Pride of Carthage

They whipped before them a massive army, thousands upon thousands of well-armed soldiers, both Roman citizens and legions from the allied cities. If the Carthaginians stayed where they were and met this force, they would not just be fighting the arrogant men of Rome; they would be clashing with all Italy.

Imco had many times before questioned Hannibal's wisdom only to see the commander's judgments proven right. But this did not stop him from doubting once more. No one man can harness Fortune indefinitely. So prolonged a war could not have been what he wanted, and now, perhaps, the winds of fate had shifted to blow the Romans forward to victory. Imco, in his foreboding at the coming conflict, could not help but ask for news and opinions from any man near at hand. It was because of this that he first met a young soldier who claimed to have overheard a conversation between the commander and his brother.

The soldier swore his tale was true, and he told it as he shared Imco's supper beside the fire. He had stood within listening distance, he said, assigned as a guard to the storehouse that the commander happened to check on personally. He had stood as unobtrusively as he could, straight-backed and still as a pillar. The two paid him no mind whatsoever. When Mago voiced anxiety about the Roman contingent's size, Hannibal said it was as it should be. He said he had recently heard voices inside his head. No, not as a madman does, for he understood that the voices came not from without but were born inside him. Sometimes the voice was recognizable as his own; at other times it was his father's, or the low grumble he believed to be the language of the gods. But they all told him the same thing. They all came to him with a single message. . . .

The young soldier paused here and contemplated the fire, seeming for all the world to have nothing more to say. Imco nudged him on.

“It is coming.”

“What?” Imco asked. “What is coming? It is no secret they are coming. Is this—”

The soldier, forgetting the silent drama of a moment before, raised his voice. “That is what he said. ‘It is coming.' He said, ‘The coming battle determines everything. We look upon a space of hours that lead up to the moment I was born for.' That is what the voices tell the commander is coming: the moment he was born for. And you and I will witness it.”

The soldier resumed his portentous air, but Imco clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth and turned away. What sort of tale was this? One of the teller's own invention, probably. He would not flatter the fellow with questions. So he thought, but instead he found within himself a chorus of questions and answers. What is the moment he was born for? So vague a statement, like something an oracle would say. Did it indicate a day of glory? But was not the most obvious sense always the wrong sense when interpreting oracles? Perhaps the day he was born for meant the day of his death. Was that not the only certainty in all beings' lives? Had the commander seen his own demise? If so, why did he not flee it? For a moment this thought gave Imco comfort, but then he recalled how stubborn a character Hannibal was. Perhaps he planned to defy death, to spit in its eye and push it out of the way.

When Imco lay down that evening, sleep eluded him completely, like a creature that knows it is being tracked. He tried to think only of his beautiful camp follower, but when she looked at him he heard her voice repeating the message he wished to avoid.

“It is coming. It is coming. . . .”

During the first two weeks of the march from Rome, the consuls shared a single intention. They had to cover the distance quickly, make contact with Hannibal, and find the right occasion on which to bring him to battle. There was no debate on this much, at least. But as they came nearer, the strains of their dueling commands began to show. Varro believed that they should pour forth over the Carthaginians in one great wave, unstoppable. He argued that the location and terrain had no strategic importance, considering the overwhelming shock the enemy would feel on the first sight of them. He imagined their wide-eyed horror, the slack mouths, and the thumping in their chests as they beheld their doom striding toward them in a cloud of dust. That was the true strength of the army they commanded. They should use it to best effect, wherever they found the invader hiding.

Paullus held a different view. If they were to learn but one thing from the lessons of the Ticinus, of Trebia, of Trasimene, it must be caution. They were marching toward Hannibal; and he appeared to be simply waiting for them. Paullus found something disquieting in this. They should approach slowly. They should carefully assess just what the enemy might have planned for them. They should learn beforehand everything they could as to the lay of the land and Hannibal's current numbers and the morale of his troops and their state of health and supply. All of these things should weigh in their decisions. War was not as straightforward as Varro seemed to think it was.

In keeping with this, on Paullus' days in command he slowed the pace of the march and sent out scouts and surveyors to detail the features of the land around Cannae. What he learned troubled him. He was sure Hannibal's chosen spot was not a favorable place for battle. The land was too open. Apart from the rise atop which Cannae sat, the land stretched for flat miles in all directions, dotted sparsely with brush and stunted trees and cut by shallow, easily fordable rivers. It favored the African cavalry in every way. He spoke cautiously of this with his fellow consul, for it was hard for a Roman horseman to acknowledge the supremacy of any other. But Paullus believed they had to do just that. The last few years had proven that the Africans, especially the Numidians, were superior to them when astride a horse. He proposed that they move elsewhere.

“Listen to me,” he said. He sat facing Varro in the war tent, between them the tribunes and officers of the horse and various others. Paullus had called the meeting toward the end of one of his days in command. He had opened it with his now familiar arguments and listened to the equally well-known rebuttals. But as he was giving up power on the morn he wished to do all he could to sway his fellow consul's opinion. They were so close to the Carthaginians now that any mistake could doom them.

He said, “Let us turn the column and march for more broken ground to the west, with hills enough to hamper the enemy's horsemen. We need someplace not of Hannibal's choosing but of our own instead.”

Varro could barely contain his loathing of this line of thinking. “If Hannibal is so brilliant,” he said, “how do we know that he is not hoping for just such a move? Perhaps he anticipates such cowardice. If we do as you say, we might simply be turning into another of his traps.”

“I do not think so,” Paullus said. He spoke gravely, with the fingers of both hands massaging his temples. “Varro, I beg you to temper your vigor with wisdom. Fabius fought hard to avoid situations that—”

“Fabius fought?” Varro asked, cutting in with a raised voice. He cocked his head at an angle, as if his hearing troubled him. “Fought? Never has that word been so misused. I was there beside Fabius and I can tell you that he never raised a hand against the enemy. Fighting is not in that man's nature. And now you, Paullus, would do the same as he. You're nothing more than the old man's puppet. You think not for yourself but do his bidding—just as he does Hannibal's. Do you really believe Rome could survive another year like the one Fabius inflicted upon us? He made us out to be fools, cowards, sheep trembling at the sight of an approaching wolf. Perhaps you are those things, but I am none of them. We have let half the summer pass already. Believe me, if we do not strike now we will start losing allies. It will take just one defector for them all to crumble. But why am I telling you these things? You know them already. You only lack the heart or courage to grasp them and act!”

Paullus had gone red under this barrage of insults. He glanced at the officers around the chamber, all of whom shifted uncomfortably, eyes lowered to suggest no particular allegiance, faces as expressionless as possible. “We should speak privately,” Paullus said. “It is not seemly for—”

“I don't care what is seemly!” Varro shouted.

“And I will not commit our troops to disaster!” Paullus roared back at him, his anger bursting out so suddenly that several of the officers started. “Truly, Terentius Varro, you're worthy of the butchers from whom you're descended. Would that your people had kept to their labors and left important matters to those suited to them!”

Varro shot to his feet; Paullus mirrored the motion. They stepped toward each other, first tentatively, and then, as if at some choreographed signal, they fell toward each other like two rams in the season of rut. The room was a flurry of motion. Some jumped back against the tent walls. A few sat frozen. More than one cowered as if the consuls' anger was meant for them. Only one person wedged himself between the two.

Publius Scipio was faster on his feet than either consul. He stepped forward and took the full brunt of the impact, Varro at his back, Paullus against his chest. He shouted to them to find reason. He batted their arms down and twirled to separate them with his shoulders. Heartened, others grappled the men and tried to calm them. Publius managed to get a hand to either consul's chest and push them to the full length of his outstretched arms.

“If you two were not the most important Romans in all of Italy right now I would sit and watch one of you