Cæsar may be assumed to have effected his junction with these reinforcements five or six days after he set out from his encampment on the Apsus to meet them f*: and that having been accomplished, we have next only two days more to the arrival at Asparagium where Pompey was posted 5; and two days there, including the day of the arrival: and on the next day, the march of both Pompey and Cæsar to Dyrrhachium, where each arrived in the morning. So that, if we may suppose that all this was continuous, and that the date of this arrival at Dyrrhachium was January 19 (the day after the full moon), Cæsar must have come to Asparagium on January 16; and must have effected his junction with Antony January 14: and Antony with these reinforcements must have been making the passage a few days before January 9. And thus every thing will be consistent. Suetonius' four months, on this principle, must have borne date on or about January 19 B. C. 48 (x Kalendas Apriles U. C. 706); and had they been four complete they would have extended down to the x Kalendas Sextiles, May 19. But he himself speaks of them as only quatuor pæne menses; and their actual duration appears to have been from the x Kalendas Apriles January 19 to Pridie Nonas Quinctiles May 2; three months of Roman time by the calendar and half of a fourth t. The epistles of Cicero are not of much use in assisting us to clear up the chronology of the early part of these proceedings; yet they confirm our conclusion respecting the actual date of this breaking up of the siege of Dyrrhachium: at least to a certain extent. There is one letter to Atticus h of the date of Pridie Nonas * Antony landed at Nymphæum, (iii. 26,) three miles Roman beyond Lissus. Soon after (29) he was admitted into Lissus. Cæsar must have marched to him there; and from the Apsus to Lissus the distance in a right line could not be less than 80 Roman miles = 90 by road at least. That would require six days at the rate of 15 miles a day, and five even at the rate of 20. †That the entire interval in question was not less than three months may, we think, be inferred from Cicero Ad Fam. xiii. 29. De Bello Civ. iii. 30-34. Cf. 41. ii. 55. h ri. 1. Ibid. 41. Cf. 76. Appian, B. C. Februarii (Dec. 4 B. C. 49); consequently long before the beginning of the siege. There is another i, dated Idibus Juniis ex castris, April 10 B. C. 48: and at that time Pompey had been besieged by Cæsar nearly three months. There is a third k, in which Cicero complains of being unwell; and when that was written Pompey was no longer at Dyrrhachium. And though it is without a date, there is a letter to Terentia1, which in other respects relates to the same subjects as that to Atticus; implying that both were written about the same time, the letter to Terentia first and then that to Atticus. And this letter to Terentia is dated Idibus Quinctilibus, May 11. Pompey therefore had left Dyrrhachium before May 11 at least. During the whole of this four months' blockade of Dyrrhachium Lucan describes Cæsar as master indeed of the country but as suffering from the want of necessaries. At liber terræ spatiosis collibus hostis And this in fact is merely Cæsar's own representation of the circumstances in which he was actually placed for the first part of the interval at least: Ipse autem consumtis omnibus longe lateque frumentis summis erat in augustiis: sed tamen hæc singulari patientia milites ferebant". And yet, (as was naturally to be expected, the season going on advancing,) even these privations are spoken of as gradually becoming less and less: Jamque frumenta maturescere incipiebant, atque ipsa spes inopiam sustentabat°-At Cæsaris exercitus optima valetudine summaque aquæ copia utebatur: tum commeatus omni genere præter frumentum abundabat : quibus quotidie melius succedere tempus majoremque spem maturitate frumentorum proponi videbat°. i xi. 3. k Ibid. 4. 1 Ad Fam. xv. 6. Cf. Ad Attic. xi. 13. m Phars. vi. 106. iv. On the chronology of the proceedings from the retreat from Dyrrhachium to the battle of Pharsalia. The retreat of Cæsar from before Dyrrhachium followed with little or no delay after Pompey's second attack upon his linesP; the success of which was the only material advantage which he gained in the course of the war. We cannot undertake to pronounce with certainty upon the date of this retreat; but from the most careful consideration of the context of events both before and after it we are strongly of opinion that it must have taken place about the new moon of May, which this year fell on the 2nd of that month. On the first day of the retreat Cæsar encamped within his old lines at Asparagium on the river Genusus 9. And on the fourth day after he seems to have got so much in advance of Pompey that he pursued him no further at this time; but left him to march unmolested to Apollonia". He was probably at Apollonia on or about May 6. From Apollonia to Æginium on the borders of Thessaly, where Cæsar effected his junction with his legate Cn. Domitius Calvinuss, the distance was little less than 150 Roman miles direct=170 by road: and that would require eight or nine days' march at the rate even of 20 miles a day. Appian seems to represent the length of the march even from Dyrrhachium to Pharsalia as not more than seven days"; which is scarcely credible: though Cæsar was certainly making great marches at this time. We may assume then that he probably arrived at Æginium in seven or eight days from Apollonia consequently on or about May 14. Gomphi was 17 miles direct=19 by road, distant from this point; and as it was taken by storm, between the ninth hour of the day and sunset, we may conclude it must have been on May 15. The next day (May 16) Cæsar moved to Metropolis and as that was 27 miles direct, 29 or 30 by road, distant from Pharsalia, it is probable that he did not arrive in that vicinity before May 18: but having so arrived, Segetis idoneum locum in agris nactus quæ prope jam matura erat * ibi adventum exspectare Pompeii . . . constituit. * In these different allusions to the harvest, it does not appear whether wheat-harvest or barley-harvest was intended. But though the word employed to denote the grain which was growing at the time is frumentum, and that in its most general sense is as applicable to barley, (hordeum,) as to wheat, (triticum,) yet if there was any difference in the times of these two kinds of harvest respectively, the earlier of the two, that which would be the first to come in and was the nearest at hand, must have been first and properly meant. According to Lucan, the corn was not yet ripe even when Pompey, as well as Cæsar, was now come into Thessaly. Ad præmaturas segetum jejuna rapinas Agmina compulimus, votumque effecimus hosti Ut mallet sterni gladiis 1. And that might be the case even with barley-harvest as late as May 21 or 22; though Cæsar gives us to understand it was not far from maturity even when he arrived, which was some days before Pompey: and Lucan himself implies that grain was to be found in the fields, ripe for cutting, on the morning of Pharsalia itself 2. Illo forte die &c. But there are other suppositions in his account of these proceedings which could not have been founded in fact. For example, the speech which he puts into the mouth of Cicero3, just before the battle; as if he too was present at Pharsalia: though we know from his own letters 4 that he was left at Dyrrhachium sick, when Pompey marched thence; and from other parts of his works that he was still at Dyrrhachium when the news of the battle arrived there. We may have occasion, on a future opportunity, to collect the testimonies of antiquity to the different dates of barley and of wheat-harvest respectively for different parts of Greece. There can be little question that in Attica barley would be ready for the sickle about the third week in May at this time; and wheat about the third week in June. It could hardly be later on the plains of Pharsalia, the warmest part of Thessaly: though probably wheat was more generally grown in that country than barley. And here we may observe that, as the date of this memorable battle 1 vii. 98. 2 Ibid. 235. Cf. Appian, B. C. ii. 68. Polyænus, viii. 23. Cæsar, 14. 3 vii. 67. 4 Cf. Ad Attic. xi 4. Ad Fam. vii. 3: ix. 18. Plutarch, Cicero, xxxix: Cato, lv. Livy, cxi. Dio, xlii. 10. D Bello Civ. iii. 81. Pompey was already on his march to join Scipio!; who was about the end of the eighteenth century was made the subject of a warm and active controversy among the learned; and as the question of the season of harvest for the climate of Thessaly was necessarily mixed up with it; the French consul at Salonica (the ancient Thessalonica) A. D. 1785 was requested by some of the members of the Academy to make inquiries about it upon the spot. He did so, and his answer, as we find it reported in the Dissertation of Mons. De la Nauze on the Roman calendar5, was as follows: "Suivant les informations que j'ai demandées en Thessalie, et suivant ce que m'en ont rapporté ici des gens de ce pays là la moisson s'y fait dans le mois de Juin: du côté de Larissa et de Tricala, c'est dès les premiers jours de Juin, et du côté de Jannina et des environs ce n'est que du 15 au 20 du même mois." : These dates being reduced to old style, it appears from them that for the neighbourhood of the ancient Larissa (that of the ancient Pharsalia too) the harvest (wheat-harvest no doubt) still began about the 20th or 21st of May and as the summer solstice at this time was falling June 10 or II old style, this, it is manifest, was about 20 or 21 days before the solstice. At the time of Pharsalia, the summer solstice was falling on June 25 and the date of Pharsalia, the 5th of June, would bear exactly the same proportion to the solstitial date of this time as May 20 or 21 to the solstitial date of A. D. 1785. If wheat then was commonly ripe for the same locality A. D. 1785 about May 20 or 21; it would be ripe for the locality in question, B. C. 48, about June 5 or 6: at the very time when it appears from the testimony of Cæsar that it actually must have been. So invariable are the laws of nature; and so consistent with itself is truth even in the slightest circumstances. Among the prodigies or omens, as they were considered, which preceded the battle, some merely natural phenomena are enumerated; as a storm of thunder and lightning, and a swarm of bees: which latter some6 represent to have occurred when Pompey was moving from Dyrrhachium; others speak of the same or a similar phenomenon after his arrival in Thessaly, and on the day before the battle itself. A storm of thunder and lightning would be nothing extraordinary about the new moon of May, May 1 or 2 and as to the swarm of bees, the earliest date which the ancients assigned to that natural occurrence, for the climate of Greece, was the heliacal rising of the Pleiads, on or about May 6; i. e. almost the very time when Pompey was probably on his march from Apollonia to Thessaly. 5 Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, xxvi. 255. 6 Valerius Max. i. vi. 12 Dǝ Prodigiis. Lucan, Pharsalia, vii. 152-164: Obsequens, cxxv. 7 Dio, xli. 61. Appian, B. C. ii. 68. Florus, iv. 2, 44. 45. Ibid. 79, 80: cf. Appian, B. C. ii. 65. |