Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

Amid this war of nerves the actual war ground on inexorably. Working now as a team, Pompey and Metellus Pius reduced some of Sertorius's towns, though Calagurris had not fallen; Sertorius and Perperna had turned up with thirty thousand men and sat back to pick off the Roman besiegers in much the same way as Sertorius had dealt with Pompey before Pallantia. In the end lack of supplies forced Pompey and Metellus Pius to pull out of the investment of Calagurris, not Sertorius's harassment; their twelve legions just could not be fed. Supplies were a perpetual problem, thanks to the previous year's poor harvest. And as spring turned into summer, and summer blazed on toward the coming harvest, a freakish disaster played havoc with the war of attrition Pompey and Metellus Pius were intent upon waging. The whole of the western end of the Middle Sea underwent a frightful shortage of food when scanty rains in winter and late spring were succeeded, just as the crops struggled to mature, by a deluge which stretched from Africa to the Alps, from Oceanus Atlanticus to Macedonia and Greece. The harvest did not exist: not in Africa, in Sicily, in Sardinia, in Corsica, in Italy, in Italian Gaul, in Gaul across the Alps, or in Nearer Spain. Only in Further Spain did some crops survive, though not with the usual abundance. "The only comfort," said Pompey to the Piglet at the end of Sextilis, "is that Sertorius will run short of food too." "His granaries are full from earlier years," said the Piglet gloomily. "He'll survive far more easily than we will." "I can go back to the upper Durius," said Pompey doubtfully, "but I don't think the area can feed six full legions." Metellus Pius made up his mind. Then I am going back to my province, Magnus. Nor do I think you will need me next spring. What has still to be done in Nearer Spain, you can do for yourself. There won't be food for my men in Nearer Spain, but if you can get inside some of Sertorius's bigger strongholds you'll manage to provision your own men. I can take two of your legions to Further Spain with me and winter them there. If you want them back in the spring I'll send them to you but if you think you won't be able to feed them, I'll keep them. It will be difficult, but the Further province is not as badly hit as every other place west of Cyrenaica. Rest assured, whoever stays with me will be well fed." Pompey accepted the offer, and Metellus Pius marched with eight legions for his own province far earlier in the year than he had planned or wanted to. The four legions Pompey kept were sent at once to Septimanca and Termes, while Pompey, lingering with Varro and the cavalry on the lower Iberus (thanks to the deluge grazing for horses was no longer a problem, so Pompey was sending his troopers to Emporiae to winter under the command of Varro), sat down to write to the Senate in Rome for the second time. And even though he now had Varro, he kept the prose his own.

To the Senate and People of Rome: I am aware that the general shortage of grain must be affecting Rome and Italy as badly as it is affecting me. I have sent two of my legions to the Further province with my colleague Pius, who is in better case than Nearer Spain. This letter is not to ask for food. I will manage to keep my men alive somehow, just as I will manage to wear Quintus Sertorius down. This letter is to ask for money. I still owe my men about one year of pay, and am tired of never catching up for the future. Now although I am at the western end of the earth, I do hear what is going on elsewhere. I know that Mithridates invaded Bithynia in early summer, following on the death of King Nicomedes. I know that the tribes to the north of Macedonia are boiling from one end of the Via Egnatia to the other. I know that the pirates are making it impossible for Roman fleets to bring grain from eastern Macedonia and Asia Province back to Italy to help overcome the present food crisis. I know that the consuls of this year, Lucius Lucullus and Marcus Cotta, have been compelled to go out to fight Mithridates during their consulship. I know that Rome is pressed for money. But I also know that you offered the consul Lucullus seventy two millions of sesterces to pay for a fleet and that he declined your offer. So you do have at least seventy two millions of sesterces under a flagstone in the Treasury floor, don't you? That's what really annoys me. That you value Mithridates higher than you do Sertorius. Well, I don't. One is an eastern potentate whose only real strength is in numbers. The other is a Roman. His strength is in that. And I know which man I'd rather be fighting. In fact, I wish you'd offered the job of putting Mithridates down to me. I might have jumped at it after this thankless business in Spain, an address no one remembers. I cannot continue in Spain without some of those seventy two millions of sesterces, so I suggest you lever up that flagstone in the Treasury floor and scoop a few bags of money out. The alternative is simple. I will discharge my soldiers here in Nearer Spain all the men of the four legions I still have with me and leave them to fend for themselves. It is a long way home. Without the structure of command and the comfort of knowing they are led, I believe few of them will elect to march home. The majority of them will do what I would myself in the same situation. They will go to Quintus Sertorius and offer to enlist in his armies because he will feed them and he will pay them regularly. It is up to you. Either send me money, or I will discharge my troops on the spot. By the way, I have not been paid for my Public Horse.

Pompey got his money; the senators understood an ultimatum when it was put to them in such downright, forthright language. The whole country groaned, but was in no condition to deal with an invasion by Quintus Sertorius, especially reinforced by four legions of Pompeian troops. So salutary was the shock of Pompey's letter that Metellus Pius also received money. It only remained for the two Roman generals to find food. Back came Pompey's two legions from Further Spain, bringing a huge column of supplies with them, and back to his war of attrition went Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. He took Pallantia at last, then moved on to Cauca, where he begged the townspeople to take in his sick and wounded and succor them. The townspeople agreed; but Pompey disguised his best soldiers as sick and wounded, and took Cauca from within. One after the other Sertorius's strongholds fell, yielding their stores of grain to Pompey. When winter came, only Calagurris and Osca still held out. Pompey received a letter from Metellus Pius.

I am delighted, Pompeius. This year's campaigning by you and you alone has broken Sertorius's back. Perhaps the victories in the field were mine, but the determination has been all yours. At no time did you give up, at no time did you allow Sertorius the room to breathe. And always it was you Sertorius himself attacked, whereas I had the luck to face first Hirtuleius a good man, but not in Sertorius's class and then Perperna a pure mediocrity. However, I would like to commend the soldiers of our legions. This has been the most thankless and bitter of all Rome's wars, and our men have had to endure hideous hardships. Yet neither of us has experienced discontent or mutiny, though the pay has been years late and the booty nonexistent. We have sacked cities to scrabble like rats for the last grain of wheat. Yes, two wonderful armies, Gnaeus Pompeius, and I wish I was confident that Rome will reward them as they ought to be rewarded. But I am not. Rome cannot be defeated. Battles she may lose, wars she does not. Perhaps our gallant troops are the reason for that, if one takes their loyalty, their good behavior and their absolute determination to grind on into account. We generals and governors can only do so much; in the end, I believe the credit must go to Rome's soldiers. I do not know when you plan to go home. It may be, I suppose, that as the Senate gave you your special command, the Senate will take it away. For myself, I am the Senate's governor in the Further province, and in no hurry to return home. It is easier for the Senate at the moment to prorogue me if I request it than to find Further Spain a new governor. So I will request that I be prorogued for at least two more years. Before I leave I would like to set my province on its feet properly, and make it safe from the Lusitani. I do not look forward upon my eventual return to Rome to engaging in a fresh conflict a clash with the Senate to procure lands on which to settle my veterans. Yet I refuse to see my men go unrewarded. Therefore what I plan to do is to settle my men in Italian Gaul, but on the far side of the Padus, where there are tremendous expanses of good tilling soil and rich pastures at present in the hands of Gauls. It is not Roman land per se so the Senate will not be interested, and I will back my veterans against a pack of Insubres any day. I have already discussed this with my centurions, who profess themselves well pleased. My soldiers will not have to mill about aimlessly for up to several years waiting for a committee of land commissioners and bureaucrats to survey and chat and cull lists and chat and apportion and chat, and end in accomplishing nothing. The more I see of committees, the more convinced I am that the only thing a committee can organize is a catastrophe. I wish you well, dear Magnus.