72. The Killing Zone

After organizing the siege of Massilia, Julius Caesar continues on his way to Spain, where his army, held by his legate Fabius, awaits him. And true to form, Caesar is radiating confidence, and it's infecting his partisans, particularly the young, wild ones. Caelius, who is accompanying Caesar on the Spanish campaign, is one of these men. Caelius writes to Cicero while on the march to Spain with Caesar, and tells him the Spanish provinces will be Caesar's as soon as Caesar arrives. Meanwhile, Curio has caught the same bug.

On his way to Sicily, he stops by to talk to Cicero, and tells Cicero that he has no doubt that the Spains will be Caesar's, meaning both Spanish provinces. And it's Caesar's confidence that's leading the way. Cicero writes that Caesar seems to feel certain of victory in Spain. And so, as Caesar arrives at his army in Spain in the month of June, 49 BC, accompanied by his personal bodyguard of 900 Germanic cavalrymen, I imagine confidence is the overriding emotion he is projecting. But there are worrying rumors spreading too.

Pompey's aura, or legend, is so larger than life in the Mediterranean that there are all sorts of rumors flying around with regard to bold and audacious moves Pompey is making to take back the initiative. Cicero, writing from Italy, says he's heard a rumor that Pompey had gathered a large army in Greece, and with it moved up through Illyricum, which is the modern Balkans and one of Caesar's provinces, and from there marched up through Germania. And from Germania, we can only guess his intention would be to invade Caesar's province of Gaul. This is something akin to Hannibal taking Rome by surprise by marching his army, elephants and all, across the Alps. This is a false rumor, though, simply driven by Pompey's legendary reputation and at least one of his followers.

In fact, the guy Cicero heard the rumor from is a friend or follower of Pompey, and Cicero marvels at the lies he goes around telling on behalf of Pompey. So Cicero is not buying this far-fetched theory or story. But meanwhile, Caesar is independently hearing a similar rumor, but with a whole different geography. Writing in his Civil War commentaries, Caesar says the rumor he had been hearing was that Pompey had moved his army to North Africa, and from there he is marching west, where presumably somewhere in the vicinity of the Strait of Gibraltar, he will cross into Spain to confront Caesar. What's more, the rumors Caesar is hearing say Pompey will arrive in Spain shortly.

This sort of campaign would foreshadow the future Islamic conquest of Spain, which also came from North Africa. That is, if this rumor was true. But it isn't. It's another false rumor driven by the legend of Pompey Magnus, Pompey the Great. And we don't know how much his friends helped in its spreading.
Now when Caesar arrives and takes his place at the head of his army in mid-June, something interesting or illuminating happens. Caesar goes to the military tribunes and centurions of his army, and he actually borrows money from them. He then uses this money to pay the ordinary legionaries. This is a very surprising move. You would think between having just seized the Roman treasury, and the personal wealth he made in Gaul himself, that he wouldn't still be strapped for cash.

But maybe it's an indication of just how expensive this war is, and just how quickly Caesar spends his money. Either way, it doesn't look good. The war has barely begun, and he's already having to borrow money from his officers to pay his soldiers. But Caesar paints this story, which he himself tells in the commentaries, in an entirely different light. He basically says that this whole exchange was win-win for him, that he was able to kill two birds with one stone.

By borrowing money from his military tribunes and centurions, he took a security for their loyalty. Meaning, now that he owes them money, he can be more sure of their loyalty, since they will want to stick around if they ever want to see that money again. It will also motivate them to be fully invested in Caesar's cause, because again, Caesar winning is the only way they will get that money back. And motivation and loyalty are two factors to pay extra close attention to in any Roman Civil War. The second bird killed with that same stone is that Caesar gets to splash money around to the ordinary legionaries, thus buying their goodwill and loyalty.

This becomes extra important in a war where the troops will be prevented from plundering, and when the enemies they are fighting aren't foreign barbarians, but fellow Romans, potentially even friends, possibly even family. Still, it's unclear if this is a counterintuitive act of genius by Caesar, or if he's putting lipstick on a pig. The fact that he tells the story himself in the commentaries, when he could have left it out entirely, makes me think he legitimately does see this as a clever move on his part. It's also an indication of how dedicated his officers are to him and his cause. They are now pledging their lives and fortunes in the cause of his personal interest.That's the kind of loyalty you, quite literally, cannot buy.

Well, by the time Caesar arrives, the nearer of Fabius' two bridges is almost finished being rebuilt. Remember, it had collapsed during a storm temporarily stranding two of Fabius' legions in our last episode. Caesar, always in a rush, orders the bridge to be finished that night. The next day, he reconoiteres the countryside, familiarizing himself with the geography he will be campaigning on.

Now familiar with the lay of the land, Caesar leads his army out of camp and marches them toward Afranius' and Petreius' camp. He leaves the entire baggage train behind at camp and leaves six cohorts, the equivalent of a little over half a legion, to guard both the camp and the bridge. Now just to refresh your memory, both armies are camped on the west bank of the Sicoris River, as is the town of Ilerda. Caesar's camp is the furthest north, or furthest upriver. South of his camp, or downriver from his camp, is the town of Ilerda.

And near to Ilerda is the camp of Afranius and Petreius, which is actually pitched on the same ridge as Ilerda itself. As usual, I'll post a map on our social medias. Well, Caesar, always the hyper-aggressive commander, immediately marches his army right up to the plain before the hill Afranius and Petreius are camped on. And there he arrays his legions for battle. This is akin to throwing down the gauntlet.

It's a challenge. Caesar is organizing his army for battle on neutral terrain, and he's doing so his first full day on the scene. The message being sent here is, I, meaning Caesar, have every confidence that in a fight on neutral terrain, my legions will come out the victors. So in other words, Caesar is showing he believes his forces are superior, and he's willing to put his money where his mouth is. He's offering battle.

And Afranius and Petreius, well, if they disagree, if they feel that their legions are superior, then they ought to come down off the hill they're camped on and line up their army on the plain opposite Caesar. And if they don't, well, then they must be afraid. It will be a sign to both armies that they agree with Caesar, that they think his army is superior, or else they are afraid of Caesar himself as a general, or some combination of both. So Afranius and Petreius duly lead their legions out of camp and down the hill. But they stop halfway down the hill, and there array their army for battle.

This is essentially pretending to meet Caesar's challenge. Yes, they've left their camp, which looks better than hiding in their camp, but they've also made sure not to leave the high ground. Meaning, if Caesar were to march his army forward and engage them, the Pompeians would have the high ground, which is a huge advantage. Of course, Caesar's never going to do that, and Afranius and Petreius know this, so this is really their way of avoiding battle while attempting to save face. In a way, I think this is the exact outcome Caesar wanted.

Thus far there have not been any pitched battles in the Civil War, and Caesar would like to keep it that way if possible. Once blood is shed, peace becomes that much harder to obtain. But by immediately marching right up to the Pompeian camp and offering battle, an offer which is refused by the Pompeian commanders, he's now intimidated the Pompeian soldiers and bolstered the confidence of his own men. Well, it doesn't take long for Caesar to realize Afranius and Petreius will not be coming down off their hill. So Caesar sets his men to building a fortified camp.

But of course, he can't just have them put down their weapons and start digging. That would be a clear invitation to the Pompeians to launch an attack on his men, who would be vulnerable. Instead, he has to be sneaky about it. So he keeps his first two lines arrayed for battle. But the third line he sets to digging a 15 foot wide trench behind the first two lines.

Caesar's forces are about a half mile from the base of the Pompeian hill. So to Afranius and Petreius, it looks just like Caesar's army is still waiting for battle. His first two lines screen the third line from their vision. What's more, Caesar realizes that if they start building a rampart too, as they normally would, that will clearly stick out above the heads of the first two lines and will be a dead giveaway to the Pompeians as to what's happening. So instead, he limits the third line to only digging a trench, an activity they can keep hidden since the more they dig, the lower down they get and the more invisible they become.

And this works. And before Afranius and Petreius realize anything is happening at all, Caesar has his 15 foot trench dug and is able to bring his army behind it. That night, he keeps his men behind the trench for safety. But since this is only just a trench and not an actual camp, he keeps his men under arms throughout the night. The next morning, he sets his men to digging three more trenches of similar size so they form a square or rectangle.

The digging of each of the three trenches is assigned a legion. The remaining legions are kept under arms and free of their marching kits so they can protect the diggers from attacks. The reason Caesar continues to stick with simple trenches and avoids grander fortifications is because they would require sending his legions out to search for wood, which is just not possible while the entire Pompeian army is half a mile away and watching them and Caesar doesn't have an actual camp to retreat to if they are under attack. And you may be wondering what the point of all this is. Why is Caesar going through so much trouble to build this camp right on top of the Pompeians when he has a perfectly good camp already backed by his bridge?

Well, the point is to start making the Pompeians uncomfortable. The closer the two armies, the more there will be contact between them. And as we've already seen, Caesar backs his veterans in any kind of fight against the Pompeians. Plus, the closer Caesar is to their camp, the more chances there will be for him to outmaneuver them in some way, to checkmate them into some disadvantageous position. Afranius and Petreius don't want this Caesar camp right on top of them, though.
Or at the very least, they would like to take advantage of Caesar's men being distracted with their digging. So, Afranius and Petreius send their men down to the base of the hill, but there they stop. The hope is that this movement forward will spook Caesar's legions into stopping their digging. It doesn't work. Caesar just ignores them.

What's more, Caesar claims the Pompeians didn't stay at the foot of the hill long and quickly retreated back into their camp, sort of like rabbits running back into their hole. Finally, on the third day, Caesar sets his men to building ramparts to complement the ditches, and orders the army baggage train and the six cohorts left to guard it to be brought up to the new camp. And just like that, Caesar has a fully defensible camp that contains his entire army right on top of the Pompeians. And of course, when I say right on top, I don't mean literally. There is a half mile between Caesar's camp and the base at the Pompeian hill.

But in terms of two armies, this is very close proximity. With stage one of his plan complete, Caesar sets about beginning stage two. But to understand this stage, you need to have a little more knowledge of the terrain. So as I've already said, the camp of Afranius and Petreius is located on the same ridge as the town of Ilerda. But between Ilerda and the Pompeian camp is a level stretch of ground about 500 yards or meters wide.

This level stretch of ground is still on top of the ridge, it's just a flat section of the ridge, and it sits between the hill Ilerda is situated on and the hill the Pompeians are camped on top of. Now let's add a little bit more complexity to this terrain. In the middle of this flat stretch of ground is a hillock, or a small hill. It's this hill that Caesar has his eye on, the hill that sits between Ilerda and the Pompeian camp. He figures if he can seize it and fortify it, he can cut the Pompeians off from Ilerda.

Ilerda is the Pompeian source of food, and Ilerda is where their only bridge is located, so cutting them off from this town would be disastrous for the Pompeian army. So putting this plan into action, Caesar leads three legions out of his camp. He then arrays them in battle order in a position suitable for seizing this small hill. With all that set, he orders the front line of one of the legions to march forward on the double to take the small hill. And this is where things start to go wrong.

You might even say Caesar's luck abandons him, at least for a time. Afranius sees all of this happening. By the way, Caesar typically refers to Afranius as being the man making all the decisions because he was a consular and therefore outranked Petreius. In practice, we don't know who exactly was calling the shots or how much of it was a collaborative effort between these two men. Anyway, Caesar tells us that Afranius sees this and orders the cohorts guarding the front of his camp to take the same small hill via a shorter path.

I imagine it certainly helps them that his soldiers are marching downhill while Caesar's are marching uphill. But there is another, even more important factor that will play a big role in what happens next. Caesar tells us that it was usual when Roman legions spent a long period of time in a specific part of the empire to start to pick up the habits of the locals. This includes the fighting tactics of the natives. And you can see examples proving this throughout Roman history.

There is a great story that takes place during the year of the four emperors. This was a later civil war in 69 AD between rival claimants to the throne after Emperor Nero's death. During the course of this war, in an unusual case, the armies of Vespasian and the army of Vitellius were locked in a night battle known as the Second Battle of Bedriacum. Off and on, the two sides battled throughout the night. But as the sun began to rise with no victor in sight, suddenly the third legion let out a mighty shout.

Hearing this, the army of Vitellius, which lacked a general, for reasons I won't go into, became convinced that the army fighting on Vespasian's side must have spotted reinforcements. In their exhausted state, they became so panicked by this idea that morale collapsed and they took off in flight. All of this was a misunderstanding though. The third legion had spent many years in Syria and there had adopted the local custom of cheering the sun as it rises each morning. So there were never any reinforcements being cheered, just the dawn of a new day being hailed.

Well, these Pompeian legions have spent a long time in Spain, and as such they've picked up many of the tactics Spanish tribes use when fighting. So when Afranius orders his guards to go and take the small hill, rather than forming up and marching in line as Caesar's Gallic veterans are doing, the Pompeian troops instead just charge headlong at the small hill, not bothering to stay in any sort of formation. And Caesar tells us this was their usual custom. Right at the outset of any engagement they would, as he puts it, violently charge to seize a position. And this works, the Pompeians reach the small hill first.

Caesar's veterans aren't about to give up that easily though, so they mount an attack on the small hill themselves. But the Pompeians have the high ground, and Pompeian reinforcements are on the way. So with their mission having clearly failed, the Caesarian advance guard turns around and begins to retreat back to Caesar's army. And this is where things go really wrong. The strange, foreign fighting style of the Spanish legions upsets Caesar's veterans.

That is the actual word he uses, or at least the translation of it. Their foreign, Iberian style of fighting upsets Caesar's veterans because it went beyond just charging positions and ignoring formation. Apparently they would charge their enemies the same way, again not bothering to keep any steady formation. Instead each man just fighting wherever he found himself. But I think probably the strangest part of their fighting style, to Caesar's legions at least, was that they felt no shame in running away.

The ancient world was an honor crazed place. Any kind of retreat could make soldiers feel shame, feel dishonor. But these Roman legions in Spain couldn't care less and will attack with no formation and then all of a sudden, without any warning, suddenly retreat. This confuses and throws off Caesar's veterans. And so when the Pompeian soldiers now start running at the retreating advance guard in their typical fashion, the advance guard sees individual Pompeian soldiers running forward and thinks they are going to be flanked by these Pompeians.

All of this throws Caesar's already retreating advance guard into confusion. And whenever you get an army of men shoulder to shoulder to fight with edged weapons in hand-to-hand combat to the death, fear and confusion can spread like wildfire. And so it does for Caesar's army. The legion that is posted on the wing that it appears the Pompeians might flank the Caesareans from, that legion abandons its post and retreats to higher ground. That is Caesar's legion on the wing abandons its post in fear or in apprehension and moves to higher ground.

At this point, panic just rips through the whole army and trying to quench the wildfire of fear before it grows completely out of control, Caesar begins urging his men on in an attempt to bolster their flagging spirits. He also leads the Ninth Legion up to reinforce them and settle their nerves. The Pompeian soldiers don't stop though, they see a retreating foe and they are intent upon pursuing them. But circumstances are rapidly changing and now with reinforcements and with Caesar gaining back control, the Caesareans are able to repulse the Pompeian attack. But Caesar's veterans are proud and this whole debacle has been a humiliation for them.

So in order to repair their reputation from what Caesar refers to as this unusual and unexpected occurrence, their panicking, the Ninth Legion starts pursuing the Pompeians too aggressively. Remember the Ninth was brought up as a reinforcement and is probably in disbelief that their brother legions are panicked and so want to set the example for how Caesar's legions should accord themselves in battle. The Ninth Legion pursues the Pompeians right up to the foot of the hill Ilerida sits on. Partway up this hill, the Pompeians turn and make a stand. The Ninth Legion has essentially walked into a trap.

Not realizing that just because the Spanish legions run, doesn't mean they're in full panic mode, this is part of their normal operations. The ground the Ninth Legion now finds itself on is a narrow uphill slope. To either side of this slope is a steep drop. This means the Ninth Legion can only field three cohorts abreast, the drop on either side of them preventing them from making their lines any wider. The narrowness of the slope also prevents Caesar from sending reinforcements on their flanks or cavalry to help them disengage.

The other very serious problem with the terrain the Ninth finds themselves on is that the Pompeians have the high ground. All of this together creates a situation where the Ninth would like to get out of this position, but disengagement from an enemy once locked in combat is always a difficult maneuver, even in modern warfare. And being downhill from the Pompeians on a narrow slope means that if they turn their backs to get away, it will be open season on them. The Pompeians can launch missiles of all sorts at them, meaning javelins, maybe arrows and rocks if they have them, and the Ninth Legion will be bunched up on the narrow slope with their exposed backs to all of these missiles. And any time you shoot or throw something from the top of a hill, it obviously goes much further, builds more speed in the falling, and hits the enemy from an upward angle.

Caesar writes that all of this combined so that no missile launched by the Pompeians could fail to hit its target. And when the Caesareans do try to retreat, the Pompeians also press them on their heels, further adding to the danger. This means that as dangerous as it is standing and fighting in that killing zone, it's even more dangerous to try to escape the killing zone. So the Ninth Legion doggedly stands their ground and continues to fight the Pompeians even while being so disadvantaged. Caesar writes in the commentaries that they fought with courage and endurance and sustained innumerable wounds.

As the fighting continues, the Pompeians are able to send in a steady stream of reinforcements from their camp via the town of Valerda. That is to say, they send the reinforcements out of their camp, into the town, and from the town, down onto the slope. Caesar writes that this forced him to do the same, and to send fresh cohorts to pull out the tired cohorts.

Now, we all know that our perception of time can feel different in different circumstances. The more difficult the circumstances, the slower time seems to move. I remember wrestling as a kid, I didn't stick with it very long, but I did do it as a kid, and I remember that a two minute round in wrestling could feel like half an hour, especially if you had somebody more skilled than you just working you the entire time. And I know my dad and my uncles and my cousin all say the same thing, and they all wrestled a lot more than I did. You're exhausted, you're in pain, and another human being is doing his best to harm you. And I've heard people in combat sports like MMA and boxing say the same thing, and I imagine it's even more so in their case. So, given that, imagine how excruciatingly slow time must pass when you're locked in hand-to-hand combat with edged weapons against men who are not just trying to hurt you, but to kill and maim you, javelins and who knows what else, all the while raining down upon you.

Every minute must feel like an eternity. I mean, think about how on edge you would be, how much adrenaline would be coursing through your veins if some guy opposite you was trying to stick a sword through your chest. And you don't have to imagine what that looks like, because you've already seen it happen to the guys to your left or right, or you've seen a javelin launch from the hill above impale your friend standing next to you. That's the kind of environment where I imagine time would seem to pass in slow motion. Which is why it's so staggering when Caesar tells us that this situation of his legionaries being stuck on this narrow slope, this killing zone, while fighting for their lives, goes on for five hours.

By this time, the Caesareans had used up all their pila, their javelins. Meanwhile, Caesar tells us the numbers advantage of the Pompeians was beginning to tell on them. Meaning, with their superior skill, the Caesarean legions could hold out even while being outnumbered and with the enemy holding the high ground. But in a contest of endurance, eventually the side with more fresh reinforcements will win out. Caesareans know this, and they realize that now is the time to act, because they will only grow more tired the longer they wait.

So in a gutsy move, they draw their swords and charge uphill at the Pompeians. A few of the Pompeians are cut down where they stand, but the rest take off in flight. The Caesareans pursue them right up the city walls, with some of the Pompeian soldiers even climbing over the walls and into the city to escape. And now, with the enemy in disarray, the Caesareans use this brief window to withdraw from battle. Seeing this, Caesar's Gallic cavalry, in an effort that Caesar describes as being valiant, find a way via the flanks to get up to the top of the Ilerda Hill.

There they ride back and forth between the Pompeians and the retreating Caesareans, giving the Caesarean legionaries cover to retreat in safety. Caesar, putting a positive spin on it, calls this day a mixture of success and reverses. He writes that by the end of the day, he had 70 dead and 600 wounded men. This included a man named Quintus Fulginius, which my translation describes as being a leading centurion of the 14th legion. Though for the Roman military nerds out there, my translation does say that the actual Latin term Caesar uses for this man's position was Primus Hastatus. Caesar tells us this man had risen to this position from the ordinary ranks of soldiers due to his valor. And I would say it was likely that same valor that got him killed. As the saying goes, if you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.

Meanwhile, Caesar, who quite obviously is not an unbiased source, lists the Pompeian losses at over 200 ordinary soldiers and 5 centurions, including the most senior centurion, or Primi Pilus, of one of the Pompeian legions, a man named Titus Caecilius, I believe is the way you pronounce it in classical Latin. But whether Caesar's numbers are accurate or not, this is a sort of defeat for Caesar and for the Republic as a whole.

Up to this point, Caesar has managed, for the most part, to avoid the shedding of Roman blood. His invasion of Italy was virtually bloodless. The only real fighting was during the siege of Brundisium, and there doesn't seem to have been much in the way of casualties there, or at least nothing large-scale. In fact, none are even mentioned. But now, both sides have shed Roman blood and both sides have had their blood shed.

For Caesar, who has repeatedly tried to bring this conflict to a negotiated and peaceful settlement and will continue to do so, this is a sort of strategic defeat. In any conflict, once blood is shed, peace becomes that much more difficult to obtain, and the more blood that is shed, the more entrenched both sides become. To be fair, Pompey and the Optimists never needed any additional reasons to refuse to negotiate with Caesar, but now they have that much more ammo, and as such, it is a propaganda defeat for Caesar. His forces have now killed Roman citizens. That makes his cause a tougher sale to the neutrals and to the fence-sitters.

All these realities aside, though, in the end, Caesar tells us that both sides claimed victory that day. The Pompeians, because it was generally acknowledged that the Caesarian legions were superior, and yet the Pompeians had taken the small hill that started the whole fighting and had stood their ground and fought against these hardened veterans in hand-to-hand combat for hours. This is a big confidence builder for them, and makes them believe that they can actually hang with these legendary legions of the Gallic Wars. Caesar's men, meanwhile, claimed victory in light of the fact that they had held out for five hours despite fighting on difficult terrain against superior numbers. They also counted it as a victory because, in the end, they had shown great courage in charging uphill, swords drawn, and chasing the enemy who had, again, the advantage of the high ground and forcing them to run and even hide in the town.

In other words, if Caesar's veterans were able to get the best of the Pompeians with all those disadvantages, imagine what they can do when they get them on an even playing field. Whoever won, and I've put a survey on Spotify for anyone who wants to answer, or you can just comment on YouTube, Afranius and Petreius, after that day of fighting, heavily fortified the little hill which had started the fighting, almost as a visual reminder to Caesar and his army that, at the end of the day, they were kings of the hill.

And that is where we'll end our narrative today. In our next episode, Caesar's famed luck goes from bad to worse as a massive storm sweeps in, flooding the rivers and obliterating both of Caesar's bridges, stranding him and his army.
Thank you all for listening, but don't go yet.

If you're listening on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe and comment and all that fun stuff, especially subscribing. And since I've heard horror stories of people's YouTube accounts getting shut down out of nowhere, please subscribe somewhere else, like Spotify or Apple, just in case. I have no intention of this channel getting shut down, but you never know, YouTube has that policy of three strikes and you're out.

I also have an announcement. The March of History now finally has a website. It's simply www.themarchofhistory.com. And I've included a link to it in our show notes too. Right now, it's a pretty simple website. It's still a work in progress. It's up and running, but it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that it hopefully will eventually have.

But it does have a lot of things related to the March of History all on one site. You can find all of the episodes there, links to various podcast platforms, links to PayPal, Patreon, social medias. And I'm starting to add transcripts to episodes too, which should start to become available on any podcast platform that allows for transcripts. I know Spotify does, I know Apple does. I know both of them do their own auto-generated transcripts as well, but I find it gets a lot of the spelling of ancient names wrong, so I've been doing my own.

But it's a process. There are 70 some episodes for me to create transcripts for. So little by little, I'll be getting those out. But all the newer episodes going forward will have transcripts. And for those unfamiliar, a podcast transcript is much what it sounds like. It's just a podcast episode in written form. Some people like to read as they listen, and with the new updates they've made on Spotify and Apple, it actually kind of highlights the word that I'm saying as I say it. So it helps people to follow along. And some people, so I'm told, don't like to listen to any podcast at all and just want to read the transcripts of the podcast. To which I say, hey, if it works for you, it works, whatever floats your boat.

There are also videos from YouTube on our website of my travels to historical locations, both the short ones I make for social media and the longer ones I've made like the Battle of Alesia. And eventually, I will add a store to the website where I will have such merchandise as a pen and a knife holder where you stick said pen or knife into the back of Julius Caesar. I think I've mentioned it before, but have never gotten around to actually getting it and sourcing it, largely because I was getting sicker and sicker. Now on the mend, I'm looking into it again, and it's just the perfect way to liven up your cubicle or to spice up your kitchen. So all that's in the works. I don't know how long it'll take, but it is in the process.

All right, and now on to our five star reviews. Both of these reviews today are from Podcast Republic.
The first is from the screen name Augustus. He writes,

“The best history podcast ever. If you love Julius Caesar and all things Roman, this podcast is for you.”

To Augustus, I say thank you very much for your kind words. I'm so glad that you find this to be the best history podcast ever. I really appreciate that, and I hope you are enjoying listening to the show and that you find it to be such a good resource for Julius Caesar and Roman information. And of course, sometime in the future, we will move on to other biographies, non-Romans, and we'll hop around in geography and in time. I think there'll probably be shorter biographies than this one. There is only one Julius Caesar, and not everybody needs so many episodes, but that is in the distant horizon. We still have much to go on Julius Caesar's life, and I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast.

The second review is from Pliny the Smiter. I'm loving these Roman screen names, by the way. Pliny the Smiter writes,

“The March of History is a truly enveloping and gripping telling of the life of Julius Caesar, similar to the style of Dan Carlin.”

Thank you, Pliny, for the five star review, and I'm just so happy that you find the podcast to be enveloping and gripping. That is one of the things I wanted in this podcast to create a world in which you can get lost in in the best sort of way. I mean, there's two kinds of ways of getting lost. There's one where it's like, I don't know what's going on.

And there's one where the world is so complex and so fascinating and so multifaceted that you can listen again and again and never get bored because there's always things that you forgot about or don't remember, aspects of something that you hadn't considered yet. So I'm glad that you find this podcast to be enveloping, to be gripping. As for the comparison to Dan Carlin, I'm sort of left speechless with that. It's such an honor to be compared to Dan. I think he, as I said, I think in what was that last episode, is the absolute best history podcaster and he's certainly been an inspiration to me. So thank you for that wonderful compliment.

On another note, I'd like to give a huge shout out to Mervan, who made a generous contribution to the March of History. His message said, “Thank you for your work.”, to which I say, no, thank you, Mervan, for your generosity and for helping this podcast to continue to grow.

Now for our regular patrons. We have Marcello, Jay, Mark, Antony, that's not Mark Antony, those are two separate people, Mark and Antony, Liga, Laurie, Scott, Peggy, Carey, and Desert Legionnaire. Thank you all for your continued generous support!

And now for our ending quote,

“I wish all the Roman people had but a single neck,”

That is a quote by the infamous third emperor of Rome, Caligula. Caligula is, of course, wishing out loud that he could kill all of what Suetonius calls the city rabble with a single cut to behead them all at once. And as outlandish a thing as that is to say, it's even more outlandish when you learn why Caligula said it.

You see, he had been watching some sort of sports competition when the city rabble started cheering for a certain faction that he was rooting against. And so in anger, he yelled at them, “I wish the Roman people had but a single neck,” or another translation has it as, “I wish all you Romans had only one neck!”

And while I hope you have never become that angry, I think a lot of sports fans can relate to being irritated by having some rival fan cheering in your vicinity. And that's all for today. Maybe one day I'll do an episode just comprising the greatest hits of Caligula anecdotes. That could be fun, though it does get dark a lot of the times. Anyway, I'm your host Trevor Fernes. Don't forget to keep on spreading word about the podcast, and I'll talk to you in the next episode of the March of History.