David Durham - Pride of Carthage

Publius did not waste time trying to haggle with the councillors. Neither did he attack Carthage itself. Instead, he turned his army to the south and had them ravage their way down the broad valley of the Bagradas River. Every field they passed was left a blackened inferno, every village and town, every storehouse of grain, every orchard. They took town after town by storm, enslaving everyone with a value as a slave, dispatching the rest. At Thugga they tossed the bodies into the river and let them float toward the ocean, like a great vein bleeding out the life of the continent. When the town of Abba sent out envoys to discuss terms of surrender Publius had the men's hands cut off and spun them around with the message that there were no terms except the complete surrender of Carthage itself. At Kemis he repeated the atrocity of the plains, burning alive an entire village of thatched huts, the young and the old alike, capturing those lucky enough to escape and enslaving them.

The people did not understand who this demon was and why he had dropped down on them with such fury, but Publius was as calculated in his cruelty as he had been in his generosity in Iberia. Hannibal knew exactly what the Roman was doing, for he had used the same tactics himself. The consul bore those poor people no malice, just as Hannibal had not thought of the Latin tribes as naturally inimical to him. But by abusing them Publius prodded the Council to swift action. They, in turn, pressured Hannibal to give chase before he had truly gained his footing in Africa, leaving him little time to raise new troops and none to properly train them.

At first, Hannibal balked at being ordered about in this fashion. He did not move immediately. Instead, he came to terms with the Libyan Tychaeus, who was a relation of Syphax and hungry for revenge. He brought three thousand Libyan veterans into the army, a great gain. But in the days it took him to arrange this, new orders came from Carthage. Hannibal was to track the Romans down and annihilate them while they were still far from the city itself. Should he have any question about following these orders, he should remember that his family still lived in Carthage, by the grace of the Council. They were sure, they said, that Hannibal would not want anything unfortunate to befall them, especially his wife and young son.

As he closed his eyes after reading this Hannibal entertained a vision of turning his army on his own city. He had always believed that he knew the Carthaginian mind intimately. Now he wondered whether Carthage was viler than he had yet imagined, deserving of harsher punishments than he had ever visited on his enemies. Did not his men love him more than Carthage itself? They would rally behind him. He would find no difficulty reminding them of all the many ways the city had neglected them over the years. He would make them believe that together they could reach into the capital and rip out its foul heart and replace it with something to be proud of, something that would enrich them all with treasure beyond booty, beyond gold and slaves. He would build a new Carthage on the foundations of the old. And that city—his creation—could then turn its full resources to anything, even back to the defeat of Rome.

But this was only a fancy, and Hannibal was not one to entertain fancies. Ever since retreating from the walls of Rome he had known that this war would not lead to victory. Rome had taken the worst he could give it, and had lived. He would spend the rest of his life trying to understand just how that had happened, for he still did not fully comprehend it and could not order the events in a way that added up to the outcome Rome achieved. And in a more intimate way it baffled him. For all the years of his remembered life, he had believed that it was his destiny to defeat Rome. The knowledge that he had been mistaken cast everything in doubt. He was not even confident that he could rid Carthage of Publius Scipio, not considering the way Fortune's wind blew in his favor. He would have argued against the Council if he had known what to say, but the words eluded him. So he bowed to their wishes and began his pursuit.

It seemed that nothing in the world alarmed the animals of Africa more than the spectacle of an army of men on the march. As Hannibal pushed southward down the Bagradas valley, he drove herds of gazelle bounding before them across the scarred, smoldering landscape. Ostriches crisscrossed in front of the tide of men with their great, long-legged strides, occasionally becoming so disconcerted as to flap their useless wings in a desire to gain the air like other birds. Hyenas protested their progress each step of the way, retreating just so far before the approaching army, then spinning to challenge them with a chattering cacophony of yelps, only to spin again into bare-bottomed retreat. One evening Hannibal awoke to the calls of a lion, a tortured sound that seemed to warp the very fabric of the air through which it issued. The commander thought his tent fabric shook with each blast of sound, but in the dim light he could not be sure of this. It felt like the beast was communicating with him, but if this were so he knew not the language that it spoke.

As they were not themselves bent on destruction, the army rapidly gained on the Romans. From outside the pit of misery that had once been the trading center of Sicca, Hannibal sent out spies. They returned several days later and told a strange story. Several of them had been captured. When they were brought before Publius, one of his generals, Laelius, unsheathed his sword. They expected the customary fate of captured spies: to have their hands and tongues cut out and then to be released. But the consul laughed and waved for Laelius to sheath his sword. With another motion, he ordered their hands unbound. He called them guests and said that if Hannibal wished to know the state of his army all he had to do was ask. He personally escorted them throughout the camp, showing them everything, pausing long enough so that the men's nervous eyes could count and gauge the numbers they were seeing. This they did.

After they ended their report, the spies stood nervously about, with something more to say although they feared to do so.

“What else?” Hannibal asked.

One of the Libyans answered, “Commander, forgive me, but Publius told us to ask you whether his spies might survey your camp under the same conditions.”

Hannibal sent the same man back with a negative answer. He did say, however, that he would be pleased to meet Publius to discuss the terms of a peace. Without waiting for an answer, he kept to his tasks as he saw them. Maharbal's scouts surveyed the land between the two armies, and the commander maneuvered his troops according to their reports. It soon became clear that Publius had chosen the wide plain east of Zama as the stage for their encounter. A strong decision. The land was perfect for an open engagement, with nothing to favor either side, no traps to spring or avoid, no reason not to judge the ground a fair venue for combat. It was a spot, in fact, that Hannibal could find no excuse to avoid.

Strangely enough, he wished he could. He felt the fingers of another man's hands pushing him this way and that, and he did not like it. In the past he would have found some way to snatch control, but he could see no way to do this now. The consul held all the advantages he had had in Italy. For that reason, Hannibal meant his offer of discourse seriously. The Council wanted him to destroy the Romans, but if they believed that only he was capable of this, they must accept his word if he chose a negotiated peace. That might be just the thing they all needed, to talk peace, and then to go home and be citizens again. He sent a second envoy to the consul.

On the afternoon that he approached Hannibal with the news of Publius' acceptance of his proposal, Gemel found him asleep on his stool. He sat upright, with one hand stretched out before him on his thigh, as if he were reaching to accept an object into his palm. The officer almost commenced speaking, but then he noticed the slump of his head and the labored steadiness of his breathing.