David Durham - Pride of Carthage

Eventually, in the darkness of full night, Hanno said, “Out of the clutches of one Greek . . .”

Silenus filled in the pause. “. . . and into the hands of an old friend. By the gods, you must have fared all right if you leave that chamber with humor on your tongue. Are you hungry? I brought food, for I feared they'd starved you.”

Hanno shook his head. “Romans believe meat and rich food make a man soft. So they gave me meat instead of the plain food they favor.” A fit of coughing choked out his words. He was silent for a moment and then whispered, “They fed me so that I would be stronger for their questions.”

“Think no more about it,” Silenus said. “It's over. Done. You've left that dungeon and none need speak of what went on there. I'll never betray you, as you never betrayed your country. That's all anybody need know.”

Hanno looked as if he might try a weak smile but he did not. He just gazed into the other man's eyes with an intensity that was statement and question and silence all.

Silenus had to turn away. “And to think,” he said, “at one time I thought we were just a few words away from becoming lovers.”

Hanno closed his eyes as if this thought pained him.

The air above Rome hummed with a wild, bickering energy, with resentment and anger, with possibility and passion, with fear of the gods, and with the fervent hope that divine forces would soon smile on the Roman people. In alleyways and baths and markets, Romans spoke of nothing save the situation they found themselves in and how to remedy it. Few opinions sat easily next to one another, but the tone of the discourse had shifted. The shock of the Trebia now lay a distant memory; gone was the desperation following Trasimene; forgotten the notion of Hannibal's invincibility. In place of these, the Roman people stoked the fires of indignant rage. Under Fabius' leadership they had wasted an entire season pretending to be cowards. They had suffered humiliation after humiliation. When the old man finally seemed to have the African within his grasp he let him escape by a cheap, cowardly ruse. Things had to change, at all levels, decisively and soon.

The dictator received a cold reception on his return to Rome. He walked the streets with the decorum he had long nurtured, with his faithful around him. He showed not the slightest diffidence, gave no hint that he viewed his strange campaign with regret. He handed his dictatorship back into the trust of the Senate without a word of apology. This apparent indifference to public criticism united the people against him. A senator's wife dubbed him Fabius the Delayer. The name took. Children taunted him in the streets. They threw out insults that were rarely intelligible—spoken as they were on the run, with fear and laughter both garbling the words—but the sight of young ones darting to and fro through the dictator's entourage had a detrimental effect on his stature. Enough so that a street player could get away with depicting the dictator as completely blind, a feeble creature who complained that his testicles had somehow fallen out of the sacks that held them. By the end of the performance—to the hilarity of ever-growing crowds—the actor was down upon his knees, searching with his hands for the missing baubles. The audience laughed all the harder because mirth had been absent from the capital so long. With its return, however, a new future seemed possible. The elections only verified this.

Terentius Varro stepped first into the fringed toga of consul. He who had so chafed against the dictator's delaying tactics easily became the popular choice. He wrapped the garment around his thick torso and walked with one arm clenched at an angle that highlighted the bulge of his bicep. Though he was not exactly of the people, he knew how to play to a crowd, boasting with an earthy bravado that his family had once been butchers. He knew that citizens both rich and poor wanted action. It was not simply a matter of honor, of national pride, or even of revenge for lives lost. The fact was that people were going hungry. Food was in short supply. Goods normally transported across the country had been long held up. Italy, so rightly the object of Roman hegemony, was out of balance. Varro pledged to right all this by the age-old method of the Roman people—war on the open field. In his speech accepting the consulship he reminded the Senate that he had once before looked into Hannibal's foul face, some years back, in his city of New Carthage. He swore that the next time he caught sight of him would be the African's last day in command. He would do battle that very hour and bring this matter to a close.

The people greeted all this with enthusiasm. But Romans had embedded deep within them a cautious core, a twin who always wished to calm the passions of his brother. Thus the second consul elected was Aemilius Paullus, already a veteran of the office: He had commanded previously in Illyria. The family line of this more seasoned choice nowhere converged with that of butchers. He was a friend to the brothers Scipio and had apprenticed under Fabius himself. Indeed, it was rumored that on the evening after the election Aemilius supped at the former dictator's house, listening to the older man's counsel and taking within himself a portion of his views. But if this was true, he was prudent enough not to admit it.

The Senate, having appointed these two men with a war mission, did not fail to support them. In addition to the four legions already in the field, they called up four more. They increased the number of men in each to five thousand, and they demanded that their allies provide matching forces. More than one hundred senators left the Senate to serve in the coming year's army. Though they were going to war, the people felt propelled by an almost euphoric wave of enthusiasm. They would field an army such as the world had never known—a full eighty thousand soldiers for Rome. The destiny of their people was again within reach. They had only to remember themselves and seize it. They were Romans, after all.

Another point of interest in the new year's elections—an event hardly noticed in the consular turmoil—was the rise of Publius Scipio to the position of tribune. He was thereby entrusted with protecting the lives, property, and well-being of the people. The young man, son of the former consul, savior of his father at the Ticinus, whisperer in the dictator's ear, held to a path of quiet ascendance.

Hasdrubal found the Scipio brothers a constant nuisance, a two-headed viper that threatened to stir the whole of Iberia into rebellion. Word of Trasimene must have reached the Scipios quickly, for their tactics changed somewhat late in the summer. They became cautious. They turned their talents to political intrigue. The two sides played a game of strategic moves, one pressing around the side of the other, flanking and counterflanking, skirmishing at the fringes of their might but not clashing head-on. Both sides courted the various tribes, each vying to play the native people against each other, or against other Iberians, whichever seemed more expedient. It was an intricate game that ill suited the young Barca. He could barely keep track of who was loyal to whom, who an enemy of whom, and why, or which double or triple betrayal was in the works at any one time. Had it not been for Noba, with his labyrinthine memory, he would have overturned the game board in frustration long ago.

In the autumn, frustrated by the lack of direct action and warily feeling that the contest was turning against him, Hasdrubal pushed for a decisive military clash. His army was divided—half of his forces patrolled the far south, staying vigilant lest any portion of the empire grow rebellious—but he drew upon a fresh reserve of troops gathered from the Tagus region, mostly of the Carpetani. They were raw recruits, numerous but not entirely happy with their lot in life since Hannibal's rout of them a few years before. They might not want to fight, but like all men they would do so for their lives. If they were flanked on either side by the best of his troops, the Africans, then simple self-preservation would transform them into something useful.