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Abstract
During the Roman Civil War that broke out in 49 bc between Julius Caesar and Pompey naval operations played a critical role. In order to confront Pompey’s army quickly in the Balkans, a major amphibious crossing of the Adriatic was undertaken by Caesar’s army. The text of Caesar’s Civil War and other sources, including Lucan’s epic poem Pharsalia, pose problems for understanding the campaign. This paper identifies and corrects a number of key points from the texts and reconstructs a new narrative that enhances our understanding of events. The most significant problem is the identification of Caesar’s landing place for his army with Palaeste, when it can be shown that he probably landed inside the Gulf of Valona.
Notes
1 Caesar’s work is Commentarii de Bello Civili, or Commentaries on the Civil War, published in three books, hereafter Civil War. The five books of Appian’s work (written in Greek, known in Latin as the Historia Romana) that deal with the civil wars are usually referred to in English as Civil War, books 1–5. Cassius Dio’s Historia Romana was similarly written in Greek.
2 Caesar, Civil War 3.6.
3 Gardner, Caesar: The Civil War, 28.
4 Appian, Civil War 2.54. Dio, Roman History 41.44.
5 Caesar, Civil War 3.9.
6 Caesar at Civil War 3.2 says that he had shipping for 15,000 men and 500 horses. At first sight this is hard to reconcile with his other statement that he had seven legions (3.6) and 500 horses (3.2), but it is well known that Caesar’s legions were below theoretical strength: IX Hispania had only 3,500 men, and I Germania is thought also to have had 3,500 when raised (Kelsy, Caesar’s Gallic War, 22). At 3.89 Caesar implies that at Pharsalus his cohorts averaged 275 men which implied a legion of 2,750 men. Caesar’s statement about 15,000 men therefore possibly relates to Caesar’s original plan for a journey to Salona, a passage of 340 km where the troops would require more space than on a passage to Aulon, when only one night was spent at sea.
7 Caesar, Civil War 3.2.
8 Mark Antony landed 800 cavalry with four legions (Civil War 3.29).
9 There is a very tiny bay, Grama or Grammata Bay, on the forbidding west coast due south of Oricum, which has many ancient inscriptions, including one dated to 44 bc (Anamali, Corpus des inscriptions latines, no. 222) suggesting that many people must have embarked or landed there contemporary to these events. It was far too small for any substantial use but for out-going messengers it may have been ideal.
10 Few historians distinguish between the risk Caesar thought he was taking, from the actual risk.
11 The movement of large armies was restricted by the amount of fodder available to the horses and mules so campaigns usually only started after the grass began to grow. Caesar, being unable to carry large numbers of horses across the Adriatic, therefore had every incentive to fight a winter campaign.
12 The only clear indication of the size of the ships is that two of them carried about 200 soldiers each: Caesar, Civil War 3.28.
13 Caesar, Civil War 3.29, pontones, quod est genus navium Gallicarum, ‘pontoons, which is a type of Gallic ship’.
14 This speculation is based on the operational requirement and the medieval derivation of the word pontoon from descendants of this type of vessel. Caesar’s description (Gallic Wars 3.13) of the ships of the Veneti shows that a sophisticated Atlantic tradition of shipbuilding existed that was wholly different to the Mediterranean tradition. Both pontoons and punts are vessels that normally have flat bottoms and they are often symmetrical lengthwise. This feature was very useful for river ferries by avoiding turning. Casson, Ships and Seamanship, 169, n7, writes that these pontones reappear in Civil War 3.40 as the 30 naves onerarias, transport ships, at Lissus.
15 I assume they had an internal ramp and a drawbridge at the bow and stern for horses to be walked from ship to shore.
16 Caesar, Civil War 3.29 and later at 3.40; there they are called naves onerarias, vessels of burden, i.e. merchant vessels.
17 Appian, Civil Wars 2.59. Presumably not many legionaries were included, though it is possible Appian misdates this expedition for one which happened later. Gray-Fow Qui Mare Teneat, n74.
18 Appian Civil Wars 2.56.
19 Lucan, especially, and others in antiquity were remarkably fascinated by this attempt. As Caesar does not mention this episode we know little of it and rely on Appian Civil Wars 2.57.
20 Caesar controlled a long coastline which was impossible for Pompey’s galleys to entirely blockade against small boats slipping across with messages.
21 I suggest later that Caesar, Civil War 3.23 and 25 have been wrongly ordered.
22 Gray-Fow Qui Mare Teneat; 162 misunderstands that in war being on the strategic offensive while being tactically defensive is the strongest possible position, which Libo achieved while he held the island in Brundisium harbour. If Pompey could not hold Brundisium’s inner harbour against Caesar, Libo could not have taken it, even temporarily, against Antony.
23 When Libo captured one grain ship and destroyed other merchantmen (Caesar, Civil War 3.23), these must have been supply vessels in the outer harbour, mostly empty, waiting for favourable winds to depart, probably for Sicily.
24 One could construct a scenario where this is the time when Caesar tries to get back to Italy.
25 Caesar, Civil War 3.23 claims to quote a despatch from Libo to Pompey that he, Libo, did not need the support of the rest of the galley fleet, implying an unjustified arrogance by Libo. In truth, Libo needed sailing ships to provide water. More galleys would have made Libo’s water supply problem worse.
26 Silting made it quite small in the Admiralty chart of 1878, no 1463, but it could certainly have been bigger in antiquity.
27 Chronological table in Kraner and Hofmann, C. Iulii Caesaris commentarii de bello civili .
28 After Pompey defeated Caesar at Dyrrachium, naval considerations may have played a decisive role but if they did, they left no record. Caesar retired to Thessaly and Pompey had a choice of objectives, one of which was crossing back to Italy. Pompey failed to exploit his preponderant naval power and followed Caesar into Thessaly.
29 Caesar, Civil War 3.40.
30 Caesar, Civil War 3.100. I suspect that Caesar’s ‘at the same time’ (eodem tempore) had a very much looser meaning in antiquity than in a world of clocks. At the very least this blockade must have persisted long enough for merchant ships to bring up water.
31 Lintott, ‘Lucan’, 492
32 Grainger, Hellenistic and Roman Naval Wars, 172
33 The Romans had conducted naval operations within human memory, such as the invasion of Britain, but there is no suggestion that they had encountered any opposition at sea, beyond perhaps a few pirates in the Red Sea.
34 On the other hand, Lucan’s incidental facts are valuable e.g. 5.521 refers to alga as soft bedding. He certainly means eelgrass (zostera marina). It is difficult to imagine how else we could learn that this material was so used in Roman times.
35 Bourgery, ‘La geographie dans Lucain’.
36 Lucan, Pharsalia, 5.488.
37 Both Lucan and Caesar would surely, for different reasons, have mentioned any storm. Many historians are vague in expressing the view that Palaeste was not the original objective, e.g. ‘the huge convoy drifted far to the south during the night’: Jiménez, Caesar against Rome, 129.
38 Description of coast for 32 (sea) miles from Cape Linguetta to Port Palermo, Med. Pilot 1880.
39 Med. Pilot 1880, 15. The current is generally about half a mile an hour but greater near the coast and with southerly winds.
40 It matters whether we think Caesar’s vessels were square or fore-and-aft rigged. I suspect that larger square rigged ships were used. We know that two could carry about 200 soldiers each, surely with enough space on board to sleep when on the longer passage to Lissus (Caesar, Civil War 3.28).
41 Caesar’s soldiers would have been heavily encumbered. Transfer from ship to boat and boat to land was not simple even in a flat calm. Each boat would make many trips. Landing the men was trivially simple compared to landing the horses, which must have numbered 500.
42 The ancient city of Aulon was somewhat to the north of the present city of Valona/Vlorë (see Hammond Epirus; 700, map 18) and lay between the lagoon and the sea. The harbour of ancient Aulon, meaning channel, was inside the lagoon. Caesar could have landed at ancient Aulon and not at its harbour.
43 Caesar, Civil War 3.25.
44 Appian, Civil War 2.58. Appian may well be quoting from an intercepted message from Caesar himself.
45 Caesar, Gallic Wars 3.13.
46 The adoption of the wineglass hull is associated with the movement away from inland ports to new harbours on the sea such as Alexandria, Thessalonica, and Nea Paphos. Flat or rounded hull profiles were more suited to smaller vessels working in river deltas and estuaries.
47 Drawing a ship out of water gave protection against ship-worm on the one hand and scrapped away the lead sheathing on the other, making beachable and non-beachable ships archaeologically distinguishable categories.
48 Wilson ‘The economic influences’, 217.
49 Archaeology of wrecks of this period shows that ships were liable to have their wineglass keels ripped off. Pomey, ‘Les conséquences’, 54.
50 Caesar, Civil War 3.28, clearly shows that on one occasion troops could successfully land from a beached ship. However, this ship had failed to keep up with the fleet and was probably among the smallest in the fleet.
51 Med. Pilot 1880, 248 reports the 5-fathom line, in places, is nearly 2 miles from the coast.
52 Mean February sea temperatures are about 14 °C on the landing beaches, Med. Pilot 2008, 24.
53 Caesar, Gallic Wars 4.24.
54 Wilson, ‘The economic influences’, 226, states ‘water was deep enough (2–3 metres) to allow medium to large cargo ships to dock’.
55 Polybius 4.40.8 states that large ships required a pilot in the Sea of Azov because this sea was so shallow. Trajan’s harbour of Portus was dug to a depth of nearly 7 metres and the harbour at Ostia to 6 metres. Although the Romans tended to over-engineer their works, digging to 6 and 7 metres when the requirement was only 3.5 metres seems wildly excessive, even for Romans.
56 Lucan, Pharsalia 5.460.
57 Med. Pilot 1880, 6.
58 Med Pilot 2008, 31.
59 Beresford, The Ancient Sailing Season.
60 See the wind rose in the Straight of Otranto. Med. Pilot 2008, 32.
61 Data for 1–6 Feb. 2015 from the website of Brindisi airport, adjacent to the port.
62 Med. Pilot 1880, 6.
63 Med Pilot 2008, 31.
64 Especially in the southern Adriatic. The Bora in the northern Adriatic is very dangerous to sailing ships (Med. Pilot 1880, 7).
65 Med. pilot 2008, 46. Including SE and NE winds in these easterlies alters these numbers to 42 per cent and 25 per cent.
66 Sailing ships could certainly sail at 90° to the wind without bother and when under way were difficult for galleys to board or ram.
67 Gray-Fow, Qui Mare Teneat, 160, misinterprets the location of these ships, which were close inshore to where the Bora is localized and wrongly blames Calenus when Caesar had the warships.
68 Cassius Dio, Roman History 41.44 implies that the mainland opposite was rather carelessly guarded by Bibulus.
69 Caesar, Civil War 3.6.
70 Most of the gulf is 20–28 fathoms (36.6–51.2 metres) deep. Unlike the Veneti (see Caesar, Gallic Wars 3.13), the Romans would have used cables rather than chains, which needed to be about five times the depth to get a firm horizontal grip on the bottom.
71 Caesar, Civil War 3.7.
72 Caesar, Civil War 3.8.
73 Brown, The Textual Transmission, p. 67.
74 Damon, Studies on the Text of Caesar’s Bellum Civile, 211, but ‘Salonis’ is in the editio princeps
or first edition printed at Rome in 1469.
75 Gardiner, The Age of the Galley, 210.
76 Ibid., 213 n22.
77 Caesar, Civil War, 3.25.
78 Caesar, Civil War, 3.15.
79 Polyaenus, Strategica 8, 23, 13 has an anecdote of later in the campaign where harassing fire from galleys forced troops, on the march, to carry their shields on the right.
80 Pliny Natural History 3.152 and Polybius 5, 110.
81 Caesar, Civil War 3.27. Caesar was not a witness to the change of fortune he reports. At Shëngjin the Med. Pilot 2008, 182, says ‘Gales from this (SW) direction are unknown.’ There is no obvious reason why these galleys could not have anchored in the good anchorage south of the harbour.
82 Caesar, Civil War 3.18.
83 Caesar, Civil War 3.15.
84 A Handbook of Macedonia, 491.
85 The difficulty for galley fleets to maintain a blockade along hostile shores is illustrated by the failure of Pompey’s fleet to hold Brundisium island (Caesar, Civil War 3.23–24). Though as Caesar, Civil War 3.100, shows, galleys could do so when supplied from sailing vessels.
86 Caesar, Civil War 3.14.
87 Caesar, Civil War 3.25: sive ad Labeatium was added by Peskett (1966) on the authority of Kraner and Hofmann (1906) but the latest Oxford Classical Text edition by Damon omits ad Labeatium.
88 A messenger could get through much more easily than Caesar because of the length of coast controlled by Caesar, whereas Caesar himself could not be inconspicuous for more than a few hours. Appian Civil Wars 2.58.
89 I suggest that Caesar, Civil War 3.23 and 25 have been wrongly ordered, probably because Caesar in expunging the account of his attempt to get back to Italy oversimplified events. The addition of sive ad Labeatium in order that Mark Antony’s landing place does not contradict Caesar’s orders is not helpful.
90 Caesar, Civil War 3.100.
91 Gray-Fow, Qui Mare Teneat, 144, ‘a dull, unimaginative man’ and Gray-Fow, ‘The Mental Breakdown of a Roman Senator’.
92 Caesar, Civil War 3.39.
93 Pitassi, The Roman Navy, 173.
94 Polyaenus, Strategica 6.16.3, gives an example of triremes defending themselves behind a screen of merchant ships with soldiers in the merchant ships.
95 While the circumstances are very different, we hear of galleys hiding behind merchant ships in Thucydides (7.41).
96 Caesar, Civil War 3.24. Thucydides (7.40) attaches the same significance to small boats in fighting inside the harbour of Syracuse.
97 Appian 2.54. According to Caesar, Civil War 3.39, at least two merchant ships were presumably captured intact as they were available later for use in defending his warships at Oricum. Or perhaps they came over with Caesar’s galleys.
98 Appian 2.54.
99 Appian2.54.
100 A Handbook of Macedonia, 174–5.
101 Hammond, Epirus, 130.
102 The pass on the modern road is said to be at 1,027 metres. Presumably the nineteenth-century path clung to the side of the valley.
103 Hammond, Epirus.
104 Almost exactly two synodic lunar months before this eclipse; http://www.eclipsewise.com/solar/SEprime/-0099--0000/SE-0047Jan04Pprime.html
105 Dio, Roman History 41.44)
106 Roller, The Geography of Strabo, 310, 316.
107 Especially Veith, Der Feldzug von Dyrrhachium.
108 An interesting question is why did Pompey not attempt to hold Brundisium Island after he evacuated the port? At least a partial answer is that Pompey’s naval superiority was not as great at that time. In addition perhaps the experience of using Sason as a base was necessary before the utility of Brundisium island could be recognized.
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Ian Longhurst
Ian Longhurst is an independent scholar based in Godalming, Surrey. He has published a number of articles on Roman history and archaeology. He was on holiday, standing at the Llogara Pass, when he heard a story he did not believe being told by the tour guide.