Chapter XIV #2
Knowing this, Caesar proposed that we should avoid a full-scale engagement and allow Antony and Cleopatra to slip through our lines.
We could then pursue them with our faster vessels and capture them alive out in the open sea.
I argued that this was too risky. My experience of winds and currents had taught me that one could never be sure what might happen.
If our quarry got over the horizon, there was a good chance we would lose them.
And there was another factor. Our infantry numbered eighty thousand against Antony’s one hundred and twenty thousand, whereas our fleets were of roughly equal size. A sea battle offered us our best chance of victory.
Caesar grumbled and sulked, knowing it would mean ceding command to me, and then reluctantly agreed.
– But on your head be it!
The next day, I brought our ships to battle readiness, manning them with their full complement of soldiers – forty marines and eight archers to each vessel.
We could tell from our observations in the gulf that Antony and Cleopatra were doing the same.
I was rowed across to my flagship and held a conference with my commanders to lay out my tactics.
I had observed during our long summer months in the area that a wind known locally as the Iapyx would usually start to blow from the west about an hour before noon, agitating the sea before dying away at sunset.
This would be at our backs and would both help us and more importantly hinder the enemy as they came through the straits.
I issued orders for various battle manoeuvres accordingly.
By dusk, our preparations were complete. I anticipated a fight the following morning.
But that night, just as they had at the start of the Sicilian expedition, the gods intervened and sent a severe storm.
For the next four days we found ourselves fighting not men but Nature as it lashed us with wind and rain, dragging our anchors and blowing us out of formation.
How I envied Antony and Cleopatra their protection in the gulf!
Fortunately, it abated before it was able to cause too much damage.
We reassembled our line about a mile offshore and waited for the enemy to show themselves.
It was the second day of September in Rome’s 723rd year – the day on which the fate of the world would be decided.
The sky was cloudless, the sea calm; all was peace.
The perfect conditions for war.
My ship formed part of our left flank, opposite the northern headland of the entrance to the gulf.
Early in the morning, Caesar came aboard and I outlined my tactics.
He approved them, which was just as well as the orders had already been issued.
As so often in the past before a battle, we clasped hands and wished one another good fortune.
He pointed out that the sun and the moon were both visible and assured me this was a good omen.
Then he was rowed in a small boat all along the line to show himself to the men.
The roar of twenty thousand voices bellowing in acclamation carried across the waves.
He took up station to the south, on our right flank, aboard our fastest liburnian in case he needed to make a quick escape.
Our reasoning remained the same as it had been at Philippi.
As long as he was still alive, our cause would not be dead.
Soon afterwards, the first elements of Antony’s fleet began to emerge – ten huge warships, line abreast, quinqueremes and even decaremes, with many more vessels crowding behind, and at the back of these, just visible, the brightly coloured hulls of the Egyptians, which remained anchored in the gulf.
The Roman warships came on slowly. I waited until they had closed to within half a mile, then gave the order for our oarsmen to begin rowing in reverse.
Our trumpeter sounded the signal for withdrawal, and the rest of the fleet followed our example.
Months of patrolling and exercises had turned them into superb seamen.
They maintained the discipline of the retreating line as strictly as centuries on a parade ground.
Crowded on deck, our marines were quiet, knowing what was to come.
Only the monotonous tempo of the hammers disturbed the silence.
We continued our slow withdrawal for some time, luring the enemy onto us, drawing them further and further into open water.
All this while I paced the deck waiting for my ally the Iapyx to make his appearance.
The sun rose ever higher, and I was beginning to curse the fickleness of Nature when at last the limp flags began to stir in the breeze.
I instructed the captain to unfurl the sail to catch the wind, and our oarsmen to switch direction and row us forwards. Our trumpeter sounded the signal to attack. Hearing this, our entire line advanced towards the enemy, who were now being slowed by the adverse wind and the rising waves.
My battle orders called for our two wings to turn inwards as soon as we were close enough, so that we might encircle their fleet and prevent escape. I told my captain to veer right towards the nearest warship.
As the enemy came within range, the air began to fill with the familiar missiles of naval warfare – clouds of arrows, flaming torches attached to javelins that scattered sparks across the deck and set fire to the sail, catapulted clay pots full of burning charcoal and pitch that exploded on impact.
The smoke was choking. I raised my shield to protect myself.
At once an arrow thudded into it. Another rattled off my helmet.
There was no attempt by either side at ramming.
Antony’s ships were too heavy to reach sufficient speed, ours too light to smash in their hulls.
We collided head-on with our quarry, glanced off their bow, sliced through their oars and disabled them, while they rained arrows down upon our deck and our men struggled to put out the fires.
Once we were past them, we turned about and shot our grappling irons.
The chains glittered as they hummed through the air, the claws embedded themselves in the enemy’s timbers and we hauled ourselves alongside.
Their hull loomed over us. They had the advantages of height and greater numbers – seventy soldiers per ship.
The first wave of their marines jumped over their gunwales and swarmed across our decks.
I threw myself into the fighting, slashing and stabbing right and left, stepping over bodies.
I was wounded by a sword thrust in my left arm.
We were in danger of being overwhelmed. Before they could send in a second wave, I gave the order to cut the ropes attached to the chains and we used poles to push us apart from the enemy.
We finished off those invaders who were still alive and tipped their corpses into the white-capped waves.
Around twenty of our own men lay dead or wounded.
I was panting for breath and bleeding from the gash just above my elbow.
I leaned over the side and looked around, trying to get some sense of the battle.
Hundreds of ships were locked together in the heaving waves.
The din was tremendous. Smoke billowing from the burning vessels obscured the view and made it impossible to tell who was winning.
Men with their hair and clothes on fire were leaping into the sea and drowning. It was a noisy, watery hell.
Suddenly, emerging through the black fog, I saw an enormous enemy ship, a quinquereme, passing close by, no more than twenty paces distant.
Its decks were crowded with soldiers rushing this way and that, trying to douse the fires.
They paid us no attention. At the stern, a solitary figure stood gazing towards the shore.
He was wearing a purple robe, loosely belted and adorned with huge gemstones.
From his belt hung a large Arabian scimitar.
In his hand was a golden sceptre. If I had beheld Neptune himself, I could not have been more astonished. It was Antony.
I rushed to the prow to find our captain. He lay dead with an arrow in his neck. It took me a while to locate his first officer, and by the time I had issued an order to attack it, the immense ship had rowed out of sight.
At this point in the early afternoon, the battle had fragmented into scores of desperate individual struggles.
Its outcome was still unclear. The formations of both fleets had disintegrated, causing a gap to open in the centre.
It was into this that sixty Egyptian ships, which up to now had stayed in the rear and kept clear of the fighting, abruptly began to move.
Their gaudily coloured hulls slicing through the choppy waves – a shifting rainbow of reds and yellows and blues – made an unforgettable sight.
Everybody saw them. The largest vessel shone gold in the sunlight – Cleopatra’s flagship.
A great cheer arose from Antony’s men. They were sure, and for a terrible moment so was I, that their strategic reserve had now arrived and the struggle must surely tilt in their favour.
But the Egyptians did not join in the battle. Instead, they passed clean through the fighting, stopping only briefly beside Antony’s ship so that he could transfer to Cleopatra’s. Then it hoisted a purple sail and the Egyptian squadron headed towards the open sea.
I gave orders to pursue them. A scattering of our liburnians and triremes followed my lead. Unfortunately, the Egyptian oarsmen were fresh, while ours were exhausted, and with the wind against us, I soon saw we had no hope of catching up. We turned around in search of easier prey.