Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage

5

Half an hour later, Fabius and Scipio made their way up the wooden stand built for the Caesares branch of the gens Julii just outside the Field of Mars, where the street that had been embellished for the triumphal procession opened out on to the army training and marshalling ground. The gentes vied with each other for the best position for their stands, securing preference from the tribunes of the people according to the extent of their benefactions to the city since the previous triumph — one of the small ways in which the plebs were able to influence the privileges of the wealthy. The Caesares had done exceptionally well that year, having funded a free corn handout and the building of a public bathhouse on the Esquiline Hill, and had been allocated a position where they could see both the execution of deserters on the roadside and the spectacles on the Field of Mars planned for that evening. The events included bear-baiting, fights to the death between Macedonian prisoners and gladiators, and the mass sacrifice of hundreds of head of cattle that would provide meat in plenty for all who wanted it, roasted on spits and braziers over the numerous bonfires that dotted the field, their flames already roaring high into the evening sky.

First up was the execution of deserters, an event that Scipio was obliged to witness as an army officer; he and Fabius had arrived only a few minutes ahead of the first bullock cart, so there was little time to lose. They picked their way up the tiers of seats past the elegantly coiffeured matrons and their children and the men in togas, some of them wearing the purple-rimmed senatorial toga and bearing laurel wreaths on their heads, awards for civic accomplishment. Among them was a scattering of men in uniform, including Julia’s brother Sextus Julius Caesar, a fellow tribune who had also served in Macedonia, and their distinguished father of the same name, a decorated veteran of the Battle of Zama who nodded gravely at Scipio and returned their salute as he and Fabius passed.

Julia was standing apart from the other women of her gens in the upper tier with her two slave girls in attendance, and waved to Scipio and Fabius as they approached. She was not arrayed like the others and looked as if she had just returned from one of her secret sessions in the academy, her wavy hair loosely tied back and falling over her shoulders, her robe belted around her waist to reveal the firm curves of her hips and breasts. She was not allowed to wear any military ornamentation but carried an ancient family heirloom, a winged helmet of Attic Greek design with the eagle emblem of the Caesares embossed on the front. It was a small act of defiance that Fabius knew her father had allowed her, against the wishes of her mother and the other Vestals. Standing there with the helmet she looked as if she had been cut from the same mould as the caryatid sculptures that Fabius had seen on the Acropolis in Athens, yet finished in a manner that was wholly Roman; she had the straight nose and high cheekbones of the Caesares family, and the auburn hair and large eyes of her mother. As she turned to greet them she looked radiant, with none of the sadness that Fabius had seen in her since Metellus had returned, and he hoped that, like Scipio, she would be able to enjoy this evening and forget the future, the life that she would have to lead as a matron of the gens Metelli in the years ahead.

The crowd had already begun shouting and jeering, and Fabius saw the first in a line of wagons drawn by oxen trundle into view from the direction of the Forum. Each wagon bore a large iron cage, and as the first one came closer he could see a female African lion pacing to and fro inside, its eyes bloodshot and its tongue hanging out. He knew it would be half-crazed with hunger, its body lean from days of starvation in advance of the spectacle. Behind each wagon a man staggered with his hands bound behind his back and his ankles loosely shackled, a long rope extending from his wrists to the cage and another from a halter around his neck to a muscle-bound gladiator behind, dressed in the full armour of a bestiarius and cracking a whip every few moments against the prisoner’s back.

From a wagon somewhere behind, a lion roared, the sound rumbling through the stand like an earthquake, and the crowd hollered and bayed. They all knew what was coming next; the prisoners had been condemned damnatio ad bestias. Aemilius Paullus had shown mercy to many of those captured at Pydna, to the Macedonians themselves and to a few of the Thracian mercenaries suited to gladiator training, but any prisoner who was marched through a triumph in chains had only been temporarily spared. The plebs knew it, and would howl at any show of clemency. And these prisoners were the worst, not enemies but deserters, men whose former comrades and families were among those baying for their blood in the crowd today. Rome might send her men out garlanded and feted for war, but those who failed in courage or fortitude must know that they would be treated more harshly than any enemy, returned to Rome shackled and humiliated, brought to justice before those same crowds whose trust and expectations they had so grossly betrayed.

At intervals along the road thick wooden poles like crucifixion posts had been sunk into the ground, but instead of a crossbeam an iron loop had been attached to the upper ends. As each wagon drew up at a post, the crowd retreated to form a circular space, those in the front row holding hands and pressing back to make enough room. At the post nearest to them Fabius watched the beast-master alight from beside the wagon driver, go to the back of the cage and untie the rope that led to the prisoner’s wrists, and pass the end through the loop on the post before handing it to the bestiarius. He then reached into the cage and hauled out a coil of chain that was attached to an iron collar around the lion’s neck, hooking the other end to the loop on the pole. At a signal from the bestiarius the driver whipped the bullocks and the wagon lurched forward, causing the rear of the cage to open and the lion to leap out, its neck caught violently on the chain as it pulled taut. Enraged, the beast tossed its head and roared, then charged headlong at the crowd until the chain brought it short again, causing it to sprawl on the ground and snarl and chafe against the collar. It tried again, hurtling itself in the other direction, and then got up and paced around the edge of the clearing, slavering and pawing at the crowd, its claws sweeping within inches of the boys who dared each other to leap out in front. Fabius remembered when he had done it himself, dicing with death many times, goading the lion with severed bull’s legs they had taken from carcasses beside the sacrificial altars in the Field of Mars; the priests always left cuts of meat for this very purpose, remembering their own fun as boys when baiting the lions and acquiring scars was the quickest way to earn esteem as a street warrior.

The crowd went silent, watching the lion as it paced round and round. The bestiarius kept the rope to the prisoner’s hands taut, releasing enough slack through the loop so that the man could strain back and keep close to the edge of the crowd, just beyond the lion’s reach. Each time the lion came close, the boys tried to push the man forward, and on the third occasion he stumbled and the lion swiped at him before he could lurch back, ripping the side of his face off and pulling out one eye. The man screamed, falling to his knees, a bloody flap of skin hanging below his chin. Sometimes the bestiarius would allow more baiting, until the victim was nearly flayed alive, but this time he knew that the crowd had been stoked up and wanted gratification. He suddenly heaved on the rope and the prisoner lurched forward, tripping and twisting as the rope pulled his wrists up the pole until he was dangling from it, his feet kicking and shaking uncontrollably, his one remaining eye following the lion as it paced around him. The moment the lion stopped and looked at him, realizing that he was now within reach, the bestiarius released his hold on the rope and heaved on the one from the prisoner’s neck, hauling him back to safety just in time. The crowd roared, and Fabius could see the prisoner more clearly now, grey with terror, his legs brown with faeces.

The bestiarius stood with his feet planted apart and his chest puffed out, and bellowed at the crowd. ‘Is the lion hungry?’

The crowd roared again.

‘Shall we feed him?’

Another roar, and the bestiarius dropped the neck rope and pulled on the other as hard as he could, his muscles rippling and taut, heaving the man up the pole again until he was dangling off the ground, his feet kicking frantically and his head twisting from side to side in terror as the lion continued to pace the perimeter, eyeing him now, flexing its shoulders and then coming to a halt and pawing the ground.

In a flash it leapt, and the crowd gasped. It happened so quickly that the man had no time to scream. The lion sank its jaws into his back and wrenched him from the pole, shaking him violently to and fro, breaking his bones just as if he were a beast caught on the plains of Africa. The bestiarius released the rope entirely and stood back with the crowd. A fountain of blood erupted from the man’s neck, spraying the boys in the front row. The lion dropped his body, sat down on his haunches and began to eat. It took a huge bite from the man’s chest, crunching through the ribs and leaving a gaping hole in his side, ripping out one lung and swallowing it, the windpipe and arteries hanging down from its jaw. It slurped them up and took another mouthful, this time from the abdomen, gorging itself on the man’s stomach and intestines, its face dripping with blood and bile.

Scipio turned to Julia, who had been watching with rapt attention. ‘That’s the end of the entertainment here,’ he said. ‘It will carry on all night in the Field of Mars, but I promised my friend Terence that I’d look in at the play he’s put on specially for the games, in the peristyle garden of his patron Terentius’ house on the Palatine. Before then, Polybius and I have arranged to meet. I want to tell him something that Terence told me, and Polybius apparently has something to tell me. Will you come along?’

‘My mother will find I’m missing, and send out the Vestals to hunt me down,’ Julia said, smiling. ‘But that’ll make it more fun. She’s not watching now, so we can go.’

They stood up, making their way through the others seated on the stand, Fabius following them. Already the crowd around the lion had begun to disperse, some moving to the other wagons where the executions had yet to happen, others heading off towards the Field of Mars. Fabius glanced at the lion as they passed by, its stomach visibly bloated, the man’s dismembered body reduced to a mess of blood and bone. The lion had taken the man’s head in its jaws and crushed it as they passed. He remembered the feast that would follow the sacrifice of the bulls in the Forum, and the slabs of meat that the priests would hand out to be roasted on a fire below the rostrum. Fabius had promised to meet Hippolyta’s slave girl Eudoxia there later on, so he hoped that Scipio and Julia would not stay too long at the play. He was already beginning to feel hungry.

Back in the Forum they met Polybius inside the Basilica Aemilia, the great law court where he had been addressing a gathering of Greek scholars and teachers who had been brought by Aemilius Paullus to Rome for the triumph. As they arrived, he was seeing off a cluster of white-robed men with flowing grey beards and unshorn hair, holding wound-up scrolls and staring haughtily ahead. Scipio turned to Polybius, grinning. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, my father has captured Greek philosophy and brought it to Rome.’

‘They are not captives, but a delegation from Athens,’ Polybius muttered. ‘Come at your father’s invitation to teach the miscreant youths of Rome how to think.’

‘You sound sceptical, Polybius.’

‘I’ve seen what it’s like in Athens. The wisdom of the true philosophers, of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, has been diluted and debased, by men who think that wearing the robe of a teacher and sporting a flowing white beard qualifies them for our esteem. Most are men like those ones: constitutionally incapable of original thought, yet trying to peddle their muddled ideas to the weak and the gullible. Rome is like a bright but uneducated youth, eager for learning, but with no critical facility. These men do not teach philosophy, but mere sophistry, wordplay, and will only speak in riddles as the Sibyl does, but without the benefit of Apollo to guide them.’

‘You underestimate us, Polybius,’ Scipio said, looking at him with mock seriousness. ‘To most of us these men are mere ornaments, like those bronzes and paintings we took from Macedonia. They will provide after-dinner entertainment in the villas of Rome and Neapolis, at Herculaneum and Stabiae. It will doubtless become imperative to have a Greek philosopher among one’s slaves, just as it has become the fashion to have a Greek doctor and Greek musicians. But they’d better have some good tricks up their sleeves. Nobody at those dinner parties will actually listen to what they say. They will be mere performers.’

‘Even so, Scipio, I know you will attend their lectures. You are too inquisitive to stay away. Beware of Greeks speaking in forked tongues.’

Julia nudged him. ‘Does that include you, Polybius?’

Scipio laughed, and slapped Polybius on the back. ‘Not a chance. What Polybius really loves is the war horse and the boar spear. Isn’t that right, Polybius? That’s why you’re so fascinated by us Romans. You love our practicality. For you, to study history is not to muse about the human condition like a philosopher, but to understand past battles and find out the best way to use a skirmishing line or deploy light cavalry. Am I right?’

Polybius eyed him keenly. ‘Speaking of hunting, I hear that your father has given you the Macedonian Royal Forest as a coming-of-age present. Did you know that I learned to hunt there as a boy? It has the best boar in any forest south of the Alps.’

Scipio glanced at Julia. ‘See what I mean? Mention boar spear, and he’s yours.’ He turned back to Polybius, grinning. ‘You’re right. I can’t wait to get there. But it’s really only a temporary present while Macedonia is my father’s personal fiefdom, in the afterglow of Pydna. In a few years’ time he reckons that Rome will try to annex Macedonia as a province, and they’ll send out a praetor. The forest will no longer be mine to hunt in, so now’s my chance.’

‘You said you wanted to see me,’ Polybius said.

Scipio nodded, suddenly serious. ‘Since we last saw you, Publius Terentius Afer has been telling Fabius and me about Carthage.’

‘Terence the playwright? You keep interesting friends.’

Scipio nodded. ‘Terence was a slave in Carthage, and his mother was an Afri from the Berber tribes of Libya, related to Gulussa’s Numidians. Do you remember the model of Carthage I made in the academy?’

‘The one you used to plan a possible assault on the city? I remember wondering how you’d got the details. I’d been meaning to ask you, but then the call to arms got in the way. Rome hasn’t bothered having spies in Carthage since the end of the war against Hannibal, and now Romans who try to enter the city are turned away. It is said that great construction works are afoot, but all of it behind the high sea walls and so invisible to ships sailing by.’

Scipio glanced behind. ‘Tell him, Fabius.’

Fabius cleared his throat. ‘My mother worked in the household of the senator Publius Terentius Lucanus, who kept Terence as a slave and freed him after educating him and seeing his talents as a playwright. Terence and I became friends while he was still a slave. He told me that Carthage was far better for hide-and-seek than Rome, because of the tightly clustered houses around the foot of the Byrsa, the acropolis hill. When Scipio years later said that he was planning to build a model of Carthage, I brought Terence along and he advised on the construction.’

‘Do you remember how I war-gamed the assault?’ Scipio said, turning back to Polybius. ‘I said that too often we just focus on the obviously defensible features: the walls, the temples, the arsenals. Those features were all that the veterans of the last war against Carthage were able to tell me about, but that was before I met Terence. He told me about the ring of ancient houses that surround the Byrsa, to a depth equivalent of two or three of our tenement blocks. Think of the houses of the plebs that surround us now in Rome, pressing up against the edge of the Forum. A general planning an assault on Rome would hardly concern himself with them, because they’re in city blocks and you could march straight past them down the streets towards the Forum. If there was any resistance, you’d simply torch them because they’re mostly wood and plaster. No defender worth his salt would set up a position there, but would instead fall back on the stone buildings of the Forum.’

‘But Carthage must be different,’ Polybius said pensively. ‘There’s less timber available in Africa, so more use of stone for even the rudest of dwellings.’

Scipio nodded enthusiastically. ‘Precisely. Those houses seen by Terence are made of stone: the walls from upright pillars, the spaces in between filled with masonry. Terence says they’ve inset wooden beams as joists for the floors, but you wouldn’t be able to burn them easily unless you could rain fire through the roof. For that, you’d need siege engines, or catapults on ships anchored close up to the sea wall. And the houses themselves are like a rabbit warren, not laid out in regular blocks but with narrow alleyways and rooftop walkways, as well as underground cisterns in each house where defenders could lurk. That’s what Terence meant about hide-and-seek. An assaulting force within a stone’s throw of the Byrsa might think they’d won the day, but they’d be sorely mistaken. The elite forces of mercenaries and special guards who are usually the last to hold out in a siege — the ones who know they’d be shown no mercy if they were to surrender — could organize a defence in depth and make the assault force pay dearly for it, at precisely the time when the legionaries would have begun to turn their thoughts to victory and booty. The assault commander would have to ensure that they kept up the momentum and rolled forward into those houses with the bloodlust still high. It’s a tactical insight I wanted to share with you. I’ve been thinking of Carthage again, Polybius. I’ve got Terence to thank for that.’

Polybius gave him a wry smile. ‘Well, I’ve always been sceptical about playwrights. But now I can see they have their uses.’ He stood up and looked through the columns of the entrance at the massed ranks of Latin troops who had begun to march past them along the Sacred Way, the beginning of a long procession of victorious allies who followed on behind the legionaries and the spoils of war. ‘You’d better get going and get your dose of drama before the evening festivities really take off. I’ve just spotted Demetrius of Syria with his bodyguards, and I want to catch him for any intelligence about another upstart who’s claiming the succession from Perseus in Macedonia. It’s not often that you get so many of Rome’s allies in the city at one time, and I need to use the opportunity.’

‘We have a little over an hour until the play begins,’ Scipio replied. ‘You wanted to tell me something too?’

Polybius turned to gaze at Julia and Scipio, and Fabius saw something else in his eyes, a faltering look, even a sadness. ‘This day is a chance for you to be together without others watching you, or knowing where you are. I wanted to tell you that the doors of my little house below the Palatine are open, and my slave girl Fabina knows you may be coming. You do not know when you may have the chance again. As for me, I’m off. Ave atque vale. And remember what I said. Seize the day.’

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Acknowledgements

Introductory Note

Maps

Characters

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Part Two

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part Three

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part Four

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part Five

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Six

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Author’s Note

Also by David Gibbins

About the Author

Copyright

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to my agent, Luigi Bonomi of LBA, and to Rob Bartholomew of The Creative Assembly for having set this project in motion; to Jeremy Trevathan, Catherine Richards and the team at Macmillan for their work in getting this book into production, as well as to Peter Wolverton and Anne Brewer at St Martin’s Press in New York; and to the team at The Creative Assembly and at Sega® for all of their support and input. I owe special thanks to Martin Fletcher for his excellent editorial work, to Jessica Cuthbert-Smith for her excellent copyediting and to Ann Verrinder for proofreading and scrutinizing the manuscript at every stage and giving much useful advice.

I am grateful to Brian Warmington, Emeritus Reader in Ancient History at the University of Bristol and author of Carthage (Penguin, 1964), for having taught me Republican Roman history in such a memorable fashion and for having encouraged my interest in the Punic Wars. My involvement with the archaeology of Carthage owes much to Henry Hurst, my doctoral supervisor at Cambridge and director of the British Mission in the UNESCO ‘Save Carthage’ project, who invited me to join his excavation at the harbour entrance and supported my own underwater archaeology expedition to Carthage the following year. That project was made possible by the British Academy, the Cambridge University Classics Faculty, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Dr Abdelmajid Ennabli, director of the Carthage Museum; I am also grateful to the many expedition members for their work on those projects.

I first studied the battlefield of Pydna and the sculpture from the monument of Aemilius Paullus on travels in Greece funded by the Society of Antiquaries of London. My knowledge of ancient naval warfare was greatly expanded during my tenure of a Winston Churchill Memorial Travel Fellowship in the east Mediterranean, when I was able to spend time in Haifa, Israel, and study the Athlit Ram — the only surviving ram from an ancient warship — and then in Greece to examine the trireme Olympias. My interest in ancient Rome developed over many visits to explore the archaeology of the city, most memorably with my father, when we discussed the possibility of pinpointing remains from a particular date and creating a book out of it; that led me to trace the likely route of the triumphal procession of Aemilius Paullus in 167 BC, and to study structures still extant among the ruins of the Forum and elsewhere in Rome dating from that period. I am also grateful to my brother Alan for his photography and film-making, and to Jordan Webber for her help with my website www.davidgibbins.com.

This book is dedicated with much love to my daughter Molly.

Introductory Note

In the second century BC Rome was still a republic, ruled by wealthy patricians whose families traced their ancestry back to the first years of the city some six hundred years earlier. The republic had been formed when the last king of Rome was ousted in 509 BC, and it was to

The courtyard of the house of Terentius Lucanus on the Esquiline Hill had been designed in the Greek fashion, with a colonnaded peristyle surrounding a garden and a pool in the centre. One end had been built up into a stage for performances and the garden had been partly boarded over to provide seating for a small audience. Fabius had followed Scipio and Julia in from the atrium of the house, and sat down with them among the two dozen or so others who had come to see the play. An hour earlier he had left Scipio and Julia at the entrance to Polybius’ house below the Palatine, and had quickly made his way back through the Forum to find Eudoxia, leading her to a hidden garden he knew on the far side of the Circus Maximus. They had met up again in time for Julia to walk visibly through the Forum on their way to the Esquiline, ensuring that word would pass back to her mother and the Vestals that she had not somehow absconded. On the way they had passed Metellus and a group of his friends, all of them the worse for wear, staggering between the temporary stalls along the Sacred Way that were serving wine without restriction now that the procession was over. Metellus had looked darkly at Scipio, swaying slightly with a wine pitcher in his hand, and had followed them with his friends, shouting and jeering, until he was diverted by a favourite tavern near the Mamertine Prison. Fabius knew that the more drunk Metellus got, the more he would want to claim Julia, as his wife to be, and that there would be nothing Scipio could do to stop him without causing a furore within the gentes. Fabius could only hope that the house of Terentius Lucanus was sufficiently far from the taverns to deter Metellus from making an entrance here, and that he and Scipio could spirit Julia away after the play and return her to the house of the Caesares before Metellus could get his hands on her.

As they sat down, a lithe man with the dark skin of an African saw them from the stage and came bounding over, smiling broadly. ‘Julia, Scipio Aemilianus, Fabius. Welcome, my friends. I’m glad you’ve come. We’re waiting for the arrival of my patron and the owner of this house, Terentius Lucanus, who is making a sacrifice in the Temple of Castor and Pollux, praying, I trust, for the success of my play.’

Scipio looked around. ‘A delightful venue, though small and a good way off the beaten track tonight, I fear.’

Terence sighed. ‘I sent plans to the Senate for the construction of a Greek-style theatre in Rome, but they were rejected by the aedile in charge of public works on the grounds that a theatre with seating would turn Romans into effeminate Greeks.’

Scipio grinned. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said he was right, Roman backsides weren’t yet tough enough for stone seats.’

‘You really know how to please them, Terence. I’m amazed you haven’t been hounded out of Rome by now.’

Terence shook his head glumly. ‘As a playwright, you can’t win. I’d wanted to present works of my own, plays in a gritty, realistic style, suited to Roman taste. But no, those who finance my productions insist on pastiches of well-known Greek plays, because they say that’s what the people want. In fact, it’s what my backers want, not what my fans want. My backers want the old, but my fans want the new. My backers want repeats of the same tired old plays that have brought in pots of denarii in the past, and so, they surmise, will do so again. These people are here today only because they are clients of Terentius and are obliged to him. They’ll be talking to themselves all the way through the play, hardly noticing it. The theatre’s been reduced to a place for meeting friends and exchanging gossip, before going off to the real fun in the taverns.’

Scipio was still carrying the scroll he had had with him on the podium while they watched the procession, and Terence pointed to it. ‘It looks as if you’ve brought something else to entertain you as well. What’s the book?’

‘My father allowed me to take what I liked from the Macedonian Royal Library. It’s a copy of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, the life of Cyrus the Great of Persia. I thought I might have a chance to discuss it with Polybius during a lull in the proceedings, but that was before I knew I’d be able to spend so much time this evening with Julia.’

‘You read for education, not for pleasure?’

Scipio looked serious. ‘I want to know how to live a good life, Terence. Xenophon was a student of Socrates. But it’s true that my interest in learning lies in its practical application, something Polybius has taught me. Xenophon has a practical take on the problems of war. And Cyrus the Great is someone who intrigues me; in some ways he was the ideal ruler, a benign despot. I want to know what it is that makes people willingly follow some rulers, but not others.’

Julia nudged him, grinning. ‘If you’re planning to become the next Alexander the Great, you can’t learn it; either you have it in you, or you don’t.’

‘That’s true enough. But Alexander could have learned a thing or two about the management of empire. We’re still clearing up his mess.’

‘He had no precedent,’ Terence said. ‘But you do, in him. You must take care that the memory of your achievements does not survive only in fragments, like the falling leaves of autumn, dry and brittle and in danger of crumbling into dust.’

‘You assume there will be a life worthy of recording.’

‘Oh, there will be, Scipio. It doesn’t take the words of an oracle to know that.’

‘Well, Polybius will see to my memory. He’s already completed his Histories of the First and Second Punic Wars, though he’s stalling publication of the second volume until he can visit Zama in North Africa and see the battlefield for himself. It’s not often that a soldier has a close friend who is the greatest historian of the day, a man who shares not only my fascination with military organization but also a practical take on strategy and tactics.’

‘Then let’s hope that when he comes to complete his biography of Scipio Aemilianus he doesn’t stall it like that other volume. Histories left unpublished on the death of an author have a nasty habit of being fiddled by the subject’s enemies, or of disappearing entirely.’

Julia spoke up. ‘I will write a history of Scipio Aemilianus, if Polybius does not. I will follow his life as if I were with him every moment of it, even if from afar.’

Fabius looked at Scipio, and saw a shadow flicker over his face. They all knew that time for him and Julia was running short. Terence leaned over and tapped the scroll. ‘I have heard Polybius speak, in this very house after dinner. Beware of monarchical government, he said. Rome has become great because it threw out its kings three centuries ago.’

‘Are not the consuls kings?’ Scipio exclaimed, his unhappiness fuelling his passion, throwing caution to the wind and not caring who overheard him. ‘And the Pontifex Maximus, and the princeps of the Senate, and the tribunes of the people? Are we not ruled by a committee of kings?’

‘If so, they are elected kings.’

Scipio snorted. ‘Kings elected for only one year, who have no time for great deeds, no time for reform, no time to develop proper administration for the provinces, whose tenure of office is dominated by legal pleading and social obligations, the life I spurned when I went to the academy.’

‘A course that your adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus chose for you.’

‘I wish I had been old enough to talk to him. I wish he had told me that he saw something in me. I grew up feeling an outsider, looked down upon even by the Scipiones for having no interest in playing the political game, as if I were not up to it.’

‘Perhaps that was his design,’ Terence said. ‘He knew it would do a small boy no good to be told that his destiny was greater than those around him. He knew that to achieve greatness you had to be an outsider. He knew that by struggling against adverse opinion, by sometimes feeling inadequate, you would become a stronger person, and that once you recognized your strengths you would develop a burning ambition to compensate for those feelings you had as a child, an ambition that would allow you to rise above them all.’

Julia turned to Scipio. ‘And yet he knew that your ambition would need to be curbed, to be controlled. So your father appointed Polybius to be your mentor. My father Sextus Julius Caesar says there’s no greater check on a man’s ego than to be taught by a good historian who can show how men risen to greatness can so easily fall into obscurity.’

There was a commotion at the door, and Fabius’ heart sank. Metellus came staggering into the peristyle, followed by a cluster of his friends. He looked around, and then spied them, waving a flagon in their direction. ‘Why don’t you come carousing with us, Scipio? Afraid of the prostibulae in the brothels? Maybe you’ve forgotten what to do, spending too long in the company of those Greek eunuchs.’

Fabius saw Scipio’s knuckles whiten as he clutched the edge of the seat, and he gripped Scipio’s wrist. ‘Keep your cool,’ he whispered to him. ‘He’s goading you, but these are just words. If he draws a blade, then that’s another matter.’

‘If he mentions Polybius, I’ll rip his throat out,’ Scipio growled.

‘He’s too clever to do that,’ Julia murmured. ‘He may deride the Greeks, but he knows how much Polybius is respected for his military expertise in the Senate. He knows how to play the game, and he’s not as drunk as he looks.’

Metellus had swayed onto the stage, and took another flagon from one of his companions. ‘Or maybe you can’t afford it,’ Metellus jeered, raising the flagon to the audience and then taking a deep swig. ‘Maybe Scipio Aemilianus has given away all of his money to women, because he’s incapable of giving them any other favours.’

‘That’s my mother he’s talking about, and my sisters, whom I’ve helped to support with my inheritance from Africanus,’ Scipio muttered, his teeth clenched with anger. ‘I’m still a richer man than he is, even so. And he’d better not mention my father’s generosity.’

Julia shook her head. ‘He won’t do it today, at your father’s triumph. He’ll do it when the name of Paullus has faded from memory and he can deride him among his friends for returning from Pydna without a thought for his own pocket. He will use that against you, to show a weakness of character within your gens.’

‘It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength,’ Scipio growled.

Julia turned to him. ‘You gave your adoptive grandmother Aemilia’s fortune to your mother Papira. You paid off the dowries of your adoptive sisters. And when we were together this evening you told me that when the time comes you will give your share of your father’s estate to your brother, and pay half the cost of the funeral games that by rights as eldest son should be his alone to bear; and then when your mother Papira dies you will pass on the fortune that you gave her from Aemilia to your own blood sisters.’

‘I will do those things,’ Scipio said quietly, watching Metellus as he pushed the actors aside and danced around the stage himself, parodying their performance, and then smashed his flagon on the floor and guffawed at his companions, turning back and bowing low to the audience in derision.

‘You’ve been generous to others, Scipio,’ Julia said quickly, as if knowing that her time was nearly up. ‘You’ve made a virtue of being magnanimous, and Polybius and others can hold you up as an example. But be careful. Rome is suspicious of too much generosity, and it will work against you. Metellus will say that you have used your wealth to compensate for the criticisms that others have made against your character, and that it just shows more clearly the weaknesses that he wants to find in you. It’s time you were generous to yourself, Scipio. You must forget the opinion of others and look to your own future.’

‘Julia!’ Metellus’ thick voice bawled from the stage, and he waved a hand in their direction. ‘It’s you I’ve come here for. It’s time I had a taste of my marriage rights. I’ve denied myself the prostibulae this evening so I can show you what I’m worth. This theatre can go to the dogs. We’re leaving now.’

Scipio suddenly leapt out of his seat, bounded across the peristyle and pounced on Metellus, pushing him hard against the wall of the stage and pinning him by his chest. He whipped out the knife he carried on his belt and pressed it against Metellus’ neck, forcing his head upwards. For a few moments Scipio held the position, his face snarling, while everyone watched in stunned silence. Metellus strained his head sideways, staring down at the blade. ‘Go on, Scipio,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Too squeamish for the sight of blood? It’s all that hunting you do. It’s softened you. You should try killing men one day.’

Fabius came up behind Scipio and grasped his wrist with an iron grip, pulling the hand with the knife away and dragging him back, while several of Metellus’ companions did the same for him. He shook them away, straightening himself up, and then marched across to Julia, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into his group. ‘I’ll remember this, Scipio Aemilianus. You should watch your back.’

Fabius continued to hold Scipio as the group staggered off. Terence sat slumped in the corner with his head in his hands, and the audience began to get up and leave. Scipio seemed stunned by what had happened, unaccustomed to losing control, as if his rage against Metellus had been triggered to displace his feelings of impotence over Julia’s departure. Now that she was gone he seemed paralysed by disbelief. Fabius could feel him shaking, and the blood pounding through his veins. Julia glanced back one last time as they rounded the corner, and then they were gone. Fabius released Scipio, took the knife from him and resheathed it, and then led him by the shoulder out of the house and on to the street, facing back in the direction of the Forum. ‘Where to now?’ he said.

Scipio stared grimly ahead, to where the stragglers from Metellus’ group could still be seen, one of them throwing up in a doorway. ‘To the shrine in my house on the Palatine, to honour the memory of my adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus. And then we go to Macedonia, to hunt. I need to be far from men, and far from Rome. We leave tonight.’

Fabius watched Scipio reach up and touch the silver phalera disc on his breastplate that he had been awarded for valour at Pydna. He could guess what Scipio was thinking. The disc was the gift of a father to a son who by rights should not have been there, a year too young to have been appointed to the rank of military tribune. Only Fabius knew that he had truly earned the decoration, that the phalera was not a sign of favouritism, that Scipio had run alone at the phalanx and cleaved his way through the ranks of the enemy until he was dripping with Macedonian blood. But Scipio knew perfectly well that there were others who would not see it that way: detractors and enemies of his father and grandfather, those who would scorn his achievements at Pydna as exaggeration and even use the award of the phalera against him. In the fickle world of Rome, the patronage of his father that had got him to Pydna and put him on the first rung of the military ladder could also be his undoing, allowing his detractors to claim that he had always had an easy ride of it and had hung on the togas of a father and a grandfather he could never hope to emulate.

Fabius knew him well enough to read his thoughts. Scipio loved Rome, and he hated Rome. He loved Rome for giving him the path to military glory, but he hated Rome for taking Julia from him. He remembered what Scipio had said that night when they had shared a flagon of wine staring at the stars from the Circus Maximus. One day he would return here wearing a breastplate of his own, more magnificent than this one, made of gold and silver taken in his own conquests, decorated not with images of past wars but with those of his own greatest victory, a burning citadel with a general standing astride the vanquished leader of Rome’s greatest enemy. He would return to celebrate the greatest triumph that Rome had ever seen. He would wait until he had received the adulation of the Senate, but then would turn his back on it and discard the ways that had been destined to bring him such unhappiness today, the day of his father’s triumph, also the appointed day of Julia’s betrothal. He would leave the Senate impotent, powerless, because he would take with him the people, the legionaries and the centurions, and together they would forge the greatest army the world had ever seen — one that would break free from the shackles of Rome and sweep all before it, led by a general whose conquests would make those of Alexander the Great seem paltry by comparison.

The last of the men ahead of them staggered away, shouting slurred words of contempt, one of them hurtling a half-full flagon of wine that smashed and left a red smear across the road. Already the glow from the huge fires on the Field of Mars could be seen, the signal that the evening’s bloodletting was well underway.

Fabius turned to Scipio, who was still staring ahead. He remembered when they had fought alongside each other in the backstreets of Rome almost ten years before, beating off the gang that had been pursing them, and afterwards Fabius had lifted him up and dusted him off. Scipio had laughed with pleasure at finding a new friend and sparring partner, at the freedom he had discovered on the streets outside the stifling conventions of his aristocratic background, conventions that had now taken Julia from him. But Fabius also remembered the hardness he had seen in those eyes, a hardness that others around him saw and feared, a fear that led the boys who were now those drunken young men to deride him for not being one of them. Fabius would have to see to it that the hardness remained, that Scipio would ride out this storm as he had ridden out the derision of others, that he did not fall into bitterness and self-destruction. He knew what they had to do.

He turned to Scipio. ‘Do you remember that stag you took above Falernium last summer?’

Scipio was silent, still staring. After a few moments he dropped his head, and nodded. ‘It was early summer; I remember it well,’ he replied quietly. ‘The snow still lay in patches on the upper reaches of the mountains.’ He squinted up at Fabius. ‘Don’t try to console me, Fabius. I don’t need it.’

‘I’m just thinking of the hunting equipment we’ll need for Macedonia. It’ll not just be stags we’re after there, but boar. Polybius said the place offers the best boar hunting he’s ever experienced. We’ll need spears, as well as bows. And I have a new puppy to train as a hunting dog. It’s always best to train a dog in the place where you want to use it, and the Macedonian Royal Forest can be his home. I’ll train him to stalk boar.’

Scipio gave a tired smile. ‘A dog. What’s his name?’

‘Rufius. It’s after the sound he makes. I can’t stop him barking. Eudoxia gave him to me.’

Scipio took a deep breath. ‘Then Rufius shall be our companion. We’ll need to collect our things tonight. And don’t get too close to that slave girl. We might be gone for a long time.’

There was a sudden commotion in the street ahead, and someone burst through the throng and ran up to them. It was Ennius, holding his helmet and drenched in sweat. ‘It’s the old centurion Petraeus,’ he panted. ‘We’ve got to get to him, now. They’re going to try to kill him.’

Scipio held him by the shoulders. ‘Calm yourself, man. What’s happened?’

Ennius bowed his head, took a few deep breaths, and then looked at Scipio, the sweat dripping off his face. ‘After the pyrotechnics display in the Forum I sent my fabri off for a well-earned drink. The nearest tavern to the Sacred Way is that one beside the Gladiator School, you remember, run by that rogue Petronius? Some of us used to sneak in there between classes. One of my centurions came running back to say they’d had an altercation with Brasis, the former gladiator from Thrace who used to fight with Brutus. I never did trust him, even though he was the best sword fighter in the school. He was drunk and slashed one of my fabri across the legs with his Thracian sica dagger, and then smashed his way out, bellowing that he was going to kill someone that night. Earlier on he’d been seen huddled in a corner of the tavern with a man in a hooded cloak that Petronius told my men he recognized as a senator, Gaius Sextius Calvinus. He gave Brasis a few denarii from a money pouch. It was after Sextius Calvinus left that Brasis began drinking heavily and brawling.’

‘Sextius Calvinus,’ Scipio said grimly. ‘One of my adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus’ worst enemies. He tried to bring him to trial on false charges of misappropriating public funds, and he violently opposed the formation of the academy.’

‘My fabri saw Sextius Calvinus pass someone in the street on the way out and hand him the money pouch, and then that person went into the tavern. All of my men recognized him. It was Porcus Entestius Supinus.’

Fabius let out a low whistle. ‘Why does that not surprise me.’

‘He runs errands for Metellus, doesn’t he?’ Scipio said.

‘More than that,’ Fabius said grimly. ‘He’s become Metellus’ right-hand man. It’s sometimes hard to tell who pulls the strings.’

‘You have a history with him?’

‘We both do. Remember that night when you and I first met years ago, when you thought you’d see what it was like in the streets at night by the Tiber? Porcus and his gang were chasing me, and you got caught up in it.’

‘So that was Porcus,’ Scipio exclaimed. ‘You’ve never mentioned him by name.’

‘He was a few years older than me, and bullied me relentlessly. He drove my mother to the illness that killed her. He and his gang picked on my father when he was at his lowest ebb, I was too young to defend him, and the bullying led him to an early grave too. One day I will get my vengeance, but I will do it alone.’

‘Why should he want Petraeus dead?’ Scipio said.

‘Because Metellus is under the influence of Sextius Calvinus and their faction in the Senate. Metellus sees his future glory in Greece, not in Carthage, and sees Petraeus as a malign influence. The riches of Greece and power in the east are the future that Porcus sees for himself, too. But there’s also a personal reason. Porcus tried to join the legions for the war in Macedonia, after we’d gone to Pydna, but Petraeus had been dragged out of retirement and put in charge of recruitment as his last job after the academy, and he rejected Porcus. He said that his reputation preceded him, and that he was a coward.’

‘But Porcus was a street boy from the Tiber districts, your own home,’ Scipio said. ‘The breeding ground of the best legionaries.’

Fabius shook his head. ‘Not always. Do you remember how he stood back gloating while his gang laid into us? He gets others to do his dirty work for him. That’s what he’ll be doing now, getting Brasis drunk and then paying him to go after Petraeus.’

‘Well, he stoked up Brasis, well and truly,’ Ennius said. ‘My fabri overheard everything. Porcus told Brasis that the Thracian mercenaries captured at Pydna have been scheduled for execution tomorrow afternoon, which is true enough. But it turns out that one of them is his brother. Porcus also reminded Brasis of a story that the old centurion Petraeus used to tell us, of how when he was a young legionary an inexperienced tribune surrendered his cohort to a group of Thracian mercenaries and the Romans were promptly put to the sword, including Petraeus’ own brother. Petraeus never told it out of any antagonism towards Thracians, but just to show us that we should never surrender to mercenaries. But Porcus let Brasis get it into his head that Petraeus put in a word to Aemilianus to have the Thracians singled out for special attention tomorrow, as revenge for what the Thracians did to his brother all those years ago.’

Scipio stared at him. ‘That’s exactly what Sextius Calvinus and his faction would wish him to think. It’s a set-up. They’ve been trying to find a way of getting rid of Petraeus ever since Scipio Africanus appointed him to the academy. He’s never moderated his opinions about the need for a professional army or his scorn of the Senate, and the plebs respect him. Where is he now?’

‘At his farm in the Alban Hills. My fabri helped him to build a new stone barn there only a few months ago. His wife is long dead and his children are grown up, so he lives alone.’

‘I was there too, only last week,’ Fabius said. ‘I’d promised to spend time with Petraeus when we came back from Macedonia, to tell him about Pydna and help him dig a terrace for some olive saplings. They won’t come to fruit in his lifetime, but he’s bequeathed the land to me on his death.’

‘And Brasis?’

‘Last seen heading for the Ostian Gate. Not before he drunkenly ransacked the Gladiator School for a sword.’

Fabius stood up. ‘We need to warn Petraeus.’

Scipio put his hand on Ennius’ shoulder. ‘I’m going to find Brutus, who was with my father’s Praetorian Guard but can be spared now that the main ceremony is over. Fabius and I will strip off our ceremonial armour and be at the gate in an hour’s time. If we run, we can be in the Alban Hills before midnight. After all the battles he has fought and all he has done for Rome I will not allow Petraeus to die in his bed at the hands of a drunken Thracian gladiator. Nor will I forget what our enemies have been prepared to do to bring us down. We move now.’

* * *

Four hours later, Fabius clambered up a gorse-infested slope on the lower reaches of the Alban Hills, followed close behind by Scipio and Brutus. He had led them off the road on a short cut over rough ground where he had scrambled with his puppy Rufius only a few days before when he had stayed with Petraeus. His legs were criss-crossed with scratches from the spiny undergrowth, but he did not care. He could smell burning, and he had a dread sense of foreboding. Brasis was at least half an hour ahead of them, and must have made it to the farm by now.

He reached the crest of the hill, the other two alongside him. Ahead of them lay a shallow ravine he had scrambled down with Rufius, and on the other side the farmstead, perhaps half a stade distant. It was a moonlit night, and they could see the buildings clearly. Beyond the main building he saw a lick of flame from a fire in the yard, evidently the source of the smell. For a few moments Fabius felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Perhaps Petraeus had relented and lit his own private bonfire in celebration of the triumph. Perhaps Brasis had never made it here after all, and had passed out drunk in a ditch somewhere outside Rome. Perhaps they would not have to embarrass and anger Petraeus by coming to his rescue, when there was no good cause.

But then he saw something that made him freeze. The flame leapt from behind the building over the roof, and then to the wooden byre where Fabius had slept with Rufius. And then Petraeus appeared from behind the byre, his bow-legged gait unmistakable, carrying a firebrand in one hand and a sword in the other, pursued by the lurching form of Brasis. He swept the brand over his wood pile, the kindling instantly igniting in the dry air, and then tossed it into the shed where he kept his olive press and oil supply. In seconds the entire farm was alight, a mass of flame crackling and erupting high into the sky. And then Petraeus stopped in the yard in front — the place where he and Fabius had sat together only a few days before, watching the sunset over distant Rome — and he staggered, falling heavily on one arm, and then struggled up again. In the light of the fire they could see that his tunic was soaked with blood, and that it was pouring in a trail behind him. Fabius realized what he had been doing with the firebrand, why he had been burning his farm. He had been lighting his own funeral pyre.

There was no chance of getting there in time to help him. They watched helplessly as he staggered backwards, clearly grievously wounded, and faced his attacker. He lunged, his blade burying itself somewhere deep in Brasis’ midriff. Then he slipped and was down, and Brasis was on him, slashing and thrusting, driving his blade deep into the centurion’s body, over and over again, until he was still. Brasis got up, staggered backwards, leaned forward again and picked up the corpse by the hair, lopping the head off with one stroke and holding it up for a moment while it bled out. Then he sheathed his sword, put the head into a bag on his belt and turned in the direction of Rome, putting his hands on his knees and trying to marshal his strength. Petraeus’ sword was still stuck in him, and he had gaping slash wounds on his arms and legs. Petraeus had not gone down without exacting his price. He had fought like a legionary to the end.

Fabius felt numb. The old centurion was dead.

Brutus suddenly bellowed, his fists held out and his muscles tensed, his eyes wild, staring at the scene. Scipio stood in front of him and took his head in his hands, leaning against his forehead. ‘Do your worst, Brutus. And when it is over, put the centurion’s body in the flames of his beloved home. That shall be his funeral pyre. I must go far away, but you need not worry. Fabius will look after me. Ave atque vale. We will meet again, in this world or the next.’

He held him for a few moments longer, then released him and turned back towards the fire. Brutus drew his sword and bounded forward, crashing through the spiny undergrowth like a bull as he hurtled down the ravine and up the other side, his sword held high, howling with rage.

Scipio turned to Fabius. ‘Return to Rome under cover of darkness and get what we need for the forest. I’ll await you here.’

‘Your father will have missed you at the rite of dedication to Scipio Africanus.’

‘Find him before you leave and tell him what’s happened. He should at least be able to silence Sextius Calvinus, if Brutus doesn’t get to him first. We will continue to have enemies in the Senate, but those who would take this step should know who they are dealing with. I’ll send word to my father once we have arrived in Macedonia.’

His voice was hoarse, no longer with emotion but with cold determination. Fabius saw beyond the young man’s anguish to the hardness in those eyes that he had first seen all those years ago. He would see that Scipio rode out this storm, and took strength from it, a soldier’s strength.

There was a bellow from the slope opposite, reverberating down the ravine. They turned towards the fire and saw the figure of Brutus silhouetted by the flames, his sword raised, holding something up with his other hand. It was Brasis’ severed head.

Scipio grasped Fabius by the shoulders, and turned him towards Rome. ‘Go now.’

Fabius began to run.