The Seven Hills

by John Maddox Roberts

  "I am Titus Norbanus. I have just destroyed Mastanabal, as you have seen. I intend to do the same to Hamilcar, and to Carthage. But that is for the future. Right here and right now, you have a choice. We can make a fight of it, and it will be a hard one, and all of you will die; and some of us will, as well. You can lay down your arms and I promise none of you will be enslaved. Or you can take my oath, keep your arms and join my army as auxilia. You'll get no share of the loot from this fight, of course, but otherwise you will have the same status as the rest of my soldiers, short of citizenship. I am generous, but I am not patient. Decide quickly."

  Xantippus and the other officers conferred in low voices; then they took a quick poll of the men. The Spartan spoke first: "We accept your offer of honorable service. We will be your faithful soldiers to the end."

  "Then speak with my quartermaster and he will assign you your place in camp. I will make you all rich men."

  In all, Norbanus reflected as he rode away, it was turning out to be a very fine day. But it got even better. As he sat in front of the late Carthaginian general's tent while the loot was piled up and tallied, a rider came from the coast on a lathered mount. He brought news from the duumvir Decimus Arrunteius: victory on the sea, that very same day! Word spread through the camp and men congratulated one another on serving so lucky a general, such a favorite of the gods.

  In the evening, Norbanus performed the proper sacrifices, then assembled all the men for the award ceremony.

  He gave the corona muralis to a young officer who had been first to stand atop the wall, and the civic crown to several men who had saved the lives of fellow citizens in the fighting. Certain centurions he singled out for honor, bestowing upon them military bracelets. He was about to dismiss the formation when the senior centurion of one of his legions strode forth and stood below his reviewing stand. The man raised an arm and extended his fist toward his general. "Imperator!" the grizzled officer shouted. "Imperator!" The other soldiers took up the shout: "Imperator! Imperator!!" Slowly, it turned into a chant: "Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor! Im-per-a-tor!" On and on it went and Titus Norbanus felt himself to be a god. To be honored with the title of imperator by spontaneous acclamation of his own soldiers was the highest honor to which a Roman general could aspire. In a triumph he would be honored by the citizenry as a whole, but these were the men who counted.

  Hamicar and Carthage might still await, but this would never be taken from him. He let the intoxication flow through him as the chant went on and on and he knew what it was to be worshipped.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Senate held silence while Publius Gabinius read out the dispatches. They had arrived that morning, two of them at once and both wreathed in laurel. It was a thing unprecedented in Roman history. First, he read the report of the duumvir Decimus Arrunteius. The senators gasped and broke into spontaneous clapping as he detailed the battle, the enemy ships destroyed, the loot taken. Otherwise, they remained quiet.

  The princeps came to a momentous passage: "My marines and sailors behaved with uniform valor and discipline. I cannot commend their behavior too highly. Most of them are men from the towns and countryside of Italy, with only a few citizen legionaries to act as their officers. I believe that our Italian allies have rediscovered their manhood forfeited by their ancestors when ours accepted the Exile."

  Gabinius looked around him. Some of the senators looked pleased to hear this; others did not. Hostility against the Italians went deep in this body. Most had agreed that the Italians should do the dangerous but menial work of rowing in the new fleet. Many had protested their bearing arms as marines. While sea service was inferior to that of the legions, it was honorable, and many believed the Italians had forfeited all claim to honor when they knuckled under to Carthage in the days of Hannibal the Great. But there had been no choice. They were embarked upon a war of unprecedented magnitude and every citizen was needed for the legions. If they were to have a fighting navy, the Italians had to be enrolled.

  Next, Gabinius brought out the dispatch from Norbanus. This time the senators could not keep quiet. The faction that supported the Norbani cheered lustily, and even the old family adherents who despised them made sounds of approval, lest they seem churlish. The totality of the victory lost nothing in the telling, as young Norbanus detailed his ruse, his night march to the battlefield, his daring direct assault upon the Carthaginian camp and his novel assault plan, culminating in the suicide of Mastanabal and his principle officers, the destruction of his army and the sack of his camp. The loot was described in great detail, along with the information that the eagles and other standards captured at the disaster of the Arnus had been recaptured and were returning to Rome with an honor guard, to be deposited in the Temple of Saturn.

  Finished, Gabinius closed the wooden case with a snap. "Senators, I propose that we declare ten days of thanksgiving for these great victories. The gods must be thanked properly."

  A new family senator stood. "Ten days? These victories deserve a month of thanksgiving!"

  Old Scipio Cyclops stepped forward. He had just returned from a tour of inspection in the South. "I agree with our princeps. These are fine victories and I rejoice that the standards have been taken back. But the main Carthaginian fleet is still afloat. The main Carthaginian army is still intact, under the personal command of Hamilcar. Carthage itself still stands. Let us not celebrate foolishly, when so much is left to be done."

  "Sour grapes, Cyclops?" jeered the same new family senator. "You are just jealous because our new family commanders are winning glory while your grandson luxuriates in Alexandria, accomplishing nothing!"

  Scipio looked at the man scornfully, his single eye glaring down his long nose. "Which one are you? Oh, yes, I remember. I believe I flogged your grandfather's blue-painted backside at the battle of Five Forks."

  The senator went scarlet while half the Senate growled and the other half roared with laughter.

  The Consul Hermanicus stood. "Gentlemen! Let's not disgrace these proceedings with partisan bickering. The Roman people expect better from us. I propose that we declare fifteen days of thanksgiving, to commence at once and to conclude with the dedication of the recaptured standards at the Temple of Saturn. I further move that the Italian communities that sent men to serve in the fleet be awarded with the status of socii, with full rights of citizenship to be conferred at the successful conclusion of the war, should their actions continue to prove as valorous as they were in this instance."

  There was approval and disapproval. There was more arguing. But in the end the proposals carried. Then Herennius, followed by the rest of the Senate, went out into the Forum, mounted the Rostra and read out the dispatches to the assembled citizens, concluding with the actions declared by the Senate. With so many citizens away with the legions, ratification by the Plebeian Assembly and the Centuriate Assembly was impossible, but the tribunes of the plebs carried the vote by acclamation. The mood that had oppressed the city since the defeat at the Arnus lifted, and the name of Norbanus gained yet new luster.

  It gave Gabinius much to think about as they all trooped up the winding Clivus Capitolinus, past the restored Archive, up to the crest of the Capitoline Hill. First the lictors with their fasces, preceding the senior magistrates—the consuls and the praetors—followed by the lesser officials, the priests, then the rest of the Senate, and last of all the great mass of citizens.

  As they stood upon the great terrace before the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Gabinius pondered upon this new phenomenon: the Roman warlord. For that was what they were, he knew. The younger Titus Norbanus with his fanatically loyal soldiers—men loyal to Norbanus himself rather than to Rome. His father, now with the other great military command, leading the new family bloc in the Senate and the assemblies and now sure to woo the Italian communities as they gained limited citizenship rights through military service. There was justice in that, Gabinius knew. It was the bullheaded members of his own peers, the old families, who were so s
tubbornly prejudiced against the Italians, as if a dispute between great-grandfathers had the same immediacy as the present war with Carthage.

  And then there was young Scipio, who had no Roman soldiers at his command, but who was a potent force nonetheless. Gabinius had a great fondness for young Scipio and that whole remarkable, irascible family, but the boy was making his own foreign policy in Egypt and playing some dangerous game with the Princess Selene. And that redoubtable woman was playing manipulative games of her own. Word had long come back to Rome, whispered by his many enemies, of Scipio's dalliance with the Egyptian princess. There were strange stories of statues erected in villages and cities all up and down the Nile—statues of Marcus Scipio adorned with the curling ram's horns of Zeus-Ammon. These were attributes of divine kingship.

  Alexander the Great had had just such statues erected to himself, to remind people of his divine and royal status.

  A Roman god-king? The idea was unthinkable! What had the boy got himself into? But the position of young Norbanus was far more worrying. As he looked about him, Gabinius could see how the people's faces lit up at mention of Norbanus, how they spoke that name with near reverence. He was acquiring something close to divine regard.

  Gabinius tried to puzzle it out. Perhaps there was no explaining such things. The boy had come out of nowhere and wangled himself an unearned army command. He had performed a truly remarkable march that was little more than a plundering expedition, meddling in the affairs of Eastern kings. He had fought a cleverly managed battle and turned in a victory. And now the people thought he was a son of Mars. Men who had campaigned hard all their lives, fought in many battles, won greater victories and saved the Romans from dangers far greater, simply had not won such adulation from the citizens.

  Young Norbanus, he knew, had some gift. It was a thing some men had and it could not be explained. It was something that made men want to serve him loyally, made others want to worship him, made them regard him as something more than human, whatever his real deserts. Alexander had had such a gift. The Macedonian golden boy had taken the superb army forged by his father and attacked the rotten, tottering old Persian Empire, and it fell into his hands like overripe fruit. He'd fought a few battles with the incredibly inept Darius and gained half the world, then had gone on a pointless march all the way to India, taking land he hadn't a prayer of governing. He'd acted like a drunken fool and murdered close friends, and in the end his own once fanatically loyal soldiers rebelled. Now, more than two hundred years later, men still worshipped him as a god.

  For generations we fought Gauls and Germans to carve for ourselves an empire in the North, Gabinius thought. For all those generations we brooded on the insult Carthage had done us and plotted our return. All we thought about was defeating barbarians and destroying Carthage. How ironic that now, on the verge of victory against all our foreign enemies and regaining our old empire on the Middle Sea, we should discover that the real threat, the real enemy, is Roman.

  Marcus Scipio studied the map he had ordered made. It depicted the whole world around the Middle Sea and what was known of the lands farther east: India and the land of the Silk People and the islands rumored to lie beyond. It showed Arabia and the land mass of Africa down to coastal Punt. It even had the legendary Tin Isles to the north. He had wanted a large map, perhaps ten feet wide and covering a wall. Selene had had it made in the typically overdone Alexandrian fashion, covering a floor fifty feet by one hundred feet, everything inlaid in mosaic. It was so large that he needed a platform made so that he could take it in all at once. Just now, though, he didn't need the whole map. He was concentrating on Spain. Spain was where the next great chapter of this epic would unfold. As soon as word of the naval battle had arrived, the artisans had torn up a section of mosaic depicting that part of the sea and created a picture of hundreds of little ships fighting, sinking and burning. The site of the land battle was also marked, with a Roman sword wrapped in laurel.

  "Where is Hamilcar?" Marcus fretted. He felt frustrated and impotent while all the important events were going on so far away.

  "The latest word has him dallying at Cartago Nova," Selena said, not for the first time.

  "Why is he waiting so long?" Marcus muttered.

  "Isn't it obvious?" Flaccus said. "He wanted Mastanabal to soften up the Roman army first, so he declined to reinforce the man. What has he lost? A handful of Carthaginian officers and a great many barbarians. It is nothing to him and he is weakened in no way."

  "Flaccus is right," Selene concurred. "I don't know how you Romans go about it, but in most of the world kings regard successful generals as dangerous rivals. Mastanabal won a battle against Rome, so his days were numbered. I was fairly certain that it would turn out this way."

  "But that is infamous!" Marcus said. "What sort of loyalty can men have to such a sovereign? I detest Titus Norbanus, but never would I leave him and an army of Roman soldiers without support in the face of a strong enemy! No Roman commander could ever do such a thing!"

  "Perhaps the rest of us cannot contest with the Romans on points of virtue," Selene said, sighing as the barb sailed right over Marcus's head, as usual. She had never met such a combination of intelligence and obtuseness as Marcus Scipio. She also caught Flaccus's grin and returned it with a smile of her own.

  "They have to meet soon," Scipio said. "Where?" He studied the map. It showed the major rivers and mountain ranges, but gave no sense of any other terrain. In the great Library he had studied the books concerning Spain, but those were concerned mainly with the coastal cities and had few tales of the peoples of the interior. The historians and geographers had never considered Spain to be a very interesting place.

  "I don't know where," Flaccus said, "but I know who will choose the time and place: Norbanus. He won't wait, Marcus. He will be on top of Hamilcar before he knows it. Hamilcar is hesitant and cautious. Titus Norbanus is not. He loves action and he believes himself to be invincible."

  "I agree," Scipio said, nodding. "He's bold and he'll move before anyone else has a chance to win glory. They may have fought already." That was what galled him the most: that great things were happening and he had no way of knowing about them until many days afterward. Even the swift new courier ships could travel only so fast, and they were as vulnerable to storms and calms as other vessels.

  "I wish you would stop fretting here," Selene said to him.

  "What?" He seemed to drag his thoughts from far away as he turned and looked at her. "What am I to do?"

  "This isn't like you, Marcus," she said. "You always have a plan of action. Very well, if you lack one, I'll suggest one: Go attack Carthage."

  Both men looked at her as if they had been struck by Jupiter's thunderbolts. "What?" Scipio said. "Unless you haven't noticed, I don't have an army."

  "You don't have a Roman army," she said, "but I have rather a large one. It sits around eating up my substance without doing me any good, so you may as well take it and put it to some use. March it to Carthage with my blessing. Take all those toys you've been playing with at the Museum as well. At least they will make the war a fine spectacle, even if you lose. You've been saying for months that your legions are about to cross from Sicily to attack Carthage. If you go immediately, you might get there before they do, with Hamilcar and his army away from the city. That will do you no end of good at the next elections."

  They gaped at her. "Majesty," Flaccus said at last, "are we to understand that you desire a full military alliance with Rome?"

  "Of course it's an alliance!" she yelled. "Do you think I am going to let you take my army away as your personal property?" Then she added, more quietly: "Naturally, there is something I want from Rome in return."

  "The Senate is to recognize you as full sovereign of Egypt," Marcus said. "You are queen, and your brother is deposed."

  "I knew you were not as stupid as you sometimes pretend."

  Flaccus whirled on his heel and strode off. "I'll get the papers ready right now. They'll
be on their way to the Senate under your seal with the morning's first wind."

  "There goes a man who understands things and does not waste time," she said, smiling.

  "Selene," Scipio said, "I am overwhelmed."

  She had never expected to hear this from the incomparably arrogant Roman. "I will be honest with you. As long as you are here, I am not queen. I am just another member of the court, playing power games. I want to be queen in truth and I want to be an ally in your own legal sense of the word. I can call upon you for aid and you can call on me, but I want Rome out of Egypt. I will do nothing against your interests but I want no Roman occupation. Agree to this, and my army is yours."

  "I'll need your navy, too," he said.

  She closed her eyes. "You Romans make my head hurt. You shall have the navy, too. And before you ask, you shall have all the material support of Egypt, which you know to be incomparable, for your use during the campaign. What allies I have in Libya will be yours as well. I'll even send along my best beasts for your sacrifices. Is that satisfactory?"

  "Eminently, Majesty."

  Hamilcar studied the head of his late general, Mastanabal. It had arrived that morning by courier, under a flag of truce, packed neatly in a cedar box and preserved in aromatic oils. It was disfigured by the general's method of suicide, but was quite recognizable.

  "If we had marched faster," Queen Teuta said, "this need not have happened."

  "What need not have happened?" he said, still musing upon the ruined features, the faintly reproachful expression.

  "The disaster, of course!" she said impatiently. "We have lost a fine army and many capable officers because we were too slow."