Tyrant (7 page)

Empedius reached Hannibal at the camp he’d set up between Selinus and Segesta, and he asked to be received, with his interpreter. He was not kept waiting long; the two men were escorted through the area where the prisoners were being held, and they saw such scenes of despair that they were wholly shaken by the time they were brought before the general. To think that just a few days before these people were living free and prosperous in comfortable homes, wearing clean, elegant attire! Here they were lying in their own excrement, feeding on scraps which were thrown into their pens as if they were animals. Some of them shrieked out, babbling meaningless words. Others shouted even louder to shut them up.

Some realized that the man being escorted by the guards was a Greek, and they ran along the confines after him, crying out pitifully for help. They begged him in the name of all the gods to have pity on them, to free them from their miserable plight. He answered that he was there for just that purpose, that soon they would all be free. His soul swelled with pride and satisfaction as he spoke, so sure was he that his mission would be successful. The Carthaginians were merchants, not warriors: why would they refuse a good deal?

‘Take heart,’ he told them. ‘I’ve come all this way to liberate you. Have no fear; we’ll ransom you all! Your suffering will soon be at an end.’

Hannibal, the Carthaginian commander, was an elderly man, well over seventy; his skin was dark, his hair and beard white, his eyes a deep, cold blue. Some Berber woman from the Atlantic tribes must have been among his ancestors. He received Empedius and the interpreter in his tent, a pavilion of white wool cloth supported by cedar-wood poles; the ground was covered with coloured mats and Numidian rugs. The golden cups and plates on the table looked like plunder from one of the temples of Selinus.

Such ostentation did not promise well, thought Empedius, but he nonetheless made his offer, speaking on behalf of his city and his government: ‘We admit that the Selinuntians have erred against you by attacking one of your allies, but you’ll surely agree that they have already suffered the worst of punishments. We are here to offer a ransom for them: one-third more than their price on the market, in silver and coins.’

Hannibal arched an eyebrow at the thought of the mountain of money that this man was willing to spend, and he listened attentively, without allowing his expression to betray was he was thinking. He then replied: ‘The crime that the Selinuntians committed against us deserves no pardon. They challenged me, although they had been given the opportunity to surrender, causing the death of many of my men. It is only right and fitting that they live in slavery for the rest of their days. As a sign of my generosity of spirit, I will free any of your relatives who may be among the prisoners. Consider this my gift to you; you need not pay me for them.

‘My informers tell me that a certain number of them fled the city. I shall allow the survivors, if they so desire, to return and rebuild their homes, to cultivate the fields and to live in their city, as long as they do not reconstruct the walls, and pay an annual tribute to our tax collectors. I have no intention of discussing these decisions.’ Having said thus, he dismissed the envoy.

Empedius declared that some of the prisoners were his relatives, and they were duly released: a young couple with two children were the only ones among six thousand prisoners who he was able to bring back to Syracuse with him. But even such a meagre result had given meaning to his undertaking, and he felt that he had not acted in vain. On his return journey, he stopped at Acragas to inform the Selinuntian refugees about the outcome of his mission and of the conditions laid down by Hannibal should they want to resettle in their city.

None of them accepted, and their hate mounted beyond measure when they heard about the cruel sufferings of their fellow citizens and relatives, condemned to perpetual slavery, outrage and humiliation. The insolence of that barbarian! He had dared to refuse the ransom which he was bound to accept in accordance with the will of the gods and the rights of the people.

The surviving heads of family assembled in the temple of the chthonic gods – the faceless divinities who rule over the gloomy world of the dead – and swore that they would live only for revenge, and that when the moment came, no Carthaginian would be spared: not a man, nor a woman, nor a child. They promised the heads of their enemies to the infernal gods, and laid a curse upon them that would endure from generation to generation until that abhorrent race was wiped off the face of the earth.

Empedius returned to Syracuse then, to report to Diocles.

In the meantime, Hannibal had turned east and it was soon clear that he was headed for Himera, the city where his grandfather Hamilcar had perished seventy years before. His army was sixty thousand men strong, and they were joined by contingents of natives, lured by the promise of plunder and slaves. Terror spread rapidly, and the Himerans readied to defend themselves to the death. Selinus’s fate left no doubt as to the intentions of the enemy, and their only hope lay in their bravery and their arms.

The high command met in Syracuse with Diocles at their head. They decided to send an expeditionary force to assist Himera. If Himera should fall, the other Greeks of the West would lose all faith in Syracuse, and their cities would be wiped out as if they had never existed.

This time as well, however, Hannibal moved faster than the government of Syracuse, and before Diocles’s decision could be finalized, his army was already at the gates of Himera. He pitched camp on the high plains overlooking the city, to ward off unexpected sorties, and he set his moving towers and rams to work on the city walls. Twenty thousand of his assault troops laid siege to the city, reinforced by a numerous contingent of seasoned, belligerent native Sicels and Sicans.

Himera was a symbol for the Greeks of the motherland and the colonies because, seventy years earlier, as the Hellenes of the continent were defeating the Persians at Salamina, the Greeks of Sicily were likewise winning their battle against the Carthaginians and would soon defeat the Etruscans as well in the waters of Cumae. It was later said that the three battles were fought on the very same day, month and year, symbolizing the fact that the gods had willed the triumph of the Greeks on all fronts against eastern and western barbarians.

But for Hannibal, son of Gisco, the city was cursed. His grandfather Hamilcar had found defeat there and had killed himself after having seen his entire army destroyed. From dawn to dusk, throughout the entire battle, he had sacrificed victim upon victim, imploring his gods for victory, but as the sun fell and he had to watch his men routed and hunted down like beasts, fleeing in every direction, he threw himself on to the pyre, screaming out promises for revenge amidst the flames.

Hannibal’s own father had been defeated there as well, and sentenced to exile. He was the third of his family to attempt the endeavour and he had a burning desire to exact vengeance for the downfall and disgrace of his forebears; he would redeem their honour and his own.

Diocles managed to put together three thousand men in all, calling up the contingent stationed in Acragas as well. He set off towards Himera to save her, if he could, from the bitter fate that had befallen Selinus.

The Carthaginians had meanwhile positioned their assault towers at various points of the walls, and the rams battered relentlessly from daybreak to nightfall, continuing after dark at times. They found that these walls could not be demolished as easily as those of Selinus. The Himerans had, in fact, built them by embedding great blocks of stone both horizontally and transversally.

Seeing that the rams were largely ineffective against these fortified walls, the Carthaginians withdrew and resolved to dig a mine. They worked ceaselessly day and night, in shifts, until they had opened a tunnel under the walls, which they reinforced as they went along with pinewood timbering that they had harvested from the surrounding forests and saturated with liquefied resin. Working by night, so as not to be seen by the city’s defenders, they dug ventilation chutes, both to give air to the miners and to feed the fires they would soon be setting.

They finished just before dawn on a cloudy night. A group of raiders made their way through the tunnel to the opposite end and set the timber aflame. The blaze spread like wildfire as the incendiary substances the wood had been soaked with burst into flames. The sentries up high on the walls could see a row of red eyes lighting up in the plain: the glow of the fires burning below, visible from the ventilation shafts. Whirlwinds of flames and smoke soon roared out of the holes and twirling sparks rose to the sky, spreading an acrid, scorched smell throughout the countryside. The timbering was reduced to ash in no time and a stretch of wall, deprived of its foundations, crumbled to the ground with a resounding crash, taking the defenders with it into a heap of ruins.

Even before the dense cloud of smoke and dust could clear, the bugles and war horns sounded and the Libyan, Mauritanian and Siculian infantry of Hannibal’s army launched their attack. The rest of the army drew up, ready to rush in as soon as the attackers had opened a passage; they would overwhelm anyone who tried to resist.

But that screaming horde were no sooner at the base of the breach than the passage was already teeming with defenders. None of their actions had passed unobserved and nothing they could do would be unexpected. Every man capable of carrying arms had taken them up. Their outrage over the atrocities committed by the barbarians at Selinus was so strong that not only were the Himerans ready to die to the last man rather than surrender, but they hurled themselves at their assailants with such violence and loathing that no one could doubt their resolve.

They were at the base of the breach even before the attackers arrived, and they formed ranks in phalanxes, in a single battle line at first and then in two or even three lines, as new combatants arrived; they drew up in a curved front to prevent any access to the breach. Then, at a signal from their commanders, they surged forward, holding their spears high in clenched fists, as the men and women remaining inside the city rushed to repair the damage, bringing all sorts of material that could be used to close up the breach.

The impetus of the Himerans was so forceful that the assailants wavered and began to retreat. At that point Hannibal, who had remained with his crack troops on the hills, gave orders for reinforcements to be sent in, and the reserves who were already waiting on the plain entered the fray. The battle continued for hours, with neither of the two sides giving up a span of ground. Only the onset of darkness put an end to the combat. Hannibal’s mercenaries dug themselves trenches in the plain and the Himeran warriors returned to the breach where they joined their families. The oldest soldiers, who had been held back as reserves, guarded the bastions in fear that the barbarians might attempt a surprise attack under the cover of night.

The women gave ample proof of their mettle as well. The young and old alike, who had worked all day bringing arms to the defenders and stones to close the breach, without pausing a moment to eat or drink, rushed now to their men returning from the battlefield, blood-spattered and grimy. They helped them to remove their armour and they tended to their wounds and their wearied spirits. They brought hot water, clean clothing, food and wine to refresh and restore.

Wives, mothers, daughters and sweethearts gave a show of strength even greater than that of the warriors. They showed their men they were not afraid, did not fear death, actually preferred death to slavery and disgrace. They praised their bravery, stirred their pride, never wavered in their faith in the favour of the gods and in the trust that the warriors’ courage and abnegation would bring them victory. They held the valour of their husbands and sons up as an example to their younger children not yet of fighting age, and taught them that no sacrifice was too great to defend their freedom.

The evening breeze from the sea brought a little relief from the oppressive heat. The darkness and silence that followed the blinding light of that day and the screams of battle led many of the men to seek a little rest.

The old men, too feeble to carry out any other task and too anguished to sleep, stood vigil. Joined under the porticoes of the agora, they reminisced about the wars they had fought in their youth and the risks that they had run. They sought any pretext to take heart, found the words to console those among them whose sons had not returned from the battlefield. They told stories of episodes of the past where men given up for dead had miraculously reappeared, knowing full well that bad luck is much more frequent than the good kind. And yet they encouraged each other with the promise that reinforcements were on the way; they wouldn’t be long now.