Stephen Dando-Collins - Cleopatra’s Kidnappers: How Caesar’s Sixth Legion Gave Egypt to Rome and Rome to Caesar

Caesars Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesars

Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome

Neros Killing Machine: The True Story of Romes

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.

Cleopatras kidnappers : how Caesars 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, JuliusMilitary leadership. 2. Rome. Legion VI FerrataHistory. 3. RomeHistory, Military265-30 B.C. 4. RomeHistoryCivil 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

932.021dc22

2005003082

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.

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 Wileys 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.

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 dont 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 Caesars 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 Caesars little force with him in Egypt, hardened Spanish soldiers with seventeen years of military service under their belts. For, without these men, Cleopatras 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, Caesars Legion, the story of the 10th Legion, Julius Caesars favorite unit, and Neros 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 Caesars 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.