THE EYES
OF
ARCHIMEDES
BOOK ONE
Other Books by Dan Armstrong
Taming the Dragon
Prairie Fire
Puddle of Love
Chain of Souls
The Open Secret
The Eyes of Archimedes Book II
The Death of Marcellus
The Eyes of Archimedes Book III
Zama
THE SIEGE
OF
SYRACUSE
A Novel
Dan Armstrong
Mud City Press
Eugene, Oregon
The Eyes of Archimedes Book I
The Siege of Syracuse
Copyright © 2013 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 in a nineteenth century illustration. Permission for its use was obtained through Eon Images. The image on the back of the book comes from the Wikipedia commons.
ISBN-978-0-9830045-4-7
Printed in the United States
To Judith
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 Greek 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.
“One cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
-Albert Einstein
The Central Mediterranean
The City of Syracuse
PROLOGUE
I, Timon Leonidas, am writing this narrative to account for a choice I made more than forty years ago. Difficult decisions are a part of all lives. Many of my most challenging came during my time as a slave to the famous mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse, but none of those decisions proved as agonizing as the one in question, made several years later, when I served under the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus.
I first met Marcellus when he was stationed in Sicily during the sixth year of the war with Hannibal. Marcellus was in his fifties then and rarely involved himself in full combat, but he was still a formidable man with a powerful physique and a commanding personal presence. I served as a secretary in the second cohort of the Eighteenth legion for five years of the war. Six months of each of those years were combat duty. There could be no better way to know or understand the man Marcellus than by traveling with his two legions in time of war—particularly this war.
The Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca had entered northern Italy through the Alps with an army of twenty-six thousand men and thirty-seven elephants in the 291st year of the Roman Republic. In the following two years he inflicted four crushing defeats on Roman armies. In each case, Hannibal’s field tactics, particularly his methods of deception, played a significant role in the outcome. In the fourth of these defeats, outside the city of Cannae, he purposely collapsed the center of his line as a strategy to surround the Roman army. Sixty-five thousand Roman and allied soldiers were either killed or taken prisoner. Following this humbling defeat, the inhabitants of Rome and her senate fell into a delirium of fear and panic. All believed that the invading army would come directly to Rome and take the city as easily as it had controlled the battlefield.
At the time, there was a long-standing tradition in Rome against giving leadership to a single individual. Instead, two consuls, elected annually, shared the highest office in the Republic. But in this instance, the Roman people, in a move reserved for only the most dire circumstances, appointed the elder statesman Quintus Fabius Maximus to the position of dictator, giving him sole control of the state and its military operations.
A man nearly seventy years old, with many years of military experience, Fabius knew Hannibal had outwitted the Roman generals in battles where the two armies were otherwise equal in numbers and materiel. Swallowing his Roman pride, he openly acknowledged the Carthaginian’s superior acumen for war, and, as dictator, put in place a policy of tactical defense. The Roman army, known for its aggressive military style, was ordered to pull back. They were to protect the gates of Rome and avoid pitched battles with Hannibal’s full army.
Hannibal never came close to breaching the walls of Rome. But as the years passed and Hannibal remained in Italy, his army ravaged the rest of the peninsula, freely destroying Latin villages and reaping the harvest of the farmland—often with Roman generals watching from afar, bound by orders not to engage. Many powerful men in Rome found this strategy difficult to accept and spoke out against it.
Marcellus was one of these men. More than anything else he wanted to confront Hannibal on the battlefield. A number of high ranking officers in the Roman military maintained that Marcellus’ open desire to face Hannibal was vanity and ambition. I never saw it that way. I believe Marcellus thought himself the one man in all of Rome best suited to rid Italy of the Punic menace. Politics and circumstances, however, did not allow Marcellus this opportunity until my last years under his command. To this day, my most heartfelt regret is a promise that I didn’t break when this one thing that Marcellus wanted so badly was within his grasp.
It was the eleventh year of Hannibal’s presence in Italy, the 302nd year of the Republic. The Carthaginian position in Italy was showing signs of weakening. Rome abandoned Fabius’ defensive strategy, and her generals were given the freedom to resume offensive tactics. Fittingly, Marcellus, then sixty years of age, was elected to his fifth consulship. For that year he would share the command of the Roman military with a younger officer, Quinctius Crispinus.
From the moment we marched out of Rome that spring, two legions strong, Marcellus’ target was evident to every man in our outfit from tribune to lowly Greek scribe. Finally free to pursue the war in the way he felt necessary, Marcellus was determined to seek out and destroy Hannibal’s army.
Hannibal kept close track of affairs in Rome and was well aware of Marcellus’ intent. But as always, war for the Carthaginian field marshal was as much about psychological maneuvering as hand-to-hand combat. Rather than meet us head on, he played cat and mouse, encamping, drawing us to the edge of conflict, then moving on, often in the middle of the night, infuriating our usually cool and calculating general.
That spring and summer proceeded in a series of emotional peaks and valleys—finding the Carthaginian army, encamping opposite them, preparing long into the night for battle, then waking to find our enemy gone. We would track Hannibal in a forced march, catch up with him, and encamp—certain this would be the time he would accept battle, only to have him slip off again during the night like a reluctant lover.
To be sure, these months of artful gaming were n
ot without their share of spilled blood. Hannibal would allow some contact between portions of his army and ours—sometimes with many hundred lost to both sides, but never with a decisive outcome to the whole. Marcellus knew this was not cowardice on Hannibal’s part, but a well-planned strategy of punch and counter-punch, designed to lure him into a tactical error or a particular lay of the land favorable to the Carthaginian mix of infantry and cavalry. This was always Hannibal’s way—never accepting battle until his position gave him a decided advantage. Many nights Marcellus would bristle with frustration, itching for the clash of sword on sword, yet he remained patient, and for three months he made no misstep, hoping that Hannibal might actually outwit himself and be the one to err. Day after day, week after week, these two powerful men played the game, gradually gaining a stubborn respect for each other.
Midsummer we were in Apulia, just north of the boot heel of the Italian peninsula. For the fourth time during the campaign, we were able to camp close enough to Hannibal to offer battle. It was immediately clear to Marcellus that the circumstances of this meeting were unique. Crispinus and his two legions were close by, meaning for the first time we would be able to flank the Carthaginian in such a way that he could not retreat.
I remember the day as if the intervening forty-five years of my life have not occurred. I was awakened by a centurion before sunrise and taken with my wax pad and bronze stylus to Marcellus. He stood out front of the camp in full armor talking with Crispinus, who had just arrived from his camp. Both men wore the purple cape of consulship. Marcellus pointed to a small wooded hill in the valley between our camp and Hannibal’s. He wanted to lead a small party to the top of this hill to assess the terrain and verify the enemy’s exact position and numbers. Often what appeared to be an advantage over Hannibal at one moment became a liability the next. I heard Crispinus agree with Marcellus on this very point as I came within earshot of the two men. “I would like to go along with the scouting party,” added Crispinus. “We should consider the possibility of placing an outpost on that hill.”
Marcellus nodded, but his eyes were on the haruspex in a hooded white robe, exiting from the camp and heading our way. Two minor priests trailed behind him carrying a live lamb by its legs. Romans did nothing without conferring with the gods. You didn’t eat a meal. You didn’t take a bath. You didn’t relieve yourself without the favor of this or that god. And in the case of something important, a live sacrifice was invariably required.
You could see it in Marcellus’ eyes when the haruspex presented himself; the consul had little need for priests or their gods. Marcellus was too practical a man for this type of ceremony. As far as he was concerned, it was politics more than religion—and a way for smaller minds to constrict larger. I did not know Crispinus well enough to know how he felt, but Marcellus conformed to the rituals because it was unavoidable custom.
The haruspex withdrew a flint knife from the folds of his robe and theatrically slid the leather sheath off its ragged blade. He cast a dark glance at Marcellus, then at the glowing orange ember on the horizon. With a wave of his hand, he motioned to the two priests. They stepped forward and laid the bleating lamb on the ground. Marcellus seemed absorbed in other things as the haruspex knelt beside the lamb for a brief prayer, then sliced the animal’s throat. After it had bled out, he plowed the ceremonial knife up through the belly of the lamb from its genitals to the top of its ribcage. The haruspex looked over his shoulder at Marcellus just prior to dipping his hands into the open lamb. The fact that the general was looking off in another direction seemed to sour the priest’s mood. Clearly disturbed, he glared down at the bloody mess, then sorted through the entrails and pulled the liver free like a surgeon cutting out a tumor.
To me, an educated Greek, the Romans’ preoccupation with this kind of ritual seemed preposterously antiquated. I’m certain Marcellus felt the same way. That the happenstance of the shape of an animal’s internal organs should determine military strategy had to be the height of nonsense to a man as coldly rational as he. He grimaced when the haruspex stood with the bloody mess cradled in his palms and presented it like a handful of precious rubies.
“You can see, generals, something is amiss,” the augur hissed with a cruel little grin. “This liver has no head.” It was a reference to the bulbed end of an ordinary liver. “I feel you tempt the gods to proceed on your mission this morning.”
Crispinus seemed more affected by this pronouncement than Marcellus, who without hesitation said, “Try another lamb.”
This response clearly irked the haruspex, a man with considerable influence within the walls of Rome, but much less at the edge of battle. “Is that your wish also, Crispinus?” asked the augur, his eyes invisible within the folds of his hood.
Crispinus gave an uneasy glance to Marcellus. By far the more imposing of the two men, Marcellus simply turned away. “Yes, another lamb,” Crispinus replied.
The sun was now a yellow ball in the east. The hill in question stood out in the morning light with a long dark shadow stretching like a pointer across the valley floor to where we stood. Marcellus stared at this promontory without speaking while the priests procured a second lamb. He barely acknowledged their return or that the haruspex had killed the shrieking animal and opened its belly. I scratched at my block of wax as fast as I could, lifting my eyes only long enough to see the haruspex sifting through the bloody innards, picking out a second liver for reading.
Marcellus deigned to return to the cluster of men just as the haruspex stood with thick ribbons of blood stringing from between his fingers, the quivering liver in his hands. “Another curious abnormality, generals,” he said, holding the specimen out for their inspection like a newborn to its parents. He grinned, showing his broken teeth. “Have you ever seen so large a bulb on a liver before?” His eyes flashed with the glare of sunrise.
The two generals suffered a glance at the swollen organ.
“It seems,” continued the haruspex, “we have one irregularity after another. One with no head.” He cast an ugly look at Marcellus, then Crispinus. “A second unusually oversized. Best stay in camp today, generals. The gods have spoken.”
Marcellus had no time for this. After three months of chasing Hannibal, a perfect opportunity was at hand. He wanted to read the lay of the land, not these abominations. “One is small, one is large,” he said without emotion. “I read this the same as if we had two of ordinary size. What say you, Crispinus? The sun is up and we are wasting time.”
Crispinus fidgeted with the clasp to his cape. He did not share Marcellus’ passion for battle with Hannibal. This was his first consulship, and the haruspex’s reading had clearly unnerved him. But his desire for respect from the noble Marcellus ran deeper. “I’m with you, General, I think the augur overreads.”
The haruspex spit out a curse in Etruscan. Only his two priests and I understood the meaning of his words and the depth of his contempt. Marcellus ignored it all. The augur spun on his heels and stomped back to the camp like an angry child. The priests shuffled behind with the disemboweled lamb. The scene was so full of vitriol, disdain, and premonition, that even I, a non-believer, struggled to contain the trembling of my stylus as I finished my waxen record.
A short time later, in the full light of day, all of the superstition, all of the haunting of the morning sacrifice had evaporated like the dew. Marcellus drew up two hundred men on horseback—one hundred and sixty allied levies and forty hand-picked Fregellae, some of the best fighters and most loyal men in our camp. Crispinus joined the group as did Marcellus’ son Marcus, already distinguished in combat and a tribune at age twenty-nine. I was included to take notes.
The hill from which we wished to view the valley was oblong and about a mile from the camp. There was a wooded peak at each end with a small meadow in the declivity between. With the mumblings of the haruspex all but forgotten, we cantered out that morning with little real concern beyond accurate observation. I rode beside Marcus. He was my senior by eigh
t years, but we had become fast friends in the five years I had known him. Just ahead of us were Marcellus and Crispinus, riding in their decorative armor, with their stunning capes fluttering out behind them like purple flames. We ascended from the southwest, up through a dry creek bed to the elevated meadow. The expedition took very little time, during which we never lost sight of our camp.
It was midmorning when we topped the hill and gained our first view of the ground. At the far end of the valley, in a line with the hill and our camp, were the Carthaginians. They had camped on a small swell in the valley floor so that any approach to their position was uphill. Several tall rock formations covered their rear. It was a formidable camp. The subtlety of the placement showed all Hannibal’s attention to detail. But with two full armies, totaling forty thousand men, Marcellus and Crispinus could pin him to that position. He would have to answer to the offer of battle or confront a siege. It was exactly what Marcellus had hoped for all these past months.
He called me up alongside of him. Our horses nickered and tromped at the ground uneasily. Marcellus pointed out the parts of the valley that most interested him, then watched while I drew with the stylus. Marcellus was a high-minded man, not just a bludgeoning soldier. I think he would have read the Greek tragedies if his life had not been so consumed by the duties of war. But more than that, he wanted to know mathematics and geometry, and that allowed me to know him. There were nights in camp when I would be invited to share dinner with him and Marcus. Invariably, toward the end of the meal, Marcellus would ask me to demonstrate a simple proof and I would draw it in the campfire ashes with a stick.
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