Battle of Mutina
Battle of Mutina | |||||||
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Part of the War of Mutina | |||||||
Map of the movements of the various legions during the campaigns leading up to the Battle of Mutina | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Roman Senate | Mark Antony's forces | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Aulus Hirtius † Octavian Decimus Brutus Albinus | Mark Antony |
The Battle of Mutina took place on 21 April 43 BC between the forces loyal to the
Six days earlier, the
After the battle, Mark Antony decided to give up the siege and retreated westward along the
Background
At the start of the
As Pansa's army moved to join Hirtius, who had previously moved north, Antony ambushed it on the Via Aemilia at the Battle of Forum Gallorum.[3] Successful in defeating and mortally wounding Pansa, his forces were however then themselves set upon by Hirtius and Octavian's veteran forces and were forced to retreat back to the siege works at Mutina.[4] Hirtius and Octavian then moved to engage Antony's forces and relieve the city.
Battle
Attack on the camps of Mark Antony
Initial news in Rome claimed that the Senate's forces had suffered a defeat at Forum Gallorum, arousing concern and fears among the Republican faction. Only on 18 April did they receive Aulus Hirtius' letter and a report detailing the events of the battle. The victory at Forum Gallorum, wrongly considered decisive, was greeted with enthusiasm; Antony was roundly denounced and his sympathizers forced into hiding. In the Senate on 21 April 43 BC, Cicero emphatically pronounced the Fourteenth and final Philippic, in which he exulted in the victory at Forum Gallorum, proposed forty days of public thanksgiving, and particularly praised the legionaries who had fallen and the two consuls Aulus Hirtius and Vibius Pansa. The latter was injured, but his life did not then seem in danger. The orator rather minimized the contribution of Caesar Octavian,[5] although the young man, despite his minor role in the battle, had been acclaimed imperator on the field by the troops, as had the two consuls Hirtius and Pansa.[6]
The Battle of Forum Gallorum appeared to decide the campaign in favour of the Senate's coalition. Mark Antony, after the losses he had suffered, had retreated with his surviving troops to his camp around Mutina and seemed determined to remain on the defensive. He had, however, strengthened the encircling front around Decimus Brutus in Mutina and continued to maintain his positions.[7] Mark Antony was by no means resigned to defeat, but for the time being he considered it dangerous to court another pitched battle against combined enemy forces that were numerically superior to his own. Instead, he intended to harass and weaken the armies of Hirtius and Octavian with continuous cavalry skirmishes. In this way he hoped to gain time and increase the pressure on Decimus Brutus, whose besieged troops in Mutina were now short of supplies.[8] The consul Hirtius and propraetor Octavian, confident after the victory of Forum Gallorum and reassured by the discipline of their Caesarian legions, were determined to force a new struggle to rescue Decimus Brutus and break the siege of Mutina.[9] After trying unsuccessfully to force Antony into open battle, the two commanders manoeuvred with their troops and concentrated the legions in a field where the enemy camps were less strongly fortified due to the characteristics of the ground.[8]
On 21 April 43 BC, Hirtius and Octavian launched their attack, trying to force a passage for supply columns to the besieged city.[9] Mark Antony initially sought to avoid a general battle and to respond to the challenge with only his cavalry, but when the enemy's cavalry units opposed him, he could not avoid committing his legions to the fray.[8] Antony therefore, in order to keep his siege lines from breaking, ordered up two of his legions to stem the advance of Hirtius and Octavian's massed forces.[9]
Now that the Antonian forces were finally out in the open field, Aulus Hirtius and Caesar Octavian concentrated their legions to attack them. A fierce battle commenced outside the camps. Mark Antony transferred additional forces to meet the onslaught. According to Appian, at this stage of the battle the Antonian forces found themselves struggling mainly because of the slow arrival of their reinforcements; the legions who were caught by surprise and deployed far from the area where the most important clashes were going on, entered the field late and Octavian's forces seemed to have the best of the fighting.[8]
Death of Aulus Hirtius
While this battle was raging outside the camps, the consul Hirtius took the bold decision to break directly into the camp of Antony with some of his forces. The consul then personally led the Legio III into the camp, making directly for Mark Antony's personal tent.
Octavian eventually managed to recover the consul's remains, but could not keep possession of the camps. In the end, his legions retreated from Antony's camp. At the culminating moment of the battle, Pontius Aquila was killed, and his troops, which had made a sortie out of the city, eventually returned to Mutina.[9] On the basis of the reconstructions of ancient historians it is difficult to know precisely the true course of the final clashes of the battle, with pro-Augustan accounts focused on exalting the role of Octavian and his courageous action to recover the body of the consul Hirtius.[11] Other sources cast doubts on the real actions of the young heir of Caesar; Suetonius[12] and Tacitus[13] report other versions that hint that Hirtius was even dispatched during the melee by Octavian himself in his eagerness to get rid of an uncomfortable political rival. The death of Pontius Aquila, a fierce opponent of the Caesarian faction, has also appeared suspect to some historians.[14]
By virtue of his position as propraetor, Caesar Octavian assumed command of Hirtius' legions. When the Senate ordered that the legions be handed over to Decimus Brutus, Octavian refused, assuming permanent command on the grounds that the established legions would refuse to fight under the command of one of Julius Caesar's assassins. As a result, Octavian came to control eight legions, forces which were loyal to himself rather than to the Republic. He refused to co-operate with Decimus Brutus, whose legions at Mutina began deserting him, many going over to Octavian. His position deteriorating by the day, Decimus Brutus abandoned his remaining legions and fled Italy. He attempted to reach Macedonia, where fellow assassins Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus were stationed, but was captured and executed en route by a Gallic chief loyal to Mark Antony.
Mark Antony's retreat
The Battle of Mutina ended without a clear victor. Mark Antony, though in serious difficulty under the attacks of the superior enemy forces, had not been annihilated, and the two sides suffered nearly equal casualties.[15] However, the very night of the battle, Antony summoned a war council and determined that further resistance would be useless, despite his lieutenants' exhortations that he renew the attack, taking advantage of his superiority in cavalry and the exhaustion of Decimus Brutus's supplies.[15]
Antony probably did not know about the death of Hirtius or understand the weakness of the legions left to Octavian's command. Rather than contemplating a decisive counterattack, Antony feared a renewed attack on his own camps.
Aftermath and assessment
The victory of the Senatorial forces and the allied faction of young Caesar Octavian at the Battle of Mutina did not decisively put an end to Mark Antony's hostility, who, in a timely and successful retreat, was able to cheat the victors of success in the campaign. The eventual turnaround in Antony's fortunes was facilitated by the breakdown of the precarious alliance between Octavian and the Republican faction led by Cicero. Following the death of Aulus Hirtius in battle on the night of 22–23 April, the consul Vibius Pansa also died as a result of the wounds he had suffered at Forum Gallorum. In this case, too, the circumstances of his death remained obscure and rumours spread, according to Suetonius and Tacitus, that Pansa had been poisoned, with hints that the ambitious Octavian might be implicated.[20]
After the death of the two consuls, Caesar Octavian was left alone at the helm of the Senate's legions. Mutina is essentially where Octavian turns from an inferior young man to an equal of Antony. He immediately adopted an attitude of opposition to Decimus Brutus, refusing any co-operation with this murderer of Caesar.
In the power struggles ensuing many years later, Octavian would eventually defeat Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC and usher in the Principate, but Mutina was the milestone where Octavian first established himself as a force to be reckoned with. Without this victory, Octavian might never have attained the prestige necessary to be looked upon as Caesar's successor, and the stability of the Empire might never have been established in the lasting manner which Octavian had decided for it.
Notes
- ^ Syme (2014), pp. 142–143.
- ^ Canfora (2007), pp. 23–24.
- ^ Ferrero (1946), p. 211.
- ^ Ferrero (1946), pp. 212–213.
- ^ Canfora (2007), pp. 42–44.
- ^ Syme (2014), p. 193.
- ^ Ferrero (1946), pp. 213–214.
- ^ a b c d e f Appian, III, 71.
- ^ a b c d e f Ferrero (1946), p. 214.
- ^ Suetonius, Life of Augustus 10.
- ^ Canfora (2007), pp. 48–49.
- ^ Suetonius, Life of Augustus 11.
- ^ Tacitus, Annals I.10.
- ^ Canfora (2007), pp. 49, 54–55.
- ^ a b Appian, III, 72.
- ^ Ferrero (1946), pp. 214–215.
- ^ a b Ferrero (1946), p. 215.
- ^ Syme (2014), p. 196.
- ^ a b Syme (2014), p. 199.
- ^ Canfora (2007), pp. 53–55.
- ^ Canfora (2007), pp. 62–63.
- ^ Syme (2014), pp. 197–198.
- ^ Syme (2014), pp. 199–201.
- ^ Syme (2014), pp. 205–206.
- ^ Syme (2014), pp. 210–213.
- ^ Syme (2014), p. 214.
References
Ancient sources
- Appian of Alexandria. Historia Romana (Ῥωμαϊκά) (in Ancient Greek). Vol. Civil Wars, book III. Archived from the original on 20 November 2015. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
- Cassius Dio Cocceianus. Historia Romana (in Ancient Greek). Vol. Book XXXXVI.
Modern sources
- Bleicken, Jochen (1998). Augustus. Berlin: Fest. ISBN 3-8286-0136-7.
- ISBN 978-88-420-8970-4.
- Ferrero, Guglielmo (1946). Grandezza e decadenza di Roma. Volume III: da Cesare a Augusto. Cernusco sul Naviglio: Garzanti.
- Fields, Nic (2018). Mutina 43 BC: Mark Antony's struggle for survival. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-4728-3120-0.
- ISBN 978-0-1928-0320-7.
- Syme, Ronald (2014). La rivoluzione romana. Turin: Einaudi. ISBN 978-88-06-22163-8. (Italian translation)
- Syme, Ronald (2014). La rivoluzione romana. Turin: Einaudi.
External links
- Marc Antony's siege of Mutina by sending letters to the consuls via pigeon. 'What service,' Pliny wrote, 'did Antony derive from his trenches, and his vigilant blockade, and even from his nets stretched across the river, while the winged messenger was traversing the air?'" (Jon Day, p. 15.)