Battle of Munda

17 March 45 BCE, the Liberalia

On the Liberalia, 17 March 45 BCE, Caesar's army advanced across difficult ground against Gnaeus Pompeius's army, which stayed on higher ground near the town of Munda in Hispania Ulterior.

The anonymous Caesarian narrative gives the Pompeian line as 13 legions, 6,000 light-armed troops and nearly as many additional auxiliaries, against 80 Caesarian cohorts and 8,000 cavalry.

The line shifts, then breaks

Caesar's Tenth Legion pressed the Pompeian line on its left. When the Pompeians moved a legion across from their right to reinforce that sector, Caesarian cavalry increased the pressure on the Pompeian left and the line eventually broke.

The rout killed Titus Labienus — once Caesar's senior lieutenant in Gaul — and Publius Attius Varus, while Gnaeus and Sextus Pompeius escaped. The same narrative reports about 30,000 Pompeian dead, including roughly 3,000 Roman knights, against about 1,000 Caesarian dead and 500 wounded, and 13 captured legionary eagles.

Not the end of the campaign

Survivors took refuge inside Munda. The victors blockaded the town with captured shields and javelins, piled corpses as a rampart and displayed severed heads facing the town.

Caesar then moved against Corduba; neither Munda nor all of Hispania was his by nightfall, and Sextus Pompeius, who got away, later renewed the war.

The battlefield's exact location remains disputed. Spain's Ministry of Culture lists proposals near Montilla, Estepa, Osuna and Écija and describes the ancient town's position as uncertain.