Mutina

About

The Senate's consuls Hirtius and Pansa, backed by the 19-year-old Octavian, broke Mark Antony's siege of Decimus Brutus at Mutina, forcing Antony to retreat over the Alps. Both consuls died from wounds within days, leaving Octavian holding their armies. Cicero had just delivered his blistering Philippics against Antony in the Senate. Octavian used the resulting power vacuum to force his own march on Rome and a consulship at twenty.

What happened here

A Roman army fights the way it camps: in lines, by drill, on ground chosen if possible. The legions form up in cohorts with gaps that let ranks rotate, throw a volley of heavy javelins at close range, and then close with the short sword, pushing behind the shield. Auxiliaries hold the flanks and do most of the cavalry work and most of the skirmishing. Battles are short and decided by whether one line breaks, and the killing happens in the pursuit rather than the fighting. The camp is dug and palisaded every night regardless. Afterwards the dead are stripped and the field is looted for days; the ground is remembered locally long after the campaign is a paragraph in someone's history.

In ancient writing

• Appian, Civil Wars 3.66–72

  Two battles round the besieged town within a week, both consuls dead, and Antony withdrawing over the Alps with his army intact.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mutina
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Mutina