Scipio's End

by Martin Tessmer

  Scipio turns his back on the senators. He walks to Sempronius, and grasps his shoulder. “Come on, General. There is nothing left to do here. Let us take our men home. We will leave our weapons at the gates.”

  Sempronius shrugs off Scipio’s hand. “This is your fault. If they didn’t hate you so much, they would have given it to me.”

  Sempronius treads over and faces the senators. He unclasps his purple cloak and lets it fall to his feet. “I am done with your political bullshit!” he declares. “And done with fucking Rome!”

  Laxtus rises. “Please, Consul, do not take this as—“ But Sempronius is already marching away, head held high. He climbs onto his white stallion and gallops down the pathway that follows the Tiber River, heading for his farm in the Sabina Hills.

  Scipio watches Sempronius disappear down the cobbled roadway. He turns back to the senators, nightfall on his face. “For any one of you who denied us because we are Hellenics, I will tell you this. You have soiled your robe of office.”

  Scipio whirls about and marches back to his horse. Laelius stands there, holding the bridles their mounts. The two mount their horses and trot toward Rome.

  “Well, you said they might not give it to us,” Laelius says, shaking his head. “So much for my consular campaign.”

  “They did not, but we will give it to them—up the ass. We are going to get you elected. We will host something memorable. Something the Latins cannot diminish.”

  “What? A three-day public orgy?”

  Scipio smiles grimly. “Nothing with that much group participation. We’ll organize our own gladiatorial games, in honor of our legions’ glorious victories. That will remind the people who won this war. You think Prima would be willing to participate?”

  Laelius rolls his eyes. “Willing? I can only hope she doesn’t get the baby to fight!”

  iV. Wars of Diplomacy

  LEPCIS, CARTHAGE, 193 BCE. Masinissa and Sophon ride down the roadway between this port city’s fields of barley and millet. The rising sun sets the Mediterranean aglow before them, its light dancing atop the choppy turquoise waves. In spite of the beauty about them, the Numidians’ faces are grim. They know their mission may end in their immediate death.

  “You think this will work?” Sophon asks.

  “Why not? We are not their enemies, though we are not their friends,” the king replies. “I can’t see why they’d kill us outright.” He snorts. “Then again, Carthaginians are very unpredictable.”

  Father and son enter the clearing that encircles the block-walled fortress. They halt in front Lepcis’ twenty-foot doors. Masinissa draws a long silver spear from his saddle sling. He wheels his horse sideways and pitches his spear into the earth. He and Sophon withdraw several paces, watching the spear’s white pennant flap in the gusty sea breeze. An hour passes. Neither man moves.

  The heavy doors slowly creak open. A squadron of Carthaginian cavalry file out in wedge formation, their linen cuirasses gleaming in the high desert sun. The squadron halts near Masinissa and Sophon. A brown-bearded rider trots out from the group. He removes his purple-plumed helmet. His green eyes stare insolently beneath his coal-black brows.

  “What are you two doing out here?” he demands.

  “Reclaiming our lands,” Masinissa replies. “The Numidians owned this land until Hamilcar took it from my grandfather. I, King Masinissa, am here to reclaim the property. Its tenants will now pay taxes to me.”[xl]

  “Psh!” the officer replies. ”These lands are always being taken over by someone or another. And now it’s part of Carthage. Get on your way, before I make a rug of your skin.”

  Masinissa smirks. “It is you who will ‘get on your way,’ as you say. I am giving you a chance to go back to Carthage—alive.”

  The Carthaginian flushes with anger. “I’m not wasting words on a fool.” He beckons his dozen riders. “Take them in.”

  “You were a fool to leave your walls,” Masinissa replies. He flicks up his right hand.

  Five hundred cavalry rise up from the tall fields behind the Numidians. They leap onto their horses. Riding fast as a desert wind, the Numidians whirl across the clearing and encircle the stunned Carthaginians.

  Two thousand Numidian mountain men lope in behind them, lugging the spears and shields that Masinissa recently gave them. The recruits race across the plains, eager for their first taste of battle and plunder.

  Forty Numidian foot soldiers trot past the cavalry, lugging the trimmed pine trees that serve as their ladders. They line themselves along the front wall of the city.

  Shouts of alarm erupt from the walls. Scores of Carthaginian militia level their spears over the ramparts.

  “As you can see, we are ready to defend ourselves,” the squadron leader says.

  Masinissa watches the Numidians line up along the walls. “Now!” he says to his son.

  Sophon whistles two short, high-pitched notes. Another five hundred cavalry rise from the fields and mount their horses. They gallop in and line up behind their infantry. The wall defenders peer anxiously at their bewildered captain.

  “You have maybe three hundred men in the town?” Masinissa says to the Carthaginian. “Do you think you have a chance for more than token resistance? I don’t want to kill your men, but I will. Your choice.”

  “Are you mad? Carthage will destroy you when it hears of this!” the leader blusters.

  “Then go tell them!” Masinissa replies irritably. “Or stay here and die. What will it be?”

  The captain is silent, studying the Numidian forces arrayed about his city. Sophon draws his curved sword and pulls his horse next to the captain’s mount. He points it between the captain’s eyes.

  “Make a decision. Or I will make it for you.”

  The captain stares at the gleaming blade. He swallows. “I will come back and rectify this outrage.”

  The prince withdraws his blade. “Of course you will. But for now, you will wait here with me. Tell your officers to bring out the rest of your men. I swear on my mother’s spirit, no one will be harmed.”

  An hour later, two hundred unarmed Carthaginian cavalry stand in the Lepcis square, surrounded by a matching number of foot soldiers. The captain leads his men down the northern road to Carthage.

  “Aren’t you worried about a counterattack?” Sophon asks his father.

  “No. Rome’s treaty has cut Carthage’s balls off. They don’t have the men to handle border incursions. They’ll just complain to Rome.” He shrugs. “Let them.”

  “That does not worry you?” Sophon asks.

  “No. These lands are rightfully ours, and you have recently done a great service to Rome. That is why I sent you to help them.”

  The king’s eyes grow cold. “And Scipio is the most powerful man in Rome. He owes me a debt he can never repay. But he will try.”

  LYSIMACHIA, THRACE. They’re almost there. Come on, you dogs, Just a little farther. There.

  Thrax is satisfied. The Syrians are right where the Thracian chief wants them, heading for the narrowest passage in the Chersonese Mountains. He leans over his skeletal brown horse, beckoning to the five hundred Thracians strung along the chasm trail, hundreds of feet above their enemies. Get ready, he signals.

  For three days, Thrax and his raiders have followed the Syrian war party. Scrambling over brush and boulders, the rebels have stalked them through Thrace’s rugged peninsular mountains. Thrax himself has followed every move of the four Syrian scouts that rode in advance of the party, learning their signals and motions. Now he’s ready to spring his trap.

  They’re heading north to take Pontike town, I’d bet my children on it. The townspeople won’t surrender. The Syrians will murder them all. We have to take them here, before they get out onto the plains.

  The rangy old warrior examines the tops of the jagged peaks that surround him, recalling every trail and passage of his childhood hunting grounds. The upper routes are too narrow for their horses and wagons. They’ll have to take the Ludi gor
ge. That’s our best chance.

  Thrax sends a hundred men ahead of him. The Thracians march along the trail, each lugging a stout pole upon his shoulder.

  Thrax watches them disappear around a bend in the trail. Now to prepare a welcome for those scouts. He dissolves soundlessly into the trailside scrub.

  The next morning, the Syrian war party enters the mouth of the Ludi Gorge, the cavalry splashing through the rocky stream that carved this precipitous passage. The Syrian scouts ride along the mountains ahead of the army, traversing the high mountain passages. Seeing no sign of enemies, they wobble their polished bronze shields, flashing the signal that all is clear.

  The scouts do not see Thrax and three of his men lurking along the deer trail above them, slowly edging downward.

  The Syrian cavalry enter the mountains’ narrowest defile. Thrax crouches down, his hunting knife clenched in his teeth. He motions for his men to do the same. The scouts trot by below them. Thrax chops down his hand.

  The Thracians leap upon the startled scouts, tackling them off their mounts. Minutes later, the scouts lay dead and naked. Garbed in Syrian armor, Thrax’s men ride along the trail, continuing the scouts’ route. Thrax flashes his Syrian shield at men below, assuring them that all is well.

  Five hundred infantry and two hundred cavalry turn into a rocky passage. Thrax watches the Syrian columns fill the gorge below him. When the last column of Syrians marches into the gorge, Thrax grabs his ram’s horn and blows three short blasts.

  The mountainsides swarm to life with warriors. Hundreds of Thracians spring up from the scrub trees and boulders above the Syrians, seemingly rising from the earth. The warriors jam their poles into crevices beneath mountainside boulders. Grunting and straining, they pry huge rocks from the mountainside.

  Rolling, bouncing, and crashing, the heavy stones plummet into the surprised Syrians, bashing into their heads and bodies. The passage echoes with the screams of men trapped under the avalanche. Scores of Syrians crawl along the ground, stunned by blows to their heads and back. The cavalry mill about their fallen comrades, uncertain about what to do.

  The Thracians scramble down the mountainsides, shields and swords strapped upon their backs. As they near the bottom of the gorge, the warriors leap upon the milling cavalrymen, knocking them onto the earth. The Syrian riders die where they land, too dazed to block their enemies’ killing blades.

  Thrax stabs a rider off his mount and vaults upon it. He arcs his dripping sword above his head. “All die!” Thrax screams.

  The Thracians charge into the surviving infantrymen. Hundreds of individual duels erupt inside the narrow, rock-filled passage. The lightly armored Thracians dodge the strikes of their heavily armored opponents, swarming around them until they can administer a fatal thrust. After several hours, no infantrymen remain to oppose them. The vengeful Thracians crawl from boulder to boulder, executing the wounded that lie beneath them.

  “Back to the city!” yells the cavalry captain. The Syrian cavalry stampede from the slaughter, racing back for Lysimachia. Thrax grimaces. Shit! We should have set up a boulder field to block them. Now they’ll return with an army.

  “Come on, we’ve got lots of work to do before we get back to our retreat,” Thrax says. “Get the poles. Grab the bodies. You know what to do.”

  Hours later, as the sun creeps behind the westernmost pinnacles, the Thracians finish their grisly task. The horns sound, and the Thracians hike up the threadlike trail that leads to their hidden camp.

  The evening moon finds Thrax’s men ensconced in a high valley, feasting on venison and wine. Thrax sits by a campfire in front of his cave, sharing battle stories with his men. His tattooed face beams with mirth.

  “It was a good fight today,” declares Zalmoxis, Thrax’s one-eyed cavalry leader.

  The smile disappears from Thrax’s face. “Is this what we are reduced to? Nibbling at the edges of Antiochus’ armies while they destroy our towns?” He pounds his fist on his thigh. “There just aren’t enough of us! The Greeks need to come after him. Or the Romans. Then we can join them. Vulcan’s balls, even Philip of Macedonia would be better than these Asian butchers!”

  “Aye,” Zalmoxis growls. “That silver-faced bastard is the worst of them!”

  Thrax recalls the Battle of Lysimachia two years ago, when the Syrian hordes slaughtered thousands of his men. Nicator the Assassin was there, slashing down Thrax’s men. He remembers Nicator’s scarred and pustulent face when Thrax yanked off his mask. He shudders.

  Thrax pokes at the campfire’s orange-red embers, watching them flare back to life. You killed many of my men, soup-face. We have a score to settle. He grins to himself. I left you a memento in the gorge.

  Two days later, the Syrian army marches into the Chersonese Gorge, seeking their comrades’ bodies. They do not have far to look.

  From that day on, the Syrians will refer to the gorge as the Passage of Fifty Crucifixes. It is so named to commemorate the fifty comrades hung along the high mountain trail above the gorge, each cross angled southeast toward Syria. Each corpse’s right arm sags limply next to its side, but the left arm points toward Antiochus’ homeland, sending their comrades a message from the grave. Go home.

  The Syrian raiding party stares mutely at their comrades’ bodies. “Leave them,” the commander orders. “Nicator will want to see this.”

  Days later, an army of riders gallops out from Lysimachia. A thousand of Antiochus’ elite cataphractii rumble out in the vanguard. Horse and rider are armored head to foot, impervious to the blows of sword or spear. Five hundred Parthian horse archers follow, men experienced in mountain warfare. The army enters the Chersonese Gorge, preceded by twenty advance scouts.

  Soon, the lead explorer returns. He pulls up to his silver-masked commander and points to an outcropping a thousand feet above them. “Up there, Captain. Look at what those fucking Thracians did!”

  Nicator tilts his face upward. He sees a limp body hanging from a cross, its left arm nailed to the crossbeam. He nods appreciatively.

  Using corpses to tell us to leave. Very clever, Thrax. He smiles inside his mask. I am going to burn a village for every one of those men you’ve put up there. Maybe rage will bring you down to confront me, you pig.

  “Leave them to the vultures. We don’t have time to bury them,” he commands. The Syrian squadrons gallop through the mountain passage, their eyes fixed on the trail of crucifixes.

  Thrax watches them leave. When the last rider has filed past him, he rises from his rocky niche at the top of the mountain. He waves his hand. Hundreds of Thracians rise from the pinnacles, their bodies wrapped in leafy branches. Their eyes follow the departing Syrians.

  Thrax eases his sword into its scabbard. “Come on, get the horses. We’re going to hound those bastards until they sail back where they came from.” He gazes westward, toward Greece and Italia. “Or until someone comes to help us destroy them.”

  SENATE CHAMBERS, ROME. Menippus bellows with laughter. “You want us to withdraw from Lysimachia?” the Syrian commander blurts. “And give up Pergamum, too? You want us to just walk away from the lands of Antiochus’ ancestors?” He throws up his hands. “Zeus take me! Who says Romans have no sense of humor?”

  A young senator rises from his seat in the back row. He glares at the Syrian general. “You have no right to those lands anymore! The Greeks claimed them years ago.“

  “We preceded them. They do not have the right to claim anything! I will speak no more about such silliness!” The rotund Syrian hoists his black robe above his ankles and lumbers to his seat next to the Cyprian the Senate Leader, his back stiff with resentment.

  The Leader’s wattled neck reddens, but his voice remains unruffled. “Three days ago we received ten commissioners from Greece, Menippus. They were very concerned about your incursions into the Lysimachia region. They insist that you return to your Syrian homeland. We are in sympathy with their desires.”

  The second Syrian delegate rises, his fis
ts clenched. “I assure you, we resent even listening to this proposal that we vacate Thrace and its environs.[xli] Antiochus’ great grandfather Seleucus won these places. The people who live there are the better for him ruling them. He has restored Lysimachia to its former glory. Come visit it, and see!”

  General Flamininus rises from his bench in the second row. “If you want to be friends with the people of Rome, you must promise that you will keep your hands off the cities of Greece! If you move any farther into Greece, Rome has the right to protect her existing friendships over there.”[xlii] The senators roar their approval of the young general’s words.

  Scipio sits in the front row, resting his elbows on the marble bench behind him. Listening to Flamininus’ shout out his warning, Scipio cannot help but smile. He turns to the two Hellenic senators sitting behind him. “Flamininus was so damn eager to withdraw our troops and become Greece’s ‘liberator.’ Now he threatens to declare war against Syria, when his hasty withdrawal only encouraged their advance!” He rolls his eyes. “Does he not see the irony?”

  Menippus shakes his fist at the red-faced Flamininus. “You threaten those who would be your friends? You made the Greek city-states into your amici, into friends of Rome. We only ask that you do the same for us. Yet you treat us as if we were conquered enemies, dictating terms of conquest to us!”[xliii]

  Flamininus springs to his feet. “That is because you act like an enemy, when you transport your armies across the Aegean!” Several senators shout their agreement.

  Scipio rubs his eyes. Gods help us, this is getting out of control! He pushes himself up and walks to the center of the Senate floor, facing Cyprian and the two Syrian envoys.

  “This discussion seems to be generating more heat than light, so let me propose an alternative. We will send envoys to negotiate with King Antiochus, the same ones who met him at Lysimachia.[xliv] Let us see if we can come to some agreement about Greece and Syria’s borders, before war breaks out between us. I would be happy to lead the delegation.”