Why veterans matter.

Pharsalus, the battle fought on this day in 48 BC was the defining moment in the careers of both Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. Pompey was the great man in Rome for as long as most people could remember. He came to attenion serving under his father at the age of 16 in the Social war. A hayseed from Picenum his father Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo was a “new man”, what we would today call “new money”. Not proper Roman stock. But he was rich and could afford to put a legion behind his son.

By 83 BC Pompey was able to support Sulla in the Civil War against the Marian faction. Marius was married to Julia, Caesar’s aunt. Sulla famously said he saw many a Marius in Caesar. So Pompey and Caesar began their careers on opposite sides.

Pompey styled himself “Magnus” with youthful bravado aged only 24, but he had the chutzpah to do it. He bypassed the cursus honorum and was elected consul three times. He also celebrated three triumphs. He brought the messy and drawn out Sertorian rebellion to a conclusion, earning wealthy Spanish clients along the way. He famously cleared the Mediterranean of pirates, securing an unprecedented pro-consular authority to the coastlines of every maritime province to succeed. More clients fell into his lap.

He then went to the wealthy East, defeated Mithridates, and – you guessed it – more clients. He was fabulously wealthy. Almost as wealthy as Marcus Crassus. The first man in Rome. But his settlement of clients in the East relied on some treaties he had agreed with local rulers. On his return to Rome he found himself opposed by the conservative faction of the Senate.

From stage left stepped an unlikely ally; Julius Caesar. You will have your treaties if I can have my Consulship! And to seal the deal Caesar offered his daughters hand. The old man was smitten by the beatiful Julia and fell madly in love. With Crassus the three formed the first Triumvirate.

It was the death of Julia that led to the division between Caesar and Pompey. The Optimates of the Senate, those who originally opposed his treaties in the East, leaped on the chance to bring Pompey to their camp. They found him a new wife and a gang of new friends and gave him an army to oppose Caesar who had just crossed the Rubicon at the head of his veteran legions.

Pompey found himself in command of an army larger than Caesars, but they were green men. So he moved south and shipped them to Greece for training. Caesar, lacking a navy, could not follow. Instead he reversed course and eliminated the Pompeian forces in Hispania province, securing his back in the kind of clever strategy he might have learned from Pompey himself.

In January 48 BC Caesar at last managed to ship seven legions to modern day Albania. Pompey rapidly moved to besiege him in an attempt to starve him into submission. The arrival of Mark Anthony with four legions of reinforcements in March forced Pompey to withdraw. So it was not until August that the armies met.

Pompey held the high ground. He had one flank anchored on a river. He commanded over 40,000 men and 6,000 cavalry. Caesar was at the bottom of a hill in marshy land with his 22,000 men and 1,000 cavalry. But Caesar had hard fought battle trained veterans, and that is often the difference.

Pompey’s plan was simple, he positioned his infantry on the top of the hill in deep lines and all they had to do was hold on against an inferior infantry force. Hold the line, while with his massive superiority in cavalry he would sweep around Caesars right flank and roll up his line, driving Caesars men into the river.

Caesar saw what Pompey’s plan was and thinned his left flank, bringing as many men as he could to support his favourite legion the Legio X under his command on the right flank.

On his right Pompey ordered his men to hold the hilltop and not advance against the caesarian legions led by Mark Anthony. Poorly trained troops fall apart when they march, so it was safer to hold them steady. This allowed Anthony to climb the hill, and then order his men to rest and regroup before advancing further. If Pompey had experienced men they would have smashed the thinned out left wing of Caesar’s army at this point.

When Pompey’s cavalry charged Caesars right wing he drove off the caesarian cavalry as expected. But now Caesar unleashed his surprised weapon. The troops he had thinned from his left flank had been formed up secretly behind his three files on the right wing. They were now instructed to charge into the Pompeian cavalry and use their javelins as spears to unseat the horsemen. The result was chaos. Pompey’s cavalry lost all their impetus and were driven into a confused mess.

Caesar’s cavalry, who had withdrawn in good order, now wheeled about, reformed and charged into Pompey’s cavalry, driving them off the field of battle.

Now Pompey’s left wing was completely exposed to the mighty Legio X and the reinforcements from the rest of the field. They fell like a hammer on the inexperienced Pompeian right wing.

The day was over and Pompey knew it. He fled the field, south to find a ship to take him to Egypt, where he met a grizly end. Beheaded by a Roman Officer serving with the Egyptians who thought the head of Caesar’s old friend would please the victor. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Caesar wept.

Pharsalia (excerpt) ; by Lucan

No single death deserves its own lament,
no time to mourn the individual.
Pharsalus was unlike the former battles’
catastrophes. There Rome fell with men’s fates,
here with entire peoples’. Soldiers died there
but here whole nations perished. Here blood streamed
from Greek, Assyrian and Pontic veins,
which might have congealed on the field in one
cross-ethnic scab, but for a huge deluge
of Roman gore.

In that unholy battle
upon the stinking plains of Thessaly,
the peoples all sustained a deeper wound
than their own era could endure. Much more
than life and safety were lost there. We were
made prostrate for eternity. Every age
that suffers slavery fell to those swords.

But what did grandsons and great-grandsons do
to deserve birth in an autocracy?
Were ours the blades that fell with fear? Did we
snivel behind our shields and hide our throats?
The penalty of others’ cowardice
is hung around our necks today.

O Fortune,
since then you’ve only given us more tyrants!
Why not at least give us a chance to fight?

-=o0o=-

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The death of Sparta

In 371 BC, on the 6th of July, the Spartan army lost the battle of Leuctra.  In the process they lost their dominance as a land army and lost the myth of the unbeatable army which had lasted since the defense to the death at Thermopylae in 480 BC and the defeat of Persia at Plataea in 479 BC.

A loss in battle 100 years before was not a death knell for Sparta, so what went so wrong in 371 BC?  To answer that you must understand the economics of the Spartan system.

Spartan boys were taken from their homes as children and raised in barracks as soldiers.  Each soldier was maintained in his position as a military professional by his estate.  The estates, large farms, were worked by slaves and the Spartan system was entirely reliant upon the goodwill of slaves to function.  Initially there were a large number of small estates.  Over time estates became larger and the number of soldier citizens diminished.  At the time of the battle of Platea the Helots were said to outnumber the Spartans by 7 to 1.

At any given time Sparta could only field about 5,000 elite troops.  These ‘special forces’ relied on lesser trained allies and even slave soldiers to supply weight of numbers.  The Spartan elite were the greatest and best trained soldiers in the world in their day.  On the battlefield they were marked by their red cloaks and their silent drill.  While other armies roared and sang and shouted the Spartans advanced in a silent wall of death.

Because there were so few elite Spartans, any serious loss of their numbers could have serious repercussions.  There were simply not enough estates and enough slaves to support a larger Spartan elite.  They tried to bridge this manpower gap by according a special elevated status to the sons of Spartans born to Helot mothers.  These boys could serve as middle level administrators and auxiliary soldiers.  But they could never rise to the rank of soldier citizen.

The nature of Greek warfare also helped to underscore the immortality of the Spartans.  Greek heavy infantry fought in a phalanx, a tightly packed line of spear men, ten to twelve ranks deep.  Your own shield, the great round pylon, protected your left hand side.  For protection on the right you relied on the shield of your neighbor.  The hoplites tended to lean in to the right to stay protected by their neighbors shield.  As a result there was a tendency for the phalanx to move gradually to the right.  To prevent this impetus armies would put their best trained and most veteran troops on the right flank.  This was the place of honour.  These troops would stand firm and prevent right hand drift.

In any battle with allies, the Spartan elite held the right flank.  This meant that they were facing the weak flank of their enemy.  The success of the Spartan elite was continually reinforced by facing them against weak foes.

The Theban general, Epaminondas, introduced three ground breaking innovations to the Greek way of war.  Firstly he placed his strongest troops in the left flank, directly facing the Spartans.  Secondly he arranged them in a phalanx 50 lines deep.  This provided an irresistible weight of numbers against the Spartan phalanx of only 12 deep.  Finally, he organised his remaining troops in echelon instead of phalanx.  They formed a series of blocks stepped further and further away from the Spartan line.  This denied the Spartan left flank contact with the weaker right flank of the Thebans.

At Leuctra the Spartan elite were smashed.  They lost between 1,000 and 4,000 troops.  The important thing is that most of the losses were elite Spartan troops instead of allies and slave soldiers.  These were irreplaceable Spartan Citizen soldiers, the product of 20 years of training.

Leuctra also shattered the illusion of invincibility of the Spartan troops.  The spell was broken, and the economic system was broken.  Sparta declined and became a bucolic backwater and an economic dead end.

At the same time, in the north, Philip of Macedon paid close attention to the Theban tactics.  The oblique line and the massed wedge became a trademark of the Macedonian war machine, and enabled Alexander to conquer the world.

Epitaph of Simonides at Thermopylae:

Go tell the Spartans, thou who passes by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

The Temple Mount

I have always been interested in the history of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  Why is there a mosque sitting on the site most sacred to the Jewish religion?

The Al Aqsa mosque sits upon a rocky outcropping at the centre of the temple mount.  This is alleged to be the rock where Abraham was ordered to sacrifice his son by Jehovah.  When he demonstrated his obedience God stayed his hand, so the dogma goes.

I have my own ideas on this.  I believe that Abraham was an intelligent Rabbi and spiritual leader of his people.  He figured out that you did not have to kill people to worship God.  For me the lesson here is “Don’t kill children, you can substitute them with a Goat or a Lamb, or a Dove, or a Fatted Calf.”

Abraham is important because he is a father to three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  All three lay claim to his legacy.

The rock on the temple mount became the central focus of the Jewish religion.  At some time around 832 BCE Solomon is held to have constructed the First Temple.  However there is no archaeological record for this construction.  This temple was allegedly destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar after the siege of Jerusalem in 589-587 BCE.  The Jews were clearly a problem for the Babylonians who felt it necessary to exile the leadership to their capital where they could monitor them.

In 538 BCE Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish leaders to return to the city of Jerusalem.  They immediately set about re-establishing the temple, but not without opposition from others in the area.  Some form of Jewish Temple existed on Mount Zion until the Hellenistic Period.

Following the conquest of the east by Alexander the Great, and the division of his empire, Judea became a pressure point between the Ptolemaic Egyptian lands and the Seleucid lands.  In 167 BCE Antiochus III drove out the Egyptians under Ptolemy V.  The Seleucids clearly saw the Jews as loyal to the Ptolemies and set about reducing their power base.  The temple was looted, services were stopped and the buildings were dedicated to Zeus.  Judaism was effectively outlawed.

In 160 BCE following the revolt of the Maccabees the Temple site was again back in Jewish hands and was cleansed and re-dedicated.

Between 20 and 18 BCE the temple was totally rebuilt by Herod the Great, a client king of the Roman Empire.  This is the Temple where the Christian Jesus is alleged to have overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

The temple was the centre of Sadducee control of Judaism.  Jesus was from a Pharisee sect and did not hold that worship needed to be tied to a particular pile of stones.  The money changing incident was a demonstration of belief by Jesus.  Abraham said “don’t kill children – kill animals instead” and Jesus said “don’t kill animals – the simple act of breaking your daily bread can be worship of God”.

This is not a message designed to sit well with the Sadducees, who made a profit on every sacrificial animal sold on the temple mount, and who also made a fortune on the Currency Exchange market when the rural hicks found that their silver was no good in the temple.  They had to buy “Temple Silver” to purchase their sacrifice.  No wonder the Sadducees had a problem with Jesus!  He was threatening their entire economic foundation.

Ignoring the economics and religious dogma, the Jews were not comfortable citizens of the Roman Empire, and rose up in rebellion (notice a pattern here?).  The “Great Revolt” lasted from 66-70 CE.

The Roman Emperor Vespasian sent in his son Titus, who besieged Rome in 70 CE, punished the population and burned the temple to the ground.  The destruction of the temple removed the power base from the sects that were centralised there.  In this power vacuum the new “Christian“  religion was able to prosper.

The subsequent Bar-Kokhba revolt in 132-136 CE sealed the fate of the Temple Jews, who were massacred by Hadrian’s troops in large numbers.   It also firmly established the distance between Judaism and Christianity.  Following the revolt both Sects were barred from Jerusalem.

By this time the Christians had already established Golgotha as their primary site of worship.  There is no doubt that the Jews would have had issues with Christian worship on the Temple Mount, despite their common link to Abraham.

The Christians therefore opted to venerate the site of Christ’s death and the associated tomb.  When Hadrian expelled the Jews and Christians from the city he had a temple dedicated to Venus constructed on the Christian site, presumably to remove their power base.

From here we roll forward to the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Golgotha.  In 325/326 CE Constantine the Great began construction of two interlinked churches over the tomb and the peak the hill of Calvary.  This firmly established the Christian centre of Jerusalem as separate to the Jewish site.

Under Byzantine rule the Jews and Samaritans faced increasing persecution which led to a number of Jewish and Samaritan revolts.  The final revolt occurred when the Jews sided with the invading Sassanid Empire against the Byzantines.  In 602 CE under Sassanid occupation the Jews re-established control over Jerusalem for a short time, but the Sassanids ended up siding with the majority Christian population by 617.

The Jews then played the other side of the coin and supported the reconquest of Jerusalem by the Byzantines under Heraclius in 630 CE.  There were attempts by the Jews to re-establish a temple on Mount Zion during the Sassanid occupation and during the subsequent Byzantine re-occupation, but they were torn down and the site was left as a ruin.  It seems no ruler wanted to see the rise of a new Jewish power base.

So it was when Umar led the victorious Islamic armies into Jerusalem in 638 CE.  By agreement with the Christian Bishop his entry was a peaceful one.  Umar was invited to pray at the Holy Sepulchre.  He declined on the basis that Muslims might subsequently claim it as a Mosque, and invalidate his promise to protect Christian interests.  Instead he had the Temple mount cleared, and constructed a wooden mosque on the site.

Umar found a prime piece of real estate in Jerusalem, at the heart of the city, good location, nice views and absent of a formal place of worship.  So he took it over.

Subsequently the Ummah defined the site as “The Furthest Mosque” (al-Masjid al Aqsa), revealed to Muhammed on his mystical night journey undertaken in 621 CE.  This cemented the al-Aqsa Mosque  as the third holiest site in the Islamic world.

Over the years Caliphs improved the mosque.  It was destroyed by an earthquake in 746 and rebuilt.  It was destroyed by another earthquake in 1033 (a religious Jew might take this as a sign).  The current mosque largely dates from the 1035 reconstruction.

Under Crusader rule of Jerusalem from 1099 to 1187 the Al Aqsa was used as a palace.  It was restored as a mosque by Saladin and has remained as such to the present day.

During the six day war in 1967 when the Israeli forces gained control of the old city of Jerusalem they secured Jewish access to the Western Wall.  There were suggestions from some hawks that only a few sticks of dynamite stood between the Jews and their ancient site of worship.  But cooler heads prevailed on that day.

-=o0o=-

This site is available for free and I make no money from any ads you see here. If you would like to show your appreciation feel free to leave a comment or you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy