David Durham - Pride of Carthage

“Let us forget this conversation,” Hannibal said, opening his eyes and straightening to his full height. “It does nobody any good and we've much to attend to. Here is what we do, brother. You must go to Carthage on my behalf. . . .”

Never before had Rome endured so dreadful an hour. Each of the previous battles had struck its blow, but Cannae beggared belief. For days after the first news of the disaster trickled in, the people had no clear understanding of any of it. Just who had been killed, who captured, and who spared? Was there an army left? Was Hannibal already beating a path toward them with gleaming eyes? Was he truly, truly unstoppable? Questions multiplied with few answers rising to match them. Rome's people knew only that every aspect of their lives had been altered; now everything was at risk of imminent destruction. The streets and the Forum became roiling sluiceways of despair. The living and the dead were mourned simultaneously, in a jumble, for there seemed no way of separating the two.

On the suggestion of Fabius Maximus, horsemen rode out along the Via Appia and Via Latina to gather what news they could from the battered survivors—if any could be found. The gates to the city slammed shut behind them. All believed that Hannibal would come for them now. What object could there be but the destruction of Rome itself? The death of her men, the despoiling of her women, the theft of her riches: what greater temptation for the monsters of Carthage? For a people so buoyed by their enslavement of others, it was easy to imagine the trials ahead for them should the barbarians breach the gates. Masters crouched beside servants and wept with them and made declarations never heard before and whispered apologies previously inconceivable. All awaited the coming tempest.

Amazing, then, barely believable, mysterious . . . that Hannibal did not appear on the horizon. Yes, the details that reached them were horrendous, the death toll shocking, no portion of the news fair or welcome . . . but Hannibal did not come. He did not come. And with the passing of days into weeks and more weeks, people's thoughts turned from impending doom to other matters. Amid the fervor of war and hope in the city as Paullus and Varro marched out, none had taken note that prodigies had been occurring with unusual frequency. In the sealed, waiting city these events were recalled.

There had been lightning strikes at the Atrium Publicum in the Capitol, as also upon the shrine of Vulcan and the temple of Vacuna and upon the stones of the road in the Sabine district. This latter had left a gaping hole at the center of a crossroads, inside which a child found the handle of an ancient's dagger. There had been other strikes on lonely spots that set the hills on fire. In a village in the far south, a flaming goat ran through the street calling out, “Hurrah, hurrah!” It was assumed that the creature had likewise been the victim of a malicious lightning strike, though there were no witnesses to this.

All of this had taken place the previous year. As the new year dawned, the land seemed rife with signs. The earth split and peeled and offered up amazements that proved time and again that the natural order had been reversed. At Mantua there was a swamp that captured and held the overflow from the river Mincius. It was a foul place even in the best of times, damp and smelling of decay, rich in substance and yet somehow rank with death as well. All this was of nature's own design. But a man chanced upon the place one twilight to find that the waters had turned to blood: not just in color but also in substance, thick and congealed and metallic in his nostrils, as if the earth itself bled like humans.

At Spoletium, a woman awoke one day changed into a man. At Hadria, white forms were seen floating in the sky. Great numbers of dead fish washed ashore near Brundisium. And some said that the tunic on the statue of Mars at Praeneste protruded each sunset under pressure from the god's great, granite erection. Rumors to explain this flew as fast and chaotic as bats in the night sky. Some said the god was instructing them to procreate. Still others suggested that they should look to a leader endowed with a similar length and regularity. Before long the notion took hold that the local whores had sold themselves into the employ of Carthage. They had taken to servicing the god to distract him from the war effort. Reliable persons, however, never confirmed this, so this tale was best considered with skepticism.

For augury it was an abundant season, and the results fueled the deepening suspicion that the gods abhorred the Roman cause. The city had forgotten to honor them properly. That was why this Carthaginian conqueror prevailed so easily against them. The people responded according to the advice of the magistrates and priests. An edict was issued for a period of prayer to all the gods of Rome, lest one go neglected and feel slighted. Lambs were sacrificed, fat ones with fine coats and handsome faces. Their blood ran freely to appease the gods. Their entrails betrayed more omens too bleakly numerous to detail, so the priests looked to still darker measures. Two Gallic slaves were publicly beheaded in an elaborate offering to Apollo. It was rumored that even older rites were enacted across the Tiber at night, but what went on over there had no place in the public record. Some people even turned to soothsayers—unusual for a Roman as such a practice was more Greek in nature—and these questionable persons produced all sort of varied and contradictory advice. Some people hammered nails into sacred objects and offered them at the gods' temples; others left food outside their houses for certain animals or washed with a single hand only, refrained from saying certain words, or pricked their skin with needles and licked the blood clean.

Though some believed that these practices improved their fortunes, others found that unnatural incidents proceeded unabated. It was truly a volatile time, in which reason was hard to come by and quiet voices seldom heard. Two of the Vestal Virgins were discovered in unchaste acts. One killed herself with a dagger; the other had not the courage to take her own life but was instead buried alive by a raging mob. Gangs of youths swarmed the streets, flagellating beggars and rooting out poor souls they named as spies for Carthage. For weeks after the news from Cannae, the soldiers' widows walked the streets in tears, dragging their fingernails across their faces and arms and chests. Their mourning was so disruptive that the Senate roused itself to action. They banned any display of sorrow, calling it treasonous and un-Roman, and conscripted the raucous youths to police the ban.

And yet through all this turmoil and distress not a single voice of prominence suggested settlement. Rome sent no envoys to treat with the Carthaginian, nor did the city receive his messengers with anything but scorn. Without even discussing the matter, the citizens of Rome chose ultimate war over a compromised peace. They would live by their own rules, or they would perish.

Despite the almost fatal circumstances of his early years, Masinissa was a young man full of certainty. In infancy he had been threatened by an unnamed illness. A few years later, a smallpox outbreak took away his elder brother, several cousins, and many of his childhood companions: this was his earliest memory. A year later he fell sick with yet another contagion. Headaches and rashes plagued him. Stomach cramps doubled him over. He vomited whatever he swallowed, and other substances that came from deep inside him. Eventually, he lay unable to rise, feverish, his sheets stained pink by the blood escaping through his skin. Priests and physicians alike labored over him. Around them he watched the play of other creatures, small, half-human things that only he could see. These demons set their tiny hands on him and tugged, trying to lift him from his pallet and drag him off to some foul place. It took all of his will to fight them back. He was never sure just how he prevailed over them, but he emerged from his ailment with a quiet conviction in his own destiny. The illness had been a test; he had passed.