The Siege of Syracuse

by Dan Armstrong

  “I believe you are seeing beyond that wall, Timon. It’s farther than I can see, but can you make out the parapets on the wall along Via Intermuralis?”

  I looked out in that direction. “I can.”

  “It appears to be a straight line from the crystal lens to the parapets above the Achradina gate. Is that what you’re seeing?”

  “Maybe so.” I put the bead to my eye. After much effort, I saw the man’s face. It was upside down but so clear I could guess his age. My hand began to waver and he was gone. I lowered the lens and looked up at Archimedes. The experience was so peculiar I was trembling. “I saw a man’s face in detail. His eyebrows meet over his eyes,” I said excitedly. “And yet the man is so far away, I can barely see him without the lenses. Master, you must see for yourself.”

  “It takes a steadier hand and sharper eye than I have,” said the old mathematician. “You will have to be my eyes until we can find a way to mount the lenses so that I can use them.” He pointed out the east window. “What do you see looking out in this direction?”

  “There’s nothing but water,” I answered.

  “Let’s see if the lenses change that.” He turned the wooden annulus so that the crystal lens faced the east window. I got down on one knee and followed the same procedure I had before. My eyes were tired from squinting, and it was much harder looking off into the distance at nothing than at a specific target like a man or a wall.

  After a few tries, I adjusted the frame that held the crystal. Then again. I was looking for the horizon. It took some time, but at last I saw it sail across the lens. Another slight adjustment of the frame and I had it—upside down—the water on the top, the sky on the bottom. But what was that but a vague line? I wanted a ship to watch. I stood up and scanned the sea. The only boats were in the harbor. No, maybe not. There was a faint spot, just a tiny dot, on the horizon due east. I went back to the crystal and turned it slightly.

  Archimedes watched me the entire time, saying nothing, though understanding, I’m sure, exactly what I was trying to do. I wanted to see a ship pass over the horizon. I wanted to see the curvature of the Earth.

  I applied my eye to the bead and sought out the dot on the horizon. Nothing. I made another slight adjustment of the annulus. Nothing. I made several more adjustments until my face ached from squinting. Then I saw it—the mast of a ship on the horizon, appearing as an inverse. I turned to Archimedes. “I can see a ship’s mast. I don’t know if it’s coming or going.”

  He nodded, obviously enjoying my excitement.

  After many attempts, finding it and losing it again, my hand shaking, my eye muscles cramping, I watched the sail—upside down—climb above the horizon.

  I gasped at the power of the lenses and what I was seeing. “Archimedes, it’s true. The Earth is round! I can see it even more clearly with these lenses.”

  “Did you doubt me, Timon?” he laughed, finally giving in to the thrill.

  I applied myself to the bead and crystal again. I wanted one more look before the in and out of focus made me vomit. This time I saw the full ship. With a Roman sail! Despite my spinning head, I steadied the lens. Another masthead appeared on the horizon to the left and another to the right. All three were Roman ships. I turned to Archimedes. “Three Roman warships are headed this way.” I pointed out to the horizon. Only a few faint dots were visible, indiscernible as ships at that distance, even from the height of the tower. “I can see the insignias on the sails.”

  Archimedes’ face stiffened. “It’s the arrival of the Roman fleet. The siege is about to begin.”

  “We should warn the city,” I exclaimed.

  Archimedes walked away from me and gazed out the window.

  “Shouldn’t we tell Tacitus?” I asked. “Right away!”

  “No.” Archimedes didn’t even face me. “The ships will be visible to everyone before long.”

  “But wouldn’t any advance notice be helpful?”

  “Not at the cost of revealing how we know. Besides, the city is prepared. I have given them all they need to protect themselves.” Archimedes crossed the room, sat in his chair, and hung his head.

  “But what good are these things, Archimedes, if you can’t tell others about them?”

  The scientist had dropped deep within himself. He didn’t even acknowledge my question. For all the wonder of these looking glasses, they were to remain a secret under all circumstances. Even amid a war.

  Archimedes wouldn’t allow me to leave the workshop, so I stayed at the window. Every few minutes I applied my eye to the lenses, watching three, then five, then nine Roman warships come over the horizon just beyond the range of ordinary vision.

  PART IV

  THE SIEGE

  “It will be enough for me if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which will—human nature being what it is—at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.”

  -Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War.

  CHAPTER 60

  While I was watching the vanguard of the Roman fleet through two pieces of glass, Marcellus Claudius was standing at the bow of the lead warship, staring straight ahead at the island of Sicily. The moment to launch the attack was near. His entire fleet sat ready, just beyond eyesight from the shore. He was waiting for the arrival of the haruspex and the sacrificial rituals required before each battle.

  Marcellus had been entrusted with the task of securing Sicily. Leontini had been the first step. The fortress of Syracuse was next. In this fifth year of the war with Hannibal, Rome was struggling. Too many cities had sided with Hannibal already because of his successes on the battlefield. In Marcellus’ opinion, control of Syracuse was the key to all future strategy in the war. It represented the first step in cutting off supply lines to Hannibal’s army in Italy, and along with Lilybaeum, Syracuse was one of the best ports for staging a Roman invasion of Africa. Syracuse going over to Carthage would be a disaster, likely prompting a domino effect in cities across Sicily and up into the Italian peninsula. The war would be lost.

  Marcellus had four legions under his command—forty thousand soldiers, half of them allied troops, half of them Roman citizens. He had a fleet of seventy quinqueremes. He had three huge sea-going catapults, each mounted on a wooden platform suspended between two quinqueremes. The inside oars on both ships were discarded, and only the outside oars were used to propel these slow and cumbersome craft. Four more pairs of ships had been fitted with platforms for wall-scaling devices called sambucas, due to their resemblance to the stringed instrument. When these four-foot wide ladders were lowered onto the walls, wicker screens on their sides and top shielded the climbers from arrows and darts.

  The perimeter walls that circuited Syracuse were either very tall or built atop rocky precipices so difficult to climb that there was no way any great number of men could reasonably surmount them against resistance. However Marcellus knew two places where the walls could conceivably be stormed and scaled. One of these locations was on the city’s northern perimeter between Fort Euryalus and the Hexapylon. The other was on the east side of Syracuse along the harbor quay at the Portico of Scytice—also known as the Little Harbor. Marcellus’ strategy called for simultaneous attacks at both locations, one by land and one by sea.

  Marcellus saw the hooded haruspex exit from the ship’s rear quarters. Two supplicants followed, carrying a lamb upside down by its legs. It screamed like a child as the trio crossed the deck to the bridge.

  Marcellus could barely contain his frustration at the need for this kind of ritual. Three legions under the command of Appius stood in formation outside the walls of Syracuse—one to the south, two to the north—awaiting the signal to begin. As soon as the sacrifice was completed, Marcellus would give the command for the fleet to advance. When the ships reached the edge of the harbor, the legion to the south would attack. Once there was engagement in the south, the two legions in the north, equi
pped with tortoises and penthouses, would storm the low section of wall just west of the Hexapylon. At the same time, the fleet would strike the east side of the city where the walls came down to the water’s edge. Marcellus later told me that he had fully expected to take the city in his first assault.

  The haruspex climbed onto the bridge and greeted the Roman general. Marcellus barely diverted his gaze while the augur sprinkled mola on the lamb’s back and dribbled wine on its forehead. The two assistants then stretched the lamb out on its back on the deck. The haruspex said a prayer, drew his flint knife, and cut the animal’s throat. He watched the animal bleed out, then slit the lamb from stem to stern. He reached into the warm innards like a practiced surgeon, groping for the liver. He lifted the organ from the animal, stringing out bloody strands of flesh and fiber. He cut the liver free and made a cursory appraisal. He stood and spoke to Marcellus’ back. “The gods give you their approval, General.”

  Marcellus graced the man with a glance over his shoulder. “Thank the gods,” he said. No other words were exchanged. The attendants removed the gutted animal, then used three buckets of seawater to flush the blood from the deck.

  Before the priest and his aides had reached their quarters, Marcellus removed his gladius from its scabbard and raised it high over his head. He stroked the air before him three times, signaling the ships on either side of him to proceed as planned. The signal was repeated throughout the fleet until all seventy ships were cutting through the water, oars pulling, sails snapping, bearing down on Syracuse.

  CHAPTER 61

  Using the lenses, I counted the warships as their masts rose up over the horizon. After a while I didn’t need the lenses. Nor did anyone else in Syracuse. The battlements quickly filled with soldiers, and the long anticipated confrontation was underway.

  From my vantage point in the tower, I could watch both sides move into position. The Roman fleet stretched out in two long lines, perhaps a mile off shore. Beyond the north wall, visible only with the aid of the lenses, Appius’ two legions were ready for battle. A third Roman legion stood in formation across the farmland to the south. Eight catapults squatted behind them like huge animals.

  Last-minute preparations continued atop the fortress walls. Soldiers positioned the catapults and loaded them with stones. Tens of Archimedes’ cranes swung out over the walls like monstrous giraffes. Batteries of ballistae, twenty side by side, tensed like mechanical insects, their stingers cocked and ready to strike.

  Archimedes wanted none of it. He settled into scratching out a proof on a piece of papyrus. But it was living theater to me. Barely containing my excitement, I moved from window to window, watching the battle unfold.

  When the first line of Roman ships got within a half mile of the shore, the single legion in the south began to march forward. I would learn years later in my talks with Marcellus that this first troop movement was a feint, designed to force defenders to move from one location to another. This strategy might have worked had it not been for Archimedes’ preparations.

  As soon as the soldiers in the south began to advance on the walls, three catapults on the south battlement let go with large boulders, one right after the other. The first fell short. The second overshot the Roman line by fifty feet. The third boulder hit directly in the center of the line, causing tremendous damage. At that point, ten more catapults launched boulders. Seven were direct hits, crushing scores of men like so many ants. The diversion never had a chance. The Roman line pulled back to what was assumed to be a safe distance. Five more catapults followed with four devastating hits on the more distant line. The Romans moved back even farther. This was the first sign that Marcellus had underestimated his task.

  By this time the Roman fleet was approaching the Little Harbor, aimed at a location on the quay where the ships could get close to the walls without fear of the surf. Well before these ships reached the walls, catapults on the east battlements let go with five range-finding shots. Two sailed over the second line of quinqueremes. Two others splashed amid the flotilla, and the fifth scored a direct hit, disabling and eventually sinking the vessel.

  Archimedes’ mid-range catapults were more accurate than the larger ones. The pairs of ships carrying the Roman catapults were targeted first. Two were struck and sunk before they were close enough to use their weapons. The third was damaged so badly it could not participate in the battle. Two of the sambucas were similarly destroyed by direct hits. The other two managed to get beneath the arc of the catapults, but the ballistae launched their javelins with such accuracy and force that the sambucas were torn to pieces, and the ships were forced to retreat. At this point, Marcellus called off the attack and the entire fleet retreated to the south.

  Appius and his two legions fared no better in the north. Archimedes understood that one of the lowest and most accessible parts of the city perimeter was between the Hexapylon and Fort Euryalus. When he designed his defenses, this portion of the battlements was one of the most heavily armed, as Appius was about to discover.

  His troops received a barrage of large boulders even before Appius had given the order to charge. The trumpets’ call to attack was hardly heard over the shrieks and cries of crushed Roman hastati. When the front line broke from a march into a run, the sky darkened with an array of javelins and stones. Those few soldiers who reached the base of the wall were treated to the crane and claw. Individual men were lifted into the air some thirty or forty feet, then dropped in full armor to their death. Others were flattened by rocks dropped from above. Stunned, Appius stared out over the farmland littered with huge stones and mutilated Roman soldiers and sounded the general retreat.

  I didn’t see it all first hand, but I witnessed the most impressive part—the range and accuracy of the catapults and ballistae. The quinqueremes simply had no chance of getting close enough to the walls to use the sambucas.

  Archimedes never stood from his desk. I shrieked with amazement or gasped at what I saw, but the mastermind of it all never even turned his head.

  After the battle, when the Roman fleet had disappeared over the horizon, all that could be heard was the sound of the city populace celebrating in the streets. I couldn’t resist saying something to Archimedes. I stood up to the workbench directly across from where he sat peering through his lens, trying to complete the proof he would eventually have me copy and send across the Mediterranean to one of the five people in the world who could understand it. After a while he looked up, one eye white with cataract, the other so intense you might think light projected from it. “And so, Timon, what have you seen?”

  “That you have saved the city, master.”

  He nodded slowly. “For now, perhaps.” He turned his attention back to his work.

  I spoke anyway. “It was impressive, master. I don’t believe a single inhabitant of our city was seriously injured.”

  He didn’t acknowledge my compliment. I returned to my desk and a letter to be copied. My head was so full of the battle and the visions I had seen through the two lenses that I couldn’t concentrate. The world had changed right before my eyes. It seemed larger and filled with possibilities.

  CHAPTER 62

  By late afternoon the Roman soldiers had settled back into their camps, and the warships had gone south to the shelter of Cape Pachynum. A city that had been in a state of fear was now celebrating. The Romans had been repelled with very little damage to the city and only minor injuries to those manning the battlements.

  That evening I went down to the kitchen as I always did. Hektor, Lavinia, Agathe, and Eurydice were preparing a huge victory dinner for the island garrison. They all had cups of wine in their hands or within arm’s reach. Hektor even offered me a cup, the first I’d had since arriving in Syracuse.

  Archimedes never cared when his food arrived, so I worked with the staff all through dinner that night. I had several cups of wine over the course of the meal and still managed to do my work without dropping anything. Spirits were so high among the staff and the s
oldiers that no one would have cared anyway.

  Afterward, I sat on a bag of oats in the pantry to finish a last cup of wine before taking Archimedes his meal. Despite the victory, my thoughts had turned melancholy. I dwelled on the possibility of never seeing Moira again.

  Hektor came down the stairs and sat down opposite me. “How you doing there, Timon?” he asked, a full cup in his hand and a playful look in his bloodshot eyes.

  “Okay,” I said, not feeling that way at all.

  “Will you be able to get upstairs with that food?” He motioned to the tray I had assembled.

  “Once I’m done with this last little bit.” I lifted the cup and forced a grin.

  “How are you doing with that girl?” he quizzed, leaning forward.

  “I don’t know where she is.” I blurted it out. “She could be gone for good,” I added, revealing the thing I feared most.

  Hektor shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve seen her since they closed the gates.”

  “Where?” I gasped.

  Hektor laughed. “She and her grandfather have a tent. I can’t say precisely where, but within the walls of the city.”

  This was exactly what I needed to hear. I finished off my wine in a single swallow.

  Hektor grinned. “You diddle her yet?”

  I grinned stupid and stuck out my hand. “Smell my fingers.”

  He grabbed my hand and sniffed. “Smells like dishwater to me,” he snapped, dropping my hand.

  I began to giggle. He grew indignant, but before he could utter a single profanity, he burst into laughter himself. We laughed and laughed and laughed, both drunk enough to be silly. Never before or since have I laughed so hard. Then I suddenly stopped. “Where exactly do you stick your fingers to get them stinky?”