Have you ever wondered why Pompey avoided battle with Caesar for so long? Or why Pompey fled to Egypt after Pharsalus? If you have, this book is probably for you. Author Gareth Sampson has written this account of the Battle of Pharsalus to try to answer those questions and more. As with his last book on the Battle of Dyrrhachium, Mr. Sampson has endeavored to do more than just array the where and the when of the conflict for his readers, he's made an admirable attempt at exploring the why.
Sampson sees this conflict as constituting the third Roman civil war and sees Pompey as instigating the conflict with Caesar in order to remove his nascent rival and dominate the republic. I would consider these to be his more aggressive suppositions. Sampson is on his most solid footing when appraising the military situation. He has a keen mind and understanding of ancient military tactics which allow him to dispel many of the myths surrounding the Battle of Pharsalus and the war more broadly. This book and the last one read sometimes as an exoneration of Pompey the general and politician. It only reads that way because of how skewed the current understanding is. Sampson easily does away with the narrative that Pompey was caught flat-footed by the war, indecisive and unsure of how to react; a characterization of Pompey in the aftermath of the crossing of the Rubicon derived mostly from Cicero's letters which came more from Cicero's own ambivalence about the war and his horror at having to leave the Rome again that he had so lately returned to. It's not borne out in the events of the war or when Pompey's overall strategy for victory, as Sampson has so skillfully laid it out, is concerned.
Another dominant narrative which Sampson has taken his hammer to is the dramatic tradition that portrays Pompey as wholly defeated, desperate and hopeless after Pharsalus. Sampson does an expert job at explicating Pompey's comprehensible and rational strategy for continuing the war and building up the fighting force necessary to face Caesar again and prolong the war. It was a strategy that nevertheless ended near a sandy beach in Egypt at the hands of a former Pompeian legionary turned mercenary for Pharaoh. I do very much enjoy Plutarch's moving and dramatic death of Pompey, but moving and drama is what it is above all.
The other great figure in Sampson's work and indeed in the war itself is Caesar. Sampson's Caesar is not so invincible or infallible as history has since crowned him. He's a wildly talented general, in battlefield tactics chiefly, but prone to huge risks and gambles that sometimes worked out splendidly and other times required lots of luck to save his life at the last second. Sampson takes the Caesar that became a god and turns him human again. Equally good at getting himself into trouble as he was at getting himself back out of it again. If not for Caesar's determination, his loss at the Battle of Dyrrhachium might have been the start of the end of the war. And if not for his lack of determination, his victory at the Battle of Pharsalus might have been the start of the end of the war.
Sampson never seems to lose sight of the fact that this is a conflict where both figureheads ended up casualties of the war they helped start, their military and political goals left unfinished in their own lifetimes. Sampson balances the scales, bringing both figures closer in line with how they must have lived and thought when they were men, before history got hold of them and made them something else.
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