The Death of Marcellus

by Dan Armstrong

  Pulcher eyed him doubled over, then looked at his brother. “Make sure he keeps something down. The day gets awfully long on an empty stomach.”

  At the first glimpse of the sun peaking its sullen eye over the horizon, Marcellus hung his scarlet cloak on the camp gate. Tensions quickened as the orders were dispersed. The first line would contain the Twentieth legion on the left and the levies from Venusia on the right. The second line would reverse that. The Eighteenth would be on the right and the troops from Brundisium on the left.

  Hannibal didn’t leave us in doubt. His blue cloak appeared at his camp’s gate moments after Marcellus’. Apparently he was tired of dodging battle and knew he would have to accept Marcellus’ challenge eventually. No sooner did our men march from camp and assemble in formation, than the Carthaginian forces did the same, also in two lines, but with twenty elephants in between. I watched from outside the camp’s front gate.

  Our soldiers immediately began pounding on their shields. When the noise reached the volume of thunder, Marcellus gave the signal for the war trumpets. Hannibal did the same. The velites broke into a run. Hannibal’s slingers and javelineers raced out to meet them. The opposing lines began their determined march toward each other. The battle was underway.

  When the skirmishers peeled away, the two lines met with a ferocity built up over weeks of frustration. Even from a distance, I could see our eager young generals on horseback in their gleaming bronze armor, both of them in the thick of things on the first line. If Nero killed twenty men the afternoon before, the way he was fighting he would take down fifty before the day was over. Lentulus seemed likely to match him.

  In the wide open countryside, Hannibal had no magician’s trick to undo us. His cavalry numbers had diminished and were more easily contained by the added number of equestrians on our side.

  The battle raged through the first half of the morning, neither side gaining an obvious advantage. Both armies fought with unusual spirit. After all the cat-and-mouse, they seemed anxious to finally put their lives on the line.

  Despite Nero’s heroic efforts, just short of noon, the levies from Venusia began to fall back under pressure from Hannibal’s Libyan infantry.

  Marcellus, watching on horseback from a slight elevation, and flanked by his twelve lictors, withdrew his gladius and chopped at the air four times. Four quick bursts from the trumpets signaled for the Eighteenth legion to replace the failing right. The introduction of a second line was always a difficult maneuver. The communication necessary between the advancing Eighteenth and the retreating allies never happened. The allies simply turned, broke rank, and ran right into the oncoming Eighteenth.

  What should have been a strengthening of the right disintegrated into confusion, jeopardizing the center and all sense of order. Marcellus was forced to call for a general retreat before he could answer with the allies from Brundisium. Of the ten thousand men in the first line, nearly a third were killed in the action. Four centurions were lost. Two tribunes, Helvius Paetus, who had just joined us, and the recently promoted Gaius Tubero, also fell. Six standards were lost, all on the right. We escaped complete rout with an ugly, scrambling retreat into camp. Hannibal couldn’t risk the heavy losses of advancing on a fortified camp and pulled his troops back once we had reached the palisades.

  While Hannibal’s men remained on the battlefield to pick through the field of corpses for weapons and plunder, our army huddled in camp like a pack of beaten dogs licking their wounds. Marcellus was furious that his men had broken order. A maneuver that should have saved the right brought about its collapse. This reflected badly on Nero, but Marcellus already knew that the levies from Venusia were a weaker contingent, not nearly as well-trained or as enthusiastic for combat as the Roman legionnaires under Lentulus on the left.

  Marcellus called all the officers to headquarters immediately after the battle. Several of them had suffered significant injuries during the fighting. Lentulus had wounds on both arms and legs. None were serious, but he had clearly been actively engaged. Nero had returned to camp covered in the blood of the enemy. He was as enraged as Marcellus at the breakdown and strode back and forth in the tent like a caged tiger, swearing at the ineptitude of his charges.

  Purpurio and Marcus were part of the Eighteenth. They had seen limited action because of the confusion in the second line’s advance and subsequent retreat. They had only minor injuries.

  Because of the number of casualties, all the officers expected a retreat from Asculum to reassemble and wait for reinforcements. Nothing could have been further from Marcellus’ mind. I had been in Marcellus’ company for almost four years. Never had I seen him more angry. He told the commanders to assemble the entire army in the intervallum behind the officers’ tents.

  It didn’t take long. The space was just large enough for an orderly assembly. The men packed in close, more or less in their maniples and cohorts, mumbling and talking among themselves. Those who were too badly wounded to walk were carried. When Marcellus exited from headquarters, the army, now significantly reduced from its twenty thousand, immediately silenced. He surveyed the array of soldiers for some time before speaking.

  “Am I facing Romans?” he asked softly, as though truly befuddled. “Or am I facing some lower breed of humanity? We should thank the gods that the enemy didn’t pursue us in retreat. I fear we would have deserted our camp as hastily as we deserted the battlefield.” His voice gradually built in volume and intensity. His eyes sought out the officers, one by one, who stood across the front of the assembly.

  “What was the meaning of this debacle today? Did you forget who we are and what we are about? Those men across the way are the same men we faced last summer. The same men we chased into their camp yesterday afternoon. Not some new and fearsome agents of the unknown!

  “Last night when we withdrew from the enemy,” continued Marcellus, now revealing his anger and nearly shouting, “we left a tired and beaten army in that camp over there.” He pointed across the battlefield bedewed with blood. “We should have assembled today full of confidence. The commands I issued should have been carried out with a precision more important than life itself. Instead the entire right fell into disorder.”

  Marcellus hung his head and shook it in disgrace. When his eyes lifted, he continued with even greater intensity. “I saw your frustration when we chased Hannibal’s army through Apulia. I felt the impatience in the camp. I heard the mumbling about marching week after week. And yet today, when we finally entered the battle that all of you have demanded for more than a month—had itched for! that our entire campaign was focused on!—you couldn’t answer the call.”

  And it was true. Instead of rising to the occasion, our men had taken a beating. The mood among the officers was foul, among the soldiers something worse. Many stood there now with serious injuries. Some lay on the ground because they could not stand. When I dared to look into the eyes of the men, Marcellus’ harangue seemed to pain them more than their wounds.

  “All we showed the enemy today was our backsides,” continued Marcellus, really laying it on his men, revealing the fraying edge of his usually well-managed patience. Even as he spoke, between his pauses, we could hear the celebration that filled the Carthaginian camp two miles away.

  “I do not accept what happened today. In my mind it did not occur. It is too impossible to believe.” Marcellus paused again to look out at the men before him, as though using his eyes to infuse them with the energy and passion and pride that coursed through him.

  Marcellus may have been maligned in Rome, but in camp, he was the kind of leader whose respect was sought by the soldiers. They admired him. They looked up to him. And on this evening, his words stung. They would rather die the next day than fail Marcellus a second time. Here and there in the ranks men cried at the ignominy. Others called out for redemption and another chance to prove their worth. And though I’m sure no one expected it—the defeat had been too thorough, the losses too great—that is what Marcellus ga
ve them.

  “I realize we took a hard hit today,” he shouted. “But we’re not finished here. We will line up tomorrow at dawn as though what happened today were a dream to be forgotten. War is a competition in pain. Whoever can endure the most will prevail. Tomorrow morning we will show Hannibal what real Romans are made of.”

  Despite the awful condition of the men and the horror they would likely face the next day, a huge cheer arose from the mass of them, so loud the Carthaginian camp must have heard it and wondered what it meant.

  Marcellus concluded his scolding with one final reprimand. “The maniples that lost their standards today will be given rations of barley tonight instead of wheat.” He may as well have called them cowards.

  The centurions who had led those six maniples were called to the front. Before the entire army, they were stripped of their armor and weapons and dismissed from the camp. Execution would have been a lesser punishment for veterans such as these.

  With that, Marcellus turned from the men and disappeared into the headquarters’ tent. He was a man of such great pride that I’m sure he felt the disgrace personally, and that the pain of failure hurt him more deeply than it did those centurions he had cast out.

  That night the camp was silent except for the periodic screams elicited by the surgeon’s blade. When I returned to our tent, only four of the others in unit were present. Our maniple, as part of the Eighteenth, had fought sparingly at the end of the engagement, but had still taken losses. Both of the new recruits, the twins Titus and Horatius, had been killed during the bungled transition from the second line to the first. Seppius had been trampled to death in the retreat. Pulcher’s right arm was bandaged from wrist to shoulder, and the carroube on the right side of his face had been shorn off, leaving a bright red crater on his chin. It had to have hurt badly, but he pretended it was nothing. Troglius had no significant wounds. Decius’ left forearm and hand were mangled. He groaned throughout the night. Gnaeus had taken a blow to the head. He had wrapped it in a tunic and slept as though unconscious.

  CHAPTER 64

  The next morning Marcellus’ scarlet cloak hung on the camp gate. The mood in the camp was subdued but intent. Every soldier in a red tunic felt that the censure they had received the night before was justified and that each would rectify that today. As the orders were dispersed and the men assembled in battle formation, Marcellus must have sensed the change in the attitude of his men and, I’m sure, expected to see it translated into a victory on the battlefield despite their battered condition.

  Marcellus deliberately aligned the troops in the same order as the day before. This meant that those in the thickest part of the fighting the previous day, including those who had been reprimanded for failing to maintain order, were again in the front line, given the chance for immediate redemption. The cavalry, now reduced to less than fifteen hundred equestrians, was divided into equal parts on the flanks of the first line.

  Purpurio, who had been on the second line the first day, was there again chafing for action, as was Marcus. Cornelius Nero, whose Venusian levies had failed him despite his valor, rode back and forth behind the line, screaming at his men as they assembled, pointing out any imbalance in their ranks.

  Marcellus was at the front of the formation. He rode his white charger down the length of the first line, challenging the men to be Romans and to prove that what had happened the day before had been an aberration.

  Marcellus, who had been in no action the previous day, had decided to lead the initial charge. He would be surrounded by his lictors and would slip back to a command position behind the first line as the two armies converged. Such a move was not unusual for a younger general. For Marcellus, a year short of sixty, it was a statement to his men about who he was and who they must be. It seemed extreme to me. For the first time, I wondered if his obsession with Hannibal had gone too far.

  Hannibal must have been shocked that Marcellus offered battle after such a difficult defeat the day before. The Carthaginian could not have wanted a full engagement that second morning. He had taken his own losses and surely felt that he must conserve his men for situations of greater strategic import, especially with his brother due to arrive with reinforcements. But Marcellus was obviously not going away. Weakened as the Roman army was, Hannibal must have thought why not finally eliminate stubborn Marcellus while he had the chance? Whatever his reasoning, he gave the order to assemble for battle.

  The Carthaginian formation mirrored that of the day before. Hannibal’s heavy infantry formed the center of the first line. Maharbal took the right flank with the Numidian cavalry. The Carthaginian heavy cavalry took the left. The second line was largely made up of tribal warriors from northern Italy or the mountains of Spain. The twenty elephants, which had not come into play the day before, were again stationed between the two lines.

  I have never watched any engagement with more apprehension. I had traveled with the army now for almost two years and had witnessed several battles of more than forty thousand men, all involving Hannibal, all critical to the war, and always anticipating a victory for our side. And yet this morning, after what had been such a horrible display of soldiering the day before, I expected defeat.

  The battle began with unusual intensity. The velites raced forward hurling their spears into the Carthaginian first line while the Balearic slingers launched their lead pellets. Our entire first line lifted their shields as one to cover themselves as the tiny bombs thundered down like hail upon their wooden bucklers.

  Marcellus sat on his horse at the center of the first line throughout this first wave of missiles, then proceeded forward with the hastati, surrounded by his lictors. When the legionnaires’ advance turned into a charge, Marcellus let them pass, and slipped back into the maniples of triarii. At the moment the two opposing lines met, Marcellus oversaw the most intense fighting, gladius upraised, shouting encouragement and direction. Those who had run the day before now attacked like madmen against Hannibal’s most hardened veterans.

  From my position outside the camp, slightly above the level of the battlefield, it was evident that the Carthaginians were as determined to do away with us as we were determined to do away with them. Even at Numistro, I had not witnessed such furious fighting for so long a period with neither side gaining an advantage.

  Not long after midday, Hannibal, who much like Marcellus directed his men from horseback at the rear of the first line, ordered his elephants to advance. His men parted to provide lanes for the gigantic beasts to lumber forward wearing their polished breast plates and howdahs, each carrying four archers with arrows taut in their bows.

  The elephants’ impact was immediate. The order that had held like iron through the first half of the day broke down as the elephants surged into our line, trampling our soldiers and opening two large gaps on the right, exposing Nero’s center. What had been an indecisive battle suddenly seemed to favor the Carthaginians, as disorder spread across the right side of our line.

  With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I watched what appeared to be a repeat of the previous day. Then, out of nowhere, Gaius Flavus rose above the fray. He snatched the standard from the most advanced maniple, and waving it like a banner, encouraged the men to follow him. Such was his courage and energy I’m sure Marcellus’ words from the night before still rang in his ears.

  Flavus sprinted for the closest elephant. Swinging the heavy standard like a weapon, he smashed it into the animal’s eye, causing the beast to turn ninety degrees from the direction of attack. Flavus then ordered the principes to open lanes for the elephants to pass through and to aim their javelins at the soft skin under the elephants’ tails as they thundered by. The effort of this one man amid the mayhem of twenty thousand turned the battle.

  The use of elephants was always a gamble. The mahout carried a wedge and a mallet. Should the elephant become uncontrollable, the mahout would drive the wedge into the base of the beast’s head where the skull met the spinal column, killing the animal instan
tly.

  The barrage of javelins sent eleven of the elephants into a trumpeting frenzy. The huge beasts turned away from the attack, tens of javelins poking from their backsides, directly into the Numidian cavalry mounting an attack on the right flank. When the mass of elephants and horses collided, forty of the Numidians went down in a heap. Those behind ran over them, trampling their own men and horses. The commotion of animals and men turned the elephants another ninety degrees, completely reversing their original direction. As one they stampeded back through the Carthaginian’s first and second lines, headed for their own camp, ready to break through the ramparts. With no other choice, the mahouts killed the enraged beasts one by one, toppling over howdahs, archers, and animals like toys.

  On Marcellus’ order, the front line reformed with the reserves from the second line. With one great push, they threw the Carthaginians back on their heels, reversing the momentum of the battle. Hannibal, who had seen elephants run wild before, wasted no time and sounded the retreat, hoping to save as much of his army as possible.

  Bent on revenge for the previous day, Marcellus pressed on, ordering both lines to pursue the retreating Carthaginians all the way to their camp. Five of the elephants went down in front of the camp’s main gate, blocking the way in. Our soldiers caught the Carthaginians from behind as they fought among themselves to scramble over the elephants’ carcasses for the safety of their camp.

  Marcellus called for an all-out assault on the camp, but the Carthaginians stiffened. The battle across the ramparts became little more than butchery on both sides. Flesh and gore filled the air. A red mist rose above the Carthaginian camp like fog above a cursed burial ground. The day had become too long and the casualties too great to force the issue. Marcellus, watching from behind the action, raised his gladius above his head and made six long passes through the air. The trumpets sounded for disengagement. The soldiers pulled back from the ramparts in clusters. The fighting mercifully came to an end.