Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  “I do not think so,” Paullus said. He spoke gravely, with the fingers of both hands massaging his temples. “Varro, I beg you to temper your vigor with wisdom. Fabius fought hard to avoid situations that—”

  “Fabius fought?” Varro asked, cutting in with a raised voice. He cocked his head at an angle, as if his hearing troubled him. “Fought? Never has that word been so misused. I was there beside Fabius and I can tell you that he never raised a hand against the enemy. Fighting is not in that man's nature. And now you, Paullus, would do the same as he. You're nothing more than the old man's puppet. You think not for yourself but do his bidding—just as he does Hannibal's. Do you really believe Rome could survive another year like the one Fabius inflicted upon us? He made us out to be fools, cowards, sheep trembling at the sight of an approaching wolf. Perhaps you are those things, but I am none of them. We have let half the summer pass already. Believe me, if we do not strike now we will start losing allies. It will take just one defector for them all to crumble. But why am I telling you these things? You know them already. You only lack the heart or courage to grasp them and act!”

  Paullus had gone red under this barrage of insults. He glanced at the officers around the chamber, all of whom shifted uncomfortably, eyes lowered to suggest no particular allegiance, faces as expressionless as possible. “We should speak privately,” Paullus said. “It is not seemly for—”

  “I don't care what is seemly!” Varro shouted.

  “And I will not commit our troops to disaster!” Paullus roared back at him, his anger bursting out so suddenly that several of the officers started. “Truly, Terentius Varro, you're worthy of the butchers from whom you're descended. Would that your people had kept to their labors and left important matters to those suited to them!”

  Varro shot to his feet; Paullus mirrored the motion. They stepped toward each other, first tentatively, and then, as if at some choreographed signal, they fell toward each other like two rams in the season of rut. The room was a flurry of motion. Some jumped back against the tent walls. A few sat frozen. More than one cowered as if the consuls' anger was meant for them. Only one person wedged himself between the two.

  Publius Scipio was faster on his feet than either consul. He stepped forward and took the full brunt of the impact, Varro at his back, Paullus against his chest. He shouted to them to find reason. He batted their arms down and twirled to separate them with his shoulders. Heartened, others grappled the men and tried to calm them. Publius managed to get a hand to either consul's chest and push them to the full length of his outstretched arms.

  “If you two were not the most important Romans in all of Italy right now I would sit and watch one of you overman the other,” he said. “But there is no place for dueling now. Rome depends on you; be worthy of her. By the gods, find your senses! Our enemy lies outside this tent, not within.”

  Publius' fellow tribunes looked between him and the two senior officers, unsure just how his outburst would be received and therefore unsure how they would comment on it. He was the youngest among them and had up until that moment been the quietest. Varro seemed to be deciding just how best to take off Publius' head, but when Paullus withdrew a half-step he did likewise.

  “The young tribune is imprudent, but he speaks some truth,” Varro said. “You call me rash, but will you hear my plan?”

  “You have a plan?”

  “I am not a fool, Paullus.”

  “Tell me, then. I'd love to hear sensible words from your mouth.”

  Varro glared at him a moment, then motioned that they should all sit again. “We command the largest army Rome has ever fielded,” he said, “perhaps the largest ever mustered by any civilized nation. This is our strength, and Hannibal will know it. We should show him from his first sighting of us that we are a hammer, and he the nail that we will drive into the soil of Cannae. We must use the full overwhelming grandeur of our numbers to best effect. To do this, we reduce the frontage of each maniple by a third and shrink the intervals between them. This will stretch the line so that the enemy will look out at an unending river heading toward him. Hannibal's men will shake at the sight of us, and some will run. Imagine it, Paullus. Remember that this is the first time we will meet them face-to-face and in the full light of day. You and I will command the cavalry on either wing. This is the weak point, but we need not defeat our counterparts. All we have to do is hold them for a time, keep them from flanking long enough to let the body of our infantry drive through. By then it will be too late for their horse to matter. We'll punch right through their center, divide them into two smaller forces, and attack each at will.”

  Paullus stared at his fellow consul with an intensity that made the edges of his eyes quiver. “You may be right,” he said, “but I do not know that it is wise to modify our formations like this without first practicing it.”

  “Impossible,” Varro said. “We are engaged already. And this plan works precisely because the troops are raw. Just as the enemy will see their uncountable numbers, so the troops in the front will take heart from the lines of men behind them. They will see that they are undefeatable. As a whole, they will become braver than they could be in thin ranks. This formation makes it impossible for cowardice to sway the battle. A man in the middle of this river will have nowhere to flee but forward, over the bodies of the enemy. Paullus, refrain from finding fault and be one with me.”

  “I am unsure,” Paullus said, sincerely and without a trace of malice. Though they talked late into the night, he could offer no more than that.

  As the day dawned the consuls were not exactly at odds, but neither were they of a single mind. Varro—in control—broke camp and moved even closer to Hannibal, so close, in fact, that it would be impossible for Paullus to retreat even if he wished to. He set up camp on the near side of the river Aufidus and ordered a small deployment to claim a spot on the far bank. He sent out units to harass the Carthaginian foragers, but ended the day more exasperated than vindicated. Numidian raiders ambushed the Roman water carriers instead, launching their spears at them so that the workers had to drop their jugs and run. And yet Varro had accomplished his main objective. He was locked in the preliminary stages of the struggle. The following day Paullus received word that the enemy was moving as if to offer battle, but he did not answer them. He shifted troops from one place to another, hesitating, trying to think of a way to better their position, knowing that on the morrow control went back to Varro. Wriggle as he might, he was pinned to the spot as surely as if his fellow consul had speared him through the foot. There was nothing to be done. The clash would come with the rising sun. Their fate was in Varro's hands.

  Mago had already been up for hours by the time he met with Hannibal and a mounted contingent of his generals atop the rise of Cannae. Together they watched the armies assemble upon the wide plain. The sight approaching them was like nothing any of them had ever imagined. Mago had learned from his brother to approximate numbers of men by visual clues, to weigh on internal scales the density of troops and the area of land they covered, and to account for the receding scale of distance. But the number of Romans now before him was beyond his reckoning. Eighty thousand? Ninety? One hundred thousand? He could not possibly count them, and the exact number would have seemed arbitrary. What mattered was that the Romans' front line stretched to fill the entire field, so wide it would have daunted even the best of runners to sprint from one edge to the other. It was completely uniform, no portion lagging behind or preceding the others. This was all formidable enough, but it was the depth of the ranks that truly stunned him: they came row upon row with no end in sight, fading into the dust and distance so that it seemed they were marching out of the haze, an army born of the landscape itself.

  “They have the wind in their eyes,” Hannibal said. A simple statement, acknowledged with nods and a few grunts. “And more of the sun's glare than we do. I like this advantage.”

  Mago never ceased to be amazed by his brother's calm. Looking at him, he fe
lt buoyed by his confidence. If Hannibal believed they would win this conflict, then who was he to doubt it? The day previous, the commander had presented his multiple strategies with calm, reasoned assurance. Even when he proposed the most improbable of maneuvers they sounded like testimony given after the events and not a plan suggested before. He had traced the bowed line the first ranks were meant to form, a convex front made up entirely of Gauls, headed by Mago and Hannibal himself. With this he intended to meet the first lines of the enemy. “We must keep this crescent from breaking,” he had said. “Let it not snap but instead slowly manage a retreat. So carefully that the Romans are fooled into feeling themselves winning. So gradually that the Gauls are not frightened into fleeing.”

  When Mago questioned whether the Gauls would rebel against setting themselves up for slaughter, Hannibal answered, “You do not understand the Celtic mind, brother. These people do not conceive of the world as you and I do. Consider that they believe creation to be a balance between two worlds. Death in this one means rebirth in the other. Thus they mourn at a newborn's birth and celebrate upon that man's eventual demise. They have no fear of dying tomorrow; they run to death, headlong.”

  Mago had sworn that he would do everything Hannibal instructed, but after a sleepless night the immensity of the day's challenges left him staring in awe. Even the cloud of dust stirred by the Romans' feet filled him with dread. It was a great brown shadow that rose up into the heavens and stretched so far as to all but obscure the horizon.

  “Look at them,” he said. There was a tight quaver in his voice, as that of a man who has been punched in the abdomen but is trying to speak through the pain of the blow. “I never imagined there were so many of them.”

  Hannibal straightened in his saddle. He spoke without a hint of irony. “Yes, they are many, but not one among them is my brother. Not one is named Mago.”

  The others laughed, but it took a moment for this cool statement to roll over in Mago's mind, revealing its humor.

  Monomachus was the first to respond, dry of voice, giving no indication that he spoke in jest. “They have among them few who would eat human flesh.”

  “What is more,” Maharbal added, “they are not commanded by a man named Hannibal. I am sure this fact troubles them.”

  “And, unless I am mistaken,” Bostar said, “nowhere among them is there a Bomilcar or a Himilco or even a Gisgo, not a single Barca, not one of them who prays to Baal or Melkart, none who were pushed through the thighs of an African mother. Truly, never have I seen so many unfortunate men gathered in a single place.”

  Hannibal's stern expression gave way to a grin. “I see your amazement, Mago, and I understand your point: we should have issued the men with two swords each, one for either hand to make the killing faster.”

  Mago ducked his head and ran the palm of his hand over his horse's neck and then looked up again. Just listening to them humbled him. Who had ever been as fortunate as he, to learn warfare from men such as these? He searched for a jest of his own to add to theirs, but jesting before battle was not a skill he had learned yet.

  Soon the generals parted company, each riding off to lead different contingents of the troops, each with a different purpose in the coming battle. Mago stayed a little longer with Hannibal. They were to command quite near each other and did not need to separate until the battle was well begun. Even with the armies facing each other—paused with a wide gap between them—there were maneuvers to go through before the bulk of them met in earnest. The enemy's forward line glistened in the glare of the sun, armor reflecting the light in thousands of tiny bursts. At first their shields seemed as tightly wedged together as the scales on a snake's belly, but there were gaps enough between them to allow their skirmishers forward. These poured through onto the field. This battle would open in the manner that suited the Roman style, just as Hannibal had predicted.

  “Velites,” Hannibal said. “Let us see whether these pups have teeth.”

  The young soldiers moved not like men but like half-beasts, agile. They wove through each other, barking courage and yelling curses at the Carthaginians. They wore helmets draped in animal skins: the heads of wolves mostly, some bears, and a few mountain cats. At first, they were frightening to look upon, as if the animal world had united with humans and fought on the Romans' side. They came armed with several javelins each, which they hurled with all the strength their bodies could muster, sending them high into the air in deadly arcs. So it seemed to Mago, but Hannibal saw them differently.

  “They are tentative,” he said. “Afraid. Look, Mago, they seem to step forward boldly, but they come only near enough to loose their weapons. Then they retreat to gather up courage to repeat the maneuver. They have taken on the skins of warriors but not the hearts.”

  Mago had not realized this at first, but soon he saw that Hannibal was right. The velites were not so impressive after all. Their inexperience left them no match for veteran skirmishers. Balearic slingers swirled their tiny missiles into the air almost casually, picking out velites at will, breaking arms and ribs and occasionally dropping one when a stone broke a velite's head.

  This went on for an hour or so, until Hannibal signaled that the slingers should be called back. They pulled up, shouted last taunts at the Romans, and withdrew into the body of the infantry. The Romans did the same. The velites vanished through the snake scales so that within a few minutes all motion stopped, save for the struggles of the wounded left on the field.

  At about the same time, both sides began to move forward toward each other. The Romans accelerated to a trot and held it. Watching them, Mago found his insides knotted so intensely that he almost pitched forward in the saddle. He knew to look past the tricks of visual intimidation: the swirls and patterns and animal features painted on their shields, the high feathered plumes that rose up from their helmets to make them seem taller, the layered wall of shields and upright pila and glinting metal and legs beneath, shifting steadily forward so that from a distance they seemed not individuals at all but rather a single force eating up the land. Knowing these tricks did not make it any easier to watch the advance. The Romans moved in more skillful unison than even the Libyans, and there was no trickery in the amazing mass of them.

  More than any of the visual drama, what struck the young Barca was the silence, the awful, unearthly hush of the oncoming enemy. They spoke not a word, no chant or instructions or shouts of rage. No sound came from them at all but the rhythmic pounding of their feet and the thrum of their swords upon their shields. This was noise, yes, but devoid of emotion. Mechanical. Frightening, for it seemed to be the beat of death. The various contingents within the Carthaginian army yelled and chanted and spurred themselves to fury by releasing deep-bellied roars. The Gauls sent forth a tremendous racket through their horns, the tall, animal-shaped heads of these stretching high into the air above them. It should have been ferocious cacophony, but the answering silence proved even more unnerving. It was as if Carthage had thrown a punch at a visible target but missed it and cleaved only the air. If the Romans felt any fear they did not show it, and the best the Carthaginian troops could do was to scream louder.

  Mago knew what came next, but still it was a shock when it happened. The Roman vanguard—at some signal or position known only to them—all hefted their pila up and hurled them in the same instant. Two, three thousand missiles suddenly flew through the air. Several hundred soldiers went down, twisting, shouting in pain or silenced. From where Mago sat beside his brother, he saw whole portions of the front ranks buckle forward and disappear.

  “As it should be,” Hannibal said. “There will be a second wave. And then a third, remember that. This is what we've come for. We've prevailed previously through good fortune and Roman foolishness. Today we face them on their own terms. This is all as I would have it be. Take your position and remember everything I've taught you. Go now. And do not forget your name!”

  With that, Hannibal slipped from his horse and joined the lieutena
nts and messengers and guards who would be around him throughout the battle. They headed off through the ranks down corridors left clear for them. Mago heard a soldier call to him, telling him they were awaiting him. He dismounted and handed his horse to a keeper and joined with the contingent of men sworn to protect his life. Something happened in him as he felt the earth beneath him and his feet moving him across it. He stopped trying to fight the passing of time, stopped wishing for more moments to process and think through the things he faced. He stepped into the present and felt an enormous rush of energy push him forward. He was about to fight as he never had before. The forces at play in the world had finally converged. He strode forward behind his lieutenants, growing more into his skin at every step. He was a Barca, after all.

  The two cavalry units—one composed of Numidians, the other a mixed company of Carthaginians, Iberians, and Gauls—took up positions on either wing of the infantry. Their general orders were clear: Attack the opposing Roman horse. Hit them, hard and fast. Break them in the first moments of the struggle, wipe them from the field, and strip the main body of the Roman infantry naked on either flank. A good part of Hannibal's strategy depended on this. But not only on this. He also chose to fracture and confuse the enemy in smaller ways. That is why Tusselo and four hundred other Numidians went out on a specific mission. They understood that there was a danger in it greater than that of straightforward combat. It required both military prowess and cunning. They took up the arms customary to them, but each also carried an extra sword hidden beneath his tunic, wrapped in oddments of cloth to protect its wielder from the honed blades.

  They rode in the wake created by Maharbal's cavalry, which was quite a trail to follow. They moved in a great, trilling herd at full gallop, launching their spears once, twice, and yet again before they even reached the enemy. By the time they collided with them, many of the Romans had already dropped, impaled by cool iron, and then pummeled beneath a barrage of hooves. Other horses wheeled and darted in confusion, their riders suddenly gone limp. Tusselo watched Maharbal sword-stab a wounded Roman under the arm and pull a spear from the man's thigh in something like a single motion. He planted this new spear in another's throat. He stabbed the weapon forward and back. The pierced Roman grabbed it desperately, jerked this way and that by a playful hand, recognition of his coming death splattered across his face with the stain of his own blood. Maharbal finally yanked the spear free and left the man slumped over his horse's neck. Without another thought, he surged toward a new target.