Caesar’s biographers and the historians of his campaigns repeatedly emphasize the mutual devotion of the general and his troops. To Caesar those fighting for him are not soldiers (milites) but comrades (commilitones), and the worst name he can call them is citizens (quirites; Suet. Iul. 67.2, 70.2; App. B Civ. 2.93.392; Luc. 5.358). The material rewards for valor are lavish and are more than effective in binding the soldiers to their leader (Plut. Caes. 17.1, 55.2; Suet. Iul. 67.2). Caesar even recruits new legions from his own resources and grants citizenship to those he favors (Suet. Iul. 24.2). All this benevolence is repaid in full, and our sources pullulate with instances of valor and devotion to the general, particularly among the junior officer class: C. Acilius, who emulates the Athenian Cynegirus in the sea-battle at Massilia (Val. Max. 3.2.22; Plut. Caes. 16.1; Suet. lul. 68.4); the collective suicide of C. Vulteius and his Opitergian crew when trapped in the sea off Illyria (Livy Per. 110; Flor. 2.13.32-3; Comm. Bern. at Luc. 4.462); the centurion Scaeva and his lone stand at Dyrrachium (Caes. BC 3.53.3-5; Val. Max. 3.2.23; Suet. lul. 68.3-4; Flor. 2.13.40; Plut. Caes. 16.2; App. B Civ. 2.60.247-50); C. Crastinus, the centurion who leads the charge at Pharsalus (Caes. BC 3.91, 99; Livy ap. Comm. Bern. at Luc. 7.470 and 471; Plut. Pomp. 71.1-3, Caes. 44.5-6, App. B Civ. 2.82.347-8); Granius Petro the quaestor or centurion who defies his Pompeian captors off Africa (Plut. Caes. 16.4; cf. [Caes.] B Afr. 44-6). Lucan in turn finds in these figures and their relationship to their leader a constant source of fascination. As in his handling of the speed of Caesar, he reaches back to the prose tradition and reconceives an essential feature of Caesar’s representation in strikingly epic terms.
Among the embassy sent by Caesar in 51 BC to seek an extension of his Gallic command was an unnamed centurion. Learning that the senate had refused to grant this, he grasped his sword in his hand and exclaimed ‘‘But this will grant it!’’ (Plut. Caes. 29.5, Pomp. 58.2; cf. App. B Civ. 2.25.97 attributing these words to Caesar himself). This story appears to underlie the first of Caesar’s centurions to appear in the Civil War - Laelius - and the speech he delivers at Luc. 1.359-86 asserting his absolute loyalty to Caesar’s cause. Note how he is in effect but a hand to be put to the service of his master:
‘‘Come, lead us through the Scythian peoples, through Syrtis’ inhospitable shores, through parched Libya’s burning sands: to leave a conquered world behind as it marched on, this hand subdued with oar the Ocean’s swollen waves and curbed the northern whirlpools of the foaming Rhine: to carry out your orders the necessary power and will I have.’’
(Luc. 1.367-72, trans. S. H. Braund [slightly adjusted])
Laelius goes on to promise that with a right hand, however reluctant, he will plunge his sword, if so ordered, into his brother’s breast, his father’s throat, even the womb of his pregnant wife (Luc. 1.374-8). The men around him cry out in assent and promise their hands for whatsoever war Caesar should require (Luc. 1.387-9).
The collective suicide of Vulteius and his crew is not mentioned in Caesar’s Civil War, but the detailed note of the Commenta Bernensia at Luc. 4.462 makes clear his appreciation for their deeds: to console the people of Opitergium for their loss, he granted 20 years’ dispensation from military service and enlarged their boundaries by 300 centuries. And what is perhaps most striking in all Lucan’s narrative is the speech of Vulteius himself urging his men to suicide, the claim that they have no better way to demonstrate their devotion to Caesar (Luc. 1.501-2), and the exhortation to ensure by deeds of great valor that, few though they are among the many thousands of casualties that he endures, Caesar should regard their fall as a loss and a disaster (Luc. 4.512-24, esp. 524 damnum clademque). Here too Lucan appears to engage with a key feature of Caesar’s generalship, for Suetonius reports that he so cherished his men that, on hearing of the 54 BC disaster of Titurius at the hands of Ambiorix ( audita clade Tituriana), Caesar grew long his hair and beard in token of mourning and did not cut them short until vengeance had been achieved (Suet. lul. 67.2). Yet now Lucan also locates this episode within the realm of myth. The shipmates who stab each other to death rather than fight on or surrender are compared to the sown men of Cadmus and Medea (Luc. 4.549-58), and Fama, the embodiment of rumor but also of epic fame, is said to have spoken of no ship with louder mouth as she runs through the world (Luc. 4.573-4). The implication is clear: Apollonius, Varro of Atax, and the rest can now fall silent; the Argo and its crew must content themselves with second place.
Two further examples may be cited of the reinvention of Caesar’s loyal subalterns as figures of epic. Caesar himself lavishes praise on the centurion Crastinus who led the charge at Pharsalus and was found dead amidst the foe with a sword thrust full in his face (Caes. BC 3.91 and 99). Lucan in turn curses him for shattering the momentary hesitation that envelops both sides as they get ready to strike their own kin (Luc. 7.466-75). Yet where the Crastinus of the historians leads his men forward and strikes with the sword, in Lucan’s epic he takes on the dimensions of the Homeric archer Pandarus (Hom. 1l. 4.86-140) and particularly of the Tolumnius of Vergil (Verg. Aen. 12.266-8), and casts his spear into the foe. The centurion Scaeva is already a somewhat hyperbolic figure even in the dry narrative of Caesar’s commen-tarii, and we are told that his shield, when brought to Caesar, was found to have been pierced in 120 places (Caes. BC 3.53.4). Lucan goes even further, has him strip offhis armor lest he be deemed to have survived through it, and describes the forest of spears he now bears in his guts (Luc. 6.202-6). At one stage towards the end of his heroic stand, Scaeva in fact feigns incapacity and represents himself as an example of Caesar abandoned rather than of an honorable death (Luc. 6.233-5). This though is but a ruse by which he gains the chance to slay one more foe and mock the enemy for the frailty of their devotion to Pompey compared to his devotion to death (Luc. 6.236-45). Death apart, it is Caesar that Scaeva loves; he yearns to die before the eyes of his leader (Luc. 6.158-60) and is certain that vengeance will be at hand as soon as the sound of his struggle reaches the ears of the general (Luc. 6.162-5). Nor is he wrong (Luc. 6.246-7). This then is a mighty warrior and a devoted follower, but he is also an example of the perversion of martial valor (virtus) in civil war (Luc. 6.147-8). As Scaeva quits the scene, Lucan observes the fair fame he might have won had he but fought a foreign foe (Luc. 6.257-9), makes him an example of wars that can enjoy no triumph (Luc. 6.260-1, cf. 1.12), and finally exclaims ‘‘Wretch, with how great valor did you gain a master!’’ (Luc. 6.262 infelix, quanta dominum virtuteparasti!).
When Lucan talks of the fame that Scaeva might have won had he fought in the national cause (Luc. 6.257 felix hoc nomine famae), he again reflects implicitly on his capacity to enter the annals of epic heroism. And indeed Lucan has every reason to meditate on this possibility, for through allusion he has located Scaeva in a long pattern of lone epic resistance that links the Homeric Ajax struggling to hold back the Trojans in Iliad 16 (Hom. 1l. 16.102-11) and Turnus at bay in the Trojan camp in Aeneid 9 (Verg. Aen. 9.803-11). Yet perhaps the most important link in this chain is represented by the 15th book of the Annals of Ennius, where the Republican epic poet transfers key features of the resistance of Ajax not to another figure from the age of heroes but rather to the military tribune C. Aelius standing his ground in the Istrian war of 178-177 BC (Enn. Ann. 391-8 Sk.). Here indeed is the foreign war that guarantees heroic valor its meed of fame. Scaeva needs no such validation; to him it is enough that Caesar should approve.
World History
