Excursions in the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with characteristic sketches of the inhabitants of southern Spain, vol. 2/2

by C. Rochfort‏ Scott

In addition to these objections it will be obvious that the half of Pompey’s cavalry on the right, would have been posted on a high mountain, where it could not possibly act, whilst the whole of Cæsar’s (on his left), would have been paralyzed by having to manœuvre on the acclivity of a steep mountain and against a fortified town, instead of being kept in the valley of the river Seco, ready to fall upon the weak part of the enemy’s line as soon as it should be broken.

What, however, seems to me to be fatal to the supposition that this was the side of the town on which the battle was fought is, that Cæsar’s army would have occupied the road by which alone the small portion of Pompey’s army, that escaped, could have retired upon Cordoba.

Against the supposition that the battle took place on the western side of the ridge on which Monda is situated, the objections, though not so numerous, are equally insurmountable; since there is nothing like a plain whereon Cæsar’s army could have been drawn up; the valley of the river Seco being so circumscribed that, for Pompey’s army to have “advanced a mile from Monda,” it must not only have crossed the stream, but mounted the rough hills that there border its left bank; whereas Cæsar’s army is stated to have been posted in a plain that extended five miles from Monda. The half of Pompey’s cavalry on the left would, in this case also, have been uselessly posted on an eminence. In other respects the supposition is admissible enough, since Monda would have been in the rear of the left of Pompey’s position, but still a support to the line, and the whole front would have been “difficult of approach,” and along the course of a rivulet.

We will now examine the ground to the north of the town, to which it strikes me no insuperable objections can be raised.

We may suppose that Pompey took post with his army fronting Toloz and Guaro, the only direction in which his enemy could be looked for, and where the ground is so little broken, as certainly to allow of its being called a plain, as compared with the rugged country that encompasses it on all sides; and his position would naturally have been taken up along the edge of the last ramification of the ridge of Monda, which extends about two miles from west to east along the right bank of the river Seco.

The town would then have been half a mile or so in rear of the left centre of Pompey’s position; a rivulet, “rendering the approach of the mountain difficult,” would have run along its front. His cavalry would naturally have been disposed on both flanks, where, the hills terminating, it would be most at hand either to act offensively, or for the security of the position; and the cavalry of Cæsar, on the contrary, would all have been posted on his left, where the access to Pompey’s position was easiest, and where, in case of his enemy’s defeat, its presence would have produced the most important results.

We may readily conceive, also, that in times past a morass bordered the Seco where it first enters the plain, since several mountain streams there join it, whose previously rapid currents must have experienced a check on reaching this more level country. The industrious Moslems, probably, by bringing this fertile plain into cultivation, drained the morass so that no traces of it are now perceptible, but twenty years hence there may possibly be another.

Every condition required, therefore, to make the ground agree with the description given of it by Hirtius, is here fulfilled; and, occupying such a position, the army of Pompey seemed likely to obtain the ends which we cannot but suppose its general had in view.

The objections of Mr. Carter to modern Monda being the site of the Roman city are, first, the want of space in its vicinity for two such vast hosts to be drawn up in battle array; and, secondly, the little distance of the existing town from the river Sigila and city of Cártama, which, according to an ancient inscription, referring to the repairs of a road from Munda to Cártama, he states was twenty miles.

In consequence of these imaginary discrepancies, he suffered himself to be persuaded that the spot where the apparitions are fighting “three leagues to the westward of the modern town,” is the site of the Roman Munda. In which case it must have been situated in a narrow valley, bounded on all sides by lofty mountains, and twenty-eight Roman miles, at least, from the city of Cártama!