The Death of Marcellus

by Dan Armstrong

  THE EYES

  OF

  ARCHIMEDES

  BOOK TWO

  Other Books by Dan Armstrong

  Taming the Dragon

  Prairie Fire

  Puddle of Love

  The Open Secret

  Chain of Souls

  The Eyes of Archimedes Book I

  The Siege of Syracuse

  The Eyes of Archimedes Book III

  Zama

  THE DEATH

  OF

  MARCELLUS

  A Novel

  Dan Armstrong

  Mud City Press

  Eugene, Oregon

  The Eyes of Archimedes Book II

  The Death of Marcellus

  Copyright © 2015 by Dan Armstrong

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Published by

  Mud City Press

  http://www.mudcitypress.com

  Eugene, Oregon

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  The image on the cover comes from the Wikipedia Commons. It is from a painting by the French artist Louis Francois Lagremée (1724-1805) titled, “Hannibal Recovers Corpse of Marcellus.” The image on the back also comes from the Commons. The artist is unknown.

  ISBN-978-0-9830045-6-1

  Printed in the United States

  To Edwin

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Eyes of Archimedes is a fictional trilogy set during the Second Punic War, also known as the War with Hannibal. The Second Punic War began in 218 B.C. (the 291st year of the Roman Republic) and ended in 202 B.C. (the 307th year of the Roman Republic).

  The many Latin, Greek, and other foreign names used for the characters in this novel are listed alphabetically at the back of the book for the reader’s convenience. A glossary containing words specific to the ancient world and/or the Roman culture follows the list of characters.

  Although I have made a concerted effort to be faithful to a very complex episode in ancient history, simplifications were made for the sake of readability. In the end, this is a novel. The narrator is fictitious, and his story an embellishment of the existing literature.

  “So soon as age will permit, I will follow the Romans both at sea and land. I will use fire and steel to arrest the destiny of Rome. Neither the gods, nor the treaty which forbids us war—nothing shall stop me. I will triumph over the Alps as over the Tarpeian Rock. I swear it by the god Melqart who protects me!”

  -Hannibal, oath at age nine to his father

  The Central Mediterranean

  The City of Rome

  PROLOGUE

  You might not expect Archimedes’ former slave to write a three volume account of Rome’s war with Hannibal, but I, Timon Leonidas, had the unique misfortune to be an eyewitness to much of it. In the first book, The Siege of Syracuse, I recounted my kidnapping from the Greek colony Croton, being sold into slavery in Sicily, becoming the property of Archimedes of Syracuse, and surviving the two-year siege of that city by the Roman army.

  In this second volume, I describe the subsequent three-year period in my life, when I served as a scribe to the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Six months of each of those years I traveled with Marcellus and his two legions while they were actively engaged in warfare. Our primary military objective was to confront Hannibal and destroy his army. No experience in my life, even the time I spent with Archimedes, affected me more than these three tours of combat duty. The brutality of the war not only swept away the innocence of my youth, but also shook my idealism as I watched Marcellus, a man I came to respect above any other, pursue a dream and be consumed.

  If ever there was a man who was meant for war, it was Marcus Claudius Marcellus. Strong in body, valiant in character, skilled in every aspect of the military arts, Marcellus was by nature drawn to combat. This is not to say he had a violent temperament. He was a man of rigid self-control and deep sentiment, who attained his greatest focus at times of highest duress.

  Marcellus’ ardor in battle and devastating capacity with a gladius attracted the attention of his superiors in his first action as a young soldier. In an age when Rome knew few years without war, war became Marcellus’ life. He rose to the rank of general in his mid-thirties and was elected to the position of consul, Rome’s highest office, five times.

  Marcellus became a popular hero in the 287th year of the Roman Republic. An insurgent barbarian tribe, the Gaesatae, had come out of the mountains of northern Italy intent on pillaging the Roman outposts in the Po River valley. Marcellus, a month into his first consulship, was sent from Rome to put a stop to the Gaesatae rampage.

  In his initial confrontation with the tribe, though greatly outnumbered, Marcellus called for an immediate attack. Riding a black stallion, he singled out the Gaesatae king, a man by the name of Britomartus, and charged the huge barbarian at a full gallop. Britomartus saw the onrushing Roman and turned his own horse directly for him. Marcellus’ lance struck Britomartus in the shoulder and knocked him to the ground. Marcellus jumped from his horse and stabbed him three times through the breastplate with his gladius, killing the king and ending the uprising in one bold moment.

  This was the ultimate heroic deed of Roman legend, winning the spolia opima, one general killing a rival general in hand-to-hand combat and stripping him of his arms on the battlefield. This had happened only twice before in Roman history. The first was Romulus who slew Acron, King of Caenina. Second was when Cornelius Cossus took down Tolumnius the Etruscan.

  Afterward, when Marcellus led his soldiers into Rome in a magnificent triumph, he carried Britomartus’ armor arranged on a piece of oak as if it were the barbarian king himself. The spectacle drove the populace wild, and Marcellus, born to the plebeian branch of the Claudian clan, became the darling of the common people.

  Marcellus embodied the Roman ideal—brave, stoic, and decisive. His accomplishments on the battlefield were such that I have no doubt he will be remembered a thousand years from now, a memory sullied, however, by the way he died.

  This is my personal account of Marcellus’ death and the events that led up to it. The story is somewhat compromised by the fact that I was there and to this day feel I might have changed the outcome—except for a promise I made to Archimedes.

  Though very young, I acquired tremendous insight into the realm of Greek science during my three years with the famous Greek mathematician. Years later, my knowledge of geometry and numbers made me a valuable military asset, particularly as a mapmaker.

  The science of mathematics is a tool of far-reaching practical application, including sophisticated weapons. Archimedes’ machines of war were clear evidence of this during the siege of Syracuse. One of his applications, however, never became public knowledge. Just before he died, Archimedes gave me a crystal disk the size of my palm and a glass bead not much larger than a lentil. When used together, these lenses—much like science itself—allowed me to see farther than anyone had ever imagined was possible.

  I kept the two lenses in a small leather pouch that hung from a thong around my neck. They came with a vow to Archimedes that I would not show anyone how they worked or what they were used for. They would remain a secret to all the world—to be revealed only if my life depended on it. This promise became a curse on me, and never proved more agonizing than during Marcellus’ last campaign. Had I used those lenses, I might have prevented h
is death. I tell this story as much to clear my conscience as to justify why I did finally decide to break my promise to Archimedes.

  PART I

  ROME

  “Among the many divinely inspired institutions established by our ancestors, nothing is more outstanding than their desire to have the same individuals in control of worship of the gods and the vital interests of the state.”

  -Cicero, On his House

  CHAPTER 1

  During a break from my morning duties, I stood on the bow of a Roman quinquereme anchored in the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber River. A lazy sea breeze from the southwest whispered over my shoulder, and the sun, a glaring ball of yellow, sat just above the wooded hills to the east. I had to shade my eyes to watch the teams of soldiers unload the spoils collected after Marcellus’ two-year siege of the city-state of Syracuse, then my embattled home.

  After what I had been through, I considered myself lucky to be alive. I was an orphan, seventeen years old, and grateful to have a position as a scribe in the Roman army. But I was sad as well. I recognized many of the marble statues that were being hauled from the holds of the Roman transport ships. The Altar of Concord, the beautiful sculpture from Syracuse’s forum, sat on the wharf below me in a stout wooden carriage with wheels as tall as a man. In many ways I felt as though my old life had been packed up with the crates of plunder and shipped here to Ostia, with our next stop the fabled city of Rome.

  From my vantage point on the giant warship, I could see the entire harbor, now packed with the fifty quinqueremes and one hundred transports it had taken to ship the spoils and five thousand soldiers from the east coast of Sicily to Ostia. The voyage through the straits of Messana, north along the west coast of the Italian peninsula, had taken two weeks. We had been in port one day. Such was the mass of plunder, three weeks were set aside for unloading the ships and transporting the bounty to Rome. It would be late October before the task would be complete.

  The stone from Syracuse’s deconstructed temples was destined for barges to be towed up the Tiber to the city. The artwork and treasure would travel with the army as part of a baggage train that was already being assembled along the side of the road, waiting for the fifteen-mile trip to Rome.

  Our camp was east of Ostia along the river—a perfectly laid out tent city with streets of its own—surrounded by hand-dug ramparts. To the south of the harbor was the Roman shipyard. I could count twenty-six new warships in all stages of construction spread out on the shore within a stone’s throw of the ocean. Crews of workmen, barely discernable at this distance, swarmed over the ships’ wooden frames like flies around a milk pail. From what I had been told, the men had been working from dawn to dusk all summer to keep up with the war’s pressing needs—a war that was now in its eighth year, the 298th of the Roman Republic.

  I saw a soldier on horseback coming down the road from the direction of Rome. He rode fast and with purpose through the center of town, directly to the quinquereme where I stood. The rider dismounted, threw the reins to a soldier, and hurried up the gangplank to the deck. I watched him stride the length of the ship to Marcellus’ quarters at the stern.

  A hand fell upon my shoulder. “Scribe! What are you doing daydreaming in the sun? There’s work to be done.” Statorius Galba, the senior centurion in my maniple, and of late the bane of my existence, shook his fist at me. “We’re in a hurry! The quaestor needs every scribe, no matter who they might know.”

  The short but powerfully built Statorius was in full armor, a bronze cuirass of sculpted musculature, a kilt of leather straps, a greave on his left shin, and an officer’s red plumed helmet. His double-edged gladius hung from a baldric at his hip.

  “I worked all through the night, sir,” I replied. “The quaestor gave me the morning off.”

  I was a tall rail of a youth with a thick mop of curly brown hair. Compared to Statorius, I was no more than a long twig.

  “The morning off? I don’t believe there is such a thing with a war going on. War is full time, all the time, and don’t forget it.” The powerful centurion took hold of my ear and towed me across the deck to the gangplank.

  Statorius was known by everyone as a brute and a butcher, a man determined to put everyone in their place, just so they’d know they had met him. Hoots and hollers erupted from the bare-chested soldiers on the wharf as the centurion paraded me, earlobe first, through the glistening, sweat-streaked work crew.

  Statorius pushed me into the makeshift quaestor’s office at the edge of the wharf. Six scribes sat shoulder to shoulder at a table, recording each piece of plunder on a papyrus ledger and checking it off the shipping order. The quaestor stood behind them, his eyes darting left and right, supervising the whole affair.

  “Why’s this Greek not at work, Quaestor?” snarled Statorius. “I caught him counting seagulls. Just say the word, and I’ll take him to the brig.”

  Lucius Oppius, my immediate superior while we were in Ostia, looked up as though he were holding numbers in his head. “The youth worked all night, Centurion. I told him to go to bed a couple of hours ago.”

  Lucius appraised me as I rubbed my earlobe, which felt as though it might reach down to my shoulder after all the tugging.

  “But if he’s not asleep,” the quaestor continued, “Jupiter knows I could use him.”

  “Then he’s being delinquent. I’ll take him to the brig.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary. He’s a good lad.”

  Statorius had it out for me and wasn’t listening. He pushed me out of the office intent on my punishment for reasons that had little to do with me. I had been tutoring the general’s son, Marcus Claudius, in geometry and mathematics. Upon our arrival in Ostia, Marcus had been promoted from centurion to the rank of tribune, though only twenty-five. It was a position that Statorius coveted and felt he deserved. He was ten years older than Marcus, had considerably more combat experience, and owned a reputation for extraordinary ferocity in battle.

  Statorius’ real beef was with Marcus, but he also didn’t like the favored treatment I received because of my time with Archimedes. That I was a youth and “an effeminate Greek,” just added to his disdain.

  Marcus was standing on the quinquereme’s deck when Statorius pushed me across the wharf. The young tribune saw us and immediately called out, “Centurion, what’s going on down there?”

  Statorius stopped and deliberately confronted Marcus. All around us men from our maniple wrestled column rounds into wooden carts.

  “This scribe’s been ignoring his duties.” His tone was haughty, unfitting for a response to a senior officer.

  Marcus looked down at me in Statorius’ grasp. We had gotten to know each other through the tutoring, which had begun in the months before we left Syracuse. Though my senior by eight years, Marcus had come to respect me for what I knew and thought of me as a friend.

  “Let him go. I’ll take care of the matter,” replied Marcus. “You have better things to do than herding scribes.” Marcus turned and went to his quarters.

  Statorius whacked me upside the head on the same side as the tortured earlobe, then turned away, strutting between the crews of soldiers as though he were quite a bit more than he was.

  Although officers usually had quarters in camp, the warship served as temporary headquarters during the unloading. Marcellus had a cabin aft, and each of his six tribunes had a tent on the top deck that served as an office and personal quarters.

  Marcus was sitting at a table when I entered his tent. He wore a plain white linen tunic with a wide leather belt, no armor and no weapon. He looked up from his work and smiled.

  “I’m sorry the centurion has made a target of you, Timon,” he said, standing. “He’s likely envious of your education.”

  I bowed my head. “Thank you for intervening, Marcus. I must learn to go the other way when I see him coming.”

  “I will talk with my father. One word from him will solve any problems you have with Statorius.”

/>   “Please don’t involve your father, Marcus. It will make me appear weak in the eyes of the other soldiers.”

  “If that’s your wish.”

  Marcus was an exceedingly handsome man with large, brown eyes and short, thick, black hair. He had a good mind, capable of both warmth and intensity, and had found the geometry engaging from the start. I taught him what was arguably the most powerful knowledge in the world and in return I had gained his friendship.

  “Did you see the messenger ride up?” he asked.

  “He seemed in quite a hurry.”

  “He just briefed my father with the latest news of the war. I was in his quarters at the time. While we were at sea, Hannibal brought his entire army to Rome. He set up camp three miles east of the city and sent out his Numidian cavalry to ransack the countryside. All of Rome went into a frenzy.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “No. Apparently it was all a ruse. Hannibal sought to save the besieged city of Capua by luring our troops dug in there to Rome. Once they’d given up their position, Hannibal planned to quickly march back to Capua with grain for the starving populace.

  “Quintus Fabius saw through it from the start. He knew if Hannibal couldn’t break the siege of Capua, he would never surmount Rome’s defenses. He told Fulvius Flaccus to bring fifteen thousand of his men to Rome and leave the remaining fifty thousand in Capua to maintain the siege. Fulvius arrived in Rome three days later. He confronted Hannibal the following day with his troops plus the twenty-five thousand soldiers that garrison Rome. The two armies drew up outside the city and clashed that day and the next, but on both occasions sudden hailstorms stopped the fighting before there was an outcome.