Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  They disembarked from a river barge near Placentia, mounted the horses awaiting them, and rode with haste. They dismounted in the late afternoon at the edge of the field stretching to the outpost. Cornelius wanted to walk into the fort, to greet his troops and be greeted by them, to make immediate contact and win them to him. The sight from a distance was actually heartening: the fort perched high and solid-looking, the tents pitched about the fields near it, abutting the bustle of the late harvest. It was comforting to note that the crops had not been destroyed, for they would need these supplies in the coming weeks.

  But as he strode nearer to the soldiers' tents a dread crept up into him. It grew even before he realized what had prompted it. There was nothing peculiar in the things he saw, but something in the quality of dejection betrayed by them. The fires burned low and smoky. The men huddled near the warmth, heads low and shoulders hunched forward, gathered as if in mourning. There was little conversation, no laughter; none were engaged in vigorous exercise. Even the fabric of the tents hung limp, as if the tents, too, had been emaciated by the difficult summer. He knew these soldiers were the last battered remnants of an army who had experienced a series of near-defeats at Gallic hands. Now, at the end of the warring season, they were exhausted and war-weary. They would have been made fearful by the news of Hannibal's doings. But what Cornelius saw on the soldiers' faces was an emotion surpassing even this. They wore the expressions of men who had just learned the prophecy of their deaths.

  The consul might have proceeded straight through the grounds without making himself known, but before he could, an observant centurion recognized him. He shouted the consul's presence to the others. Men glanced up and took him in skeptically. They rose to their feet, but not smartly, not with the spirit and discipline he would have liked.

  “Be at ease, men,” Cornelius said. “Rest now. We will soon need your strong arms.”

  That evening the consul wrote new letters. Of the Senate, he asked that the other consul, Sempronius Longus, be recalled and at once. The army here was not adequate to the task before it. He had nothing to rely upon but battered and fatigued veterans and a host of raw recruits barely able to march in unison. They were no match for Hannibal, especially not if he could muster the Gauls into mischief. The plan to send Sempronius to attack Carthage was no longer tenable, not with a foreign invader already on Italian soil.

  He sent a letter to Sempronius, too. He began it: “Dear Comrade, read this and fly to me. The thunder of Baal has descended upon us.”

  Inside the thick fabric of the tent was a world viewed through weak tea. A small fire burned in a pit in the earthen floor. The melancholy quality of the room reflected the heavy skies and the inactivity of the past week. The struggles of the crossing were forgotten, followed as they had been by the quick moves that introduced Hannibal's army to the people of this region. But even the capture of Taurin and the Gallic raids now seemed old memories. The foe they wanted was Roman, and him they had yet to lure into confrontation. Hannibal had even assembled the entire army near Placentia and offered battle formally, but they had stood in the field unanswered all afternoon. Now Scipio was a short ride away, camped on the far bank of the river Ticinus. But his proximity only increased his caution. He would have to be caught off guard. In the meantime, Hannibal stayed focused on the larger battles to come.

  “Let us go over it again,” Hannibal said. He tossed a dried fig into his mouth and chewed it viciously, as was necessary to soften the shriveled stone into something edible. The sound of Hannibal's jaw abusing the fig brought up Mago and Carthalo's gazes from their study of the diagram the commander had carved into the tabletop with a dagger. It was a surprisingly precise sketch, illustrating the makeup and usual deployment of the Roman army. Bostar stood a little distance away, preoccupied, while Bomilcar lay on the couch, his large frame cast as if at ease, although somehow betraying a tight-wound annoyance.

  Hannibal had incubated a vicious cough for several days now, and with it a sore throat so painful that each time he swallowed, a dull, rusty dagger pierced his larynx. He felt alternately hot and then cold; his vision was sensitive to light; when he rose, the world shifted like a vessel at sea. His frailty disturbed his mind almost more than his body. Physical pains were nothing new; and these hardly deserved comment compared to the injuries of war. But the very fact that he had succumbed to this illness seemed a defeat, a refutation of his discipline. Throughout the mountain journey and in the days since, he had recalled his father's training, the wisdom he, in turn, had learned from Xanthippus, the Spartan who for a time commanded the Carthaginian army in the earlier war with Rome. Xanthippus taught that a soldier only needed to ignore the bitter weather to defeat it. It was a man's acknowledgment of discomfort that allowed malignant humors to enter his body. The gods looked favorably on the Stoic; likewise, they disdained the weak-willed. Such thinking had seemed right enough and had served Hannibal thus far. He had rarely been ill in his adult life and had never been bed-bound by fever. He had been uncomfortable before, but he had beaten back the elements, fatigue, and pain. He wielded a stick inside his mind and struck at any part of him that suggested weakness as one strikes at a rabid dog. And yet the creature had somehow found a soft spot and sunk its teeth in deep. He had a strange, unmanly wish for Imilce's company, but he pushed the image of her away each time it appeared.

  He swallowed the fig and spoke firmly. “A legion is composed of four thousand soldiers,” he said. “These are divided into maniples of four hundred men. Each maniple is three lines deep, positioned so that there is space between them to retreat or charge through the various lines. The velites precede the heavy infantry with javelins, small shield, and sword. They usually lack armor, as they are the poorest of citizens. The first line of the heavy infantry is the least experienced, the hastati. They are helmeted and lightly armored. They hurl their spears, which they call pila, in unison at a predetermined moment to catch their opponents by surprise and break their front ranks. If the enemy does not break, the hastati pull back through the spaces and the second line, of the principes, attacks, first with pilum and then with sword. They do not swing wildly but instead try to knock away their opponents' shields with their own, then offer one jab in an exposed place. No wasted energy, but just enough to kill. And then the third line, of veterans, the triarii, follows to finish the work, with the first and second lines both able to return to the fighting at a moment's notice. And they do most of this in near silence: no shouts or ululations or boasting. Just action, with direction coming from the consul, through six tribunes and thence to the centurions, some sixty in number. They always seek to engage and do so without apparent hesitation. This is how it has been described to me.”

  Bomilcar guffawed. “‘Always seek to engage' . . . You should run through the idiot who said that.”

  Hannibal stood erect, though his eyes stayed on the diagram. “Where is the weakness in this?”

  Mago glanced at Carthalo. He raised his eyes and cocked his head to show that he would defer if Carthalo had an answer prepared. The cavalry lieutenant, however, just furrowed his brow and leaned to study the diagram. They had all been over this material before, many times, in fact, but they each knew—perhaps the commander knew better than any—that the tactics they had conceived to fight the legion were insufficient, at least on paper. The Roman formation was more versatile than the phalanx, more disciplined than hordes of barbarians, more a machine than a temperamental beast. Some argued that it was the development of this formation that led the Romans to break with the old custom of seasonal skirmishes and begin to subjugate their neighbors completely. They had conquered in an ever-widening circle around them, had defeated most of the Carthaginian commanders during the first war, and had even humbled Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose military machine many had thought unstoppable. Hannibal had always said he was confident that his Libyan veterans could stand toe to toe against any soldiers the world had ever known. But they were only part of the army, few in num
ber compared with the newly trained Iberians and the untested Gauls.

  “I was hoping you would tell us,” Mago finally said. “I cannot find the fault in it.”

  “Neither can I,” Hannibal said, coughing abruptly. He cleared his throat and ran his palm over his mouth, as if he were drawing the illness from it and depositing it elsewhere. “If the men are well trained I think this formation is nearly unbeatable. A phalanx may be a bristling bull in full armor, but these Romans have created a creature with numerous eyes and many limbs. It may be that we cannot defeat them on an open field, not if the circumstances favor them. But discipline can be a flaw as well as a virtue. They will react as they have been trained, to each circumstance they've come to expect. So we must always present them with the unexpected. We must make sure that we never engage except under conditions to our advantage. We must fight intelligently, unpredictably.”

  Bomilcar had been waiting for a pause in his commander's address. “This talk was fine last winter, back in New Carthage, but what good is such chatter now? How can we prevail against a foe that will not fight us? That is the trick I'd like to hear explained.”

  Bostar glanced between Hannibal and Bomilcar, uneasy. His face had suffered more than most from the cold. The tip of his nose and a portion of his cheeks still dripped raw from the damage of exposure. Synhalus had coated his face with one of his salves, but whether the Egyptian knew anything about frost-damaged skin was doubtful. “What would you have us do?” he asked.

  “March for Rome!” Bomilcar said. “It is south of us, and to the south is warmth. Is not that what we came for? I've never known Hannibal to hesitate. I pray he will not do so now.”

  Hannibal fixed Bomilcar in his gaze, a dangerous look that was not anger but could easily become it. He had trimmed his beard recently, close enough that one could note the tense trembling around his mouth. “I'll consider your words,” he said. “Now leave me—all of you. We all know the situation we're in, so let us ponder it separately. Leave me and attend to your business.”

  Alone in the smoky chamber, the commander sat down on his stool and pulled his tiny field desk toward him. Bomilcar was right, of course—at least in that they must force an engagement before hard winter set in. Their situation was not so different from what he had anticipated back in the warmth of New Carthage. He knew that the campaign had thus far been more successful than most men would have dreamed, despite the death toll of the mountain crossing. But in some childish area at the back of his mind he had harbored notions of a great, swift victory. He had believed—and still believed—that the Romans would suffer only a few defeats before pleading for peace. They had gained too much in recent years to risk it all with a death struggle.

  He lifted a quill and dipped for ink and ran his hand through the pages Silenus had left until he found a blank one. He had no clear thought of why he searched out these tools. He had a vague notion that he would scribble a few lines to inspire himself, that through the pressure of the quill point on the papyrus he would scratch out the words to frame the actions to come. But when his hand moved—tremulous and large around the instrument and half-cramped even at the first stroke—he wrote something very different.

  “Beloved Imilce.”

  He gazed at the name a moment, taking it in, remembering it.

  “It gives me pleasure to write out the letters of your name, to form the sounds on my lips. Here in my warrior's tent, in frigid Gaul, your name is like a revelation. When I recall that you live in this world . . .”

  He paused, feeling a flood of maudlin words pressing against his will. It was almost overpowering, the desire to unburden himself to her, as a man can only do to a woman, to someone so much a part of his life and yet wholly separate from his violent work. But he could not give in to this desire—for many reasons, chief among them that such soft thoughts did nothing to hone his military mind. So he wrote a different truth than he had first intended.

  “. . . I am reminded why I fight. I am nothing if not a warrior, but I do not love to be far from you. I do not covet victory so much that I forget the softer things of life. Believe me in this. Even Hannibal . . .”

  He cupped his hand tightly over his mouth, coughed into it, and checked his palm for discharge. There was none. Looking over his words, he frowned at them. “Even Hannibal” what? His quill swayed over the words, undecided, half of a mind to strike them and begin again, reading them with one meaning and then, instantly, seeing another. It seemed foolish to pen a love note, but almost sacrilegious not to. The words were true, and yet they were lies also. He could not pin them down. He searched for a way to explain the progress of the campaign instead. He thought of writing that they had come through the mountains unscathed, but he could not write such a blatant falsehood. He thought to describe military matters but did not progress far on such lines. Details of distances traveled, of soldiers and supplies lost, of allegiances made and broken: it would sound like men's babble to her, just another nightmare of masculine misery. It would make no sense in the luxury of Carthage. Nor could he find the words to describe the war in brief. Nor did he want her mind tainted by things martial. Another line of thought came to him.

  “How fares Little Hammer? Perhaps he speaks some words by now. This seems an impossible thing, but speech comes to all of us. Do not let him grow soft in my absence. He is just a boy, but he will be a man sooner than you can imagine. Have him tutored by a Greek. And also in swordplay and archery. Even very young boys can fashion bows in the African style. Remember that he is a child of Carthage and he should pay daily homage to Melkart and Baal, and to all the gods of my people. Teach him to temper his passions. Also . . .”

  He impaled the point of the quill in the papyrus, cutting the flow of words. What was he doing? It had been less than a year since he left. Only a few months, one season fading into another and that into another. Why write of passions when his son was a tiny child? Why act as if he could raise his son from a distance, through words on a page?

  Maharbal entered the tent just then. He moved as swiftly on foot as he did on horseback and spoke in character with his face: sharply, directly, like a hatchet blade. “Scipio is near! If we want him we can engage him today.”

  Hannibal asked for details. The cavalry commander explained that one of his horsemen had sighted the Romans on the move on this side of the Ticinus River. They were mostly cavalry, perhaps a large scouting force, followed by pikemen and some infantry. They were an easy ride away, although foot soldiers might fail to reach them if they decided to retreat across the pontoon bridge they had used to span the Ticinus.

  Hannibal made his decisions so quickly that they followed Maharbal's report without a pause. They were to mount and ride that instant. No infantry, but all the cavalry they could call up on a moment's notice. “We must move swiftly,” he said. “Let's stick the Romans and draw a taste of blood.”

  As he rose, Hannibal grasped up the unfinished letter, smashing the flat of his palm against it and then pinching his fingers together like talons. He tossed the crumpled note into the small fire. He watched long enough to assure that all of it wilted in the heat and burst into flame. It had been a mistake, anyway. The musings of a tired mind at a weak moment. But that was behind him already. He stepped out of his tent into the damp chill of the morning, calling out orders as he walked.

  And so it was only a few hours later that he set eyes on the Roman contingent. For the first time Hannibal saw a Roman consul's standard on the field before him. He thanked the gods for allowing this moment, and then he set about to please them through action. He took in the land and knew in an instant how he would proceed.

  Cornelius Scipio had seen many battles. He had always fought well and believed he would until the hour he died. But in the days after the skirmish beside the Ticinus he lay twinging, haunted by nightmares and struggling to understand just what had occurred and how. The battle had started too quickly, changed too suddenly, and been decided too rapidly. The mounted Carthaginian
s appeared before them; the velites hurled their missiles; the two forces met; a sword slipped into the soft spot beneath his upraised arm; the Africans fell upon them from the rear. As quickly as that, the battle became a wild scramble. Someone jerked him from his mount. He struggled in the mud as shapes moved above him and horse hooves fell from the sky and battered him. He took the blows in the face and chest, his upraised arms, and his skull. Three teeth were knocked clean out and the whole of his jaw became a drooping joint of pain. He had his surgeon wrap it tightly and refused to talk. He gave orders only in writing and by nods or shakes of the head.

  Two days passed before he understood just how his life had been saved and whom he had to thank. Publius. The younger Scipio was fighting near his father when the wind of the battle shifted. He saw his father take the sword point and topple from his horse into the mêlée below him. The young man rode as near as he could, hacking at anyone remotely foreign looking. When he could go no nearer on horseback, he slid off and scrambled through the horses' churning legs. He stabbed an African straight through one eye and sliced deep into the hamstring of another. He stepped upon the man as he fell, pressing his heel to the back of the man's neck, aware of the moment the man's scream of rage was silenced with a mouthful of mud. An Iberian nearly took his head off with a sweep of his curved sword, but Publius shifted his feet so quickly that they came out from under him. He dropped straight down, the sword cleaving the air above him. He looked up for the following blow but the Iberian was gone in the confusion.