The story of Cato the Younger and the fall of the Roman Republic continues in this episode of Epochs, where we continue our mini-series on Cato's life, and the events leading up to his assassination by Julius Caesar.
00:02:15.380And 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.
00:02:25.980And Pompey's strategic plan was to vacate Rome and Italy.
00:03:08.600He tended to overpay, if nothing else.
00:03:11.460And he commanded sort of real loyalty.
00:03:14.440And 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.
00:03:43.500So 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.
00:05:23.100And 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.
00:05:32.800And that Caesar, wherever possible, was clement, even overly clement.
00:05:36.860I'll get into the exact degree of that when I talk about Caesar in detail.
00:05:41.660So, yeah, of the two factions, Pompey's faction was much more steeped in blood, Roman blood.
00:05:48.320And the war of words starts very quickly as well, because politics doesn't stop as soon as the war started.
00:05:55.260And 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.
00:06:02.580And he kept up his verbal tirades against Cato.
00:06:10.180Caesar 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.
00:06:19.040And the politicking, the war of words, didn't stop remotely.
00:06:25.080But when Cato, after his Sicilian sojourn, which I mentioned last time, when he did actually find himself in the camp of Pompey in Greece,
00:06:35.420he found himself sort of very much out of favour.
00:06:39.020He was sort of essentially not really needed at this point.
00:06:41.800Real politics, politics in the forum, in the assemblies and the Senate, that had been done away with now, though.
00:06:49.440That those avenues had been exhausted.
00:06:52.160It was, you know, it's full blown war.
00:06:53.940And although I mentioned in the first Cato episode, he had been a military tribune and he had served and had fought in battles,
00:07:00.660he was thought of very much as not a military man.
00:08:25.500It's not exactly clear whether he actually did or not.
00:08:27.620But we're told that he was going to, absolutely had the intention, of putting all the Roman navies under Cato's command.
00:08:34.620And, well, a point there is that Pompey controlled all the navies and Caesar essentially had none.
00:08:41.660But then Pompey changes his mind on that.
00:08:44.580And we're told that his thinking there was probably that if he should win, if Pompey should beat Caesar in the field,
00:08:51.620that the second that happens, Cato would revert back to his old view of making sure that no single man was too overly powerful.
00:09:00.980And if Pompey had just beaten Caesar in a big, decisive battle, then Pompey then would become clearly, absolutely undisputedly, the first man of Rome.
00:10:08.640And 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.
00:10:19.980OK, you can conquer and occupy all of Italy, the entire Italian peninsula and even probably almost certainly be able to hop across to Sicily.
00:10:45.920I 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.
00:11:00.480And Caesar could just walk in immediately.
00:11:03.840Apparently a guard did put up some resistance.
00:11:06.360Saying, you know, you're not legally allowed access to all these funds.
00:11:10.140And 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.
00:11:26.280He did have armies in Spain, which come up later.
00:11:29.680And his sons end up having, commanding armies in Spain.
00:11:33.780And Caesar has to go to Spain a bit later to defeat those.
00:11:37.640I'll go into those in another episode.
00:11:39.120But Pompey himself, the Pompey Magnus, flees eastwards in the first instance, into the Balkans, Greece, Epirus, Thrace, that area.
00:11:50.640And of course, he's the master of the east in all sorts of ways.
00:11:54.100His clients in the east are almost endless.
00:11:58.540Everyone in the east, all the magnates and kings and petty kings, they all owe him money and fealty.
00:12:06.080All of them, gigantic amounts of money.
00:12:07.880So much money, Dan Carlin tells us, that they're only paying off a fraction of the interest every month that they owe him.
00:12:18.520And so in order to work that debt down a bit, they can send him a contingent of men.
00:12:23.400And he just basically calls in all the favours he possibly can.
00:12:26.040And 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.
00:12:38.520So on paper, at least, Pompey's army is vastly superior to Caesar's.
00:12:45.480However, 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.
00:13:06.800And 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.
00:13:15.240Unless 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.
00:13:55.680Whenever 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.
00:14:06.260And Caesar's had that done to him against his own will.
00:14:26.240When 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,
00:14:36.000the soldiers listened to them sluggishly and in silence.
00:14:39.920But when Cato, after all the other speakers, had rehearsed his genuine emotion,
00:14:44.320all the appropriate elements to be drawn from philosophy concerning freedom, virtue, death and fame,
00:14:50.180and finally passed into an invocation of the gods as eyewitness of their struggle in behalf of their country,
00:14:57.400there was such a shouting and so great a stir among all the soldiers thus aroused,
00:15:01.980that all the commanders were full of hope as they hastened to confront the peril, end quote.
00:15:07.980So we are told this, Cicero talks about this as well,
00:15:10.080that Pompey himself seemed to have lost the magic touch.
00:15:16.660It's worth noting at this point that Pompey had never lost a battle at this point in his career.
00:17:53.440Caesar was just legitimately defeated.
00:17:55.660But yeah, so if Pompey had followed up there, it would have been all over history.
00:17:59.960How different history might have been if Pompey had only pushed on after Dyrrachium.
00:18:04.180But he didn't and he allowed Caesar to retain the majority of the survivors and, of course, himself to live to fight another day.
00:18:13.440But, 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.
00:18:23.480And so although extremely veteran, some have said, well, also probably a bit threadbare, maybe coming close to having enough.
00:18:32.800And when they'd lost this first engagement battle at Dyrrachium, it seemed that it really wounded their pride and morale.
00:18:55.280But 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.
00:19:04.940And 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.
00:19:14.120Because, you know, in that moment, that day at Dyrrachium, it could have been all over, could very, very easily have been all over.
00:19:21.660Caesar even apparently tries to physically stop one of the standard bearers, one of the eagle bearers.
00:19:27.220And the guy just lets Caesar take the eagle and keeps running.
00:19:31.680And so after the battle, in the debrief, they're begging Caesar for another chance.
00:19:51.960So he says, OK, you know, I'm not going to decimate you or disband you.
00:19:59.260But next time, you've got to die on your feet if you have to.
00:20:04.000Take the wounds on the front if you have to.
00:20:06.900I won't let you get away with that a second time.
00:20:09.520But 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.
00:21:19.620But 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,
00:21:31.580as he saw that many brave citizens had fallen one by another's hands, end quote.
00:21:36.520Of 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.
00:21:53.740But 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.
00:22:09.320Cato's grand strategy was that let's try and have a political negotiation to the end of this war at every possible opportunity.
00:22:18.140If there's any moment when we can stop having battles and start sitting around a table and talking, let's take it.
00:22:24.640So you would have imagined that Cato would hope that Caesar would now come to the table, so to speak.
00:22:47.640When 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.
00:22:59.280And over all these, he appointed Cato, commander and guardian, and 15 cohorts of soldiers, because he both trusted and feared him.
00:23:07.160For 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.
00:23:18.480Many prominent men were also ignored by Pompey and left behind at Dyrrachium with Cato.
00:23:23.480And so Pompey marches out to the next big battle, the main decisive battle between Pompey himself and Caesar.
00:23:32.000These civil wars go on for quite a few more years.
00:23:34.440But the main one where Pompey is CO on the ground, commander of all the forces, is Pharsalus.
00:23:44.640And I'll talk about that in great detail when I talk about Pompey and Caesar.
00:23:48.620But just to say, quick overview, Pompey had something like 40 or 50,000 men, infantry.
00:23:55.620Caesar had something like 20,000, 22,000 men.
00:23:58.440So again, probably something in the order of two to one.
00:24:02.040Pompey had something like seven or 8,000 cavalry.
00:24:05.640Caesar had something like 1,000 cavalry.
00:24:08.260So completely outmatched in terms of cavalry.
00:24:11.340So much so, it was kind of obvious what Pompey should do.
00:24:15.520And therefore, how Caesar could counter it.
00:24:18.160So 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.
00:24:30.900If 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.
00:24:40.540And then it's simplicity itself for your infantry to mop up.
00:24:45.760But 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.
00:24:59.000Exactly how it played out at Farsilus.
00:25:00.960And I'll tell you all about it in detail next time.
00:25:04.160Basically, the bottom line is Pompey was out-generaled that day by Julius Caesar, completely out-generaled.
00:25:13.420And Pompey didn't even want to do that.
00:25:15.460He knew that he had Caesar beaten in any sort of long game.
00:25:20.400He could sort of starve the Caesar out.
00:25:23.500He had all the money and men and materiel on his side.
00:25:27.860He could wait Caesar out until Caesar was in dire, dire straits.
00:25:33.160But the Senate in exile and all sorts of pressures were put on Pompey to finish this thing quickly.
00:25:39.260They didn't want to wait for months until Caesar's men were extremely thirsty and hungry and dying of exposure and things.
00:25:48.800They didn't want to wait for months for that to happen.
00:25:51.540If anything, they thought it was dishonorable as well as just sort of boring.
00:25:56.280So they put more and more pressure on Pompey to sort of offer battle to Caesar, which was the wrong thing to do.
00:26:03.540They could have just waited, but they didn't.
00:26:06.440And Pompey actually delivers a speech saying that, saying, OK, I'm going to do a battle.
00:26:11.360I'm going to offer Caesar battle, but I'm doing it because you're forcing my hand to.
00:26:16.260Remember that, you know, if we do lose, it's on you.
00:26:18.900But we shouldn't lose because I'm Pompey Magnus and I've never lost a battle.
00:26:29.880When the defeat at Pharsalus came, Cato resolved that if Pompey were dead, he would take over to Italy those who were still with him.
00:26:37.960He would himself live in exile as far as possible from the tyranny of Caesar.
00:26:42.440If, on the contrary, Pompey were alive, he would by all means keep his forces intact for him.
00:26:48.180Accordingly, 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.
00:26:59.160But Cicero would not accept the command and set out for Italy.
00:27:02.340Then 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,
00:27:20.620and 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.
00:27:32.900Just 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.
00:27:41.600He's not prepared to fight on and on and on, deeper into the east, or in Spain, or in Africa.
00:27:48.920He'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.
00:28:03.240So 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.
00:28:20.680But that's Cicero all over, you know, he's a pragmatist.
00:28:23.620He bends with the wind, which is exactly what Cato doesn't ever do.
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