The Egyptians indeed were ultimately worsted in every encounter, but they could still return to the attack with increased numbers; and Cæsar’s resources were so straitened that he was not disinclined to listen to terms of accommodation, the insincerity of which was transparent. The Alexandrian populace declared themselves weary of the rule of their young princess, and disgusted with the tyranny of Ganymedes. Their rightful sovereign once restored to them, they would unite heartily with the republic, and defy the fury of the upstart and the usurper. It cannot be supposed that the Roman general was deceived by these protestations; the bad faith of the Alexandrians was already proverbial in the West. But he expected perhaps that the rivalry of Ptolemy and Arsinoe would create dissension in their camps; he may have preferred coping with the young king in open war, to keeping a guard over him, and watching the intrigues with which he beguiled his captivity; possibly the surrender was made in concession to a pressure he could not resist, and was adopted as a means of gaining time. But when Ptolemy was restored to his subjects, and immediately led them to another attack upon the Roman position, the soldiers are said to have felt no little satisfaction at the reward of what they deemed their general’s weak compliance.
Cleopatra, whose blandishments were still the solace of the Roman general throughout his desperate adventure, rejoiced to see her brother thus treacherously array himself in rash hostility to her protector. The toils were beginning to close around the young king. Mithridates of Pergamus, an adherent in whose fidelity and conduct Cæsar placed great reliance, was advancing with the reinforcements he had been commissioned to collect in Syria and the adjacent provinces. He reduced Pelusium, the key of Egypt by land as Pharos was by sea, and crossed the Nile at the head of the Delta, routing a division of the king’s troops which attempted to check his progress. Ptolemy led forth his army to give battle to the new invader, and was followed by Cæsar. The Romans came up with the Egyptians, crossed the river in the face of their superior numbers, and attacked them in their entrenchments, which, from their knowledge both of the Macedonian and the Roman art of war, were probably not deficient in scientific construction. But the shock of the veterans was irresistible. The Egyptians fled, leaving great numbers slaughtered within the lines, and falling into their own ditches in confused and mangled heaps. The fugitives rushed to the channel of the Nile, where their vessels were stationed, and crowded into them without order or measure. One of them in which Ptolemy had taken refuge was thus overladen and sank.
This signal defeat, and still more the death of their unfortunate sovereign, reduced the defenders of the monarchy to despair. The populace of Alexandria issued from their gates to meet the conqueror in the attitude of suppliants and with the religious ceremonies by which they were wont to deprecate the wrath of their legitimate rulers. He entered the city, and directed his course through the principal streets, where the hostile barricades were levelled at his approach, till he reached the quarters in which his own garrison was stationed. He now reconstituted the government by appointing Cleopatra to the sovereignty, in conjunction with another younger brother, while he sent Arsinoe under custody to await his future triumph at Rome. The throne of his favourite he pretended to secure by leaving a Roman force in Alexandria. The pride of the republic was gratified by thus advancing another step towards the complete subjugation of a country it had long coveted. Cæsar was anxious that so much Roman blood as had been shed in his recent campaigns should not appear to have sunk into the earth, and borne no fruit of glory and advantage to the state. The whole of this episode in his eventful history, his arrogant dictation to the rulers of a foreign people, his seizing and keeping in captivity the person of the sovereign, his discharging him on purpose that he might compromise himself by engaging in direct hostilities, and his taking advantage of his death to settle the succession and intrude a foreign army upon the new monarch, form altogether a pregnant example of the craft and unscrupulousness of Roman ambition.[b]
The ancients have given us no satisfactory solution of Cæsar’s object in allowing himself to be entangled in this war. We cannot believe that he was really intoxicated by a passion for Cleopatra, and surrendered his judgment and policy to her fascinations. It is more probable that he had fixed his eyes upon the treasures of Alexandria, to furnish himself with the resources of which he stood greatly in need; for he still firmly abstained from the expedients of plunder and confiscation within the limits of the empire, and the great victory of Pharsalia though rich in laurels had proved barren of emolument. He had yet another campaign to undertake against the beaten party, and his troops, so often balked of their prize, might require an instalment of the rewards of their final triumph. But when once engaged in a contest with the Egyptians, it was no longer politic, indeed it was hardly possible to withdraw. Cæsar threw himself, as was his wont, heart and soul into the struggle, and risked everything in a warfare which he felt to be ignoble. But when at last fortune favoured his arms, he still allowed himself to remain three months longer to consolidate the advantage he had gained. He had acquired a footing in the wealthiest kingdom in the world; he had placed there a sovereign of his own choice, whose throne he secured by means of a guard of Romans, thus preparing the way for the reduction of the country at no distant period to the form of a Roman province. As long as the remnant of the Pompeians were still scattered and unprepared, he lost little by neglecting to prosecute the war against them. He might wish them to gather head again, that he might again strike them down in a single blow. Indeed he now found leisure for a campaign against Pharnaces, the son of Mithridates.
THE WAR WITH PHARNACES
[47 B.C.]
Though professing himself an ally of Pompey, the king of the Bosporus had failed to bring his contingent to the republican camp. After the battle of Pharsalia he hoped to profit by the ruin of his father’s foe, and the confusion of the republic. He mustered his forces and drove Deiotarus and Ariobarzanes from Armenia the lesser and Cappadocia. These princes sought the succour of Cæsar’s lieutenant Calvinus, and though they had just fought on the Pompeian side, he received instructions to restore them. Calvinus however was routed by Pharnaces, who recovered his father’s dominions in Asia Minor, and proceeded to expel from them the Roman settlers. Cæsar quitted Alexandria in April (47), landed at Tarsus, traversed Cilicia and Cappadocia, and reached the barbarian host at Zela in Pontus. A bloody battle ensued in which the Roman was completely victorious. The undisciplined hordes of the eastern sovereign once routed never rallied again. Pharnaces escaped from the field, but he was stripped of his possessions, and perished soon afterwards in an obscure adventure. The war was finished in five days, and the terms in which Cæsar is said to have announced it to the senate can hardly be called extravagant: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” When he compared this eastern “promenade” with the eight years’ struggle in which he had conquered Gaul by inches, he might exclaim on the good fortune of Pompey who had acquired at so little cost the reputation of a hero. After regulating with all despatch the affairs of the province, he hastened back to Italy, where his protracted absence had given occasion to serious disorders.
The measures which the dictator had enacted for the adjustment of debts were not received with equal satisfaction in every quarter. As soon as he was removed from the centre of affairs, the passions of the discontented found vent, and a prætor named Cælius fanned the flame for objects of personal ambition. Cælius was a clever, restless intriguer, and shrewd observer of other men, as appears in his amusing letters to Cicero, but altogether deficient in knowledge of himself, and much deceived in the estimate he formed of his own powers. He raised the criminal hopes of the worst and neediest citizens by proposing an abolition of debts; but he was unable to direct the passions he had excited, or to cope with the firmness of Servilius and the Cæsarian senate. He was declared incapable of holding any magistracy, expelled from the curia, and finally repulsed from the tribunate. He quitted Rome in disgust and fury, and had the temerity to plunge into an insurrection. Joining himself with Milo, who had left his place of exile and armed his gladiators in the south of Italy, he traversed Campania and Magna Græcia, soliciting the aid of outlaws and banditti. But the authorities of the capital had hardly time to take measures against the rebels, before they were reassured by the destruction of the one before Cosa, the other at Thurii.
CÆSAR RETURNS TO ROME
Cæsar’s protracted absence from the capital strongly marked the confidence he felt in the stability of his arrangements there. Notwithstanding these symptoms of transient and partial disaffection the great mass of the citizens was firmly attached to him, and to this result the ferocious menaces of the Pompeians had in no slight degree contributed. We may imagine with what anxious suspense the upper classes at Rome had awaited the event of the campaign in Illyricum; nor were they altogether relieved by the report of the victory of Pharsalia. For this welcome news was accompanied or closely followed by the assurance that the victor was plunging still farther into the distant East, while the forces of his enemy, supported by their innumerable navies, were gathering once more in his rear. Nevertheless, his adherents insisted on the statues of Pompey and Sulla being ignominiously removed from the Forum, and his secret enemies were controlled by spies, and compelled to join in the public demonstrations of satisfaction. Much of the anxiety which still prevailed was removed by the account of the death of Pompey, confirmed by the transmission of his signet to Rome. None could now distrust the genius and the fortune of the irresistible conqueror. There was no longer any hesitation in paying court to him. His flatterers multiplied in the senate and the Forum, and only vied with one another in suggesting new honours for his gratification. Decrees were issued investing him with unbounded authority over the lives and fortunes of the vanquished. He was armed with full powers for suppressing the republican party which was again making head in Africa. In October, 48, Cæsar was created dictator for a second time; and the powers of the tribunate were decreed to him for the term of his life. He appointed Antony his master of the horse, and commandant of the city. Brave, but violent and dissolute, Antony possessed neither the vigour nor the prudence which circumstances demanded.