Hannibal's Children (3 page)

"Kinsmen, let's not defy the gods as well as the noble Senate. We will found a new Rome in the north, as Aeneas founded a new Troy in Italy." With this, he walked to the left of the chamber and the rest of the Scipios followed.

The Flamen Dialis spoke once more. "There must be one condition, or we cannot go."

Once again, the Romans stood before Hannibal. This time, the Carthaginian met them before his command tent, with all his commanding officers and ranking allies around him. Beside the tent was a strange object: a table surmounted by a standard that consisted of a golden pole. At its base was a triangle topped with a pair of stylized arms, hands upraised. Above that was a golden disk, and above the disk a silver crescent, points upward.

"What is your decision, Dictator?" Hannibal demanded. "The sun is almost at the horizon."

"We will go," said Fabius, his face frozen. From the crowd surrounding Hannibal came many exclamations, some of satisfaction, others of disappointment.

"You are wise," said the Shofet.

"But there is one condition," the Dictator said.

"No conditions!" barked Hasdrubal. "Go or die, it is all the same to us!"

"Peace, brother," Hannibal said. "I would hear this condition."

"I have spoken with the Senate, with the priests and with the citizens assembled in arms. We are in agreement. You must swear not to lay violent hands upon the tombs of our ancestors or upon the temples of our gods. You may loot the temples of their treasures, but leave the buildings and the images of the gods unmolested. Otherwise, we must stay and die, right here, right now." Now he, too, gazed at the setting sun. "No need to wait until morning. A night battle will suit us as well. We do not need sunlight to find our way to the underworld."

There was stunned silence. To offer battle when the outcome was certain annihilation was astounding but not unheard of. To offer a night battle was appalling. At last Hannibal spoke.

"You Romans are a truly remarkable people. I will be almost sorry to see you gone." He walked to the strange structure by his tent and placed a palm against the golden triangle. "Upon the altar of Tanit I, Hannibal, Shofet of Carthage and general of all her armies, swear that neither I, the men under my command, my allies nor any Carthaginian will ever molest the tombs and temples of the Romans. In this I include their sacred groves, shrines, holy wells and their mundus to the underworld. This I enjoin upon all my descendants as well." He took his hand from the altar and faced the Romans again.

"Now go. Take what you can carry, but go. You have the turning of one moon. Tonight the great moon of Tanit is full. At the next full moon I will slay without mercy any Roman I find in Italy."

There was a final assembly in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter: Jupiter Best and Greatest. The Senate was present, as were all the priesthoods: the flamenae and the pontifexes; the college of augurs; the Salii, known as "holy leapers"; the keepers of the ancilia, the quinqidecemviri, who kept the Sybilline Books; The Rex Sacrorum, King of Sacrifices* who stood second only to the Flamen Dialis; the Arval Brothers; the Pontifex Maximus, who ruled over all aspects of religious practice. Behind him stood the Vestal Virgins. There were other priesthoods, some of them so ancient and obscure that most Romans were scarcely aware of their existence, each dressed in its own regalia.

When all the prayers and invocations had been spoken or chanted or wailed in their archaic languages, when all the protective and apotropaic spells had been laid, the Pontifex Maximus spoke.

"I now invoke an oath upon the whole Roman people." Four priests entered the temple. They wore long-sleeved tunics and upon their heads were bulbous turbans encircled by scarlet and yellow stripes. They carried a sacrificed pig, each holding a leg as its slashed throat dripped a line of blood upon the floor of the temple. They halted before the Pontifex Maximus and one of them handed him a rod of iron.

"If we do not return to take back our sacred seven hills, may the curse of Jupiter fall upon our descendants thus!" He raised the rod and brought it down upon the carcass with terrible force. The temple filled with the sound of snapping bones. "If Rome is not liberated from Carthage, may Jupiter smite us and our children thus!" Again the rod fell and bones crunched. "If we do not raise Rome anew, more splendid and beautiful than before, may Jupiter curse and destroy all our progeny thus!" The rod fell a third time and he cast it aside to clatter on the floor, the blood that now coated it splattering the nearest bystanders.

"This I swear by all the gods, by Jupiter and Mars, by Juno and Quirinus, by Janus, god of beginnings and endings, and by . . ." Here he raised his hands in a significant gesture and all present save he, the Flamen Dialis and the Virgo Maxima, chief of the Vestals, covered their ears. Then, in a quiet voice, he pronounced the Secret Name of Rome, the most sacred and terrible oath of Roman religion, known only to the three of them. Then the carcass of the pig, bearing the dreadful oath with it, was taken from the temple to be thrown upon the sacrificial fire. The ancient terracotta statue of Jupiter, painted red except for his black beard and golden eyes, looked down upon them benignly. In later years, many of those present would claim that they saw him nod approval.

“There they go,” said Philip of Macedon. He stood on the terrace of a fine villa that stood on a hill overlooking Rome's Colline Gate. A colorful procession had begun to stream through the gate, led by men who bore poles from which hung the sacred ancilia, the shields of Mars. Only one of them was the true ancile, which had fallen from the heavens centuries before. The others had been made to foil thieves. Now no one knew which was the true ancile, so all were accorded equal honor.

"It is about time," said Hannibal. The Romans had used up half their allotted month making preparations for the migration. Already, many of the outlying communities were trekking north, a vanguard of soldiers at their head. Other communities, under Roman domination in recent years, were already discarding Latin and reverting to their native Oscan, Faliscian, Marsian or other dialects, preferring Carthaginian domination to the perils of a march into the cold and unknown north.

Behind the shield-bearers came wagons bearing the holy objects of Rome: the Sybilline books, the ancient statue called Palladium, the Tables of the Law and a hundred lesser items, all of them revered. The Vestals bore a litter with a bronze tripod upon which burned the sacred fire of Vesta.

Then came the general populace, their belongings borne upon wagons and pack animals and the backs of men and women. They carried provisions and farm implements and baskets and jars of seed corn with which to sow new fields in some unknown land.

"Look at them!" Philip said. "Farmers who thought they could challenge the world. Plenty of stubbornness, but no sense of glory." Hannibal just watched and said nothing.

By late afternoon the last of them were out of the city and all the gates stood open. The people were dwindling northward on the Via Nomentana, with a rearguard of soldiers behind them. The whole procedure had been as precise as any military operation.

At Hannibal's signal the Carthaginian drums thundered and his army, cheering like madmen, poured into the city. The sack of Rome had begun.

"There go the last of the Romans," Philip said, pouring himself a cup of wine from a golden pitcher. He poured another and handed it to the Shofet. "We'll not see them again and good riddance. The world is better off without them."

Hannibal looked at the king bleakly. "Pray to all your gods that we never see them again."

Roma Noricum, 100 B.C.

The smoke from the burning oppidum was choking, but the fires were burning low now, the bodies frozen in postures of death, the smell of death beginning to overwhelm the smoke. The legionaries went from one body to the next, making sure that each was dead. Where there was doubt, a quick stab of the gladius removed it.

Marcus Cornelius Scipio surveyed the scene and he could take no pleasure in it. The oppidium was a small place, the last holdout of an obscure band of Celts, no match for the Roman legions sent against them.

"That's the last of them then, Commander?" said his senior centurion.

"The last," he affirmed. "Now we'll have peace for a few years." He watched the auxilia herding the women and children into a compound. The slavers who followed the legions like a cloud of vultures were already gathering, assessing the new livestock and calculating their bids.

"Peace," said the centurion. "I don't like peace. The men get soft. They lose their edge. Peace is no good for the Republic. You're young, Commander. You don't remember. Back when I was a decurion, we had five years of peace. The legions turned into worthless slaves. Praise to Jupiter those Cimbri invaded. It saved us from turning into Greeks." For Romans, the Greek traders who brought goods from the luxurious south were the epitome of all that was decadent and weak.

Marcus Scipio had to smile. "I don't think we need to fear that much peace. A year or two at most."

The centurion grunted. "Well, next year I'm Prefect of the Camp, then I retire. But I hate to think my boys are going to turn into Greeks." He spat onto a smoldering timber raising a spurt of steam.

"The Alemanni up north are planning a march south," Marcus said. "They'll be here before long, never fear." He was a very young man, no more than twenty-five, but most army commanders were young. He was dressed much like a common soldier in a mail tunic of iron links belted with a sword and dagger. His tight-fitting leather breeches reached just below the knees and on his feet he wore hobnailed caligae. Most of his gear was of Gallic make, modified to suit Roman tastes. Only the twin white plumes on his iron helmet denoted his rank.

"You can finish up here, Aufidius," he said to the centurion. Aufidius was primus pilus, "first spear." He was centurion of the first century, first cohort and the senior centurion of the legion. His greaves and side-to-side crest signified his rank.

"Go on back to the camp, Tribune. You've earned some rest."

Marcus took his cloak from his cantle and threw it across his shoulders. Like most legionary cloaks it was deep green with interlacing stripes of black woven through it. It was another Celtic item, ideal for scouting and hunting. He mounted and turned his horse's head toward the camp. It was two hours' ride southward along the Rhenus, and as he rode, he found himself already growing depressed with the prospect of peace, but not for the same reasons that troubled the centurion. In Roma Noricum, peace meant political strife. As long as there were barbarians to fight, incursions to repel, a sort of unity prevailed in the capital, although there could be plenty of rancor even in wartime. Without external hostilities to distract them, the senatorial families and their allies were at one another's throats, clawing for power and influence, trying to maneuver their patriarchs and sons into the best command positions, the important magistracies, the most prestigious priesthoods.

Always, there was the struggle between the old families and the new families. The old families were those that had made the long trek of the Exile, the families from Rome of the Seven Hills. The new families were native, Romanized by their conquerors. They had full rights of citizenship and could hold all the highest offices and all but a few of the priesthoods, but they lacked the social prestige of the old families, and this rankled. He was still brooding on this when he rode in sight of the camp.

"Camp" was a poor word for what Roman legionaries built wherever they stopped for the night. The surveyors rode ahead of the legion and found a good site, laid out its walls and streets and marked the tent sites with colored flags. When the legion reached the site, the men set down their packs and got out their entrenching tools. Still in full armor, they dug the ditch and heaped the soil on the camp side, building an earthen wall, atop which they planted the palisade poles they had been carrying all day. They posted sentries and only then went inside to pitch their tents. This was done at the end of every day's march. If they moved on in the morning, they demolished the camp so that enemies couldn't use it.

If a camp was to be occupied for a longer period, it was improved continuously. The camp Marcus surveyed below him had been in use for six months. Its earthen rampart was twenty feet high and topped with a log wall featuring wooden walks and loops for the bowmen. The trench below it was another fifteen feet deep and bristled with wooden spikes. Its streets were graveled and the road connecting it with the great River Road was being paved with cut stone.

There was no enemy present strong enough to justify such fortification, but this was the Roman custom. Besides, should the Germans continue to menace the district, it would form the basis for a permanent stone fort. Then a new town would form around the fort and thus would the empire of Roma Noricum be extended, with new peasant families dwelling here to breed more sons for the legions.

He rode in through the porta praetoria, down the main street of the camp, accepting the salutes of the men on guard. He had taken only three cohorts north with him to mop up the Celtic remnant. Two cohorts remained to guard the camp, the others scattered along the river on guard duty. He rode past the camp shrine where the standards were kept, the manipular standards topped with a bronze hand, and the silver wolf that was the standard of the legion. The standard bearers stood before the shrine with wolf skins draped over their helmets and hanging down their backs, the paws knotted upon their breasts.

He crossed the via principalis, the road that crossed the via praetoria at right angles and separated the legionary camp from the section occupied by the extraordinarii: the long-service soldiers whose special skills and duties relieved them from regular duties, the small citizen cavalry force, the medical staff, the priests and the handlers of the sacrificial animals and the scores of other supernumerary personnel required by an army. It also contained the praetorium: the commander's tent. In this case, it was Marcus's quarters. Quintus Valgus, General of the North, had divided four of his six legions among his subordinate military tribunes, and Marcus had been assigned to the Fifth Legion, the Northern Wolves. He could not have asked for better.