Hannibal's Children (7 page)

Publius Cornelius Scipio, grandson of the hero of Cannae, sat impatiently by the catch basin in the center of the house. Although he shared the same name with his father and grandfather, he was known to everyone as Scipio Cyclops. There was so much repetition in Latin names that most men went by nicknames. The old man had lost an eye in his first campaign against the Suebi and any physical peculiarity was fair game to the crude Roman sense of humor.

"Welcome home, Grandson," the old man said, extending a hand.

Marcus clasped the hard old hand warmly. "Respects and greeting, Grandfather."

"I hear you have done the family and Rome great honor in the north. You are your father's son, and my grandson." Spoken simply, it was the equivalent of a lavish speech of praise for the fierce old man.

"I would never have returned without honor," Marcus said. "But I must admit that it wasn't much of a campaign."

"What of that?" said the old man. "I lost my eye in a stupid little skirmish. Death is the same in a small fight as in a great battle. Honor is in looking death in the face and doing your duty. You have done yours and Rome is the better for it. Now, sit here by me and tell me all about it."

Marcus took a chair and a slave brought in a pitcher of watered wine and refreshments. In the austere Scipio household these were simple: bread and sliced fruits and cheeses. The greatest concession to luxury was a dish of imported olives.

"I'll give you the whole story, Grandfather, but first I would like to know why you weren't at the Senate meeting this morning. I was summoned by the Senate and I reported to the Curia first thing."

"Ah!" Cyclops made a disgusted, impatient gesture with his hand. "I stopped attending a month ago. There is no productive work going on there, just endless bickering between old families and new, as if we weren't all Romans."

Marcus told him what had transpired at the meeting and Cyclops struck the table with his fist, rattling the platters.

"By the Styx! At last something meaningful happened and I missed it! But this is wonderful, Grandson. There could not have been a better choice to lead the expedition. I'll be named to the committee, of course. I may have to recuse myself since my grandson is to lead it, but—"

"Actually, Grandfather, I am not sure that I should accept this commission."

"What!" The old man's frown was terrible. "I cannot believe that a Scipio would turn down the most important command offered by the State in a hundred years! Explain yourself, Grandson!"

Marcus, veteran commander of legionaries that he was, quailed beneath the old man's displeasure. "Grandfather, you know that I am a soldier, like all men of our family back to the beginning of the Republic. But I am no more than that. This command calls for a diplomat, a scholar, a man of business. I am none of those. I can handle the role of military analyst, better than any other man of Rome, if I may say so. I'll render the Senate an analysis of every stone in the walls of Carthage, if I should get that far. Let the Senate assign me that position and I'll fulfill it with honor. But not the leadership."

The old man softened. "I understand your reservations, Grandson. But this is an opportunity you must not pass up. You must rise to the office, Marcus! You may surprise yourself. Besides, in those areas where you lack confidence, find subordinates who are expert, just as you did in the legions. Am I not right? Didn't you indebt yourself to the commanders of other legions to get the finest primus pilus you could? Did you not pass a few bribes to get the best supply man to be found?"

Marcus smiled wryly, remembering. "I did. He was a freedman named Numerius. He knew supply regulations that hadn't been written yet. He found winter boots for my legion that were better than anything available from the regular sources, and he got them well under the footwear budget."

Cyclops spread his hands. "You see?"

Marcus told him about the short conference after the Senate meeting.

The old man nodded. "Scaeva and Gabinius are good men, wise counselors. You should listen to them. They saw exactly what I have just advised you about. Flaccus is the scholar you want. So what if he is a wretched soldier? What you see as your weaknesses are tasks for subordinates anyway. Assign them their jobs, review their reports and post them to the Senate. That is a commander's duty, and it is the command position that counts. Accept it, Marcus!"

No family conference was required, it seemed. If Cyclops said Marcus was to accept the Senate's commission, then the matter was settled. He was going to Italy.

The expedition set out in a drizzling rain. It was not a military expedition, so there was no fanfare, no music, no crowds of young girls to shower them with flower petals. As they made their way through the city, people watched them with curiosity, occasionally shouting good wishes, but generally the mood was quiet. It was not a glorious occasion, yet all felt that something of great consequence was at hand.

Marcus turned in his saddle to look back along the line of men following him. There were forty members in the official party, mostly young, all of them from good families. Many were friends. A few were avowed enemies of his family. As to the rest, he would learn about them soon enough. Besides the official party, there were a score of slaves to tend the animals, set up camp and perform all the other tedious duties of such an expedition. There was no escort of soldiers. This was, ostensibly, a trade and diplomatic mission. The men of the official party were all soldiers, anyway.

The trek south toward the mountains would be through territory long held by the Romans, peaceful and free of brigands. Each man wore a sword belted to his side, but the other arms and military gear were carried by pack animals.

"Is this a good omen?" Flaccus asked, riding up beside Marcus.

"Omen? The augurs took them this morning and everything was favorable."

"I mean this rain. Surely, if Jupiter looked favorably upon this expedition, he would give us a warm, sunny morning to start it."

Marcus grinned. "But as Jupiter Pluvium he is the god of rain. This may be his blessing."

"I see we can look forward to many stimulating discussions of religion." Flaccus drew the hood of his cloak over his head as the rain intensified. He had been appalled at being named to the expedition, but his family's pride would not allow him to back out. Since he was clearly the best man for the role of recorder and historian, he insisted on an extra pack animal to carry his writing gear, portable desk, inks, parchments and so forth. Then he had loaded the beast with extra comforts for the road.

The lands they rode through for the first few days were peaceful, fertile and intensively cultivated. The Romans were a race of farmers, and wherever they went, they instituted the sort of agriculture that had made Italy abound in produce and population, the sort of population that had allowed Rome to raise new legions after every disastrous defeat inflicted by Hannibal. They were determined never to be weakened by insufficient manpower.

These lands had been among the earliest conquered during the migration from Italy; a migration that had been spearheaded by a military invasion, for good land always has occupants, and the fine, fertile river valleys beyond the Alps had been no exception. A mixture of Celtic and Germanic tribes had stood in their way, and they had been crushed, for all they had was numbers and valor. These things were as nothing in the face of Roman organization and discipline. Above all, the natives raised no leader like Hannibal.

The wisest of the natives had allied themselves with the newcomers and assisted in the conquests. It was their descendants who now had seats in the Senate. The land through which the party rode, once the site of bloody battles, was divided into spacious farms and many of these were dominated by splendid villas. Families that had been peasants in Italy were now equites, while people of native descent were small farmers and tenants. Slaves captured in war did much of the field labor.

In the evenings they stopped at the inns that were spaced every ten miles along the fine roads. The roads themselves were splendidly made of cut stone, straight as a chalkline no matter what the terrain. If a gorge was in the way, it was bridged. If a hill intervened, it was cloven as if with an axe, and the road passed through. Only the great mountains forced the Roman roads to climb or bend.

At the inns and on the road Marcus got to know the men of his company. Some of them he had known for years, others he knew by reputation, and still others were total strangers. Quintus Brutus came from a very ancient patrician family, as ancient as the Scipios. Although still a young man, he was already a member of the college of augurs and he acted as the expedition's priest and omen-taker. Lucius Ahenobarbus was not a member of the patrician family of that name, but a descendant of their freedmen. These Ahenobarbi were merchants and contractors, and understood business in a way the land-based old aristocracy did not. Marcus would depend upon him for financial advice and analysis.

Most problematic of all, though, was Titus Norbanus. He was a tall, handsome man with a fine martial bearing although he had no great reputation as a soldier. He had a splendid voice and a rhetorician's way with words, and would be invaluable as envoy and negotiator. He was invariably polite and affable when he and Marcus spoke, apparently quite content with his secondary position. Marcus did not believe any of it for a moment. They were rivals from childhood and the rivalry had often been bitter. Norbanus acted as if this was boyish foolishness long behind them. Marcus did not believe that, either.

He could not explain why he disliked and distrusted Norbanus so. It was just that he was Titus Norbanus, and he could not be trusted.

Marcus was brooding upon this, seated at an inn fire on the evening of the ninth day since their departure, when Norbanus stopped by him.

"Come along, schoolboy," said Titus. "It's time for our lesson."

Marcus set aside his cup and rose. "I thought I'd outgrown this years ago."

"No such luck," Norbanus said, clapping him on the shoulder in a show of joviality that, to Marcus, rang utterly false. They went to a corner of the great room where an imposingly fat man stood with the rest of the party seated around him. Marcus and Norbanus took their places and waited in silence, just as they had when they were schoolboys, before donning the toga of manhood.

The fat man was Metrobius, a freedman and Roma Noricum's best teacher of Greek. Every wellborn Roman boy learned Greek, for it was the language of the civilized world, but few of them used it after their school years. It was the task of Metrobius to sharpen their rusty language skills. Nobody in Roma Noricum knew the Punic language, but it was certain that, in any land that touched the Mediterranean Sea, there would be people who spoke Greek. The Greek merchants who traded in Roma Noricum boasted that Greek was still the language of all educated people and of all who traded or traveled, though the days of Greek power were long eclipsed.

It was the order of the Senate that, every day of the journey, Metrobius was to conduct a class in Greek grammar. He drilled them like boys because it was the only way he knew to teach. They obeyed him like dutiful pupils from long-drilled habit.

Metrobius pointed at an unfortunate man who looked less than attentive. "Give me the opening lines of the Iliad."

The man stood and shuffled. He was clearly more comfortable with his sword than with any book. "Ah, let me see—'Sing, o muse, of an angry man, of the wrath of Achilles, son of—' "

"Not that wretched Latin translation!" Metrobius yelled. "I want the original Attic Greek!"

"Oh. Well, ah—" He did not reach the end of the first stanza.

"Stop!" The fat man covered his ears. "The most famous poem in the world and you made six mistakes in grammar, syntax, pronunciation and case in fewer than ten words! Where did you learn Greek? In a Druid temple?"

"No," said the man. "You taught me."

Marcus laughed with the others and was immediately punished. The fat finger pointed at him. "You! The second ode of Pindar, if you please."

Marcus stood and cleared his throat. He was fairly confident here because he had an excellent memory, although he would have preferred to recite a speech of Demosthenes. There was no help for it, though. Traditionally, language teachers taught by use of Greek poetry. Rhetoricians made their students recite speeches by rote. He launched into the lengthy ode and Metrobius nodded, finally stopping him halfway through.

"You seem to know the poem well enough, but your pronunciation is absolutely wretched. Sit down. Now, you." He pointed at Flaccus. "I suppose you are not unacquainted with the roll of the ships from the second book of the Iliad?"

"I believe I recall a bit of it," Flaccus replied.

"Then, if you please, let us hear a 'bit' of it."

Flaccus stood and adjusted his traveling cloak, managing to arrange it in the traditional drape used by orators for the most dignified effect. Then he launched into the famously difficult passage detailing the leadership of the Greek expedition, the list of towns and nobles and how many ships were contributed by each of them:

"I will name the captains of the fleet and the numbers of their ships.

"The Boeotians were led by Peneleos and Leitos, Arcesilaos and Prothoenor and Clonios. These came from hilly Hyria and rocky Aulis, from Schoinos and Scolos, Eteonos, from Thespeia, Griaia and wide-reaching Mycalessos, from the districts round Harma, Eilesion, and Erythrai, from Eleon, Hylae and Peteon, Ocalea and the well-built fortress of Medeon, from Copai and Eutresis and Thisbe with its multitudes of doves, from Coroneia and grassy Haliartos, from Plataia and Glisas, from the strongly-walled fortress of Hypothebai and from sacred Onchestos, that glorious grove of Poseidon, from Arne, adorned with clusters of grapes and from Midea, from divine Nisa and the coastal town of Anthedon, from these came fifty ships and in each ship a hundred and twenty young warriors of Boeotia.

"There were those who dwelt in Aspledon and Minyan Orchemenos, led by Ascalaphos and Ialmenos, son of Ares. Their mother was Astyoche, a maiden of high rank; their father was mighty Ares, who lay with her in secret. She bore her sons in her upper chamber in the house of Actor Azeides. They brought thirty ships to the sandy beach at Troy.