Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  One evening, Aradna met him outside his tent. She stalked up to him proudly and, through an enormous smile, spoke a single sentence in Carthaginian. “You are handsome.” She grinned at herself, proud as a cat, and Imco knew for a divine certainty that he had never seen anything more beautiful. The only flaw in all this was that he worried constantly that she would leave him, or that he would die in the next battle, or that her beauty would draw trouble. It astonished him that her disguises fooled anyone, but she rarely attracted the type of attention Imco feared. When the next blow—the first great blow—fell, it had nothing to do with their love affair. It was completely unexpected, and it woke him to the unpredictable world they both still inhabited.

  He heard the commotion while in his tent. He was watching Aradna's fingers as they plucked strips of goat meat from the hot stones lining their fire pit. Outside the horns sounded a call he could make no sense of. Feet tramped by; people yelled unintelligible things to each other. Imco was up in a moment. He spoke over his shoulder to Aradna, saying that he would just be gone a moment, and then he joined the growing crowd moving toward the command tent. Eventually, he had to shove and claw his way through, frantic now, for something evil was in the air and he could make no sense of the bits and pieces and exclamations he heard.

  When he finally broke through the circle around the front of Hannibal's tent he saw the commander on his knees, a shocking sight in itself. His arms hung limp at the sides, palms out, fingers quivering. Before him lay a round object that at first made no sense. It seemed to be a head, clasped between two hands held in place with twine. Imco stepped closer, blinking. It was a head clasped between two hands held in place with twine. The man's face was barely visible, bruised and battered, rotten, bluish and reddish and brown all at once. Ghastly. And yet Hannibal had no difficulty recognizing who the person had been.

  “What have they done to you?” he asked. “Hasdrubal, what have they done?” He bent closer to the head, but his attention focused on the hands. He touched the knuckles with his fingers. “These are not his hands!” he said, drawn in like a madman clutching at a tendril of fantastic possibility. “They are not his!”

  If these are not his hands, Imco saw him thinking, perhaps this is not his head. Maybe it is all a lie. Several of the other officers drew closer. Gemel reached out as if to touch Hannibal's back, but he did not do so. He studied the severed limbs, and then he whispered in the commander's ear. The news he gave sapped all hope from the man. Hannibal, as if angry at whatever Gemel had said, scooped the head up and cradled it against his torso. He strode silently into his tent. The flap fell shut and all who remained stared about in dumb silence.

  Gemel whispered something to a few of the other officers, and then, seeing Imco, he approached him. “We must all meet at once,” he said. “There is much to discuss. What you see is true. That was the head of Hasdrubal Barca, thrown down outside of camp by a band of Roman horsemen.”

  “And the hands?”

  “We cannot know for sure, but the horsemen, as they left, shouted the name of the scribe Silenus.”

  Hannibal wanted to rage. From the moment he recognized Hasdrubal's features, wrath stirred within him. He felt it twisting him. He heard the roar of it in his ears, a force such as one hears facing into a fierce wind, a noise that takes from the world the variations that differentiate sounds and leaves only the pure cry that is noise and silence at the same instant. He wanted to rampage. He felt Monomachus clutching his elbow, clawing at him, begging to be allowed free rein to spread his terror a thousandfold in retribution. He knew that he muttered consent to the man, but he did not do so with the full measure of his sorrow. He did not know where to direct his anger. Rome was the obvious target. He would never say otherwise in his life. But a man has quieter demons to contend with and these spoke more softly than the wraiths. They asked who was truly to blame. From whose hand dripped the most blood? And also they answered: Hannibal's. Hannibal's.

  Trapped between these feuding choruses, he could barely move for days after receiving the terrible gift. Like a man punched so hard in the gut that he cannot respond, cannot speak, cannot strike back, Hannibal doubled over the head that had once been atop his brother's marvelous shoulders and he simply held it. He did not care that the stench thickened the air in his tent. He ignored the decay. Yes, it sickened him so much that he heaved dryly, convulsively, trying to expel whatever was in him. Skin peeled roughly off the skull and the very touch of it on any object left a malignant stain that he could feel as much as see and smell. All this was true, but still this was his brother. These were the eyes he had once used to see; the mouth he had spoken with; the ears through which he had heard the world. He rubbed away the grime crusting his dry orbs and tried to look inside. It was impossible that Hasdrubal no longer resided somewhere behind those eyes. He placed his lips against the rotten flesh and whispered to him. Words tumbled from him, never long thoughts, but simple sentences like those spoken to a child. He told him that it was all right. It was fine. It would be all right. Oh, but his mother loved him. His mother thought him the handsomest. All women thought so. His father knew him to be the bravest, the strongest. He would take him home, he promised. Home to Carthage. He would leave that very day. Come. Together they would see the city jutting up from the Byrsa hill and they would smell the lemon trees and watch sparrows darting overhead in the fading light of evening. They would run out to the obelisk on the point overlooking the sea and they would stand with their chests pressed to the marble, gazing up at the long stretch of stone piercing the sky, awed that the clouds above slid by untouched.

  He had been so young when he left Carthage, but now the place called to him somberly, offering him the past reborn, assuring him that what had been might be again. By going back they would find a new way forward, a different future wherein Hasdrubal lived on. And Imilce was there. His son lived in that place. Hanno and Mago could be called home. Mistakes could be undone. What madness was it that he was not with them at that very moment, all together, in health, beneath an African sun, sheltering within palm groves, walking the innermost gardens of his family's palace?

  Hannibal's stunned sorrow and longing did not leave him in the days and weeks that followed. He did not, of course, bear Hasdrubal home to Africa; he had no choice but to sow him in Italian soil. Mandarbal undertook the monumental task of sending his soul on into the underworld despite the damaged vessel that he was. The smoke of incense clouded the air; bells tolled for days; priests called out their sacred words unremittingly into the day and night, uttering rites that none understood but that all cowered before, walking nervously, living quietly, afraid lest some new horror be released by all of this. Eventually, Mandarbal answered the lack of a body by beheading a Roman prisoner whom he deemed suitable to provide Hasdrubal's double. With this man's limbs and organs acting as his own, the general finally lay down to search for peace. Hannibal took no joy in any of this. It provided little comfort, but it had to be done. As so much else did.

  He had a war to prosecute. In meeting with his generals, he acted as if nothing of personal significance had happened. Hasdrubal's death mattered only because a skilled leader had been eliminated. An army had been routed and scattered, leaving Hannibal's force once again alone on the peninsula. None of the news his generals brought was good. He learned, finally, detailed versions of all that happened the previous year in Iberia. The loss of New Carthage was tremendous, but Baecula, Ilipa, and now Scipio's preparations to attack Carthage . . . The defeats themselves meant staggering losses. And, what was most important, he saw in the young soldier's actions signs of military genius previously absent from the Roman side. No Roman's mind had yet moved so nimbly, with such cunning, using brilliance tempered with humility. He wondered if this, too, was his fault. Perhaps in taking so long to win this war he had allowed for the maturing of a student, a protégé who was unfortunately aligned against him. He wished that he could somehow draw Publius to stay in Italy, but the news of his inte
ntions reached him too late for that.

  He had more to contend with. The Macedonians sent to secure a treaty with King Philip had been captured at sea months ago. Lysenthus and Carthalo had been executed, the other officers kept as prisoners, and the staff sold as slaves. A Roman force under Valerius had sailed to raise other Greek cities into rebellion. Valerius had surprised the Macedonians at Apollonia, routed the army, and burned most of the fleet. As the documents had never reached Philip, there was no treaty, and instead of playing a part in winning Carthage's war, Philip was fighting for his very survival.

  Such news might once have been dumbfounding, but events were now moving so swiftly that Hannibal put it behind him. Bomilcar died suddenly in his winter quarters. He was taken not by any war injury but by a swelling in his groin that grew over the space of weeks and seemed to sap the life from him. A work of witchcraft, undoubtedly, and yet another massive blow to Hannibal, for they had been friends since adolescence. Mighty Bomilcar gone; it barely seemed possible. He should have died in the thick of battle, with a sword in one hand and a spear in the other. Why had he been denied that?

  Livius Salinator skulked nearby, not offering battle but intent on keeping the Carthaginians pinned down in the south. That was all he really had to do. Even without major battles Hannibal's numbers dwindled slowly, from the attrition natural to the passage of time, fatigue, injury and illness, and occasional desertions. Carthage continued to deny him reinforcements. The city's councillors had already begun to worry about their own skins.

  Perhaps most directly pressing for him, however, was that Capua was suffering under a new siege. Three Roman armies had the city surrounded and they looked intent on pushing through to the end. They had even sent a message to the city leaders advising them not to waste their time considering under what terms they would surrender. Rome alone would name the conditions, and they could be sure these would be harsh. Representatives of the city had managed to escape and were begging Hannibal to come to their aid. The other generals advised it too. There was no real choice. Capua could not be abandoned: It had been the first city to join their cause willingly. If it fell, more tentative alliances would fall away like leaves in an autumn breeze.

  Hannibal agreed that he must take action, but he dismissed the council, saying he needed the night to consider the situation. Back in his tent he tried to do this, but he found his thoughts drifting. They would not stay on one thing but moved from Capua to Rome, Hasdrubal to Publius, Iberia to Carthage. For a time he slept, and on waking he knew he had dreamed of his father and a conversation they had years before. He lay on his cot remembering the look of Hamilcar, the cadence of his voice, the stern intelligence in his eyes. He was not sure whether he remembered things as they actually had been, or whether he had composed and woven his own words into the memory. Perhaps this did not matter. The memory felt real. It occupied a part of him, thoughts and concerns that were real. It was from near the end of his father's life, a decade earlier. They were camped in Iberia, near a hostile tribe to their west. Hannibal had called early upon his father—as was his custom—during the hour before dawn. They spoke briefly of the day to come, but just as he was turning to leave Hamilcar stopped him.

  “Hannibal, stay with me a moment as I prepare for this day,” he said.

  “Gladly,” Hannibal said. “Should I help you with your armor?”

  “That would please me.”

  Hamilcar waved away his attendant. The servant ducked out of the tent, though they both knew he was within earshot. Hannibal picked up where the other had left off, bent below his father to lace his sandals. He left the bands of leather loose around the joint of the ankle for mobility, but a little higher up he tugged the hide snug against the flesh like a second, thicker skin.

  Hamilcar was an old warrior, past his fortieth year. Every part of his body bore the damage to prove it. A livid scar dripped from his left eye, a curving incision made during the mercenary revolt, as if the artist who drew it had wished to place a permanent tear on the man's cheek. His right hand had been shattered beneath a chariot wheel his first year in Iberia. He thought the injury fortunate, as he favored his left. Ribs cracked the year previous had healed at an off angle and had left his chest cavity asymmetrical when seen without armor.

  When he spoke, he almost seemed to have been spurred by a musing on his injuries. “Do you know why I chose this life?”

  Hannibal almost responded glibly, thinking for a moment that his father might be leading into a joke. But looking up, he saw the distant look on the older man's face. The wrong word might silence Hamilcar even before he answered his own question, so he pursed his lips and carried on with his work.

  “I did not have to make war my life,” Hamilcar said. “My father fought, but I could have chosen another pursuit. I could have taken our riches and built upon them in truly Carthaginian style. I could have lived a soft and luxurious existence and never known the danger of battle or the pain of being far from the ones who complete you. There is some good to be had in such a life, but I could not honestly have chosen it.”

  Hannibal finished with the sandals and began to fit greaves over his father's shins, pounded iron infused with a red dust that gave them a color akin to blood. “We are richer now than your father could ever have imagined,” the young man said. “Is that not true?”

  Hamilcar considered the point, cocked his head, and looked off again. “Yes. I rule a vast empire now. I bend hundreds of thousands to labor for my benefit. My father would not have imagined that. But as to my earlier question, I chose the sword because it seemed the only honest pursuit available to me. Only with the blade, through a contest of wills in which one measures gains and losses against the value of one's own life . . . only this have I found to be truly honest. Do you understand what I mean? That I can be honest and yet lie time and again to achieve my aims? The honesty is in the simple fact that any and all who treat with me know the lengths to which I will go to achieve my goals. If I tell one of these Iberian chiefs that I will have his allegiance and his tribute by his permission or over his mutilated body, he knows I am a man of my word. To fulfill that word I may kill innocents or bribe his friends. I may fight on the open field or set a trap for him. I may not fight with him at all, but might find a willing slave close to him to slit his neck in sleep. I may, to prove a point, unleash an orgy of bloodletting and lust that erases his people from existence. All this I may use to achieve my ends. Do you think that I can still call this an honest profession?”

  “Yes. You are honest in your goals. You deceive no man about them.”

  “And what right have I to demand anything of another?”

  “The right of capacity. Does the rain ask our permission to fall upon us? Or the seas to drown ships? You do because you can. All of nature is the same.”

  “But the seas and rains are elements controlled by the gods. They are beyond our question, beyond our justice.”

  Hannibal paused in his work and looked up, a smile at the edge of his lips. “Father, are we not tools of the gods as well?”

  “Yes, yes,” Hamilcar conceded, waving his son away as he tested the fit of his sandals and shin guards. “Blessed be Baal, perhaps I am only a sword in his hand. Simple vanity makes me sometimes believe I am the hand instead. I say I choose this life, but who is to say it was not chosen for me?”

  Hannibal rose from his knees and found his father's breastplate. It was a heavy piece of iron, intricately molded. The portion that protected the abdomen bore an image of Elissa, she who had founded Carthage in the dim past. She had fine, strong features, even lips, and a headdress. This was a crown of sorts, and yet it had a martial appearance, as if she might wear it into battle. Her hair curled upward in two thick braids, like the curved horns of a ram. But—a strangely intimate detail—locks of hair escaped at her temples and fell down in wavering ribbons that framed her face. It was an ancient piece, artwork melded with the needs of war. He had always admired it. The only fault was in the ho
llow orbs of her large eyes. As beautiful as it was, this blind stare always troubled him. Why had the artist not gifted her with sight?

  Hamilcar let his son drape the armor over his shoulders. “Another day coming on outside this tent,” he said, “another opportunity for the fates to side with or against us. It is strange to remember that all men do not likewise gamble their lives each day. Do you recall the councillor Maganthus? His estate is in the rolling hills and pastureland south of the city. Do you know how he passes his days out there? He has thousands of slaves who work the fields surrounding him. But he has one special slave, a Thracian, I think he was. This slave's task is to search among the fields each morning and bring to him a young woman or girl. Maganthus sits naked on his patio, looking out over his workers while the woman takes his penis in her mouth and stimulates him to climax. The Thracian stands to the side, sword unsheathed and at the ready, should the woman try to damage their master. The combination of the girl's mouth upon him and the slaves in the field and the young Thracian with his sword unsheathed . . . the danger and the power of it all, that is where he finds his pleasure. He told me this himself, as if he were proud of it. What do you make of him?”

  “He's a slave himself,” Hannibal said, “to his body's desires.”

  “That was never a difficulty for you, was it?”

  “You have always shown me how a man controls his desires.”

  “I've tried, yes, but this control has come more easily to you.” The old soldier paused a moment as Hannibal clipped the buckles snug around his battered chest. It must have pained him, for he closed his eyes and drew his breath in slowly. The muscles beneath his tear-shaped scar twitched a few times, then settled.

  “Maganthus is a perverse wretch,” Hamilcar said, “but it's not his desires that interest me. It's the delusion he lives under. He told me that each girl who services him gives him proof of her loyalty to him. Any one of them could clamp down and end his pleasure forever. The fact that they don't proves to him that they love him. He disregards the sword in the Thracian's hand. That to him is no honest deterrent. If her life were miserable, she would give it up. So the fact that she neither harms him nor gives away her own life proves to him that all is as it should be.”