Hannibal's Children (28 page)

Gabinius resumed. "These things we know to be true from the firsthand reports of our officers. They have learned secondhand that the once great empire of the Seleucids is crumbling under heavy pressure from the Parthians. The Seleucid monarch also contemplates an invasion of Egypt, to restore his fortunes with that nation's legendary wealth. We have Marcus Scipio's report informing us just how wealthy that nation is." This was greeted with murmurs of appreciation. The gold and jewels of Carthage were a fantasy to them, but the rich soil of Egypt was the very essence of reality.

"Here is my proposal: We make a temporary alliance with Hamilcar." The word "temporary" forestalled the most vehement of the protestors. "We send him, say, four legions with attached auxilia for his campaign against Egypt. We must allow him to think that this constitutes the bulk of our available manpower, leaving us only a skeleton force to guard our frontiers."

"And use the other ten to reconquer Italy!" shouted an aged Caesar, one of the most fanatic of the back-to-the-Seven-Hills movement. There were shouts of agreement.

Gabinius smiled. "Not quite. We will need
some
troops to man the borders, but auxilia and veterans called back to the standards to handle that. The barbarians are not terribly threatening at the moment. No, what I propose is an expansion of our forces. I propose that we raise ten more legions."

There was stunned silence. Twenty-four legions beneath the standards at once! It was an army unheard of in all of Roman history. "Impossible!" shouted some.

"Not at all. For a hundred years and more our empire has expanded and prospered. Lands once wild and tribal are now under heavy cultivation, and our farmers raise many sons. We have long regarded this as a manpower reserve against times of crisis, but why not put the bulk of them under arms at once? All freeborn Romans should be soldiers, is that not so? Let them get some experience, then. We face great wars of conquest in the future. Italy must not be merely retaken, it must be defended. The only way to defeat Carthage is to go to Africa and destroy the city itself. And after that there will be other foes, and they will not be disorganized tribesmen with courage and little else. There will be civilized armies to defeat. Our fourteen legions will not be enough."

A stern-faced senator rose and received permission to speak. "Where will we find arms and equipment for all these men? And money to pay for it all?"

"We have plenty of iron and skilled workmen," Gabinius said. "The treasury is full. Besides," he said, smiling, "ten new legions means ten new legionary commanders. Surely we have men who are brave, public-spirited and rich who would jump at the chance to win fame and glory, and who would be happy to part with some of their wealth to see that their men have fine arms and armor and warm cloaks and good boots."

This raised a chuckle, even from the opposition. The tendency of rich men to vie for command positions and to ingratiate themselves with their legionaries through such tactics had grown notorious.

"Gentlemen," Gabinius went on, "the reconquest of Italy must be our priority now, and that reconquest will necessitate eventual war with Carthage. We have no choice. Listen!" He paused dramatically, with a sweeping gesture toward the doorway of the Curia. From without came the rumble of the crowd. "Do you hear that? That is the voice of the Roman people.
They
demand this of us. Is it because all of them want to return to the land of their ancestors? Not at all. The majority of them are not of Italian ancestry. No, they want this because the immortal gods themselves demand it! For all these months, the omens have continued favorable. If we hesitate, if we fail in this task, the anger of the gods will fall upon us, and what will you tell those people then?"

At this, all fell to speaking in low voices among themselves. Some believed in the veracity of omens, some did not. But all understood the power of omens among the populace. Nothing of importance was done without consulting them. Interpretation of omens was an important function of state officers. Omens and politics were inextricable.

One by one, in order of their ranking in the Senate, the most prestigious senators rose, each to have his say in the matter. As might have been expected, the Old Family senators were unanimously in favor of the march on Italy, although they were less than enthusiastic about the proposed military alliance with Carthage. The New Family patriarchs put up far less protest against the project than they might have a few months before, and they had very little objection to the alliance, especially if it was to be followed by a war of conquest. Already, the prospect of the vast wealth that would inevitably fall into their hands was working on them. The clincher was the speech by the elder Titus Norbanus.

"My honored colleagues," he began, "there is much to be said both for and against this proposal by Publius Gabinius. But, as he has pointed out, any objections must go against the manifest approval of the immortal gods. They make it plain that this project must take place, and it presents Rome with an unprecedented opportunity to rise to the majesty intended by the gods—to be not just the greatest power in this part of the world, but to dominate the
entire
world. It is our destiny! We have the men and we have the wealth to carry out this conquest. We owe it to our posterity to seize this moment that they, our sons and grandsons, may live as lords of the world!"

There was frantic cheering at these words. Relayed by heralds to the crowd waiting without, the roar grew deafening. Gabinius, Brutus and many others smiled cynically. This seeming reversal of position on the part of the leader of the opposition left much unsaid: Those ten new legions would be raised almost entirely from the population of New Families. The Old Families no longer constituted a majority even in the fourteen traditional legions. This would greatly raise the power and prestige of his following.

And Norbanus's own son would be elevated to greatness. Right now he was the ranking man on the spot in Carthage itself while Scipio was gallivanting off in Egypt. Clearly, old Norbanus wanted to maneuver his son into the major command position in the wars to come. But that was a difficulty to be dealt with later. They had to have his support if they were to retake the Seven Hills.

By nightfall it was decided. The military reoccupation of Italy was to proceed. The ten new legions would be raised. A small deputation of distinguished senators would travel to Carthage to make arrangements for a military treaty with Carthage. All understood that the arrangement was to be strictly temporary.

Roman aims and policy were about to take a radical change in direction.

The pyramids turned out to be as mind-numbingly huge as the early travelers and historians had reported. The Roman party found themselves duly impressed, but at least these immense heaps of stone were not alarming. The walls of Carthage had been alarming. The tour had taken them far upriver to see the equally stupendous temple complexes near the old capital, Thebes. On the journey upriver they had passed the pyramids by moonlight and had remained aboard. The majestic river itself had been a revelation. They had fancied that the Rhenus and Danuvius were the broadest rivers in the world, but the Nile could have swallowed the flow of both northern rivers without rising appreciably in its banks. Ministers of the king had explained to them about the river's annual flood, depositing the rich silt that made Egypt so wealthy in crops, and the art of surveying that made it possible to reestablish the boundaries of land after each flood. This was the sort of activity the Romans could appreciate. Surveying was something they understood.

All along the river, they saw water-raising machinery such as Marcus had seen in the Museum. With hydraulic screws and buckets moving on endless chains and in rotating wheels, water was raised from the river and dumped into channels that would bear it to the fields. All of Egypt was irrigated, because rain was a great rarity.

Yet, despite the sophisticated machinery, most farmers made do with the most primitive of machines: a long, cranelike shaft with a bucket or skin bag for water on one end, a huge ball of mud on the other as a counterweight. The farmers hauled the bucket down to the river and filled it, then let the counterweight raise the now-full bucket to be pulled in and emptied into an irrigation channel, then the process began again. The peasants performed this labor for hour upon hour, watering their fields one bucketful at a time.

"Machinery is fine," Flaccus remarked, "but it is expensive. Manpower is cheap, and Egypt seems to have no end of manpower."

Indeed, they had never seen a land as densely populated as Egypt. The whole nation was really just a narrow strip of green land bordering the river. No more than a mile from the river's banks, the cultivated land ended and the desert began with startling abruptness. Within that narrow strip of green land lived millions of Egyptians, all but a handful of them members of the peasant class whose toil produced the nation's astounding wealth.

"The river is their life," Brutus said one day, "but that desert is their security. They've never had to face anything worse than raids by desert tribes. Egypt doesn't share borders with any nation possessing a real army. In the northeast, they have the Sinai as a buffer zone between Egypt and the Seleucids. In the northwest, Libya amounts to nothing and separates them from Carthage."

Scipio nodded. "It's how they can maintain so dense a population. The land is never ravaged by war and they don't need to use the young men as soldiers. They can spend their whole lives doing nothing but farm."

"What a strange place," Caesar said. "It doesn't seem natural." He waved an arm toward the shoreline, where life was pursued as it had been without change for thousands of years. "It seems too ..." He tapered off.

"I believe the word you are looking for is 'serene,' " Flaccus said. "Serenity is alien to us."

"That's it," Caesar agreed. "This whole country is like an old man sitting under his arbor, watching his grapes grow."

"So what is to keep Hamilcar from conquering this place?" Brutus wanted to know. "We know that he has an immense army and is planning to make it even stronger. With our legions thanks to you, Marcus." He waited for Scipio to rise to the jibe, but the leader simply listened attentively. "The Libyans won't stop him. He's probably already made arrangements with them. They may have formed an alliance. The Libyans will want a part of the spoils if they're to loot Egypt."

"He can cut off Alexandria with his navy," Caesar concurred, "and bring up his army to take the city."

"In the first place," Marcus told them, "he can't cut off Alexandria by sea. As we've already seen, the city has direct access to the Nile. The Delta has hundreds of river channels and even Hamilcar's navy can't block all those mouths. More importantly, it gives Alexandria access to the interior, which can keep the city supplied forever."

"Nonetheless," Brutus said, "the fact remains that Hamilcar doesn't have to take all of Egypt, as he might have in the days of the pharaohs. If he takes Alexandria, the rest of the country falls into his hands."

"That would require an immense siege," Marcus pointed out.

"Well, what do you think he's preparing for?" Brutus cried, exasperated. "He isn't amassing that army to take a few border forts and skirmish with some desert tribesmen! If a siege is what is required, that is what he'll do. Carthage took Syracuse by siege, so they know how it's done. We've all gone over the defenses. Alexandria isn't protected the way Carthage is."

"The walls of Carthage are a great redundancy," Flaccus said. "They are designed to overawe more than to protect. Building stables and barracks into the walls is very clever, but what military purpose does it serve? The defenses of Alexandria are more than adequate. The place was designed by Alexander and his generals, and they were men who knew more than a little about siegecraft."

"Flaccus is right," Marcus said. "Besides the supplies and the walls, the Archimedean School has designed wonderful fighting machines."

"You and those machines!" Caesar spat. "They are toys!"

"Toys?" Scipio said. "You saw them demonstrated at sea. Did they seem like toys then?"

"That was different," Caesar maintained. "A ship is a sort of machine. When machine fights machine, they have their uses. But we turned that pirate vessel into a slaughterhouse with a handful of legionaries."

"That's right!" Brutus said. "The ultimate weapon is the Roman legionary. A few legions would take Alexandria in a day."

"But I thought you objected to using our legions for the purpose, Brutus," Scipio said.

"Don't try to trick me! I am saying that good foot soldiers won't be stopped by big, noisy contraptions good for nothing but scaring the horses. Hamilcar's army may not be legion quality, but they can't all be bad. They are probably up to this task."

"Perhaps, Marcus," Flaccus said placatingly, "it might be time for you to tell us just what you
do
intend. If mystifying us all is your intention, you've succeeded. I may say without bragging that I understand the Senate better than any man here. The Senate loves success, even when it is accomplished by less than traditional means. But the Senate at its most whimsical will never countenance using our legions on
both
sides of a foreign war. Not at the same time, anyway. Is that your intention? For us to back one side, then switch to the other?"

"You are close," Scipio said. "First, let me say this: In large part, I agree that Alexandria will not hold against a determined Carthaginian siege. That is not because of the inadequacy of the defenses, but rather because of the quality of the leadership. The king is a boy, surrounded by corrupt buffoons. The nation is generally well run because of Selene. The royal council is content to let her run the place most of the time because it relieves them of the labor. But they and the army will not follow her in war because she is a woman. Instead, they'll dress the boy in military clothes and try to defend Alexandria themselves. They fancy the blood of their warrior ancestors is sufficient to give them proficiency in the military arts."