Cleopatra's Kidnappers

Stephen Dando-Collins

Description

A powerful tale of war, romance, and one of history's most desperate gambles

Julius Caesar was nothing if not bold. When, in the wake of his defeat of Pompey at Pharsalus his victorious legions refused to march another step under his command, he pursued his fleeing rival into Egypt with an impossibly small force of Gallic and German cavalry, raw Italian recruits, and nine hundred Spanish prisoners of war-tough veterans of Pompey's Sixth Legion.

Cleopatra's Kidnappers tells the epic saga of Caesar's adventures in Egypt through the eyes of these captured, but never defeated, legionaries. In this third volume in his definitive history of the Roman legions, Stephen Dando-Collins reveals how this tiny band of fierce warriors led Caesar's little army to great victories against impossible odds. Bristling with action and packed with insights and newly revealed facts, this eye-opening account introduces you to the extraordinary men who made possible Caesar's famous boast, "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Praise for Caesar's Legion

"A unique and splendidly researched story, following the trials and triumphs of Julius Caesar's Legio X. . . . More than a mere unit account, it incorporates the history of Rome and the Roman army at the height of their power and gory glory. Many military historians consider Caesar's legions the world's most efficient infantry before the arrival of gunpowder. This book shows why. Written in readable, popular style, Caesar's Legion is a must for military buffs and anyone interested in Roman history at a critical point in European civilization."
-T. R. Fehrenbach author of This Kind of War, Lone Star, and Comanches
Atlas.

Acknowledgments.

Author’s Note.

Introduction: Caesar in Context.

i. Last Stand in Alexandria.

ii. Trapped.

iii. According to Brutus.

iv. The Deal.

v. Cleopatra’s War.

vi. Mark Antony, Ruler of Rome.

vii. Sailing into History.

viii. Egyptian Resistance.

ix. The Kidnap.

x. Caesar’s Baby.

xi. Defeat and Castration.

xii. Reinforcements.

xiii. Taking the Island.

xiv. Releasing the King.

xv. The Relief Column.

xvi. Battle on the Nile.

xvii. To the Victor, the Spoils.

xviii. Going after Pharnaces.

xix. The Chariots of Zela.

xx. The Roman Triumphs of the 6th.

xxi. One Last Battle.

xxii. Porcia’s Secret.

xxiii. After the Murder.

xxiv. The Wolf’s Twins.

xxv. The Imperial 6ths.

Appendix A: Republican Roman Military Ranks, First Century B.C., and Their Modern-Day Equivalents.

Appendix B: Imperial Postings of the Two 6th Legions.

Appendix C: Sources.

Glossary.

Index.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Pharsalus
• Roma (serie de televisión)
• Egipto
• Legio VI
• History of Rome
• Egypt
• Stephen Dando-Collins
• Farsala
• Cleopatra VII
• Caesar
• Roman legion
• Julius Caesar
• History of Egypt
• Iulius Caesar
• Rome
• Ancient
• History
• Cleopatra
• Caesar (homonymie)
• Pompey

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 09 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781118040454
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Also by Stephen Dando-Collins
Title Page
Copyright Page
ATLAS
Acknowledgments
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Introduction
 
I - LAST STAND IN ALEXANDRIA
II - TRAPPED
III - ACCORDING TO BRUTUS
IV - THE DEAL
V - CLEOPATRA’S WAR
VI - MARK ANTONY, RULER OF ROME
VII - SAILING INTO HISTORY
VIII - EGYPTIAN RESISTANCE
IX - THE KIDNAP
X - CAESAR’S BABY
XI - DEFEAT AND CASTRATION
XII - REINFORCEMENTS
XIII - TAKING THE ISLAND
XIV - RELEASING THE KING
XV - THE RELIEF COLUMN
XVI - BATTLE ON THE NILE
XVII - TO THE VICTOR, THE SPOILS
XVIII - GOING AFTER PHARNACES
XIX - THE CHARIOTS OF ZELA
XX - THE ROMAN TRIUMPHS OF THE 6TH
XXI - ONE LAST BATTLE
XXII - PORCIA’S SECRET
XXIII - AFTER THE MURDER
XXIV - THE WOLF’S TWINS
XXV - THE IMPERIAL 6THS
 
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX C
GLOSSARY
INDEX
Also by Stephen Dando-Collins
Caesar’s Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar’s Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome
 
Nero’s Killing Machine: The True Story of Rome’s Remarkable Fourteenth Legion

Copyright © 2006 by Stephen Dando-Collins. All rights reserved Maps © 2006 by D. L. McElhannon
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
 
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
 
Dando-Collins, Stephen, date.
Cleopatra’s kidnappers : how Caesar’s sixth legion gave Egypt to Rome and Rome to Caesar / Stephen Dando-Collins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13 978-0-471-71933-5 (cloth) ISBN-10 0-471-71933-1 (cloth)
1. Caesar, Julius—Military leadership. 2. Rome. Legion VI Ferrata—History. 3. Rome—History, Military—265-30 B.C. 4. Rome—History—Civil War, 49-45 B.C. 5. Alexandrine War, 48-47 B.C. 6. Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, d. 30 B.C. I. Title.
DG266.D36 2006
932’.021—dc22
2005003082
ATLAS

1. The Roman World, First Century B.C.-A.D. First Century
2. Alexandria, 48-47 B.C.
3. Rome, 46-44 B.C. (showing route of Triumphs)
The Roman World, First Century B.C.—A.D First Century

Alexandria 48—47 B.C.

Rome 46—44 B.C.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the immense help provided over many years by countless staff at libraries, museums, and historic sites throughout the world. To them all, my heartfelt thanks. Neither they nor I knew at the time what my labor of love would develop into. My thanks, too, to those who have read my research material as it blossomed into manuscript form and made invaluable suggestions.
I wish to record my gratitude to several people in particular. To Stephen S. Power, senior editor with John Wiley & Sons, for his continued enthusiasm, support, and guidance. And to Wiley’s patient production editor, John Simko, who has had to chase me halfway around the world at times, and copy editor Bill Drennan. To Richard Curtis, my unrelenting and all-conquering New York literary agent, who was determined from the start that the stories of the legions should and would be a series of books, and has been the general of the campaign to make it so.
And my wife, Louise. Quite simply, without her, I would not be who I am, be where I am, or do what I do. As Pliny the Younger was to say of his wife, Calpurnia: “All this gives me the highest reason to hope that our mutual happiness will last forever and go on increasing day by day.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE

Read most modern histories of Rome or biographies of the lives of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra and you will be told that Caesar “dallied” in Egypt with Cleopatra for several months in 48-47 B.C., following his defeat of Pompey the Great at the Battle of Pharsalus. What those books don’t tell you is that “dalliance” was a bitter, life-or-death struggle for Caesar that lasted for seven long months against a well-equipped, well-led, and determined Egyptian army that had just murdered Pompey and was bent on also eliminating Caesar.
This book tells the story of those desperate, bloody months, when Caesar was cut off from reinforcements and supplies and apparently ignored by his deputy Mark Antony at Rome, when Caesar’s life and career were on the line day after day after day.
Most importantly, this is also the story of the little more than nine hundred men of the 6th Legion, the key troops in Caesar’s little force with him in Egypt, hardened Spanish soldiers with seventeen years of military service under their belts. For, without these men, Cleopatra’s kidnappers, Caesar would not have survived the war in Egypt or gone on to Pontus to achieve one of his most famous victories, after which he would boast, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
This is the third book in this series of histories of individual legions of ancient Rome, following my previous books on the subject, Caesar’s Legion, the story of the 10th Legion, Julius Caesar’s favorite unit, and Nero’s Killing Machine, the history of the remarkable 14th, a legion that in the course of its career went from the shame of being wiped out to fame as the victors over Queen Boudicca and her rebel British army.
Prior to the 2002 publication of Caesar’s Legion, never before had a comprehensive history of an individual Roman legion been published. Because ancient history is often seen as a subject too dry to be interesting, a subject to be left behind in the schoolroom, in writing these books I made the conscious decision to make the histories of the legions as interesting and as exciting as I could without losing sight of the facts.
In my American histories, books such as Standing Bear Is a Person, I have gone to great lengths to include copious endnotes and detailed citations, because the sources are many and varied, and because the story affects the lives of people today, descendants of the people I’ve written about, and I owe it to them to support the details I’ve put on paper with relevant attributions.
These legion histories are different. I chose not to load them down with footnotes, often a barrier to readership by newcomers to history. In the place of footnotes, on the pages of these legion books I tell you which classical author was the source of a conversation, speech, or claim I document. And in the appendices you’ll find, in addition to a detailed list of my secondary sources, extensive summaries of the lives and works of my primary classical sources, with comments on their accuracy and usefulness.
In writing these books I have relied heavily on classical sources. Even then, Caesar and other classical authors colored and propagandized their personal accounts of the events they describe. Recorded Roman history is full of holes, and modern authors usually can only fill those holes with informed speculation. Just the same, some obvious clues abound in ancient texts if the reader is prepared to look for them, and to look for them in more than one source.
I have also brought to light several aspects overlooked by other authors. One is the reenlistment factor. In the imperial era each legion generally discharged its men en masse when their twenty-year enlistments were up and filled their places with mass enlistments of new recruits. These discharge and reenlistment dates vary by legion. Read Tacitus in particular and you will be able to calculate the discharge and reenlistment years for virtually every legion and the Praetorian Guard for several hundred years. Pinpoint one date, and then work forward and back for the others—twenty years in the imperial era, sixteen years prior to it. By going back to the year an Augustan legion was founded, you can even establish in which year its enlistment period was upped from sixteen to twenty years by Augustus between 6 B.C. and A.D. 11. (Not surprisingly, the Praetorian Guard was the last unit to make the change.) The foundation dates of some legions are easier to establish than others—for the survivors of the large number of units founded by Caesar in his massive 49 B.C. conscription progr