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by californiadreem 1195 days ago
>Compared to what? It was nearly two years just for the portion with Pompey.

The period prior to Caesar (i.e. Marius, Sulla, and Catalinean period, etc.) and the post-Caesarian civil wars?

>Of course it did involve a great many people from Italy and a great many Romans.

Show me a serious battle in Italy or a battle in Rome that resulted in serious destruction or disruption to the operations of Rome and the Italic peoples as a result of Caesar's civil war. Corfinium? Brundisium? It's nothing.

> It failed after very nearly succeeding multiple times and after months of skirmishes, sieges, storming of cities, back-and-forth trench warfare on huge scale, and marches and counter-marches. It was a slug fest between large forces.

It was a handful of battles and sieges. It's nothing compared to other campaigns. It's hard to believe that you're not actively being disingenuous rather than incidentally illiterate in regards to the broader historical context.

2 comments

> Show me a serious battle in Italy or a battle in Rome that resulted in serious destruction as a result of Caesar's civil war.

The people fighting in Spain, Greece, and Africa were largely Italian Romans or non-Italian Romans or allies. Caesar and Pompey were Italian Romans. It was in every way a civil war of Romans. What difference does it make that, for logistical reasons, the battles took place outside of Italy proper?

> It was a handful of battles and sieges. It's nothing compared to other campaigns.

Greece was the hardest campaign of Caesar's life. For the first time, he was fighting a complete military peer that had more resources, more soldiers, and more money. Pompey even had important Gallic leaders and Caesar's #2 (Labienus) leading a much larger cavalry force. Pompey's army matched and beat Caesar's in siege warfare.

Caesar almost lost multiple times and was beaten and in retreat when he turned around to fight and win at Pharsalus. Had Pompey avoided a full scale engagement, it's very likely that he would have won.

>The people fighting in Spain, Greece, and Africa were largely Italian Romans or non-Italian Romans or allies. Caesar and Pompey were Italian Romans. It was in every way a civil war of Romans. What difference does it make that, for logistical reasons, the battles took place outside of Italy proper?

The non-soldiery weren't involved, a total war wasn't invoked, and proscriptions were largely absent? Come on.

>Caesar almost lost multiple times and was beaten and in retreat when he turned around to fight and win at Pharsalus. Had Pompey avoided a full scale engagement, it's very likely that he would have won.

This is absolutely irrelevant. Your counterfactuals concerning a mythical competent Pompey are pointless. He didn't win. He fled Italy, fled Macedonia, and died commensurate to his honor and integrity. In a small boat, by foreign underlings.

The civil wars that actually impacted the peoples of Italy and Rome, as in proscriptions, institutional and physical damage, preceded and followed Caesar. The lull was enabled and continued by Caesar, sabotaged by such heroes of the Republic as the sole consul Pompous, sorry Pompeius, Magnus.

> It's hard to believe that you're not actively being disingenuous rather than incidentally illiterate in regards to the broader historical context.

Please don’t. The rules specifically discourage this.

Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm being accurate. Mindlessly sending an antagonistic reply without giving due consideration to what was actually said is more antithetical to norms of good faith than stating that this is occurring.