Caesar’s Civil War: Battle of Pharsalus

Pompey, learning of Caesar’s troop strength and dispositions, determined Caesar’s intentions and raced his army west to his supply base at Dyrrachium. As Caesar moved up the Greek coast, he captured Apollonia and Oricum, but Pompey arrived at Dyrrachium a few hours ahead of Caesar and threw up fortifications that held back the populists and created a standoff.

The Beasts Before Pompey
In the first few months of 48, neither commander wished to give battle. Half of Caesar’s army was still in Italy, while Pompey awaited the arrival of Scipio’s two legions from Asia Minor. In the late spring, however, Caesar’s luck seemed to be turning. Four legions and some 800 cavalry under Mark Antony made a very lucky crossing from Italy, destroying several patrician ships in the process. Pompey quickly maneuvered to prevent Antony from joining Caesar’s army, but Caesar learned of the patricians’ movements and moved in behind Pompey. Wisely avoiding a two-front battle, Pompey withdrew north to Aspargium, allowing the two populist armies to unite. Caesar sent his Legiones XI and XII east to pin down Scipio’s army, and sent Legio XVII southeast to forage and subdue the Greek region of Thessaly. Then Caesar’s fortunes again turned sour. Pompey’s son Gnaeus sailed into the Adriatic with a fleet of Egyptian ships and methodically destroyed or captured Caesar’s entire fleet.

At that point, Caesar had about 34,000 infantry and some 1,300 cavalry in the vicinity of Dyrrachium; Pompey’s army outnumbered Caesar’s by about 8,000 men. Caesar managed to outmaneuver Pompey and set himself between Pompey and his base at Dyrrachium, but with no supply ships and Pompey’s superior cavalry preventing any effective foraging, Caesar’s troops were quickly reduced to digging up roots and baking them into a kind of tough bread. When patrician officers took loaves of this bread to Pompey as a sign that the populist troops were on the verge of collapse, Pompey–aware of their devotion to their commander–apprehensively remarked, ‘What kind of wild beasts we are fighting!’

Dyrrachium was too heavily defended for Caesar to storm until Pompey’s army had been dealt with. So Caesar took the audacious step of surrounding Pompey’s larger army and throwing up siege works, sealing the patricians in on three sides with their backs to the Bay of Dyrrachium. His objectives were to prevent Pompey’s cavalry from interfering with his foraging efforts, to isolate Pompey from his food supplies and to reduce Pompey’s stature in the eyes of his troops. In response, Pompey threw up his own fortifications. Pompey’s food supplies began to run low, but he considered evacuation out of the question, both politically and militarily–Greece was now the only theater where he outnumbered Caesar. Both commanders knew that the decisive effort had to take place there.

On July 9, Caesar vainly tried to take Dyrrachium at the north end of his lines. But while he was involved there, Pompey sent 60 cohorts plus light infantry and archers in a two-pronged attack on the southern end of Caesar’s fortifications. Caesar’s Legio IX was driven back until Antony quickly arrived with 12 cohorts and stabilized the front. Caesar returned and counterattacked with an additional 13 cohorts, retaking much of his original siege works. That ended Pompey’s offensive, but he now held an outlet to the grasslands south of the contender’s camps, and was no longer surrounded. Caesar once more sought to surround Pompey, but the 33 cohorts he sent against Pompey’s southern wing were quickly flanked by five patrician legions from the south and several cavalry units from the north. For once, Caesar was unable to control his men, who panicked and fled the field. By the time the fighting stopped, he had lost nearly 1,000 troops and 32 unit standards. At that critical point, however, Pompey merely contented himself with pursuing a handful of fugitives. When he realized that Pompey would not press his advantage against his routed flank, a relieved Caesar remarked to his officers, ‘The enemy would have won the war today, if they had a commander who knew how to use a victory.’

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