“Put the lens back in your spyglass,” said Scipio as we passed out into the daylight. “I want to use it to further analyze Hannibal’s formation.”
I did as he said and stood beside him as he scanned the opposition with the spyglass. Below, I saw our commanders ride onto the battlefield to join their men. Cato, Lucius, and Marcus Ralla each commanded a legion. They shouted orders to their men and the accompanying allied commanders. The troops responded to the change in orders like a machine. The maniples moved either left or right out of their checkerboard formation, creating open lanes in the alignment, which were then filled by velites.
Scipio gave me the spyglass, then mounted his magnificent red roan that had been brought to the front of the camp by an aide. I watched him canter down the hill, then gallop into the center of the formation to ride back and forth in the space between the hastati and principes, shouting encouragement to the legionnaires and orders to his commanders.
Across the way, Hannibal, riding the huge black war horse I had seen him on six years earlier, did the same, preparing his men for the most important battle of the war. Two great nations, each represented by tens of thousands men, were now ready to enter into mass murder for the right to claim world dominance.
As the two armies jostled about, settling into order and rank, I used the spyglass to assess the battlefield, thinking, much as I had eight years earlier outside Numistro, that I was there to witness the last battle of the war.
The sun was bright and the sky clear on a day that was already heating up. I counted eighty elephants across the front of Hannibal’s formation, all wearing bronze breastplates and sharply pointed iron extensions on their tusks. Each one had a mahout guiding them and a howdah perched on its back, carrying four archers. Amassed behind the elephants were several thousand skirmishers, Balearic slingers and Lusitanian light infantry, supported by three lines of heavy infantry, each containing roughly twelve thousand men.
As best I could determine, the first line of infantry contained the mercenaries that Mago had assembled from the barbarian tribes in northern Italy, a mixture of Gaestate, Boii, and Insubres. These monstrous men were the largest on the battlefield, many standing over six feet tall. They fought bare-chested, wearing only sandals on their feet, and girdled in leather loincloths. Their beards were unshorn, and their hair was long, often blond, braided or secured with pieces of bone. These men, wearing helmets adorned with animal horns or headdresses made from the skins of bears or wolves, were a formidable, but undisciplined, collection of soldiers who fought as individuals, swinging long swords or double-edged battle axes.
The second line contained a mix of Libyans in white tunics trimmed in red, carrying round shields and long swords, and Carthaginian recruits, all very young, in blue tunics with brown leather cuirasses, clutching javelins and rectangular shields. Judging from what I had heard, these were the least experienced of Hannibal’s troops.
The third line was made up of Hannibal’s most loyal men, his remaining veterans, those who had crossed the Alps with him, and the other soldiers he had brought from Italy. These men stood further back, at twice the distance between the first and second line, as though waiting in reserve.
On the wings, matching the Roman formation, were Hannibal’s two cavalries. On the left were the highly trained and proficient Numidians, perhaps two thousand, all riding their garrons bareback, and commanded by Syphax’s cousin Tychaeus. On the right was the cavalry mustered by Hasdrubal from the aristocracy of Carthage. These men were recent levies, with no more than a month of training.
Opposite Hannibal’s heterogeneous mix of barbarian mercenaries and African recruits stood Scipio’s nearly uniform legions in red tunics. Half were Roman citizens, half were allied levies, almost all of which had fought and trained together for three years or more. Three lines of heavy infantry—hastati, principes, triarii—formed our center, sixty maniples across, twenty-four thousand men in total. The velites stood ready in the lanes between the maniples.
On the wings were the cavalry. On the right was Masinissa and his four thousand Numidians. On the left was Laelius with two thousand Italians, a mix of Roman equites and allied levies. By my rough count, nearly eighty thousand men were faced off on the dusty African plain to determine the course of world history.
I anticipated a lull, a short break after the commotion of forming battle lines, when both armies stood ready, prior to the beginning of the battle, but Hannibal was still riding up and down his lines, making adjustments in the ranks, when Scipio sounded the battle trumpets. The velites raced forward, javelins upraised, into the open ground between the two armies, while the lines of infantry followed, marching slowly at first, pounding their shields with their gladii and shouting war cries like some huge, screeching machine.
The sudden eruption of sound startled the elephants, causing them to jostle among themselves, some nervously turning in circles. Hannibal quickly shouted his last orders, then waved his sword over his head, signaling for his own battle horns, followed by the multi-lingual battle cries of his mercenaries gathered from ten different nations.
Hannibal had placed the elephants in front to lead his charge and break the order of the Roman line, much as Xanthippus had used them against Regulus at Tunis in Carthage’s first war with Rome, but the animals’ initial response to the raucous clatter of the advancing Romans spoiled any hope for an orderly attack. While the slingers and light infantry ran mob-like out ahead of the elephants to exchange volleys with our onrushing velites, some of the elephants broke to the left, some to the right.
Elephants were always a risk. In the frenzy of battle, they could stampede in any direction. The elephants that went left saw Masinissa’s oncoming cavalry and turned left again, directly into Tychaeus’ Numidians. Outnumbered two to one, and scattered by the marauding elephants, Tychaeus’ riders were quickly overcome and chased from the battlefield in the opening moments of the battle, with Masinissa’s cavalry in hot pursuit.
Some of the elephants that veered right ran between the two armies and off the battlefield completely. Others, pierced by the velites’ javelins, turned right again, mirroring what had happened on the left, and thundered directly into the Carthaginian cavalry. These men were young aristocrats with no battle experience. They dispersed almost immediately, trying to avoid the trumpeting monsters that waved their trunks in the air like huge gray serpents. Laelius took advantage of the confusion and routed the cavalry from Hannibal’s right flank, chasing them from the battlefield just as Masinissa had done. This repeated what had happened in the early moments of the battle on the Great Plains. Hannibal had lost his protection on both flanks, but for the time being, all cavalry—on both sides—was gone from the battlefield and fighting on the run.
Of the eighty elephants, perhaps forty maintained their course straight ahead into the Roman line. Maybe half of them broke through the first line, trampling scores of men, catching others with their armored tusks, tossing human torsos this way and that as they thrashed about. The others, as Laelius had predicted, raced down the lanes between the maniples. Those that weren’t cut down from behind disappeared into the hills behind our camp.
By this time the two armies’ front lines were marching resolutely at each other. Our sixty maniples of hastati, ten thousand highly trained legionnaires, against Hannibal’s twelve thousand Gauls, who fought as individuals with havoc as a tactic. The ferocity of the giant barbarians more than absorbed our initial surge, pushing the hastati back in a mayhem of slashing blades and severed flesh. But the Roman principes, our second line, swelled up behind the hastati, launching their pila and shouting support to their comrades. With our order reigning in their chaos, the hastati gradually turned the tide, my friend Troglius at the center of it. I could spot him off and on with the spyglass, a windmill with a blade, spraying human parts in all directions.
Hannibal had placed his weakest line second for a reason. They hadn’t the courage to be in the first line, and pinned between the
first and third, they couldn’t run. But they also failed to reinforce the first line when our hastati began to break through. Instead, the young recruits held back and watched the destruction of their fellow soldiers. As soon as the Gallic mercenaries saw what was happening behind them, they turned and in anger attacked their own men. Suddenly the Libyan and Carthaginian levies were fighting both the Romans and the Gauls.
Hannibal must have known that at some point the Roman cavalries led by Laelius and Masinissa would return to the battlefield and attack his men from behind—just as his cavalry had done at Cannae. He needed to make a decisive move before that happened, but instead of bringing his best men into the battle, he allowed his first two lines to be beaten down to nothing, as little more than fodder to wear out the advancing Romans. Soon the entire center of the battlefield was a carpet of corpses, animal carcasses, human body parts, and discarded or broken weapons. The depth and extent of the carnage became an obstacle to our advance. The soldiers had to step around so much bloody muck and human refuse, whole and otherwise, that neither rank nor order could be held.
Scipio, riding back and forth behind the principes, saw what was happening and ordered all three Roman lines to pull back and reform. Though time was wasting for Hannibal, he also took advantage of this lull in the battle to reorder his troops by integrating the survivors of the first two lines into his third. At the same time, the light infantry on both sides cleared the battlefield of the injured as quickly as the situation allowed.
Scipio, anxious for the return of his cavalry, extended his front line, sending the principes to the right flank and the triarii to the left, much as he had at the Great Plains, leaving the hastati on their own to hold the center. Now as the two reformed armies faced off, the Roman line overlapped the Carthaginian line on both ends, a sure problem for the Carthaginian flanks, even without the return of Laelius or Masinissa.
When the battle trumpets blared again, the two armies surged forward. Waves of skirmishers rushed ahead, then quickly gave way to the opposing infantries, trading punch for punch across a heavily contested center line, sometimes pushing forward, sometimes falling back. The roar and howl of the battle echoed through the hills, where bystanders from the surrounding villages stood watching the horror unfold.
Using the spyglass, I scoured the battlefield looking for Rullo, but instead spotted Troglius in the center of the melee, covered with blood, holding the line like a human anchor. He would push forward with his scutum, muscling men out of his way, then cut and slice through the opening with his gladius. To the best of my knowledge, he had been there all day, with only the one break—on an afternoon that was getting long and hot.
Despite Scipio’s extension of the front line, our troops could not turn the corner on the Carthaginian line and overrun its flanks. Instead, the two armies held fast, seemingly prepared to fight toe to toe until the last man fell. Then a cloud of dust and thundering horses appeared out of the northwest. Some four thousand Numidians led by Masinissa attacked the Carthaginian line from behind, tossing their darts, then spinning away, only to come back at them again. The arrival of Laelius and the Italian cavalry signaled the beginning of the end. Once the Carthaginian rear was breached, our extended line swung like two gates across the Carthaginian flanks. The enemy was completely surrounded. Except for the brutal butchering of those trapped within, the battle was over.
Dust devils, spawned by the late afternoon wind, spun across the open plain and through the litter of lifeless bodies and animal carcasses. Those few Carthaginians who weren’t dead or severely wounded broke for the hills. Hannibal and a small contingent of his cavalry, led by Maharbal, escaped to the south.
While our soldiers straggled back to camp, weary and streaked with blood, Scipio sat astride his golden charger, surveying a landscape littered with thirty thousand dead. There was relief, not pleasure, in his face as he contemplated the greatest victory Rome had ever known. A huge weight had been removed from his shoulders. He had accomplished what he had promised to the Roman Senate some six years earlier.
Standing out front of the camp, I used the spyglass to scan the battlefield. Here and there men still fought in small knots of frenzied survivors. Others staggered through the corpses, wildly waving their weapons at anything that moved. I spotted a single legionnaire holding off two of the enemy near the center of the battlefield where the fighting had been fiercest and the dead lay in enormous heaps. As I focused the spyglass, I realized it was Rullo, standing knee deep in corpses, swinging a gladius, and struggling not to be overcome. I didn’t take a second look. I secured the nearest horse and a gladius and took off down the hill into the field of human refuse.
I dismounted before my horse came to a stop and ran to Rullo’s aid. He stood over a fallen soldier, protecting him from a Libyan waving a sword and a Ligurian hefting a double-bladed battle axe. I raced blade first at the soldier with the axe and pierced him from behind. When the Libyan caught me out of the corner of his eye, Rullo lunged forward and stabbed the man in the stomach. He twisted the blade into the Libyan and pushed him to the ground, then shouted, “It’s Troglius, Timon! Help me!”
Troglius lay amid the tangled bodies at Rullo’s feet. He was breathing but covered with blood. Rullo and I each took an arm and pulled him from the muck of lifeless debris, then laid him flat on the ground.
Rullo looked at me. “I was on my way back to camp when I saw him staggering out of the carnage. That’s when those two men went at him.”
I leaned over Troglius and used my tunic to wipe the blood from his face.
“He blocked the first man’s parry with his shield,” continued Rullo, “then he stumbled backward over a body just as I arrived. The Libyan had him by the hair about to slice his throat when I pulled this gladius from the hand of a dead man and blocked his sword mid-swing.”
I could see no major wounds on Troglius’ arms or legs, so I loosened the straps of his breastplate, wondering what might be beneath. Troglius muttered something unintelligible as I lifted the heavy armor from his chest and, thankfully, saw no blood.
“Rullo, get the water from the horse!” I shouted, thinking now that Troglius was simply exhausted.
I had Troglius sitting up by the time Rullo returned with the leather water bag. I held it to his lips and dribbled some into this mouth. He tried to gulp it down, so I lowered the water bag to keep him from choking. After another long drink, Troglius reached out and gripped me by the wrist. “You asked me to protect this boy,” he turned one eye to Rullo and kept the other focused on me, “but it was he who saved me.”
“Yes, apparently the gods were watching. Can you get up?”
He nodded weakly. Rullo and I helped him to his feet. He wavered a moment, then seemed to gather himself. We led him over to the horse and helped him climb on. Rullo led the horse and I walked along beside, making sure Troglius didn’t slide off.
When we reached the camp, Scipio cantered up to us on his horse and appraised Troglius’ condition. “How is he?”
“I think he’s all right, just worn out.”
“No doubt. He anchored our front line from beginning to end. Take him into the camp and get him whatever he needs.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, as Rullo led the horse toward the gate.
When I turned to follow, Scipio stopped me. “You were right about this man, Timon. He was worth any ten soldiers I have. Maybe twenty. Thank you for preventing me from executing him.” He yanked on his horse’s reins and trotted off.
CHAPTER 109
After the battle, Scipio sent a contingent to plunder the Carthaginian camp. They killed those still in the camp, then looted and burned it. Unless Hannibal took Archimedes’ drawings with him, which I doubt he had the chance to do, the scroll was likely lost in the fire.
Scipio sent a second contingent into the surrounding countryside to round up any of the enemy that could be found. The victory was complete. Hannibal’s army had been destroyed. More than half were dead, a quarter ta
ken prisoner. The rest sought refuge anywhere they could. Here and there on the horizon I could see the silhouettes of elephants striding slowly across the plain, their empty howdahs displaced to one side or the other. The war was over. The axis of world power had shifted. Instead of a line connecting Rome and Carthage, it was a perpendicular shaft centered at the top of the Capitoline Hill—symbolically a staff in the hand of Jupiter.
That evening after the meal, I took my mother a pot of wheat gruel. She had heard the battle but didn’t know the outcome. I told her the camp would be rowdy with celebration and to stay one more night in the cave. I would be back the next morning to bring her into camp and explain her presence to Scipio. No doubt I would have to tell another lie or two.
I headed back to camp in the dark. I could hear both camps, ours and Masinissa’s, celebrating long before I reached the gate. Scipio had planned ahead for the victory by procuring a thousand casks of wine in the week prior to the battle. They were quickly distributed throughout both camps. Despite the number of their comrades lost in the battle or nursing wounds, the legionnaires hooted and hollered as I walked down the rows of tents and roaring campfires to my unit.
As I approached our tent, I could see four men sitting in a circle with a torch on a stake flickering over them. I assumed it was another dice game and hoped Rullo wasn’t cheating again. Troglius, looking half-dead, lay on the ground at the edge of the circle. Rullo sat beside him. We had lost two men from our unit that day. Aurelius and one other legionnaire completed the group.
I knelt down next to Rullo and immediately jumped back when I saw two scorpions, tails and claws outstretched, stalking each other in the center of the circle. On closer inspection, I noticed that a barrier had been built around the circle to contain the poisonous insects and that stacks of coins sat before Rullo and the other soldiers. They weren’t playing dice at all. They were betting on the outcome of a gladiatorial match between the scorpions, one very large and black, the other half its size and a reddish brown.
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