Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage

by David Gibbins

  Scipio stretched, turned, and then walked back in front of the guards, peering beyond them and drumming his fingers impatiently against his thigh. ‘Bide your time, soldier,’ one of the guards said. ‘It’s always difficult finding people in this place. There are two hundred and twenty sheds to check, as well as the headquarters rooms on the island.’

  Scipio pursed his lips. ‘You know what it’s like. If I don’t return to the Byrsa soon with my message delivered, I’ll be for it. Anyway, I thought this place was the pride of Carthage. It should be the height of efficiency.’

  The man snorted. ‘How long have you been in Carthage, soldier?’

  ‘Only a matter of days. We’re Italian mercenaries, got into trouble while we were with Demetrius’ army in Syria and ended up as galley slaves, but then slipped ship in the harbour here and offered our services to the guard before our captain could reclaim us.’

  ‘Well, if you’re skilled oarsmen, I’d keep quiet about it. Otherwise the Carthaginians will recruit you for their war galleys. They’ve built this harbour and these ships, but they don’t have the slaves to man them. Carthage hasn’t conducted wars of conquest since the time of Hannibal, and war is the only way you get a good supply of fit men for the galleys. If you ask me, that’s why they’ve started up this war against Masinissa again: not to conquer a few more square miles of wasteland but to capture Numidians to use as galley slaves.’

  The other guard joined in. ‘They say they’ll use Gauls, too, brought back as slaves by the wine traders.’ He jerked his head towards the island. The optio was returning, and the two guards stood to attention. After a few minutes the optio rounded the portico and marched up to them, eyeing Scipio suspiciously. ‘There’s a Hamilcar who’s a captain of the triremes, currently seconded to the infantry, but not a squadron commander of the pentereis. In fact, there’s no such squadron. There’s only one of those big ships left, and it’s a relic. The largest vessels in the fleet now are triremes. Unless you can explain yourself to me, I’m to take you to the admiral for questioning.’

  He nodded curtly to the two guards, who stomped their legs apart and held their spears at the ready. Fabius felt his pulse quicken: this was precisely the kind of encounter that they had wanted to avoid. Scipio affected nonchalance, shrugging. ‘It was a new appointment, for one of Hasdrubal’s cousins. Maybe it was more of an honorary rank. This place is so cut off that information doesn’t pass often enough up to the Bysra, and Hasdrubal’s eyes have been elsewhere, on the war with Masinissa. I’ll return and tell him that his cousin Hamilcar is nowhere to be seen and that ships are still under construction. Maybe that will make him come here himself for an inspection.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ the man said hastily. ‘You don’t know Hasdrubal yet. If he finds fault and loses his temper, heads will roll.’

  Scipio slapped him on the shoulder. ‘All we soldiers want is to go off-duty and get to the taverns, right? We were told that if we didn’t find Hamilcar here, he might be in the Tophet sanctuary, as he’s also a priest. We’ll go and look for him there.’

  ‘Your nearest route is directly opposite us. I’ll escort you past the guards.’ The optio turned and walked to the left, heading along the southern side of the portico around the harbour, and Scipio and Fabius followed. They walked within a few feet of the docked lembos and past the first shipsheds, and then they veered right through a gap in the portico. Moments later, the optio had left them at the guard post and they were in the city proper, in a street that ran parallel to the high retaining wall of the harbour complex. They made their way quickly out of sight of the soldiers, and past the busy fish market that lined the street. Scipio turned to Fabius as they walked, speaking urgently. ‘Did you see that lembos?’

  ‘It looked Roman.’

  ‘It was Roman. I saw bundles of pila in the stern. No other soldiers carry spears like ours. And the amphorae of wine and olive oil for the crew were Italian.’

  ‘Captured?’

  Scipio shook his head. ‘That would be an act of war, and they can’t risk that until they have the slaves to man their galleys and confront us at sea.’

  ‘This war harbour is an empty threat until then.’

  ‘But it might only take one victory in the field to supply enough slaves. Once that happens, the threat is very real.’

  ‘We’ll have to tell Gulussa to redouble his efforts not to let his men get captured.’

  ‘I don’t think we need to worry,’ Scipio replied. ‘His men will fight to the death.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Fabius said, navigating his way around a pair of bullock carts. ‘The warships I saw in the sheds were small, most of them liburnae, double-bankers at most.’

  Scipio nodded. ‘There were only a few triremes. That’s our most important intelligence for Polybius so far. We know they haven’t got the manpower for a fleet of large galleys as in the past. But last night the kybernetes said that many of the Carthaginian merchant captains have been conscripted by the state. Those men would make up a highly experienced cadre of officers for a new fleet of liburnae, with the oarsmen of an elite squadron perhaps made up not of slaves but of mercenaries attracted by the promise of higher pay, and a cut of the profits. Liburnae are well-suited to break through a blockade and take messages to allies. But they’re also suited to another kind of war, perfectly in keeping with a state that prides itself on its prowess and ruthlessness in trade.’

  Fabius stopped and stared at him. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  ‘Some would call it trade war, taken to its logical conclusion.’

  ‘You’re talking about state-sponsored piracy.’

  ‘With a fleet of this size, Carthage could sweep the seas clean of rivals, and the liburnae could return in safety to their lair. The profits to the state might be less in what they actually plunder than in ensuring that Carthaginian merchant ships and their trade partners have a monopoly of the sea lanes. The cargoes of captured ships could even be split among the liburnae crews as an incentive. With her present constitution, Rome would be powerless to stop it. Look how difficult it is getting the consuls to agree to raise the legions for a campaign that might extend beyond their year in office, giving no glory to them. Imagine the problems suppressing organized piracy on this scale. It would be a proxy war with Carthage, but would have to be fought piecemeal over years, even decades. It would require Rome to sanction an admiral with a remit unlike any other given to a war leader, and to authorize the formation of a truly professional navy. The Senate in Rome is too wrapped up in its own politics and gens rivalry to allow that, and Carthage knows it.’

  ‘There’s another purpose for those liburnae, and that’s as escort vessels,’ Fabius said. ‘It’s something else that the slave carrying the tin ore pointed out to me. At the far end of the rectangular harbour is another shipbuilding yard, with huge wooden formers and a vessel being built up from the keel. He said the timbers were cedar of Lebanon supplied by a convoy that came under naval escort from King Demetrius of Syria, with his son leading a special delegation from Syria that was met by Hasdrubal himself at the harbour entrance.’

  ‘Demetrius?’ Scipio exclaimed. ‘So he has finally turned against Rome.’

  ‘That might not be the way he sees it,’ Fabius said. ‘Perhaps he’s just aligned himself to a new Rome, one that sees Carthage as an ally.’

  Scipio strode forward grimly. ‘Do you have anything else to tell me?

  ‘It gets worse. The vessel under construction was at least the size of the Europa, the huge amphora carrier we saw at the quayside. Yet the slave said this was no amphora carrier, but an elephantegos, an elephant transporter. He said that it was being built by Egyptian shipwrights who specialized in ships for bringing elephants and other beasts up the coast of the Erythraean Sea from the land they call Punt. He said the shipwrights arrived with a delegation from your other friend, Ptolemy Philometor, King of Egypt, and that his treacherous wife and sister Cleopatra herself acc
ompanied them.’

  ‘Jupiter above,’ Scipio muttered. ‘Ptolemy too? He never was cut out to be a king. Cleopatra must be behind this.’

  ‘With Demetrius and Ptolemy siding with Carthage, perhaps in secret alliance with Metellus in Macedonia and his supporters in the Senate in Rome, it means that more than half of those who were in the academy are now aligned against you and against the Rome that you were trained to defend. Demetrius and Ptolemy may have spent their adult lives entangled in the power politics of Syria and of Egypt, but they were both trained in the academy by Polybius and the old centurion; put in charge of an army, they could be formidable strategists and tacticians. If there is to be a world war, the balance of power is swinging dangerously against us.’

  ‘A world war,’ Scipio exclaimed. ‘Could it come to that?’

  ‘Think of that elephantegos,’ Fabius said. ‘What other purpose can such a vessel have for the Carthaginians than to send elephants to war? I saw other formers in the yard beyond, for other hulls under construction. Shipwrights specialized in making large vessels for elephants could easily transfer their skills to making troop transports.’

  ‘I understand now what you mean about the liburnae making perfect escort galleys,’ Scipio said. ‘If the Carthaginians are intent on conquest to increase their gold reserves, they will find little in Africa beyond the Numidian towns, only hundreds of miles of impassable desert. What we’ve seen here, the harbours and the ships, is not just about increasing trade and controlling the sea lanes. Carthage is building an invasion fleet, a fleet that could land troops anywhere along the Mediterranean shore and besiege the great cities of Greece and the east. With support from Demetrius and Ptolemy as well as Metellus, the entire territory of Alexander’s empire could fall before such an alliance.’

  ‘And while Metellus may be focusing on consolidating the east, Hasdrubal may have his eyes set elsewhere. The legacy of history remains as firmly embedded for Carthage as it is for us, the legacy that generations of war and bloodshed have yet to resolve.’

  ‘You mean he will look to conquer Rome.’

  Fabius nodded. ‘Carthage may be unfinished business for you, for the gens Scipiones. But Rome is also unfinished business for Carthage. Just as Scipio Africanus stood before Carthage after the Battle of Zama and then turned away, so Hannibal stood within sight of the walls of Rome before he too was forced back. Just as you have a legacy from your grandfather, so Hasdrubal has his own legacy from Hannibal.’

  ‘And yet we have no invasion fleet in preparation, only a token force in Africa and a dithering Senate,’ Scipio muttered.

  Fabius squinted up, seeing the sun low in the western sky. ‘Where to next? We don’t have much time.’

  Scipio took a deep breath. ‘Remember Intercatia? The Celtiberians defended their oppidum in depth, with that second wall within the main circuit. From what Terence told me, the Carthaginians may have done the same. We’ve seen evidence of Hasdrubal’s offensive strategy, but now we need to see his defensive plans. We’ll go past the Tophet sanctuary and up the main street from the harbours towards the Byrsa. We need to see as much as we can. Let’s move.’

  16

  The narrow alleys on either side of the street lay deep in shadow, and Fabius looked ahead to see that the afternoon sun had fallen behind the level of the Byrsa. ‘We don’t have long,’ he said. ‘The kybernetes wanted to be out on the open sea by nightfall. If the bodies of those soldiers are found and they suspect us, they’ll send out one of those liburna galleys to hunt us down. We’ll need to use the cover of night to row as fast as we can to get to our own naval cordon, and that’s more than ten miles to the east.’

  Scipio nodded. ‘We’ll carry on here for half an hour, no more. Do you remember the model of Carthage that my grandfather Scipio Africanus had made – the one that our playwright friend Terence helped me to modify? He told me about the maze of old Punic houses that he used to play in as a boy, and I want to see whether the Carthaginians have knocked them down during all of this rebuilding to make a final killing zone before the Byrsa hill.’

  They hurried up the street, ascending now so that when they turned they could glimpse the distant sea beyond the harbours, shimmering above the rooftops. The buildings on either side were higher, more like fortress walls than a street frontage, and as they neared the end of the street they could see that the rooftops were crenellated and linked by low towers. They marched determinedly ahead as several people passed, and then Scipio stopped and looked along the walls, judging the field of fire for arrows and spears.

  ‘It’s just as I thought, coming up,’ he said grimly. ‘The Carthaginians have planned for defence in depth, deliberately narrowing these streets as they lead towards the Byrsa to funnel an attacking force into them, to this place where a hidden force could appear suddenly on the walls and rain down death. The only way to counter it would be to mount an attack of sufficient speed and ferocity to break through and overwhelm them, with archers in the vanguard to fire up at these walls to keep the defenders back. For an attacking force to hesitate, to be caught up in street fighting, would be to make this place a death trap. The assault on Carthage could end right here.’

  Fabius nodded. ‘At this stage in an assault, with their final stronghold threatened, they could mount suicide attacks, sending fighters down the street to try to pin down the advance. Even though such defenders might be killed within moments, it would only take a few of them hurtling down one after the other to cause the advance to halt, and then the assault troops would be killed in larger numbers by the men on the walls as they were able to find their targets. It would take the strongest leadership to maintain the determination of the legionaries and keep the assault force driving forward.’

  ‘And imaginative use of shields,’ Scipio murmured, squinting up at the walls. ‘Ennius and I have discussed a new drill for the testudo, for locking shields together to form a continuous protective cover above a marching cohort. We need to practise it, not in the open but in the streets and alleys of a town where the centurions can train the legionaries to raise and lower their shields as the width and direction of a street changes.’

  ‘We would need to find a Punic town with a similar arrangement,’ Fabius said. ‘One with similar street alignments and house layouts.’

  ‘I know exactly the place,’ Scipio replied. ‘Kerkouane, on the eastern shore beyond the cape, supposedly the place where the Phoenicians landed when they first came to Africa. The city was abandoned after the war between Rome and Carthage a century ago, and has never been reoccupied. Ennius has already been there to test a new siege engine against the weaknesses in Punic walls. It would be a perfect place to practise urban warfare.’

  ‘We need to remember what we are up against,’ Fabius said. ‘Hasdrubal is not a reasonable man like Hannibal. He’s defiant, and will hold out to the death. If he’s infected his fighters with the same spirit, then they will give up this place dearly. The men needed for suicide attacks down those streets would not be mercenaries. You can pay a man to risk his life, but not to face certain death. They could only be Carthaginian citizens.’

  Scipio nodded. ‘If they’ve put such thought into building these defences, they will also have trained men for that purpose: men who have a fanatical allegiance to Carthage, perhaps under the sway of the priests. It would be a cohort of suicide warriors with only one objective: to throw themselves at an attacker in these streets.’

  They had reached a mass of buildings below the edge of the Byrsa, where the slopes began to angle more steeply towards the temple platform on top of the hill. To their right they could see the processional way that rose up the Byrsa in a westerly direction, a place where the morning sun would cast a brilliant light on the stone steps. But the street they were on came to an end before a dense accumulation of houses, structures joined by ladders and stairways on the rooftops that allowed overhead access between the buildings. Whereas they had passed few others in the street on the way up, the alleywa
ys ahead were teeming with people: slaves carrying amphorae and other goods on their shoulders, women making their way between houses with baskets of food, children running and playing. Fabius planted his spear in the ground and stood as if on guard. ‘This looks like an old quarter, like the descriptions of ancient towns in the east that I have heard slaves in Rome talk about,’ he said. ‘It looks as if the rebuilding programme has not extended this far yet. Perhaps this quarter has special significance, like the house of Romulus on the Palatine Hill, preserved because it was the first settled part of the city.’

  Scipio squinted at the houses. ‘I think there’s more to it than that. I think it’s been left like this deliberately. If an attack force managed to push through to this point, the surviving Carthaginians could fall back among these houses, holing themselves up. This is the last-ditch line of defence in depth.’

  ‘If you were to take this quarter without incurring massive casualties, you would need to drive your men without hesitation into the houses, having stoked up their ardour for individual combat. Hasdrubal might hold back his best warriors for this fight.’

  Scipio nodded. ‘All right. I’ve seen all I need to see. We’ve got all the ammunition we need to give Polybius and Cato for their fight with the Senate. We should return now.’

  They took one last look at the Punic houses and the Byrsa beyond, the shining white of its marble backlit by the red sheen in the late afternoon sky. Fabius wondered whether they would ever be here again, and whether the street they were standing on would be a river of blood. They turned and walked quickly back down in the direction of the harbours, turning sharply as the street opened out into a wider avenue just beyond the fortified frontage that formed the second line of defence. They heard a clashing of arms and shouted commands to their right. Scipio stopped and turned to Fabius. ‘That sounds like a training ground. Let’s take a look.’