a half wide and several miles long. On one side of it lay the sea, on the other a huge salt lagoon. Inwardly exulting, Caesar led his army on to the spit, and kept marching in very tight formation until every man he had was penned into the spit.

  What he gambled on was that Labienus wouldn’t divine why he marched in a modified agmen quadratum instead of the usual eight-man-wide snake; agmen quadratum was a march in wide columns of troops, which reduced the length of the forces while it increased their breadth. Knowing Labienus, he would simply assume that Caesar expected to be attacked by the shadowing Republican army, and wanted to hustle his men off the spit as quickly as he could. In reality, it was Caesar who intended to attack.

  The moment Caesar marched into the spit, Labienus saw what he had to do, and raced to do it. While the bulk of his infantry under Afranius and Juba closed Caesar off from retreat out of the spit, Labienus and Metellus Scipio led the cavalry and the fast-moving veteran legions around the landward side of the lagoon and positioned themselves at the far end of the spit to meet Caesar’s advance head-on.

  Caesar’s bugles sounded: his army promptly split into two halves, with Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus leading the half which reversed its direction an
d charged at Afranius and Juba behind, while Caesar and Quintus Pedius led the half still moving forward in a charge at Labienus and Metellus Scipio. All Caesar’s crack legions were at the head and rear of his army, with the raw recruits in the middle. The moment the two halves went in opposite directions, the recruits were behind the crack troops.

  Thapsus, as the battle came to be called, was a rout. All smarting from Caesar’s disapproval allied to his clemency, his veterans, particularly the Tenth, fought perhaps better than in all their long careers. By the end of the day, ten thousand Republican dead littered the field, and organized resistance in Africa was over. The most disappointing thing about Thapsus to Caesar was the dearth of prominent captives. Metellus Scipio, Labienus, Afranius, Petreius, Sextus Pompey, the governor Attius Varus, Faustus Sulla and Lucius Manlius Torquatus all fled, as did King Juba.

  “I very much fear it will go on somewhere else,” Calvinus said to Caesar afterward. “In Spain, perhaps.”

  “If it does, then I’ll go to Spain,” Caesar said grimly. “The Republican cause has to die, Calvinus, otherwise the Rome I want to make will revert back to the boni conception of the mos maiorum.”

  “Then the one you have to eliminate is Cato.”

  “Not eliminate, if by that you mean kill. I don’t want any of them dead, but most particularly Cato. The rest may see the error of their ways, Cato never will. Why? Because that part of his mind is missing. Yet he must stay alive, and he must enter my Senate. I need Cato as an exhibit.”

  “He won’t consent to that.”

  “He won’t know that he is,” Caesar said positively. “I’m going to write a protocol governing conduct in the Senate and the comitia—no filibustering, for example. Time limits for speeches. And no allegations about fellow members without definite proof.”

  “We march for Utica, then?”

  “We march for Utica.”

  2

  A courier from Metellus Scipio brought the news of the defeat at Thapsus to Utica, but the man was not more than a few hours ahead of refugees from the battlefield, none of them having higher rank than a junior military tribune.

  “Lucius Torquatus, Sextus Pompeius and I are joining Gnaeus Pompeius’s fleet in Hadrumetum,” said Metellus Scipio’s brief note.

  “As yet we have no idea of our next destination, but it will not be Utica unless you request that, Marcus Cato. If you can rally enough men to resist Caesar, then we will fight with you.”

  “But Caesar’s troops were disaffected,” Cato said hollowly to his son. “I was sure we’d beat him!”

  Young Cato didn’t answer: what was there to say?

  After writing to Metellus Scipio to tell him not to bother with Utica, Cato sat drawn up into himself for the rest of that awful day, then at dawn of the next he took Lucius Gratidius and set out to see the Thapsus refugees, who had clustered together in an old camp on Utica’s outskirts.

  “There are enough of us to give Caesar one more fight,” he said to their senior, a minor legate named Marcus Eppius. “I have five thousand good, trained young men in the city who are willing to join those of you here. And I can rearm you.”

  Eppius shook his head. “No, Marcus Cato, we’ve had enough.” He shivered, lifted his hand in the sign to ward off the Evil Eye. “Caesar is invincible, we know that now. We captured one of the Tenth’s centurions, Titius, whom Quintus Metellus Scipio examined himself. Titius admitted that the Ninth, the Tenth and the Fourteenth had mutinied twice since leaving Italy. Even so, when Caesar sent them into battle, they fought like heroes for him.”

  “What happened to this centurion Titius?”

  “He was executed.”

  And that, thought Cato, is really why I ought never have put Metellus Scipio in the command tent. Or Labienus. Caesar would have pardoned a brave captive centurion. As should all men.

  “Well, I suggest that all of you make your way to Utica’s harbor and board the transports waiting there,” Cato said cheerily. “They belong to Gnaeus Pompeius, who I gather is thinking of going west to the Baleares and Spain. I’m sure he won’t insist that you accompany him, so if you prefer to return to Italy, tell him.”

  He and Lucius Gratidius returned to Utica.

  Yesterday’s panic had settled, though the city wasn’t going about its wartime business as it had during the months of Cato’s prefecture. The three hundred most prominent citizens were already waiting in the marketplace for Cato to tell them what he wanted them to do. They genuinely loved him, as did almost all Uticans, for he had been scrupulously fair, willing to listen to their grievances, unfailingly optimistic.

  “No,” he said, quite gently for Cato, “I can no longer make decisions for you. You must decide for yourselves whether to resist Caesar or sue for pardon. If you want to know what I think you should do, I think you should sue for pardon. The alternative would be to withstand siege, and your fate would be no different from the fates of Carthage, Numantia, Avaricum, Alesia. Caesar is an even greater master of siege than Scipio Aemilianus. The result would be the destruction of this beautiful, immensely rich city, and the deaths of many of its citizens. Caesar will levy a huge fine, but you’ll have the ongoing prosperity to pay it. Sue for pardon.”

  “If we freed our slaves and put them to military service as well, Marcus Cato, we might survive a siege,” said one citizen.

  “That would be neither moral nor legal,” Cato said sternly. “No government should have the authority to order any man to free his slaves if he doesn’t want to.”

  “What if the freeing were voluntary?” another asked.

  “Then I would condone it. However, I urge you not to resist. Talk about it among yourselves, then summon me back.”

  He and Gratidius walked across to sit on the stone coping of a fountain, where young Cato joined them.

  “Will they fight, Father?”

  “I hope not.”

  “I hope they do,” said Gratidius, a little tearfully. “If they don’t, I’m out of a job. I hate the thought of submitting tamely to Caesar!”

  Cato did not reply, his eyes on the debating Three Hundred.

  The decision was swift: Utica would sue for pardon.

  “Believe me,” said Cato, “it is the best way. Though I above all men have no cause to love Caesar, he is a merciful man who has been clement since the beginning of this sad business. None of you will suffer physical harm, or lose your property.”

  Some of the Three Hundred had decided to flee; Cato promised them that he would organize transport for them from among the ships belonging to the Republican cause.

  “And that’s that,” he said with a sigh when he, young Cato and Gratidius were ensconced in the dining room. Statyllus came in, looking apprehensive.

  “Pour me some wine,” said Cato to Prognanthes, his steward.

  The others stilled, turned wondering eyes on the master of the house, who took the clay beaker.

  “My task is done, why shouldn’t I?” he asked, sipped, and retched. “How extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “I’ve lost my taste for wine.”

  “Marcus Cato, I have news,” Statyllus said.

  The food came in on the echo of his words: fresh bread, oil, a roast fowl, salads and cheeses, some late grapes.

  “You’ve been away all morning, Statyllus,” Cato said, biting into a leg of roast fowl. “How good this tastes! What news are you so afraid of?”

  “Juba’s horsemen are looting the countryside.”

  “We could expect nothing else. Now eat, Statyllus.”

  Next day came word that Caesar was approaching rapidly, and that Juba had gone in the direction of Numidia. Cato watched from his window as a deputation from the Three Hundred rode out to treat with the conqueror, then turned his eyes to the harbor, a frenzy of activity as refugees and soldiers boarded ships.

  “This evening,” he said, “we’ll have a nice dinner party. Just the three of us, I think. Gratidius is a good man, but he doesn’t appreciate philosophy.”

  He sai
d it with such pleasure that young Cato and Statyllus stared at each other in puzzlement; was he indeed so glad that his task was over? And what did he intend to do now that it was over? Surrender to Caesar? No, that was inconceivable. Yet he had issued no orders to pack their few clothes and books, made no attempt to secure passage room on a ship.

  The prefect’s fine house on the main square contained a proper bathroom; in midafternoon Cato ordered the bath filled, and went to enjoy a leisurely soak. By the time he emerged the dining room was set for the party, and the two other diners were reclining, young Cato on the couch to the right, Statyllus on the couch to the left, with the middle one for Cato. When he walked in, young Cato and Statyllus stared at him openmouthed. The long hair and beard were gone, and Cato wore his senatorial tunic with the broad purple band of the latus clavus down its right shoulder.

  He looked magnificent, years younger, though all trace of red was gone from his hair, combed now in its customary style. The many months of abstention from wine had returned his grey eyes to their old luminousness, and the lines of dissipation were gone.

  “Oh, I’m so hungry!” he said, taking the lectus medius.“Prognanthes, food!”

  It wasn’t possible to be gloomy; Cato’s mood was too infectious. When Prognanthes produced a superior vintage of a smooth red wine, he tasted it gingerly, pronounced it good, and sipped occasionally from his goblet.

  When only the wine, two fine cheeses and some grapes remained on the tables, and all the servants save Prognanthes had gone, Cato settled into his couch with his elbow comfortably disposed on a bolster, and gave a huge sigh of satisfaction.

  “I shall miss Athenodorus Cordylion,” he said, “but you’ll have to take his place, Marcus. What did Zeno think was real?”

  Oh, I am back at school! thought young Cato, and answered automatically. “Material things. Things that are solid.”