The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #171 ｜ Cato ： Part III

00:00:00.320 Hello and welcome to this episode of Epochs, where I shall be continuing my narrative of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic

00:00:07.280 and finishing the mini-series, the three-part series, on the life of Cato the Younger.

00:00:12.800 So if you remember last time I left off just about when Caesar had crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome

00:00:18.340 and Pompey and Cato and Cicero and a lot of the leading optimates of Rome had fled before Caesar's legion.

00:00:28.680 And so I'll pick up the story there.

00:00:32.100 Now what it seems like is that Cato was very much a patriot, you know, that's a bit of a modern word,

00:00:39.280 but he was more of a patriot than he was a partisan.

00:00:42.460 In other words, when it came to the crunch, the actual final moments, the final political movements and machinations,

00:00:50.280 he decided it would be best to let Pompey be the first most eminent man in Rome rather than have anarchy.

00:00:58.680 He also thought, right in the last moments, that it would be best to let Caesar be the undisputed man in Rome rather than a civil war.

00:01:08.520 It seems that Cato's view was that a civil war, Romans killing other Romans, would be worse than actually giving in to Caesar.

00:01:20.360 That even it would be best to be a slave than to allow a civil war to happen.

00:01:25.860 That's how much he loved the Republic or valued Roman lives.

00:01:30.380 And so when the war did finally break out, incidentally, Cato himself was absolutely shocked.

00:01:36.240 All the accounts agree that Cato was shocked that Caesar crossed the Rubicon and actually pulled a Sulla.

00:01:42.420 He had always thought that Caesar wouldn't actually do it.

00:01:48.580 He always thought that he could play the brinkmanship game with Caesar because in the final reckoning, Caesar wouldn't do that.

00:01:56.760 But he did.

00:01:57.660 And that's despite Cato being one of the leading voices that always said that Caesar would do something like that.

00:02:05.360 That Caesar was the sort of man to do that.

00:02:08.100 But when it finally happened, Cato sort of couldn't believe it.

00:02:12.220 But there you go.

00:02:13.660 Never try and call Caesar's bluff.

00:02:15.380 And so when it did actually kick off and they had to leave Rome and they put Pompey in charge of everything, sort of military overall supreme commander.

00:02:25.980 And Pompey's strategic plan was to vacate Rome and Italy.

00:02:32.360 It's a fairly sound plan, really.

00:02:35.080 It's sort of the best thing he could have done.

00:02:36.860 The only thing he could have done.

00:02:38.240 He didn't have legions on hand to fight Caesar immediately.

00:02:41.460 In fact, he did have a couple of legions, but they'd been borrowed freshly not very long ago from Caesar.

00:02:48.400 And so he couldn't rely on them to actually stand against Caesar somewhere in northern Italy, somewhere north of Rome.

00:02:54.960 He couldn't rely on them.

00:02:55.940 And that seems like that was a sound call.

00:02:59.880 Any legions that fought under Caesar were almost certainly going to be loyal to him.

00:03:05.360 Caesar was a soldier's soldier.

00:03:08.600 He tended to overpay, if nothing else.

00:03:11.460 And he commanded sort of real loyalty.

00:03:14.440 And so from Cato's point of view, his idea, his strategy, the thing he thought best to do, was just to prolong the war as long as humanly possible.

00:03:25.320 He didn't want to see any battles.

00:03:27.920 In Cato's mind, that was the worst possible thing, the worst possible outcome was for Roman men to be killing other Roman men.

00:03:35.820 If anything could be done to avoid that, then let's try that.

00:03:42.000 That was Cato's thinking.

00:03:43.500 So if he could just prolong the war, the longer he could prolong it, the longer he could put off any battle, the more chance there was of some sort of political arrangement, some sort of deal being struck.

00:03:55.200 That was his hope the whole time.

00:03:57.960 Of course, we know it wasn't possible.

00:03:59.980 But Plutarch says this.

00:04:32.220 Just to say on that, though.

00:04:45.620 That's what Cato wanted, and only at first, that's what Pompey agreed to.

00:04:51.760 Quite quickly, they threw that out.

00:04:55.220 Quite quickly, Pompey started saying things like, if you're not actively with me, you're against me.

00:05:02.100 Caesar played it the other way around.

00:05:03.540 He said, if you're not actively with Pompey, then you can be with me or you can be a neutral.

00:05:09.960 It's fine.

00:05:11.560 But Pompey went the sort of hard line with it.

00:05:15.400 So even though at first that's what Cato wanted, you know, don't kill any Romans unnecessarily.

00:05:20.820 Pompey very quickly didn't do that.

00:05:23.100 And in fact, the story of the Civil War is that the Pompeian faction was unforgiving and they would execute lots of people all the time.

00:05:32.800 And that Caesar, wherever possible, was clement, even overly clement.

00:05:36.860 I'll get into the exact degree of that when I talk about Caesar in detail.

00:05:41.660 So, yeah, of the two factions, Pompey's faction was much more steeped in blood, Roman blood.

00:05:48.320 And the war of words starts very quickly as well, because politics doesn't stop as soon as the war started.

00:05:55.260 And Caesar, as well as being a great general, one of the very best to ever do it, was also a very good politician, a very astute politician.

00:06:02.580 And he kept up his verbal tirades against Cato.

00:06:07.880 Cato did the same against Caesar.

00:06:10.180 Caesar was still criticising Cato's sister and Cato's political decisions and trying to blame Cato for this thing really happening in the first place.

00:06:19.040 And the politicking, the war of words, didn't stop remotely.

00:06:25.080 But when Cato, after his Sicilian sojourn, which I mentioned last time, when he did actually find himself in the camp of Pompey in Greece,

00:06:35.420 he found himself sort of very much out of favour.

00:06:39.020 He was sort of essentially not really needed at this point.

00:06:41.800 Real politics, politics in the forum, in the assemblies and the Senate, that had been done away with now, though.

00:06:49.440 That those avenues had been exhausted.

00:06:52.160 It was, you know, it's full blown war.

00:06:53.940 And although I mentioned in the first Cato episode, he had been a military tribune and he had served and had fought in battles,

00:07:00.660 he was thought of very much as not a military man.

00:07:04.420 And this is outside his purview.

00:07:06.800 And, as I say, just not really needed.

00:07:09.860 You know, we've done the political thing.

00:07:12.280 We've exhausted nearly all the political avenues, other than the residual mudslinging, as I say. 0.99

00:07:18.860 But all that's really done with.

00:07:20.580 So, we don't really need you anymore, Cato.

00:07:22.780 And if anything, Cato, this is Pompey's thinking and the people directly in Pompey's circle.

00:07:28.500 If anything, all you really did was exasperate the problems.

00:07:33.200 Your stubbornness had a fair amount of responsibility in bringing all this about.

00:07:38.460 So, he was sort of out of favour to an extent.

00:07:42.300 I mean, he was still absolutely one of the leading lights in the whole Roman world.

00:07:45.620 I was absolutely in Pompey's inner circle.

00:07:48.560 But when it came to military, strategic, tactical decisions, he was not in the room.

00:07:54.780 Absolutely not in the room.

00:07:56.600 And even when it came to the big strategic decisions, beyond just merely where the battlefield would be and that kind of thing.

00:08:04.880 Again, it seems like he wasn't really consulted.

00:08:07.760 Same goes for Cicero.

00:08:09.260 You know, you sort of had your chance, guys.

00:08:10.840 Now leave it to the military men.

00:08:13.920 At one point, Pompey considers, or does very briefly, give the command of all the navies, all the Roman navies, to Cato.

00:08:24.120 Or he's just about to.

00:08:25.500 It's not exactly clear whether he actually did or not.

00:08:27.620 But we're told that he was going to, absolutely had the intention, of putting all the Roman navies under Cato's command.

00:08:34.620 And, well, a point there is that Pompey controlled all the navies and Caesar essentially had none.

00:08:41.660 But then Pompey changes his mind on that.

00:08:44.580 And we're told that his thinking there was probably that if he should win, if Pompey should beat Caesar in the field,

00:08:51.620 that the second that happens, Cato would revert back to his old view of making sure that no single man was too overly powerful.

00:09:00.980 And if Pompey had just beaten Caesar in a big, decisive battle, then Pompey then would become clearly, absolutely undisputedly, the first man of Rome.

00:09:10.560 Cato wouldn't want that.

00:09:11.520 And so he would probably backstab Pompey right away and use the navies against him.

00:09:17.300 So Pompey decides, oh, wait, actually, no, let's not give the command of the navies to Cato because, you know, in the final reckoning,

00:09:23.980 he can't be trusted to not just immediately turn against me.

00:09:27.480 So he gave them to someone else, a Bibulus, but Bibulus was a close kinsman of Cato, though.

00:09:33.960 So, you know, it may well bend to what Cato wanted.

00:09:37.840 So he's only sort of one step or even half a step removed from being under Cato's control.

00:09:45.060 But nonetheless, that does say something about Pompey's thinking and about how Pompey and his inner military circle,

00:09:53.480 how they viewed Cato, i.e., with a bit of suspicion.

00:09:57.240 We told a bit all about the Roman navy, how splendid it was and how massive it was.

00:10:03.000 And although things change, it does take many, many years.

00:10:07.060 Caesar really has none.

00:10:08.640 And so that's an interesting point from a from a strategic point of view, that Caesar was penned into Italy in a way, you know, pretty largely.

00:10:17.760 You know, he's master of the land.

00:10:19.980 OK, you can conquer and occupy all of Italy, the entire Italian peninsula and even probably almost certainly be able to hop across to Sicily.

00:10:29.720 So maybe include Sicily in that.

00:10:31.860 But he wouldn't be able to just boat around the entire Mediterranean at will.

00:10:36.880 Only really Pompey had that capacity.

00:10:39.480 And that is a thorn in the side of Julius Caesar.

00:10:41.660 It's a string to his bow.

00:10:43.540 He was sorely lacking to begin with.

00:10:45.920 I mentioned last time that when the optimates and Pompey and everyone fled Rome, they did so, so quickly and in such a, you can only imagine something of a panic, that they left the treasury behind.

00:11:00.480 And Caesar could just walk in immediately.

00:11:03.840 Apparently a guard did put up some resistance.

00:11:06.360 Saying, you know, you're not legally allowed access to all these funds. 0.97

00:11:10.140 And Caesar's supposed to have said something along the lines of, I could have you killed quicker than it would take to order you killed.

00:11:17.100 And the guy just obviously relented.

00:11:19.580 And so Pompey musters a large army.

00:11:22.480 He calls in as many favours as he can from the east.

00:11:25.340 He fled eastwards.

00:11:26.280 He did have armies in Spain, which come up later.

00:11:29.680 And his sons end up having, commanding armies in Spain.

00:11:33.780 And Caesar has to go to Spain a bit later to defeat those.

00:11:37.640 I'll go into those in another episode.

00:11:39.120 But Pompey himself, the Pompey Magnus, flees eastwards in the first instance, into the Balkans, Greece, Epirus, Thrace, that area.

00:11:50.640 And of course, he's the master of the east in all sorts of ways.

00:11:54.100 His clients in the east are almost endless.

00:11:58.540 Everyone in the east, all the magnates and kings and petty kings, they all owe him money and fealty.

00:12:06.080 All of them, gigantic amounts of money.

00:12:07.880 So much money, Dan Carlin tells us, that they're only paying off a fraction of the interest every month that they owe him.

00:12:18.520 And so in order to work that debt down a bit, they can send him a contingent of men.

00:12:23.400 And he just basically calls in all the favours he possibly can.

00:12:26.040 And he gathers together a large army, a much larger army than Caesar's, like twice as large in infantry and many times larger in cavalry and also has a navy.

00:12:38.520 So on paper, at least, Pompey's army is vastly superior to Caesar's.

00:12:45.480 However, in terms of experience, in terms of how veteran they are, how well they're likely to perform in a battle, Caesar's army was much, much better, much, much more seasoned.

00:12:59.080 And everyone knew it.

00:13:01.340 They'd been fighting in Gaul for 10 years.

00:13:04.060 Well, professionally.

00:13:06.800 And as I've said many times in epochs, and I'm sure we'll say many times more, you want quality over quantity when it comes to armies.

00:13:15.240 Unless your quantity is truly overwhelming, if you look at the Eastern Front in World War II, if your quantity is absolutely overwhelming, well, then, OK, fair enough.

00:13:25.020 In that instance, you want quantity.

00:13:27.360 But if it's anywhere close and you can pick, you want the quality side.

00:13:32.420 And that's what Caesar had when Caesar did have to cross sort of piecemeal in a difficult fashion across the Adriatic to Greece.

00:13:42.980 He got about, he had something in the order of 30,000 men and he was managed to ferry half of them across.

00:13:49.420 And then there was a big storm and the other half of his men were left on the other side of the Adriatic.

00:13:54.760 So that's terrible.

00:13:55.680 Whenever there's a big set piece battle in the offering, the worst thing you can do, classically, to the point of cliché, the worst thing you can do is to split your forces.

00:14:06.260 And Caesar's had that done to him against his own will.

00:14:10.680 So tactically, that's a balls up.

00:14:13.140 Tactically, that's a problem.

00:14:15.100 And Pompey's massed his army at a place called Dyrrachium.

00:14:17.940 I'll put a map up so everyone can see exactly what I'm talking about.

00:14:21.520 And the army's first clash at Dyrrachium.

00:14:24.100 Blutrock tells us, quote,

00:14:26.240 When Pompey himself was trying to incite his forces to a battle before Dyrrachium and bidding each of the other commanders to say something to inspire the men,

00:14:36.000 the soldiers listened to them sluggishly and in silence.

00:14:39.920 But when Cato, after all the other speakers, had rehearsed his genuine emotion,

00:14:44.320 all the appropriate elements to be drawn from philosophy concerning freedom, virtue, death and fame,

00:14:50.180 and finally passed into an invocation of the gods as eyewitness of their struggle in behalf of their country,

00:14:57.400 there was such a shouting and so great a stir among all the soldiers thus aroused,

00:15:01.980 that all the commanders were full of hope as they hastened to confront the peril, end quote.

00:15:07.980 So we are told this, Cicero talks about this as well,

00:15:10.080 that Pompey himself seemed to have lost the magic touch.

00:15:16.660 It's worth noting at this point that Pompey had never lost a battle at this point in his career.

00:15:21.720 Never.

00:15:22.280 He was undefeated.

00:15:23.720 And there's a certain magic that goes with being undefeated.

00:15:27.880 You know, again, even if it's a boxer or an MMA fighter,

00:15:31.300 if you're undefeated, there's a certain mystique about you.

00:15:34.580 The same goes for a military commander.

00:15:37.300 But it seems that Pompey had, maybe he was getting a bit older,

00:15:43.420 but apparently there was no fire in his belly.

00:15:46.360 Cicero talks about how he was lethargic, both actually physically in and off himself,

00:15:52.520 and his thinking, his style of military command was sort of slow and sluggish.

00:16:00.020 And he didn't seem to inspire any real confidence in his own men.

00:16:06.260 He wasn't a paragon of leadership when everyone sort of thought he was.

00:16:10.600 They thought, if anything, that's the one thing Pompey's got in the bag,

00:16:14.000 is that he's a leader of men in the field.

00:16:16.940 And to an almost unparalleled degree, if it comes to a hot war,

00:16:21.460 at least we can rely on Pompey for that.

00:16:23.600 But it seemed like he didn't.

00:16:25.320 Well, he didn't.

00:16:26.360 And it trickles down through his senior command and to his men himself.

00:16:29.360 But as we're told there, Cato delivered a great speech.

00:16:33.380 You can rely on Cato to sort of speak from the heart and inspire people.

00:16:40.060 He does that right up to his last days, really.

00:16:43.100 He's a great orator if you're on board with his message, certainly.

00:16:47.620 And so Caesar and Pompey's armies clash at Dyrrachium.

00:16:52.340 Caesar is heavily outnumbered.

00:16:54.360 And Caesar loses.

00:16:55.340 Now, it's not a complete and utter defeat wiped out to a man and Caesar killed.

00:17:01.860 Obviously, we know Caesar isn't killed.

00:17:03.680 No, no spoiler alert there.

00:17:05.980 But it is a reasonably heavy defeat.

00:17:08.080 And Caesar has to flee the field.

00:17:10.980 And Pompey wins the day.

00:17:12.860 And Caesar later said, if Pompey had followed up his win,

00:17:17.700 he, Caesar, would have been wiped out.

00:17:19.840 There wasn't anything he could have done in that moment.

00:17:23.200 But Pompey didn't.

00:17:24.560 He pushed the Caesarian army off the field at Dyrrachium and then stopped.

00:17:30.020 And we're not sure why.

00:17:31.520 Even ancient historians at the time are not sure why that was.

00:17:36.540 Most say it's because Pompey had become cautious, you know, too cautious.

00:17:41.180 He was a bit sort of, yeah, lethargic in his thinking, in his tactical nous.

00:17:47.920 Maybe he thought Caesar had, it was a trap.

00:17:50.960 Caesar was setting a trap for him.

00:17:52.220 He wasn't.

00:17:53.440 Caesar was just legitimately defeated.

00:17:55.660 But yeah, so if Pompey had followed up there, it would have been all over history.

00:17:59.960 How different history might have been if Pompey had only pushed on after Dyrrachium.

00:18:04.180 But he didn't and he allowed Caesar to retain the majority of the survivors and, of course, himself to live to fight another day.

00:18:13.440 But, you know, it's a real blow for Caesar's morale, Caesar's army, because also they'd been fighting, as I say, for almost 10 years in Gaul.

00:18:23.480 And so although extremely veteran, some have said, well, also probably a bit threadbare, maybe coming close to having enough.

00:18:32.800 And when they'd lost this first engagement battle at Dyrrachium, it seemed that it really wounded their pride and morale.

00:18:41.840 They weren't used to losing at all.

00:18:45.060 And, of course, it burnishes Pompey's reputation.

00:18:48.900 He's still undefeated, right?

00:18:51.500 He's still got it.

00:18:52.800 That's what everyone thought.

00:18:53.840 He's still got the magic touch.

00:18:55.280 But Caesar's men, the ones that had fled the field at Dyrrachium, within his rights, Caesar could have dismissed them or executed them or decimated them or something.

00:19:04.940 And they plead for his forgiveness because Caesar on the field personally was on the front lines telling the men, don't flee, don't run away.

00:19:14.120 Because, you know, in that moment, that day at Dyrrachium, it could have been all over, could very, very easily have been all over.

00:19:21.660 Caesar even apparently tries to physically stop one of the standard bearers, one of the eagle bearers.

00:19:27.220 And the guy just lets Caesar take the eagle and keeps running.

00:19:31.680 And so after the battle, in the debrief, they're begging Caesar for another chance.

00:19:37.500 You know, please don't disband us.

00:19:38.820 Just give us another shot, coach.

00:19:41.340 We will die to try and save our honour.

00:19:44.600 And Caesar sort of needs every man he can get in the field at this moment.

00:19:50.100 Needs every man jack of them. 0.97

00:19:51.960 So he says, OK, you know, I'm not going to decimate you or disband you. 0.85

00:19:59.260 But next time, you've got to die on your feet if you have to. 0.74

00:20:04.000 Take the wounds on the front if you have to.

00:20:06.900 I won't let you get away with that a second time.

00:20:09.520 But although Cato and Cicero and a lot of the Senate, because most of the Senate, most of the Optimate faction, most of the richest people in Rome, had all fled with Pompey.

00:20:20.480 There's as many as 300 of them.

00:20:22.540 Nearly all those guys are left behind at Dyrrachium in the camp.

00:20:26.640 They're not actually on the field of battle.

00:20:28.540 So after the battle's finished, Cato goes out and looks at the battlefield and he's in tears.

00:20:37.740 He weeps where everyone else, Pompey and everyone else in the camp, are overjoyed.

00:20:43.060 They're happy.

00:20:44.060 They think they've sort of got the measure of Caesar.

00:20:46.600 They think they've mortally wounded him militarily.

00:20:49.900 They think they've probably won this war straight away.

00:20:53.900 So they're really happy.

00:20:55.480 But Cato, classic contrarian, never goes along with what everyone else is thinking or doing.

00:21:00.660 He's just really sad.

00:21:02.240 Really, really sad because the last thing he wanted was fellow Romans to get killed, certainly by other fellow Romans.

00:21:09.900 It's terrible for him.

00:21:10.920 For him, it's sort of the end of the Republic in all sorts of ways.

00:21:15.280 It's come to that.

00:21:17.800 Plutarch tells us, quote,

00:21:19.620 But while all the rest were rejoicing and magnifying their achievements, Cato was weeping for his country and bewailing the love of power that had brought such misfortune and destruction,

00:21:31.580 as he saw that many brave citizens had fallen one by another's hands, end quote.

00:21:36.520 Of course, if you do truly love your country and your own countrymen, there probably are few things worse than seeing the aftermath of a battlefield in a civil war.

00:21:49.780 Really, really harrowing.

00:21:51.680 Everybody's lost, in a sense.

00:21:53.740 But it became clear quite quickly, almost straight away, that Caesar both wasn't completely done as a military force in his own right and wasn't prepared to treat with Pompey.

00:22:09.320 Cato's grand strategy was that let's try and have a political negotiation to the end of this war at every possible opportunity.

00:22:18.140 If there's any moment when we can stop having battles and start sitting around a table and talking, let's take it.

00:22:24.640 So you would have imagined that Cato would hope that Caesar would now come to the table, so to speak.

00:22:31.180 But he didn't. He wasn't.

00:22:32.840 Caesar had no intention of doing such a thing, even though now he's even more heavily outnumbered than he was before.

00:22:39.520 And the morale of his men has taken a knock.

00:22:42.380 But Caesar's still not prepared to do that.

00:22:44.900 And so I'll let Plutarch continue the story.

00:22:46.440 He says, quote,

00:22:47.640 When Pompey, in pursuit of Caesar, was breaking camp to march into Thessaly, he left behind him at Dyrrachium a great quantity of arms and stores and many kindred and friends.

00:22:59.280 And over all these, he appointed Cato, commander and guardian, and 15 cohorts of soldiers, because he both trusted and feared him.

00:23:07.160 For in case of defeat, he thought that Cato would be his surest support, but in case of a victory, that he would not, if present, permit him to manage matters as he chose.

00:23:18.480 Many prominent men were also ignored by Pompey and left behind at Dyrrachium with Cato.

00:23:23.480 And so Pompey marches out to the next big battle, the main decisive battle between Pompey himself and Caesar.

00:23:32.000 These civil wars go on for quite a few more years.

00:23:34.440 But the main one where Pompey is CO on the ground, commander of all the forces, is Pharsalus.

00:23:41.280 It's really the definitive battle.

00:23:44.640 And I'll talk about that in great detail when I talk about Pompey and Caesar.

00:23:48.620 But just to say, quick overview, Pompey had something like 40 or 50,000 men, infantry.

00:23:55.620 Caesar had something like 20,000, 22,000 men.

00:23:58.440 So again, probably something in the order of two to one.

00:24:02.040 Pompey had something like seven or 8,000 cavalry.

00:24:05.640 Caesar had something like 1,000 cavalry.

00:24:08.260 So completely outmatched in terms of cavalry.

00:24:11.340 So much so, it was kind of obvious what Pompey should do.

00:24:15.520 And therefore, how Caesar could counter it.

00:24:18.160 So if you've got a massive advantage in men and cavalry, a great tactic to do is you do a massive all-out cavalry charge that's irresistible.

00:24:30.900 If they've only got 1,000 cavalry, you sweep those off the field and then you smash your cavalry into their infantry, break them up, kill quite a few.

00:24:40.540 And then it's simplicity itself for your infantry to mop up.

00:24:45.760 But that was sort of so obvious that Caesar saw it coming and put countermeasures in place and was able to deny Pompey that cavalry win, which is exactly what he did.

00:24:59.000 Exactly how it played out at Farsilus.

00:25:00.960 And I'll tell you all about it in detail next time.

00:25:04.160 Basically, the bottom line is Pompey was out-generaled that day by Julius Caesar, completely out-generaled.

00:25:13.420 And Pompey didn't even want to do that.

00:25:15.460 He knew that he had Caesar beaten in any sort of long game.

00:25:20.400 He could sort of starve the Caesar out.

00:25:23.500 He had all the money and men and materiel on his side.

00:25:27.860 He could wait Caesar out until Caesar was in dire, dire straits.

00:25:33.160 But the Senate in exile and all sorts of pressures were put on Pompey to finish this thing quickly.

00:25:39.260 They didn't want to wait for months until Caesar's men were extremely thirsty and hungry and dying of exposure and things.

00:25:48.800 They didn't want to wait for months for that to happen.

00:25:51.540 If anything, they thought it was dishonorable as well as just sort of boring.

00:25:56.280 So they put more and more pressure on Pompey to sort of offer battle to Caesar, which was the wrong thing to do.

00:26:03.540 They could have just waited, but they didn't.

00:26:06.440 And Pompey actually delivers a speech saying that, saying, OK, I'm going to do a battle.

00:26:11.360 I'm going to offer Caesar battle, but I'm doing it because you're forcing my hand to.

00:26:16.260 Remember that, you know, if we do lose, it's on you.

00:26:18.900 But we shouldn't lose because I'm Pompey Magnus and I've never lost a battle.

00:26:22.800 So hopes were higher.

00:26:23.720 But Caesar wins the day because Caesar's a superb tactician.

00:26:28.680 Plutarch continues.

00:26:29.880 When the defeat at Pharsalus came, Cato resolved that if Pompey were dead, he would take over to Italy those who were still with him.

00:26:37.960 He would himself live in exile as far as possible from the tyranny of Caesar.

00:26:42.440 If, on the contrary, Pompey were alive, he would by all means keep his forces intact for him.

00:26:48.180 Accordingly, having crossed over to Corsaira, where the fleet was, he offered to give up the command to Cicero, who was of consular rank, while he himself had only been a creator.

00:26:59.160 But Cicero would not accept the command and set out for Italy.

00:27:02.340 Then Cato, seeing that the younger Pompey, Pompey's actually got a couple of sons, there's a Gnaeus and a Sextus, seeing that the younger Pompey, I believe it's the Gnaeus, Gnaeus Pompey, was led by his obstinacy and unseasonable pride into a desire to punish all those who were about to sail away,

00:27:20.620 and was going to lay violent hands on Cicero, first of all, admonished him in private and calmed him down, thus manifestly saving Cicero from death and procuring immunity for the rest, end quote.

00:27:32.900 Just to say on Cicero at this point, after Pharsalus, Cicero sees the writing on the wall and is prepared to just hand himself over to Caesar.

00:27:41.600 He's not prepared to fight on and on and on, deeper into the east, or in Spain, or in Africa.

00:27:48.920 He's not going to run away anymore, he's going to give himself up to Caesar, and if Caesar wants to kill him, which of course he didn't, because Caesar's very clement, and not just clement, but for big names, for big faces, he loves to pardon them.

00:28:02.560 He loves it.

00:28:03.240 So Cicero made that calculation correctly, that he would be allowed to live and even continue his political career back in Rome, albeit with a touch of shame, that he has to bend the knee to the sort of now undisputed tyranny, for want of a better word, of Julius Caesar.

00:28:20.680 But that's Cicero all over, you know, he's a pragmatist.

00:28:23.620 He bends with the wind, which is exactly what Cato doesn't ever do.

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - August 12, 2024

PREVIEW： Epochs #171 ｜ Cato ： Part III

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