In late Quinctilis of the calendar, the Cimbri reached the Athesis River where it joined the Isarcus, the stream they had followed down from the Pass of Brennus. Here in verdant alpine meadows they spread out a little, and looked up to the height of the mountains against a rich and cloudless sky. And here the scouts Sulla had sent out discovered them.
Though he had thought himself prepared for every contingency, Sulla hadn’t dreamed of the one he now was called upon to cope with; for he didn’t yet know Catulus Caesar well enough to predict how he would react to the news that the Cimbri were at the head of the Athesis Valley and about to invade Italian Gaul.
“So long as I live, no German foot will touch Italian soil!” said Catulus Caesar in ringing tones when the matter was discussed in council. “No German foot will touch Italian soil!” he said again, rising majestically from his chair and looking at each of his senior officers in turn. “We march.”
Sulla stared. “We march?” he asked. “We march where?”
“Up the Athesis, of course,” said Catulus Caesar, with a look on his face that said he considered Sulla a fool. “I shall turn the Germans back across the Alps before an early snow makes that impossible.”
“How far up the Athesis?” Sulla asked.
“Until we meet them.”
“In a narrow valley like the Athesis?”
“Certainly,” said Catulus Caesar. “We’ll be in much better case than the Germans. We’re a disciplined army; they’re a vast and unorganized mob. It’s our best chance.”
“Our best chance is where the legions have room to deploy,” said Sulla.
“There’s more than enough room along the Athesis for as much deployment as we’ll need.” And Catulus Caesar would hear no further argument.
Sulla left the council with mind reeling, the plans he had formulated to deal with the Cimbri all worse than useless; he had rehearsed how he would go about feeding whichever one of his alternatives would work the best to Catulus Caesar so that Catulus Caesar thought the scheme was his. Now Sulla found himself with no plan, and could formulate no plan. Not until he managed to persuade Catulus Caesar to change his mind.
But Catulus Caesar would not change his mind. He uprooted the army and made it march upstream along the Athesis where that river flowed a few miles to the east of Lake Benacus, the biggest of the exquisite alpine lakes which filled the laps of the foothills of the Italian Alps. And the further the little army—it contained twenty-two thousand soldiers, two thousand cavalry, and some eight thousand noncombatants—marched northward, the narrower and more forbidding the valley of the Athesis grew.
Finally Catulus Caesar reached the trading post called Tridentum. Here three mighty alps reared up, three jagged broken fangs which had given the area its name of Three Teeth. The Athesis now ran very deep and fast and strong, for its sources lay in mountains where the snows never melted fully, and so fed the river all year round. Beyond Tridentum the valley closed in even more, the road which wound down it to the village petering out where the river roared in full spate beneath a long wooden bridge set on stone piers.
Riding ahead with his senior officers, Catulus Caesar sat his horse gazing around him, and nodding in satisfaction.
“It reminds me of Thermopylae,” he said. “This is the ideal place to hold the Germans back until they give up and turn north again.”
“The Spartans holding Thermopylae all died,” said Sulla.
Catulus Caesar raised his brows haughtily. “And what does that matter, if the Germans are pushed back?”
“But they’re not going to turn back, Quintus Lutatius! Turn back at this time of year, with nothing but snow to their north, their provisions low, and all the grass and grain of Italian Gaul not many miles away to their south?” Sulla shook his head vehemently. “We won’t stop them here,” he said.
The other officers stirred restlessly; all of them had caught Sulla’s jitters since the march up the Athesis began and their common sense screamed that Catulus Caesar’s actions were foolish. Nor had Sulla concealed his jitters from them; if he had to prevent Catulus Caesar from losing his army, he would need the support of Catulus Caesar’s senior staff.
“We fight here,” Catulus Caesar said, and would not be budged. His mind was full of visions of the immortal Leonidas and his tiny band of Spartans; what did it matter if the body died untimely, when the reward was enduring fame?
The Cimbri were very close. It would have been impossible for the Roman army to have marched further north than Tridentum, even if Catulus Caesar had wished it. Despite this, Catulus Caesar insisted upon crossing the bridge with his whole force, and putting it into camp on the wrong side of the river, in a place so narrow the camp stretched for miles north to south, for each legion was strung behind its neighbor, with the last legion bivouacking near the bridge.
“I have been atrociously spoiled,” said Sulla to the primus pilus centurion of the legion closest to the bridge, a sturdy steady Samnite from Atina named Gnaeus Petreius; his legion was Samnite too, composed of Samnite Head Count, and classified as an auxiliary.
“How’ve you been spoiled?” asked Gnaeus Petreius, staring at the flashing water from the side of the bridge; it had no railing, just a low kerb made from logs.
“I’ve soldiered under none but Gaius Marius,” Sulla said.
“Half your luck,” said Gnaeus Petreius. “I was hoping I’d get the chance.” He grunted, a derisive sound. “But I don’t think any of us will, Lucius Cornelius.”
They were standing with a third man, the commander of the legion, who was an elected tribune of the soldiers. None other than Marcus Aemilius Scaurus Junior, son of the Leader of the House—and a keen disappointment to his doughty father. Scaurus Junior turned now from his own contemplation of the river to look at his chief centurion.
“What do you mean, none of us will?” he asked.
Gnaeus Petreius grunted again. “We’re all going to die here, tribunus.”
“Die? All of us? Why?”
“Gnaeus Petreius means, young Marcus Aemilius,” said Sulla grimly, “that we have been led into an impossible military situation by yet another highborn incompetent.”
“No, you’re quite mistaken!” cried young Scaurus eagerly. ‘ ‘I noticed that you didn’t seem to understand Quintus Lutatius’s strategy, Lucius Cornelius, when he explained it to us.”
Sulla winked at the centurion. “You explain it, then, tribunus militum! I’m all agog.”
“Well, there are four hundred thousand Germans, and only twenty-four thousand of us. So we can’t possibly face them on an open battlefield,” said young Scaurus, emboldened by the intent stares of these two Military Men. “The only way we can possibly beat them is to squeeze them up into a front no wider than our own army can span, and hammer at that front with all our superior skill. When they realize we won’t be budged—why, they’ll do the usual German thing, and turn back.”
“So that’s how you see it,” said Gnaeus Petreius.
“That’s how it is!” said young Scaurus impatiently.
“That’s how it is!” said Sulla, beginning to laugh.
“That’s how it is,” said Gnaeus Petreius, laughing too.
Young Scaurus stood watching them in bewilderment, their amusement filling him with fear. “Please, why is it so funny?”
Sulla wiped his eyes. “It’s funny, young Scaurus, because it’s hopelessly naive.” His hand went up, swept the mountain flanks on either side like a painter’s brush. “Look up there! What do you see?”
“Mountains,” said young Scaurus, bewilderment increasing.
“Footpaths, bridle tracks, cattle trails, that’s what we see!” said Sulla. “Haven’t you noticed those frilly little terraces that make the mountains look like Minoan skirts? All the Cimbri have to do is take to the heights along the terraces and they’ll outflank us in three days—and then, young Marcus Aemilius, we’ll be between the hammer and the anvil. Squashed flatter than a beetle underfoot.”
“Our general has made a bad plan,” said Sulla harshly. “We should have waited for the Cimbri between Verona and Lake Benacus, where we would have had a thousand alternatives to trap them properly, and enough ground to spring our trap.”
“Why doesn’t someone tell Quintus Lutatius, then?” young Scaurus whispered.
“Because he’s just another stiff-rumped consul,” said Sulla. “He doesn’t want to hear anything except the gibberish inside his own head. If he were a Gaius Marius, he’d listen. But that’s a non sequitur—Gaius Marius wouldn’t have needed telling! No, young Marcus Aemilius, our general Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar thinks it best to fight as at Thermopylae. And if you remember your history, you’ll know that one little footpath around the mountain was enough to undo Leonidas.”
Young Scaurus gagged. “Excuse me!” he gasped, and bolted for his tent.
Sulla and Petreius watched him weave along trying to hold his gorge.
“This isn’t an army, it’s a fiasco,” said Petreius.
“No, it’s a good little army,” Sulla contradicted. “The leaders are the fiasco.’’
“Except for you, Lucius Cornelius.”
“Except for me.”
“You’ve got something in your mind,” Petreius said.
“Indeed I do.” And Sulla smiled to show his long teeth.
“Am I allowed to ask what it is?”
“I think so, Gnaeus Petreius. But I’d rather answer you at—dusk, shall we say? In the assembly forum of your own Samnite legion’s camp,” said Sulla. “You and I are going to spend the rest of the afternoon summoning every primus pilus and chief cohort centurion to a meeting there at dusk.” He calculated swiftly under his breath. “That’s about seventy men. But they’re the seventy who really count. Now on your way, Gnaeus Petreius! You take the three legions at this end of the valley, and I’ll hop on my trusty mule and take the three at the far end.”
The Cimbri had arrived that same day just to the north of Catulus Caesar’s six legions, boiling into the valley far ahead of their wagons to be brought up short by the ramparts of a Roman camp. And there remained, boiling, while the word flew through the legions and sightseers made their way north to peer over the wicker breastworks at the chilling sight of more men than any Roman had ever seen—and gigantic men at that.
Sulla’s meeting in the assembly forum of the Samnite legion’s camp took very little time. When it was over, there was still sufficient light in the sky for those who attended it to follow Sulla across the bridge and into the village of Tridentum, where Catulus Caesar had established his headquarters in the local magistrate’s house. Catulus Caesar had called a meeting of his own to discuss the arrival of the Cimbri, and was busy complaining about the absence of his second-in-command when Sulla walked into the crowded room.
“I would appreciate punctuality, Lucius Cornelius,” he said frigidly. “Please sit down, then we can get down to the business of planning our attack tomorrow.”
“Sorry, but I haven’t time to sit down,” said Sulla, who wasn’t wearing a cuirass, but was clad in his leather undersuit and pteryges, and had sword and dagger belted about him.
“If you have more important things to do, then go!” said Catulus Caesar, face mottling.
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” said Sulla, smiling. “The important things I have to do are right here in this room, and the most important thing of all is that there will be no battle tomorrow, Quintus Lutatius.”
Catulus Caesar got to his feet. “No battle? Why?”
“Because you have a mutiny on your hands, and I’m its instigator.’’ Sulla drew his sword. “Come in, centuriones!’’ he called. “It’ll be a bit of a crush, but we’ll all fit.”
None of the original inhabitants of the room said a word, Catulus Caesar because he was too angry, the rest either because they were too relieved—not all the senior staff were happy about the projected battle of the morrow—or too bewildered. Seventy centurions filed through the door and stood densely packed behind and to both sides of Sulla, thus leaving about three feet of vacant space between themselves and Catulus Caesar’s senior staff—who were now all standing, literally with their backs against the wall.
“You’ll be thrown off the Tarpeian Rock for this!” said Catulus Caesar.
“If I have to, so be it,” said Sulla, and sheathed his sword. “But when is a mutiny really a mutiny, Quintus Lutatius? How far can a soldier be expected to go in blind obedience? Is it true patriotism to go willingly to death when the general issuing the orders is a military imbecile?”
It was nakedly obvious that Catulus Caesar just did not know what to say, could not find the perfect rejoinder to such brutal honesty. On the other hand, he was too proud to splutter inarticulate expostulations, and too sure of his ground to make no reply at all. So in the end he said, withcold dignity, “This is untenable, Lucius Cornelius!”
Sulla nodded. “I agree, it is untenable. In fact, our whole presence here in Tridentum is untenable. Tomorrow the Cimbri are going to find the hundreds of paths along the slopes of the mountains made by cattle, sheep, horses, wolves. Not one Anopaea, but hundreds of Anopaeas! You are not a Spartan, Quintus Lutatius, you’re a Roman, and I’m surprised your memories of Thermopylae are Spartan rather than Roman! Didn’t you learn how Cato the Censor used the Anopaea footpath to outflank King Antiochus? Or did your tutor feel Cato the Censor was too lowborn to serve as an example of anything beyond hubris? It’s Cato the Censor at Thermopylae I admire, not Leonidas and his royal guard, dying to the last man! The Spartans were willing to die to the last man simply to delay the Persians long enough for the Greek fleet to ready itself at Artemisium. Only it didn’t work, Quintus Lutatius. It—didn’t—work! The Greek fleet perished, and Leonidas died for nothing. And did Thermopylae influence the course of the war against the Persians? Of course it didn’t! When the next Greek fleet won at Salamis, there was no prelude at Thermopylae. Can you honestly say you prefer the suicidal gallantry of Leonidas to the strategic brilliance of Themistocles?”
“You mistake the situation,” said Catulus Caesar stiffly, his personal pride in tatters thanks to this red-haired Ulyssean trickster; for the truth was that he cared more to extricate himself with dignitas and auctoritas unimpaired than he did about the fate of either his army or the Cimbri.
“No, Quintus Lutatius, you mistake the situation,” said Sulla. “Your army is now my army by right of mutiny. When Gaius Marius sent me here”—he dropped the name with dulcet clarity into the pool of silence—”I came with only one order. Namely, to make sure this army survives intact until Gaius Marius can take it into his personal care— and he cannot do that until he has defeated the Teutones. Gaius Marius is our commander-in-chief, Quintus Lutatius, and I am acting under his orders at this very moment. When his orders conflict with yours, I obey his orders, not yours. If I permit this foolhardy escapade to continue, this army will lie dead on the field of Tridentum. Well, there is not going to be a field of Tridentum. This army is going to retreat tonight. In one piece. And live to fight another day, when the chances of victory are infinitely better.”
“I vowed no German foot would tread on Italian soil,” said Catulus Caesar, “and I will not be forsworn.”
“The decision isn’t your to make, Quintus Lutatius, so you are not forsworn,” said Sulla.
Quintus Lutatius Catulus Caesar was one of those old-guard senators who refused to wear a golden ring as an insignia of his senatorship; instead, he wore the ancient iron ring all senators had once worn, so when he moved his right hand imperiously at the ogling men filling the room, his index finger didn’t flash a yellow beam—it wrote a dull grey blur upon the air. Utterly still until they saw that grey blur, the men now stirred, moved, sighed.
“Leave us, all of you,” said Catulus
Caesar. “Wait outside. I wish to speak alone with Lucius Cornelius.”
The centurions turned and filed out, the tribunes of the soldiers followed, and Catulus Caesar’s personal staff, and his senior legates. When only Catulus Caesar and Sulla remained, Catulus Caesar returned to his chair and sat down heavily.
He was caught in a cleft stick, and he knew it. Pride had led him up the Athesis; not pride in Rome or in his army, but that pride of person which had prompted him to announce no German foot should tread Italian soil—and then prevented his recanting, even for the sake of Rome or for his army. The further he had penetrated up the valley, the stronger his feeling became that he had blundered; and yet pride of person would not allow him to admit the blunder. Higher and higher up the river Athesis, lower and lower his spirits. So when he came to Tridentum and thought how like Thermopylae it was—though of course in strictly geographic terms it was not like Thermopylae at all—he conceived a worthy death for all concerned, and thereby salvaged his honor, that fatal personal pride. Just as Thermopylae rang down the ages, so too would Tridentum. The fall of the gallant few confronted with the overwhelming many. Stranger, go tell the Romans that here we lie in obedience to their command! With a magnificent monument, and pilgrimages, and immortal epic poems.
The sight of the Cimbri spilling into the northern end of the valley brought him to his senses, then Sulla completed the process. For of course he did have eyes, and there was a brain behind them, even if it was a brain too easily clouded by the vastness of his own dignitas; the eyes had taken note of the many terraces making giant steps out of the steep green slopes above, and the brain had understood how quickly the Cimbric warriors could outflank them. This was no gorge with cliffs; it was simply a narrow alpine valley unsuitable for deploying an army because its pastures sloped upward at an angle quite impossible for troops to take in rank and file, let alone wheel and turn in proper maneuvers.
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