David Durham - Pride of Carthage

But that was before Publius Scipio. One man, a few months, two battles: everything changed. It was not just the strategic realities that troubled Mago. In Hannibal's absence, the first shifting winds of defeat blew away a mask that he had not even realized he was wearing. It had been like a helmet that blocked portions of his vision and limited the world he perceived. He had acknowledged only the things that confirmed the realization of his childhood fantasies. The last few weeks, however—with the mask removed—the unacknowledged images bombarded him unhindered. He could not help but recall the faces of orphan children, the suffering in the eyes of captured women, the sight of burning homes, the cold glances of people being robbed of grain and horses and, indirectly, of their lives. He heard their wailing in some place beyond sound, high to the right and back of his head. Everywhere were signs of the barbarous nature of conflict, ugly to behold. Nowhere was it possible to avoid these things. It suddenly seemed to him that such scenes were the full and true face of war. What place had nobility in this? Where was the joy of heroes? Why could he no longer recite the lines with which epic poets enshrined the greatness of clashing men? It was weak of him to think this way. He knew it, but he could not shake free of the mood. He thought briefly of the melancholy that sometimes took hold of Hannibal. He never explained it. . . . But, no, it could not be the doubt that he now felt. Hannibal was as certain of his place in the world as if he had created it himself.

Hanno trudged up toward him, quietly, for the pine leaves cushioned his steps. He wore a shimmering garment of scale armor, silvered metal that caught the speckled light like the moving skin of fish. Glancing at his face, Mago saw his mother in his features. He winced to think of her and the high spirits he had last shared with her in Carthage. How foolish to be joyful at one moment, forgetting that the wheel of life turns, so that he who looks at the sun at one moment soon finds himself crushed against the hard earth.

Hanno stood beside him for a time, not speaking, looking out through the trees toward the plain in which their army fidgeted in nervous expectancy. The branches were so thick that he could not possibly see through them any more than Mago could, but still he waited a long time before he spoke. When he did, Mago heard a quality that again reminded him of their mother. The part of Didobal in him seemed to be the strongest portion, the firmest in its resolve to confront the future.

“Come,” Hanno said, “we can wait no longer. It will be at Ilipa.”

Having said this, the older sibling retraced his steps beneath the trees, just as silently as before. When he faded out of view, Mago heard the rapping of a woodpecker, a loud barrage of thuds and then silence, a loud barrage and then silence. There was no way back to that other time; there was only forward through the world he now inhabited. Only onward into the clash that had to come. His brother had named the place. Mago followed him down toward it.

Two days later, the armies came in sight of each other. For the three days after that, they assembled. Both forces marched down out of the tree-dotted ridges on which they camped and approached almost to within shouting distance of each other. There the troops waited, the generals taking stock of the opposition, skirmishers exchanging volleys. They sweated under the sun and chewed strips of dried meat and swatted at flies, but otherwise rested as well as they could. Neither side broke this strange truce, and in the evening the Carthaginians withdrew first.

Mago and Hanno spent each night talking through what this might mean, trying to learn something new for the following day. Having assembled a force of all their remaining allies, they outnumbered the enemy, numbering fifty thousand to the Romans' forty. Perhaps this was working on the Roman consciousness, paralyzing them with fear, softening them for the onslaught they knew was coming soon. Publius positioned his various units in the same formation each time: legions in the center, Iberian mercenaries on either wing. Each time the Carthaginians met this in kind, with their Libyans in the center, their strongest soldiers to oppose his. They divided their twenty elephants evenly on both wings, hoping to use them as giant stabilizers to hold the army in formation. The two brothers considered changing the arrangement, but no matter how they thought it through, the deployment seemed sound. Publius might have been looking for a weakness, but each day Mago believed a little more that all they presented was strength.

But in the first gray light of the morning of the fourth day, the Roman cavalry pounced on the forward Carthaginian outposts. A few riders managed to escape to sound the alarm. But just afterward the entire Roman force slipped into view like a slow river in flood, through the trees and out onto the flat plain. The Carthaginians had no choice but to rise groggy from bed and grab up arms and rush to form up ranks. Mago shouted all the things he knew the men expected of him. “This is the day!” he said. “The enemy is trying to surprise us, but early rising alone will not win this battle.” None could say that he had not learned from his brothers' example, but inwardly he realized something was happening over which he had no control, something he still could not predict. For the first time he understood how an enemy must feel facing Hannibal across a battlefield.

The approaching army was still some way out, but Publius' deployment had changed. Skirmishers trotted in a weaving crisscross of confusion, like so many ants. His Roman legions now made up the wings; the Iberians held the center. The Barcas worked frantically through what this might mean and how to combat it, but there was no time for them to order a change in their own lines. The men were in enough confusion just trying to form up. Why had Publius put his weakest fighters against their strongest, and vice versa?

As soon as they were into the flat the Romans picked up their pace. A little farther on, they fell into a trot. As they drew nearer still, the Roman wings—hearing the horn signal—kicked their pace into a wolf-lope. Mago thought that at that rate they would be out of breath by the time the two armies met. Their armor must have weighed heavily on them. But as he watched, he realized they had trained for such a run. Their lungs billowed to meet the demand and nothing about them suggested fatigue. Their legs moved them forward, sure of step, determined. Meanwhile, the Iberians in the center kept to their slower pace and soon fell behind. After launching their fistfuls of missiles, javelins, and darts, the skirmishers withdrew through the ranks. They slipped out of sight and emerged behind the legionaries, regrouped, and fell into step behind them. They pulled swords from sheaths secured to their backs, drew daggers from their belts, or snatched up pikes that the rear infantrymen dropped for them. With so many of their helmets covered in animal skins, they looked like an unnatural pack of hunters—lions beside wolves beside bears and foxes—chasing the army forward, nipping at their heels.

When the two sides finally met, the Roman front line looked like a horseshoe. The two prongs of the veteran legions smashed into the Carthaginians' Iberian allies and from the first moments made quick work of them. The skirmishers fanned out and around and swept in on the Carthaginian flanks. Meanwhile the Libyans stood in confusion, glancing from side to side, waiting for orders, their spears to hand but useless. The front line of Iberians that should have met them did not do so. On a single horn-blasted order they all stopped. They hovered out a distance, just too far to engage, but near enough so that the Libyans could not turn away from them for fear of being pounced on. The Libyans could neither aid their dying allies nor rush forward, because to do so would break formation and lead to all manner of chaos. They just waited, panting and impatient, as men near them fell to the Romans' cut and thrust.