March 17

Battle of Munda

Pompey's sons, Gnaeus and Sextus, had rebuilt a resistance force in Spain using local Spanish allies and legions loyal to their father's memory. Caesar arrived in Spain in November 45 BC and engaged the younger Pompeians at Munda near modern Osuna. The battle was the hardest-fought of Caesar's career — fought uphill against a prepared position, where the veteran soldiers on both sides pressed each other so close that artillery could not be used and there was no room to throw pila. Twice during the fighting Caesar told his staff that he had often fought for victory but today he had fought for his life. The crisis broke when Labienus — Caesar's old legate who had defected after Pharsalus — moved troops laterally to counter a cavalry threat, and the Pompeian infantry thought the movement was a retreat. Their formation broke. Labienus was killed in the fighting. Gnaeus Pompeius fled and was caught and killed weeks later; Sextus Pompey escaped and would trouble Rome for a decade.

Munda was Caesar's last battle and, by his own admission, the most personally dangerous. Titus Labienus — his most talented subordinate in Gaul, who had defected to Pompey in 49 BC — died in the fighting, completing the split that had defined the civil wars' personal dimension. Caesar returned to Rome after Munda the unchallenged master of the Roman world, with no military opposition remaining.

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