Caesar\'s plan to invade eastwards before his assassination

[stevesarak]

The other day I read in a post someplace about Caesar preparing to invade eastwards just before his assassination.

Could someone elaborate on this, how large of an army had he massed? What was his plan? Etc. And would you like to elaborate on what you think the outcome would have been and why.

Thanks

[arklore70]

From what I understand, he was preparing for a campaign that was to conquer Parthia (Syria and Iraq). He assassination was the day before he planned to leave for the campaign. From what I can gather, Parthia was a long standing problem for Rome and perhaps the only near peer competitor out there.

His untimely death of course resulted in a another Civil War where first the "Republicans" such as Brutus were held accountable for their actions ( he committed suicide), and then a series of wars resulting in a second triumvirate, then followed but more wars in which Marc Antony was defeated and Octavian victorious.

Considering the vast amount of forces assembled, and the high cost of the Civil Wars that followed his death, I am of the opinion that had he lived, he would have had significant combat power to defeat Parthia, especially, if he could have quickly and decisively defeated them.

Where I think he would have run into trouble have been maintaining his lines of communication and his supply lines as well as the financial cost involved.

V/r
Mike

[stevesarak]

Thanks.
If I remember correctly there was 26 standing legions at the time, I may be wrong its been awhile, do you know how may were pulled for the campaign and if there were any new legions formed to support the war, if so how many.

What was the force of the Parthian army in numbers? What was Caesar up against?

[Theodosius the Great]

What was the force of the Parthian army in numbers? What was Caesar up against?

Probably something similar to what Crassus faced a decade earlier when he took them on and was killed. Anthony took them on and was only more sucessful in the sense that he escaped with his life ! I don't have the figures though.

I also remember reading that Caesar originally intended to make war on the Dacians until the arrival of the Helveti tribe offered him a more tempting target. So after his planned Parthian campaign, I think it likely that he would have gone to Dacia.

[Matthew]

I read (a good long while ago in a Cambridge ancient History, I think) that Crassus' troops were not very good quality, being hastily raised and equipped (though I imagine Crassus could afford decent gear). Caesar might have made a better go of things, he already had experience fighting in the east, and almost certainly would have done more than Mark Antony, considering the reduced resources at the latter's disposal. Still, all pretty speculative, as are all what if's..

Caesar's plan for an expedition to Parthia comes from Plutarch, Caesar 58, I think; Suetonius mentions something about it, as well.

Taken From:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... esar*.html

Plutarch

4Caesar's many successes, however, did not divert his natural spirit of enterprise and ambition to the enjoyment of what he had laboriously achieved, but served as fuel and incentive for future achievements, and begat in him plans for greater deeds and a passion for fresh glory, as though he had used up what he already had. 5What he felt was therefore nothing else than emulation of himself, as if he had been another man, and a sort of rivalry between what he had done and what he purposed to do. 6For he p579planned and prepared to make an expedition against the Parthians; and after subduing these and marching around the Euxine by way of Hyrcania, the Caspian sea, and the Caucasus, to invade Scythia; 7and after overrunning the countries bordering on Germany and Germany itself, to come back by way of Gaul to Italy, and so to complete this circuit of his empire, which would then be bounded on all sides by the ocean. 8During this expedition, moreover, he intended to dig through the isthmus of Corinth, and had already put Anienus in charge of this work; he intended also to divert the Tiber just below the city into a deep channel, give it a bend towards Circeium, and make it empty into the sea at Terracina, thus contriving for merchantmen a safe as well as an easy passage to Rome; 9and besides this, to convert marshes about Pomentinum and Setia into a plain which many thousands of men could cultivate; and further, 10to build moles which should barricade the sea where it was nearest to Rome, to clear away the hidden dangers on the shore of Ostia, and then construct harbours and roadsteads sufficient for the great fleets that would visit them. And all these things were in preparation.


Taken From:

http://www.historyinfilm.com/claudius/c ... ulius4.htm

Suetonius

LXXIX. To an insult which so plainly showed his contempt for the Senate he added an act of even greater insolence; for at the Latin Festival, as he was returning to the city, amid the extravagant and unprecedented demonstrations of the populace, someone in the press placed on his statue a laurel wreath with a white fillet tied to it [an emblem of royalty]; and when Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus, tribunes of the plebeians, gave orders that the ribbon be removed from the wreath and the man taken off to prison, Caesar sharply rebuked and deposed them, either offended that the hint at regal power had been received with so little favor, or, as he asserted, that he had been robbed of the glory of refusing it. But from that time on he could not rid himself of the odium of having aspired to the title of monarch, although he replied to the plebeians, when they hailed him as king, "I am Caesar and no king" [with a pun on rex ('king') as a Roman name], and at the Lupercalia, when the consul Marcus Antonius several times attempted to place a crown upon his head as he spoke from the rostra, he put it aside and at last sent it to the Capitol, to be offered to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Nay, more, the report had spread in various quarters that he intended to move to Ilium or Alexandria, taking with him the resources of the state, draining Italia by levies, and leaving the charge of the city to his friends; also that at the next meeting of the Senate Lucius Cotta would announce as the decision of the Fifteen [the quindecimviri sacris faciundis ('college of fifteen priests') in charge of the Sybilline books], that inasmuch as it was written in the books of fate that the Parthians could be conquered only by a king, Caesar should be given that title.


Interesting Article about Rome and Parthia:

http://www.international-relations.com/ ... -NewWB.htm


Vale,

Matthew James Stanham

[Eleatic Guest]

And would you like to elaborate on what you think the outcome would have been and why.

I believe it would have been a no-win-situation for Caesar. If he had failed another Carrhae or at least a costly retreat like later Marc Anthonys would have been likely. And if he had won any newly acquired territories east of the Euphrates would have made a classical example of imperial overstretch. Holding Mesopotamia alone would have doubled both the southern frontier towards the Arabian desert and the eastern one to the Iranian highland.

I would classify Caesars decision along with Alexanders plan to attack Carthage (or South Arabia) - it was better that they werent carried out because even in the best case territorial gains would have been likely to be temporary.

[stevesarak]

Thanks Matthew for the links,
After reading some of them, I found them to be a wealth of information and very educational. I’ve bookmarked them and plan on referring back to them from time to time when I have the time to sit back and enjoy them.

Thanks again.

[stevesarak]

As far as it being a no-win-situation for Caesar, you may be right, but for argument sake, lets take the other side. When Caesar fought against the Gauls or other countries, his ranks would swell from enlisting men from the conquered armies. If he could keep enough men in the field to withstand some losses and keep up the attack against the Parthians; and after subduing these and marching around the Euxine by way of Hyrcania, the Caspian sea, and the Caucasus, to invade Scythia; 7and after overrunning the countries bordering on Germany and Germany itself, to come back by way of Gaul to Italy, and so to complete this circuit of his empire, he may have pulled it off, it’s a big if.

What do you feel would have happened to Rome then, would she have continued to be the major power in the world until she finally destroyed herself, or do you think, just like against the Gauls, men would rise up and revolt, forming armies to fight against the Romans, but now if the new conquered territories banded together, the armies they could have produced might have been a force to large for Rome to deal with. If Caesar had gone forth with his plan against the Parthians and defeated them, would we have seen the fall of Rome sooner?

[Nathan Ross]

If Plutarch can be believed concerning Caesar's plans for world domination, it was a grandiose project indeed, and one almost certainly bound to fail. What Caesar might or might not have intended to do had he survived has been a fun game for historians ever since the event, however, and there were enough rumours flying around even at the time to fuel the wildest fantasies of future biographers. Leaving aside the 'what if?'s, I think we can be sure that, at the very least, Caesar intended to enact a defeat upon the Parthians of sufficient magnitude to revenge Crassus - Carrhae was a blot on the name and reputation of Rome, and the Parthians still held the captured eagles of Crassus' legions. This was, in effect, unfinished business.

Whether a complete conquest and domination of Parthia would have been likely or even possible is harder to say. After Caesar, several Roman commanders and emperors managed to defeat the Parthians, and even conquer Parthia itself, but none of them attempted a full scale subjegation, and I suspect even Caesar could not have hoped for that.

As for his plans - Marc Antony apparently claimed that his own plan for invading Parthia was based on that of Caesar, communicated to him personally in the months before the dictator's death. Whether true or a neat bit of propaganda, it was a good plan anyway and quite probably the sort of approach that Caesar would have taken. In short, Antony first established Roman hegemony over the states of the near east (Judea, Commagene, Armenia etc) by conquest and/or alliance, thus providing himself with a secure base of operations. He then took his army northwards through Armenia, skirting the northern mountain border of Parthia and avoiding the cavalry-friendly plains where Crassus got into such difficulties, the plan being to descend into Parthia through Media Atropatane and fall on the valley of the Euphrates from the north. Antony's army was apparently vast - Plutarch claims 100,000 men, of which 60,000 were 'Roman' legionaries (although possibly recruited from eastern provincials by Antony, who was always petitioning Octavian for more Italian manpower). Eastern allied auxiliary forces were with Antony in large numbers - with the Armenian cavalry an important part of the force. This again, quite possibly, shows a Caesarian strategy. All things considered, Antony's plan stood a very good chance of success. Caesar himself might have pulled it off - Antony, famously, didn't.

Plutarch has it that Antony was delayed in dalliance with Cleopatra - actually, he could have been more uncertain about events in Italy at the time. Whatever the reason, Antony launched his advance too late in the season. Impatient for a victory to counter Octavian's success against Pompeius in Sicily, Antony pushed his army on too fast, left his baggage train behind to be snapped up by the Parthians, then got bogged down in a siege of Phraaspa. The Armenians lost their nerve and went home, leaving Antony to extricate himself from a bloody mess. In Caesar's case, however, none of this need have happened: with a secure base in Rome he had all the time he needed to undertake a campaign against Parthia, and would not have needed to rush his advance. He could have wintered his army in Armenia if need be, before marching down into Media in the spring. Also, Caesar's unquestioned prestige would surely have kept the allied kings in check, and there would have been less chance of desertions.

As for the army of the proposed invasion - at the time of his assassination Caesar had six legions camped in Macedonia. These included the Second, Fourth and 'Martia' (Thirtieth?) legions, and were to be the backbone of the invasion force; Antony had them transferred to his own command after the assassination, on the pretext of an invasion of Macedonia by the Geteae (?), and moved them back to Italy to fight Decimus Brutus instead. There would have been several other legions in the eastern provinces that Caesar could have taken with him, but legion numbers and disposition at this time is a rather grey area. Suffice to say that, aside from veteran soldiers serving as centurions etc, most of these legions would have been relatively newly-raised formations: the majority of Caesar's veteran troops from the Gallic and Civil wars had been demobilised and settled in coloniae (although many of them signed up again after the assassination, when the rivals in the new round of civil wars were raising legions all over the place!)

- Nathan

[Alexandr K]

Hi,
for those who can read German, there's an online article about Caesar's planed campaign against Parthians written by prof. Malitz and originaly printed in Historia 33, 1984 (although I still haven't read it):

Caesars Partherkrieg

Greetings
Alexandr