Pride of Carthage

by David Anthony Durham

  Soon the elephants churned through the ranks, trumpeting and bellowing as their drivers smacked their skulls and urged them on. In the confusion men were trampled and swatted into the air or impaled on tusks. The Romans feared these animals, as any sane men would, but they did not give way. They aimed their sword thrusts at their eyes, hacked at their trunks, and jabbed their blades into their flanks. More than one mahout was jerked from his post at the point of a spear.

  Despite these stampeding boulders, despite the sleet and the spray kicked up from the ground, the Romans still managed to form and re-form their ranks. They still inflicted damage. Their style of battle was tight and organized. They leaned forward, closely guarded by their shields, and cut down the wildly swinging Gauls particularly well, jabbing their short swords into their unprotected abdomens and pulling back and then jabbing the next. They ate steadily through the Gallic center of the Carthaginian forces, fighting with surprising efficiency considering the circumstances. But still the pieces came together against them. The Numidian cavalry rode circles around their Roman counterparts and soon had them on the run, pushed clear of the legions' edges and leaving their flanks open.

  This, Mago recognized, was where he came in. He nodded to the soldier beside him, who snapped himself to his feet and bellowed out the call to the rest. They peeled themselves from the ground, stiff from the long wait, many of them chilled beyond shivering. They hefted their swords and shields and began shouting out, grunting and chanting, each invoking his favored gods, whispering prayers to them. Mago strode forward. He did not look back but trusted that the rest were behind him. For the first few steps, he barely felt his legs working beneath him. He smacked his feet down as heavily as he could to ensure his footing, and soon warmed to the work. He heard the clink of their armor and the thump of their feet against the semi-frozen ground. Initially there was something ghostly in the noise, but as they drew closer to the battle the men found further voice. Their jaws loosened, bodies fired with sudden heat. The discordant tongues blended as they ran, and became a wild bellowing that was beyond words, rooted in something earlier and deeper in the brain than language. The distance they had to cover was considerable and in the running their fury grew. Individuals picked out their targets and envisioned the damage they were about to inflict.

  Mago saw the infantryman he wanted from a hundred strides out and homed in on him. He took the man with a swinging blow that cut his neck to the spine. A warm spray of blood coated Mago's clenched fist at the sword hilt and splashed up his arm. The man never knew what hit him. Nor was he alone. Mago's group drove into the side of the legions like famished locusts, stepping over the bodies they had slain to get to more. The legionaries in the center could not yet have known what had happened, but they must have felt the shifting press of the men on both sides of them and with it the first hints of panic. Their forward progress ground to a halt. Instead of slicing through unarmored Gauls, the front ranks were now toe to toe with the spears of the Libyan veterans, soldiers fresh from the fires, well oiled and salivating for Roman blood and urged on by Bomilcar, whose voice boomed above the din.

  For Mago, the battle lasted no more than a few blurred moments. His arms lashed and thrust, his legs stepped over bodies, his ankles stiffened to steady him on the earth or on the abdomens or backs or necks of those beneath him. He turned and ducked and screamed at the top of his lungs, all at a speed beyond thought. A primal fury took hold of him completely and rendered him, for a few moments, a furious agent of death. He would remember afterward that he sliced open the unprotected belly of a velite with a right-handed stroke. On some impulse previously unknown to him, he punched a fist into the man's abdomen and ripped out the warm, steaming loops of viscera. He flicked them from his fingers and pushed the man from his path and carried on. He would later find images like this troubling, but in the heat of those short moments he was his father's son and Hannibal's brother, gifted at death, fighting not with his deliberative mind but with pure instinct.

  He was among the first to drive the Romans into the river. He felt the euphoria of blood but the work was no clear rout. The Romans managed some order in their retreat. He was ankle deep in the crimson water when he realized Hannibal had called the battle to a halt. He stood panting, watching the remnants of the legions retreat behind the screen of falling sleet, which was turning gradually to snow. When he turned and looked upon the carnage, it took his breath away, not in elation or even relief. He knelt as if to pray and, thus disguised, spat chunks of his breakfast into the river.

  His first true battle was behind him.

  Waiting in the dank cell in Emporiae, Hanno had hour after slow hour to think about the mistakes that had led to his capture. But he did not consider the tactical maneuvers that Gnaeus Scipio had so easily countered. Instead he could not shake the memory of his hands' trembling in the hours leading up to the battle. He had first felt it as he lay awake in the predawn hours. He knew something was wrong with his hands, although he could not tell what. They alternately felt as if they were being pricked by thousands of tiny needles, or as if they crawled with ants, or as if they had been submerged in icy water and had turned blue with cold. He slid them under his buttocks and stilled them with the weight and warmth of his body, but after he rose the tremble continued, gaining strength.

  At his meeting with his generals he tried to disguise the trouble, but they clearly noticed that he did not reach for the charts offered him, that he had one of them draw out the lay of the land with a stick instead of doing it himself, that he sat with his hands wedged between his knees. After he dismissed them, he stayed inside his tent and banged his hands against the table before him. This changed nothing. He bashed them on the hard floor of his tent. He sat on them, his mind roiling with fury that his own body spurned him so. None of these methods changed anything, and as he rode out to battle he could only still his hands by making sure they were always clenched on something: his helmet, the creases of his breastplate, the hilt of his sword, which he prayed would be drenched with Roman blood before the day waned.

  This, however, was not to be. He knew it from the moment he saw the Romans on the field before him. The battle was a blundering fiasco. He tried to push it from his mind, unsure how he could even learn from such a jumbled collage of images, none of them making any sense, none offering him any alternative to help him escape the outcome. It was as if he had looked over a game board and made the move of ordering his men forward, only to discover that he had already fallen into some classic mistake—recognized immediately by his opponent—and that nothing now could avert his failure. He lost his entire army of ten thousand. Most of them were killed. Many were captured. He could not even be sure how many, because he himself was seized. His guards fought to the death with the swarm of Romans that surrounded him. But when he tried to goad them into murdering him they would not. Instead they worked toward him slowly, in vast numbers, pressing in on him from behind their shields until he was so boxed in that he could not even move. They disarmed him and bound him and kicked him before them in stumbling indignity, a prisoner, a Barca in chains, denied even a mount, so that he eventually entered Emporiae as an amusement for the astonished faces of the Greek townspeople. He would so very much rather have died.

  Instead he found himself shoved into a tiny subterranean room, dim and wet from groundwater and frequented by rats. Holes the size of a man's fist lined the upper wall along one side. Through them torchlight from the hallway shone into the cell, casting shadow and highlight across the aged wooden beams that supported the roof. This was all that illuminated the chamber, but Hanno's eyes quickly adjusted. The four walls were carved from a whitish stone, roughly, as if the chamber had been intended for storage, not human habitation. He felt the chalkiness of the stone in the back of his throat. The film of it stuck to his skin. The chill seeped into him slowly, as if the longer he sat the more he himself took on the quality, texture, and substance of the stone. Once deposited here, he was left alone, pa
ssing time that he could only estimate by the movements of the guards outside his door, their rotations of duty, and the occasional meals they slipped under the door for him. His hands no longer trembled. They were still, stiff, and aching. Whatever fear he had held in them plagued him no more. This galled him nearly as much as their shaking had.

  What type of place was this to keep someone of his stature? He realized that he had no idea what to expect from these Romans. They might treat him with dignity if it suited them, as Hannibal instructed his generals to do with prisoners of note. They might make overtures to Carthage, using him as a negotiating point. But nothing in their behavior so far made dignified treatment seem likely. The Romans were likely ignorant of Hannibal's policies on dealing with prisoners. If they remembered anything, it would be the atrocities of the earlier war between the two nations, when barbarity had reached its zenith. In truth, there were no shared traditions that his captors were obliged to uphold. If they wished, they could peel the skin from his living body and douse him in vinegar and take pleasure commensurate with his pain. He simply could not predict the course ahead of him. Being hit by the full force of this reality, he recognized the truth beneath it: He had never had control of his own destiny; never had the future been certain. So in this piece of knowledge, at least, he exceeded Hannibal in wisdom.

  For all of the foulness of the cell and the possible tortures awaiting him, what troubled him most was more mundane. There was no latrine in the cell, neither a hole nor a sewage channel nor any space designated for the purpose. For the first six days he would not squat to relieve himself. He ate nothing and drank water sparingly. He swore that he would not shit until the Romans offered him a proper toilet of their own accord. This they did not do. By the third day he had to clench his buttocks tight. On the fourth day he focused in on the muscles right around his anus and scrunched them to fight the rhythmic churning power of his bowels.

  When his feces final escaped it was in a moment of weakness, while he was drowsy and dream-racked. He found himself squatting in a corner of the cell and felt his backside open up before he even knew what he was doing. As he felt the euphoric release of the stuff curving out of him he tried to convince himself that this was an act of defiance. He was shitting on Rome, throwing his waste in their faces, soiling them. But a moment later he balled up on the other side of the cell and watched helplessly as his eyes watered over and tears spilled from them. Strange that this one thing struck him as such an indignity, but it did. It made him feel like a child without even the control of his own bodily functions. Through the wavering, dim scene before him he prayed to Baal, to El and Anath, to Moloch. The names of the gods felt dead on his tongue, but still he called on them, promising that if he lived he would inflict all manner of mayhem in their names, trying to convince himself that he was still a man who could make such promises into realities.

  After a full week of complete solitude, Hanno welcomed the moment the door swung open and a Roman stepped through. At least something was now to happen, whatever it might be. The man dressed as an officer, with a red cloak flowing down his back. He carried a lamp before him, the single flame of which cast highlights on the long, prominent muscles of his arms. He stood for a moment surveying the room, looking from Hanno around the cell, pausing on the pile of waste. Then he fixed his gaze on Hanno and spoke with haughty confidence, without pausing to ask whether the Carthaginian could understand his Latin.

  “Do you know me? I am Gnaeus Scipio, the victor in our battle. You, Barca, are the first joyful piece of news for Rome since your brother began this madness. Your failure will light fires in the hearts of my people, flames that no rain can douse, no wind extinguish. How does it feel to know you so hearten your enemies?”

  Gnaeus moved closer. He bent and studied Hanno's face. He had heavy eyebrows, bushy and chaotic, and a rounded nose that might have been broken in his youth. “I can see that you understand me, so don't feign ignorance of my language. I truly mean what I am saying. You have done me a great service. When I first saw events unfolding at Hannibal's direction I feared the worst. But when I met you on the field I was reassured. Barcas can be defeated. I know, because I've witnessed it. And now you know it, too. You understand that we will send you to Rome eventually, don't you? You are, and will continue to be, a prisoner of the Roman Republic, but before you journey to my capital I will use you for a purpose or two here in Iberia. I've already sent word to every Iberian tribe that called you an ally. I've invited them all here to see you, to look upon a captured Barca and see you for what you are. Imagine the effect on them when they see you live in a tiny room, alone except for your own filth.”

  Gnaeus straightened and stepped away. “When you do go to Rome, I cannot say how the Senate will dispose of you. To some extent that depends on yourself, and on your brothers. Think carefully on what may be possible, because your lot need not be so foul as you might fear. Hannibal will lose this war. You do not have to lose it with him. You might, actually, manage to find favor with us. You might aid us and subsequently find yourself elevated even as your brother is defeated. For example, should you choose to speak reason to the tribes and dissuade them from their allegiance to Carthage . . . Or if you open your mouth and tell us things valuable to our fight against Carthage here in Iberia . . . There are many ways you can be helpful. Need I detail them to you?”

  Hanno, having grasped the thrust of the man's comments clearly enough, answered him. “I will never betray my family, or Carthage.”

  “Better men than you have done just that, and no one calls a man a fool if he succeeds while his brother perishes. How can you be sure your brothers would not sell you to save their own skins?”

  “You know nothing of us.”

  The Roman considered the prisoner from a different angle, and then twisted his head away as if to indicate that he saw nothing new. “In any event, you have already betrayed your nation. Do your people not frown on failure as a man's greatest sin? Perhaps I should put you on a boat bound for Carthage and let them deal with you. It's crucifixion they favor, isn't it? Or is it impaling?”

  Hanno spat on the ground and then covered the spot with his foot. “I curse you and your line, your brother and your sons. May you father only girls and may all of them be whores to your enemies.”

  Gnaeus smiled. He held his chin in his hand a moment and seemed to think bemusedly on the curse. “Is it by your own gods that you curse me? I do not fear them. And you, you should not trust them. Look at how they've abandoned you.” He knocked on the door and waited for the guards to let him out. Once the door was cracked he paused and addressed himself once more to Hanno. “Whether you like it or not, we will ask you many questions. It would behoove you to answer them. If you do not, we will find which torture persuades you most forcefully. By the gods—yours or mine—I would not wish to be inside your skin in the weeks to come.”

  With that he pulled the door fast behind him, leaving Hanno alone with the man's words echoing in his head.

  After the battle beside the Trebia, a howling blizzard blew in. Snow fell for two days straight. On the third a new cold crept down from the mountains. It stung exposed flesh so that men could only walk blindly, faces shrouded, stumbling toward whatever goal spurred them to move. There was little rejoicing among the men and no real mention was made of following after the ragged Roman survivors. Few even ventured out to scavenge on the battlefield. That graveyard was left to the wolves and ravens and other creatures fond of human flesh and impervious to the weather. The elephants that had traveled so far and inflicted such great damage could not withstand the relentless cold. All but one of them died within the week; this last creature, called Cyrus, was looked after with care, for now he was Vandicar's sole ward. The chief mahout swore he would keep the creature alive to see the heat of an Italian summer.

  Despite the hardships, Hannibal was pleased that they had won their first battle against Rome. Over the winter, he managed to receive several reports from spies and what
they told him of events in Rome brought him pure joy. News of the defeat had traveled quickly to the capital and rocked the population's confidence. During his first meeting with the Senate, Sempronius minimized the full extent of the tragedy and his role as the author of it. They had suffered this setback for a variety of reasons, he claimed. The rawness of so many of the troops. The bitter weather that impeded their deployment. The morale boost that the Carthaginians had fed upon after the skirmish on the Ticinus. The Trebia battle was no major defeat, he said, just an unfortunate incident.

  Cornelius, arriving somewhat later, described the situation as he recalled it. He responded to the senators' questions as flatly and simply as possible, but still each answer fell like dirt filling into his fellow consul's grave. Among other things, he provided the most accurate estimate of the dead—more than thirteen thousand killed outright, more dead of infection. Questioned as to whether Sempronius had acted with gross negligence, Cornelius, surprisingly, said that he did not believe so. The events that benefited Hannibal that morning were too numerous to explain. No man could orchestrate such a thing. Perhaps only the gods could.

  Nor was he the only one to arrive at this conclusion. Soon after the news of the defeat, tales began to circulate of prodigies that should have warned of the gods' displeasure. In Sardinia, a cavalry officer's staff had burst into flames. Some soldiers on Sicily had been struck by lightning while at exercise. At Praeneste, the rat population doubled in just a few days, and at Antium reapers swore that their hay had left traces of blood upon their blades. In more than one place it rained red-hot stones large enough to crack the skulls of the unwary. And these were not mere rumors. In each case of such an unnatural occurrence, a witness journeyed to Rome and told the story to the Senate. The Board of Ten consulted the Divine Writings, and on their recommendation the city spent much of the winter making offerings to Jupiter, to Juno, and to Minerva, conducting rites and holding public banquets like the Strewing of Couches, sacrificing pigs in Saturn's honor.