by Rob Edmunds
Amongst the troopers, the most frequent anecdote that referred to him, and one that was usually recited resentfully rather than admiringly, related to his return to the senate in Carthage after the devastating victory at Cannae. Wishing to convince a wavering legislature of Hannibal’s military efficacy, he brought with him a large basket, which he threw onto the assembly floor. In the basket were hundreds of gold rings, all of which had been cut from the fingers of dead Roman nobles. It made the dramatic impact it had intended. For the troops, however, it garnered him a reputation for meanness. Under other commanders, a lot of those fingers would have been fair game. It was a campfire lesson that Masinissa swore he would never lose sight of. If someone risked their lives for you and came through the other side, compensation was due.
Since that time, Mago had relocated to the Iberian front, and he had continued his good fortune in the peninsula. He had scored many successes against the twin Roman armies of Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus and Publius Cornelius Scipio. Why did the Roman praetors insist on such pompous names? Fortunately, the Carthaginians, Iberians and Numidians had no reason to address them so grandly, and abbreviated their titles tersely at all times. Gnaeus and Publius or often just G and P were much simpler and more succinct descriptions. A recent victory against Publius’s legions had reaffirmed to others the qualities of Mago’s command, and had buffed his swagger and haughtiness. At Akra Leuke, his forces had ambushed and killed nearly 2,000 Roman troops. Mago spared no one and crucified many, including all the commanding officers. His savagery, as much as his victories, convinced many of the wavering local tribes to stay true to the Carthaginian cause. Of course, it wasn’t the first time he had demonstrated his facility for ambushes. His flawless attack of the rear of the Roman forces at the Battle of the Trebbia River was an early sign of his prowess in that type of warfare.
He had been given a substantial army to campaign with as well; many of whom were very capable veterans. He had crossed from Tingi with nearly 12,000 infantry; 1,500 cavalry, many of whom were Numidians; and twenty elephants. These numbers had taken barely a dent, even during the period when Hasdrubal had returned to North Africa to help crush Syphax’s insurrection. That operation had left him at a significant numerical disadvantage to his Roman enemies in the field, but he had preserved the status quo, the key lines of engagement and territorial possessions.
From a purely martial perspective, there was a lot to gain from Mago’s acquaintance. He knew Hannibal’s tactics intimately and had learnt a great deal about campaigning during his time with him. Masinissa had paid attention to much of this and much that had come from third parties, notably Gisco, but he struggled to force himself to seek out his company when the chance arose. It was a visceral disdain, and he went with it. Still, he couldn’t argue that the youngest son of the mighty Hamilcar, the most junior of the Lion’s brood, had more than proven himself. The fact that he had gone about it with excessively bloodthirsty zeal and contempt was the part that Masinissa couldn’t quite reconcile himself to. Gala had always told him that you have to have honour to be a hero; it wasn’t just victories and conquest. By that measure, Mago would never be a hero, at least not in Masinissa’s eyes.
Whilst it was clear that Masinissa and Mago were never going to share a brew or confide in one another anything other than manly resolve to do one’s duty, there were some signs of esprit elsewhere in the war room when Masinissa had a moment to turn away from the arid ruthlessness of the Barcid brothers. As much as he loathed much of Hasdrubal Gisco’s behaviour, he was much preferable to his namesake Hasdrubal Barca and said namesake’s younger brother, the aforementioned Mago. Neither appeared to brook any interference in their planning or paid any heed to suggestions that were offered. At least Gisco could raise a smile. Nevertheless, Gisco still remained in the category of people he would prefer to steer around rather than towards.
The most likely sources of relief from the blithe and hubristic Carthaginian commanders were the colourful local chieftains, whom Masinissa hoped would have an easier outlook and at least shards of a shared language. Two such were the chieftains Indibilis and Mandonius. Relatively young as they were, they could be regarded as veterans of the Iberian campaigns. Masinissa knew that the eldest of these, Indibilis, had a reputation for liveliness. Chieftains weren’t always noted for their cleverness or wit, but Indibilis was, and Masinissa could see by the warm greeting Indibilis gave him as he entered the villa that they would get on fine.
Indibilis had commanded the formidable tribal forces of the Llergetes, which had been the most powerful tribe in the north of the peninsula for much of the early part of the Iberian war, and a much more effective army than anything the southern Turdetani, Bastetani or even the Celtiberi of the vast central plateau had managed to field. A lot of traffic had passed through their territories over the years since Hannibal had marched north, and an alliance was more than useful. Indibilis and his men had fought bravely and suffered terrible losses. When they were introduced, Masinissa remembered to acknowledge these sacrifices, and complimented Indibilis on his kinsman’s reputation for valour, and it obviously had pleased him immensely. It was a good start!
The personal bravery of Indibilis had been demonstrated amply at the Battle of Cissa, where he had first engaged the forces of Gnaeus. He was defeated and imprisoned, but regained his liberty within the year and resumed offensive manoeuvres quickly against the Romans and the Iberian tribes that had aligned themselves with them. This impudence was met with devastating reprisals by Gnaeus, who employed a combination of slaughter and imprisonment to quell the uprising, or at least take the sting out of it. Indibilis, with Mandonius and support from Hasdrubal Barca, fought on and resisted in a series of battles against the Romans and their Celtiberian allies. The later estimates from that campaign calculated that the Roman forces, whilst suffering comparable losses, killed 15,000 of the Llergetes, and imprisoned and enslaved a further 4,000.
Despite these devastating losses and depredations, the two brothers proved redoubtable and almost preternaturally resolute. Their reputation as field commanders exceeded any aside from Hannibal himself, although they were regarded a little suspiciously by the Carthaginians, particularly by Gisco, who seemed very keen to take the wives of the chieftains to New Carthage as potential hostages to guarantee their fidelity to the alliance. Masinissa was well aware of that sort of conduct, having had the dubious honour of the gilded cage in his own youth, and he felt a certain fellowship with the Llergetes as a result. The Carthaginian vortex sucked in a lot of convenient, rather than sincere, allies, and it appeared that Indibilis and Mandonius were in the same boat as Masinissa, albeit one that had seen most of its crew slaughtered already. Their reputation, though, had clearly influenced recruitment, and at that point they boasted a freshly raised force of over 7,000, mostly from the Suessetani tribe. How these men were likely to be deployed and regarded by the Carthaginian high command was moot, but, in Masinissa’s eyes, they had fodder or bait scored right through them. Nevertheless, his greeting to Indibilis was fulsome and warm, as if he were embracing a man who had already trod the path that he was on, rather than someone who may be destined to cross it.
To a bystander, the meeting couldn’t have put two more impressive figures together. Indibilis, whilst not as conspicuously athletic as Masinissa, cut an imposing figure. His forearms were so powerful that the individual muscle groups were very obvious, with his brachioradialis pulsing as he gripped Masinissa’s hand. Ordinarily, he was quite suspicious towards, even derisive of, people with forceful handshakes, as if they were attempting to project their authority or machismo upon him. Such attempts were rare with someone of Masinissa’s size, but it invariably invited his ridicule and scorn. Indibilis’s handshake was of a different order. It was simply the greeting of a strong man wishing to make a connection with another. There was no squeeze. He just put his mitt in Masinissa’s, and held it like a rope. There was a ragged cicatrix biting into the
gap between his forefinger and thumb, suggesting a parried assault of some kind. It was curious, as even a weak swipe into that region with any weapon ought to have sheared the thumb right off. Indibilis must have been rescued at the exact point of losing the digit or else he had managed to take out his adversary’s limb only moments before he had his fingers orphaned. He also seemed to be missing a corner of his ear, but his hair was very long, perhaps as a means to conceal the deformation, and the hint of loss Masinissa was given was covered quickly by the forward-sweeping mass of Indibilis’s impressive mane.
“How are you finding this?” Masinissa asked, deliberately leaving the remark vague enough for Indibilis to respond in any way he chose.
“The same as ever; nothing changes but the terrain and the numbers. Essentially, we take this many in one direction, you take that many, we meet here, hope to confuse and encircle the Romans, and we all come out of it in one piece, exultant and victorious – though, of course, most of the poor buggers probably won’t, even if we’re fortunate enough to prevail,”
“Ah, you cynic,” Masinissa scoffed approvingly. “This is genius at work. Don’t you think you ought to sit back and marvel at the invention and ingenuity of our commanders?” His words saturated with irony.
“I hope you’re right, but these guys…” and he motioned mostly towards Mago. “They don’t see much of the ends of these young men they’ve armed and fired up. They shout at them at the beginning of battle, but they don’t say prayers over them at the end, and, for each, put enough of their body in one pit to make it look like there’s a whole person there. They don’t see what all that young pride and enthusiasm is squashed into. Glory is not what it’s cracked up to be.” He looked at Masinissa with a desolate expression, almost imploring him to fill him with some hope or shred of purpose.
“I guess. In their minds, it’s their job merely to kill and conquer. For us too, but our part is also to stay alive and keep our troops alive. The Numidians always fight like that. We know we’ll ride for each other, and we’ll rescue as soon as kill.”
The comment was received like a promise of redemption by the weary Indibilis and sparked in him some of the bonhomie that he was renowned for. He clapped Masinissa on his cheeks, then his shoulders and cried out, “Then you’re my guy! If you’re going to ride into a Roman storm just for poor old me, then you’re my guy!”
Masinissa resisted a little bit, but only out of surprise rather than any objection. “You got me too then?” he replied, as if to ensure that the commitment was reciprocal.
“For sure,” came the brisk response. “I’ll slice up anyone who gets within a spear’s length of you or your horse.”
As oral contracts go, that wasn’t a bad one. Indibilis was a survivor and had a peerless battlefield pedigree, so if he had one eye out for Masinissa when it mattered, that would count for a lot. At that point, Mandonius – who was just as hirsute as his kinsman in appearance, only slightly less frayed at the edges – stepped in with a few cups of wine that he was just about keeping from spilling, as they were large and full to the brim.
“OK, kids,” he said puckishly, “let’s get this party started. Make sure someone can tell me in the morning just what we’re meant to do.”
“It won’t be me!” roared Indibilis.
In the background, Mago, who had been pointing at a few charts he had laid out on a table, gave him a withering look as if his deference and attention were mandatory throughout the whole gathering.
“That leaves me then!” said Masinissa with a little mock resignation. He was fortunate that Mago and Hasdrubal were becoming aware that the wilder constituents of their audience were drifting towards revelry, and responded by accelerating their briefing. The plan was relatively basic but mirrored the perceived intentions of Publius and Gnaeus. Scouts had indicated that the Scipios were fielding separate armies, and that Publius’s army was the smaller of the two. The estimates were that he had a force of about 20,000, whilst Gnaeus’s was considerably bigger at approximately 35,000. Mago would go west, Hasdrubal would go to the east, and the forces of Masinissa and Indibilis would disperse ostensibly, but – being more-mobile units – would be ready to aid whichever of the two armies engaged the enemy. They would go to the coast initially, make camp and appear, to all intents and purposes, to be on furlough. The tactical presumption then would be that they would be overlooked, and either of the armies encountering or skirmishing with the Roman units would look weaker, and stripped of effective cavalry and veteran forces. Of the two, it was more likely that Mago’s troops would appear the easier prey, and the agreement was that his troops would agitate more and appear the more bellicose. If the Romans took the bait, they would then rush to their aid collectively, and try to encircle and annihilate them.
That sounded pretty straightforward to Masinissa, and even to Indibilis and Mandonius, who, despite the brisk pace that they were quaffing their wine, were alert enough to imbibe the tactics as well as the alcohol. As they drank, the chieftain’s mood altered with their intoxication. Mandonius grew wilder and looser; he was a proper party animal out of his cage, who was clearly looking for more colourful recreation than Masinissa and Indibilis could provide: either a woman or a brawl being the most likely. By his third cup, he had fuelled himself sufficiently for an excursion into the unsuspecting night, and he was gone in a flurry of hugs and exhortations to join him. The wiser, slightly more sober heads knew he was in the mood to cut them adrift the moment he found a prospective partner for the evening, or at least at the point when he lost consciousness, and they left him to it. Indibilis, by contrast, had been slowed by the wine and had become more maudlin and affectionate. There was wisdom, regret and sorrow in the man, which was not uncommon in men renowned for their humour, and Masinissa, almost paradoxically, took some spiritual succour from him as he exhibited those more private traits. He was someone who could look back and was willing to see the trail he had left behind him: the things he had done and the things he had seen. He could dance and make peace with his own demons, and Masinissa watched him conjure them as they wandered into the night air of the gardens.
The air was cooler, and it dimmed the sobriety of both men. Even as he lost reason and function, Indibilis retained his courtesy. They sat under a tree after a while and enjoyed the scent of the orange blossoms, with Indibilis going to the extent of putting his snout right into the fragrant flowers. The trunk anchored them when they felt as if the earth became more turbulent. Masinissa even acknowledged his loss of equilibrium in a joke about the “choppiness” of the ground, and Indibilis responded with a line about an earthy tempest, which was far less funny a comment than he must have hoped for or intended. They were getting hammered, and their wit was getting as knocked out as them. They were tiring too, and it was likely that they’d both had enough wine to ignore the nuisance of the cool evening and the minor privation of a hard ground for a bed. The pair slouched gradually, improving their view of the stars, to the point where they were almost recumbent and ready to close their eyes for a few hours.
As Masinissa’s last gentle nudge to rest was almost on him, Indibilis made a small-but-dramatic gesture. He patted the ground between the two men’s heads and rubbed the tufty grass between his fingers. “These gardens are lush. This whole region is almost as verdant as the lands of the Astures and Cantabri.” He was right, but the comment was unsettling, as it clearly framed a more doleful thought. Maybe he should have left it there, so both men could switch off their worries and cares, but it was only a precursor – as Masinissa suspected – for a brooding remark. “It’s fertile ground,” Indibilis added cryptically. He made a few more pats and ran his flat palm across the grass. “The soils of Syracuse have the fertility of the volcano to nourish them, but we have to rely on other mulches to enrich our lands. How many proud young men do we have spread over and under our lands, Mas? What will we harvest from all this blood and bone?”
Masinissa
looked at his collapsed new acquaintance and presumptive brother-in-arms, and was lost for words. He struggled for a kind of neutral agricultural analogy to take the sting out of Indibilis’s smashed nihilism. “One day, we’ll bend these swords of ours into ploughs, my friend and what has rotted beneath will nurture us. We’ll see the flowers grow and the fruits ripen, and enjoy them as the birth of a new day and a new time.” As the words tumbled forth he almost believed them himself, and, as an emotional salve, it did the trick.
Indibilis gave him a gentle nod as if he had mastered his trial and his pains were subsiding. Masinissa had expended his reserves of reason and thought in the comforting words he had managed to offer at the edge of his lucidity. He had scaled the mountain of clarity that wine can often allow you to climb, and by then he was tumbling down the other side of the slope into dreams and insensibility.
Indibilis rolled away, and Masinissa just caught his final words, which retained much of his yearning melancholy. “Oh earth, if I could sleep in your moistness for all eternity like my brothers, I would be at peace. When I am exhausted and defeated, and I trade the elements I inhabit, and give up air for earth for good, roll over me and cherish me. Even as you consume my flesh, liberate my soul.”
A portion of Masinissa’s mind, which was still attentive enough to approve, hoped to remember the line in the morning. Alas, his thumping, hungover morning brain would have more prosaic matters to preoccupy it, such as which tree trunk to rest his head on whilst he peed the night away.
