Caesar’s Civil War: Battle of Pharsalus

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The battle was by no means over, however. Caesar’s two understrength lines were straining against the weight of Lentulus’ and Scipio’s troops on their left and center. To their credit, these two half-strength lines bore the full brunt of the battle until Caesar’s cavalry and infantry detachment moved from a defensive posture into an offensive and then flanking stance. But Pompey’s left was becoming rapidly enveloped by Caesar’s combined arms group. Pompey presumably gave the order to move some of his third echelon into a right angle on the left, but it proved too late and ineffective to prevent his left flank from being rolled. Caesar then ordered his reserve line into action. By midday, Pompey’s line began to give way.

Once a commander’s men begin to flee, there is little left for him to do. Dazed and lethargic, Pompey shuffled laconically to his tent. When the camp’s ramparts fell, he fled on horseback for Larissa on the Greek coast, leaving his Thracian troops to make a brief stand before his camp was overrun.

Although his men had fought to near exhaustion, Caesar was not about to reprise Pompey’s failure to follow up his tactical victory at Dyrrachium. He exhorted his troops to win the war, not just the battle. He caught up with Pompey’s four remaining legions on a nearby hill, and though it was nearly nightfall, he ordered his soldiers to throw up fortifications that cut off the Pompeians from their water supply. In the midsummer heat, that last effort proved decisive. The next day Pompey’s remaining legions surrendered. Caesar immediately extended clemency to his opponents and pardoned a large number of prominent patricians, including Marcus Junius Brutus, who later would conspire against his conqueror.

By Caesar’s account, Pompey’s losses were 15,000 killed and 24,000 captured. Ten senators, including Domitius Ahenobarbus, were among the patrician dead. Caesar’s general Asinius Pollio estimated enemy dead at 6,000. Caesar estimated his own losses at 200 troops, although that number seems improbably low. Whatever the actual number, the patricians’ backs were broken at Pharsalus. Caesar had captured nine legionary eagles and 180 unit standards and had decisively overcome the most serious threat to his supremacy. After his defeat at Pharsalus, Pompey sailed from Greece to Egypt, hoping that Egypt’s King Ptolemy XII would give him refuge and a chance to organize resistance in North Africa. Ptolemy and his ministers understood, however, that it was unwise to extend hospitality to a defeated general, and Pompey was lured ashore at Alexandria and treacherously murdered. When the pursuing Caesar was presented with his rival’s embalmed head a few days later, he recoiled in horror and burst into tears.

The surviving patricians made several attempts to rally their forces in Africa under Scipio and in Spain under Labienus, but each time they were defeated. With no effective opposition, Caesar returned to Rome under a new political order. True to his vow before Pharsalus, he erected a temple to Venus Genetrix in the heart of Rome’s Forum, the ruins of which can be seen to this day. He was appointed consul and dictator by the reconstituted Senate, and in early 44 the Senate appointed Caesar dictator for life–a brief tenure that would end violently at the hands of men whose lives he had spared at Pharsalus.

This article was written by Jonathan W. Jordan and originally published in the February 2001 issue of Military History.

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Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Historical Conflicts