Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage

14

Fabius and Scipio stood on the deck of a small merchant galley off the coast of North Africa, its single square sail billowing above them. They had rowed hard all morning to get as far as they could offshore, taking their turn at the sweeps with the crew, the sail furled and the wind on the starboard beam; but then the captain had decided that they were far enough out into the bay to avoid being blown inshore before their objective had been reached, and had ordered the sail unfurled and the tiller heaved to starboard, causing the twin rudder oars to bring the bow to the south-west and the ship to plough across the waves towards land with the wind on her starboard quarter. Fabius had just finished helping the helmsman to push the tiller hard to the right and lash it to the gunwales, to counteract the tendency of the vessel to run before the wind. They had adjusted the ropes holding the sail to keep it at the best angle to fill with wind without buckling and flapping, and to avoid filling so much that it risked capsizing the ship.

Fabius was sweating in the sun, and took a swig from a water skin. He had enjoyed the rowing, pulling hard as the ship sliced through the waves on an even keel, but now that she was heaving up and down with every peak and trough he felt considerably less comfortable. He could scarcely believe that they were now within sight of Carthage, its whitewashed buildings spread out along the seafront less than a mile away, rising to the Byrsa hill with its temple in the centre. He knew he should have been apprehensive, weighing up their chances of getting in and making it out alive, but with the motion of the ship getting worse rather than better he found himself praying for landfall, anywhere, whatever the dangers. The sooner they arrived, the better.

He looked at Scipio, who was standing with his feet firmly planted on the deck, swaying with the ship and staring ahead. He had let his hair and beard grow for several months in anticipation of this mission, to look more like a merchant and less like a Roman soldier in disguise. In the three years since they had left Spain his features had become more chiselled and his skin dark and lined from the African sun. He was thirty-seven now, old for a tribune, but he still relished the opportunity that the rank gave him to lead men from the front, and he knew that the odds would be stacked in his favour for command of a legion should the Senate finally be persuaded to commit to all-out war. It had been three years of hard grind, of small-unit action supporting Gulussa and his Numidians on the fringes of the desert, violent clashes with the Carthaginian patrols that were constantly probing forward into the scrubland, pushing against the boundaries that had been agreed by treaty with Rome over fifty years before. Six months ago, Scipio and Gulussa had begun to sense that something bigger was afoot, an increasing stream of mercenaries reaching the front from the Carthaginian training camps under the walls of the city, a massing of men large enough to force a breakthrough. They knew that if that happened there would be little they could do to stop it, and Numidia would be overrun. The mission that Scipio had proposed was a last-ditch attempt to provide Polybius with evidence of Carthaginian intentions to take to Rome and present to the Senate. There would be those who would be suspicious of it, knowing Scipio’s position and suspecting exaggeration, but his reputation for fides might be enough to persuade even the doubters. Their mission was a huge risk, but it was better than dying in the desert. Everything depended on what they found out today.

Fabius swallowed hard, focusing on the horizon as he had been told to do by the captain when he had seen his discomfort, surveying the shoreline to the south. Behind them lay Bou Kornine, the mountain whose twin peaks shaped like a bull’s horns had been a navigational waymarker from the time when the Phoenicians had first come this way centuries before. On the shoreline below the slopes lay the Roman encampment, their point of embarkation the previous evening. The beach landing site of a few years before was now a semi-permanent depot, with hundreds of fresh troops passing through it every week on their way to bolster Numidian forces to the south. What had begun as a covert mission of advisers and trainers, of men experienced from Macedonia and Spain, had become an expeditionary force that was having its first major clashes with the vanguard of the enemy field army, with cohorts of mercenaries who had been sent forward to exploit weaknesses along the Numidian lines. Neither side was yet ready for full-blown war; the Carthaginians were merely occupying reclaimed territory that was rightfully theirs, and the Romans were coming to the aid of their Numidian allies with whom they were bound by treaty. But Fabius remembered what Polybius had said in the academy, that ill-defined borders were the most likely flashpoint for war, and the former Carthaginian territory ceded to Masinissa after the defeat of Hannibal was a case in point. Something was bound to crack soon, when Hasdrubal was ready for full-scale battle, and when Rome was willing to commit herself to an endgame that had been predestined all those years before when Scipio Africanus had been obliged by the Senate to spare Hannibal after his defeat at Zama and allow Carthage to escape final destruction.

He thought of Hasdrubal, a man whom few on the Roman side had yet seen, who had grown to power behind the walls of Carthage after the city had shut herself off from unwanted visitors. He was said to be monstrous, a huge bull of a man who wore a lionskin and affected a roar like a beast, yet who showed tenderness to his beautiful young wife and their children, showering them with gifts taken from the spoils of past Carthaginian wars against the rich Greek cities of Sicily. There were some within the Senate, enemies of Cato, who decried Hasdrubal as an empty-headed braggart, but Scipio knew better than to belittle a man he might one day face in battle. Hasdrubal had shown himself to be impetuous, arrogant, a gambler who was willing to take risks that might suggest a bent towards self-destruction, but more often than not in his clashes with Gulussa’s cavalry and their Roman advisers he had shown himself to be an able and ruthless tactician. Their friend Terence the playwright who had spent his childhood in Carthage had said that Hasdrubal revelled in being from the same bloodline as the great Hannibal himself, a legacy that Scipio knew he could not afford to ignore; Scipio knew how much strength and sense of purpose he himself gained through his own legacy from Hannibal’s arch-rival Scipio Africanus, and how any coming conflict with Hasdrubal could not be taken lightly.

Fabius had felt uneasy enough over the past months, in the shadowland of a war that officially did not exist, but he and Scipio were about to step into an even murkier world, into the byways of espionage and subterfuge that were the domain of Polybius and his agents. They had removed their armour to travel as an Italian wine merchant and his servant, and Fabius felt uncomfortable and exposed without his weapons. Scipio had spent hours that night discussing Carthage with the kybernetes, the ship’s captain, an Achaian Greek on Polybius’ books who had offered his ship for the mission, and they had run over the topography of the city again and again. Fabius remembered the model of Carthage that had been built for Scipio Africanus in the tablinum of his house on the Palatine, and stories from the slaves of how the old man used to retire to the room and brood over it. The young Scipio Aemilianus had gone there too, inviting his friend Terence the playwright to pore over it with him; by the time Scipio had gone to the academy he had known it like the back of his hand. Terence had knocked down the old harbour structure and a ring of housing around the Byrsa, the acropolis of Carthage, saying that as a boy growing up in the city he had seen that secret new building was going on in both places. That was what Fabius and Scipio were there to find out now, and to discover what they could about Carthaginian intentions. Scipio was convinced that there was more to Carthage rearming herself than Hasdrubal’s defiance, that his belligerence was about more than just turning his city into a doomed fortress that would sell its existence dearly when the time came.

Fabius swallowed hard again, feeling seriously nauseous now, hoping that he did not look as bad as he felt. He had never liked sea crossings and this was the smallest ship he had been in on the open sea, swaying and rocking like a cork. At the moment, as far as he was concerned, the Carthaginians could have the sea, for all he cared; the Romans may have bettered them in naval battles in the past but were not seafarers by nature, and the only proper place for a Roman to fight was on land. He closed his eyes, instantly regretted it and then said a little prayer of thanks as the kybernetes ordered the sail furled and the sweeps drawn out and manned. They were now less than a stade out, and to keep the sail up would have been to risk being blown onshore. There was going to be some tricky navigation ahead to get them safely past the long quayside and into the harbour entrance.

He stared at the shimmering façade of the city, shielding his eyes against the brilliance of the sun. The entire north-facing seafront was backed by a defensive wall some fifteen feet high, in front of which lay a wide quay backed by a continuous line of offices and warehouses built against the wall. The quay was too exposed to serve as a dock for all but the largest ships, one of which was visible near the western end; instead most vessels would enter a protected complex to the east where goods would be offloaded and then transported to warehouses along the seafront by bullock cart and on the backs of slaves. A further harbour, for ships with high-value cargoes or on commercial expeditions controlled by the state, lay in a landlocked position behind, entered by a channel to the south and leading to a second landlocked harbour that contained the naval shipsheds. The channel to the landlocked harbours was heavily guarded and they knew there was no point in seeking a berth there without attracting unwanted attention. Instead the captain directed the helmsman to steer towards the east end of the quay, ordering the rowers to ship oars as they came close and steering the remainder of the way on the momentum from their efforts. Fabius and Scipio moved to the stern behind the helmsman, keeping well back as he heaved the tiller to angle the steering oars in the direction that the captain was pointing from his position in the bow, bringing the ship expertly into the outer harbour.

As the momentum dropped off, the ship closed with an open section of wharf, bumping against the nets of brushwood that were hung down from the quay to soften the impact. The helmsman quickly pulled the pins that locked the steering oars in place and pushed the tiller forward, raising the oars to the gunwales so that they would not be damaged by the quay or by other vessels. Fabius lent a hand, heaving hard against the tiller until the oars were horizontal, but Scipio remained in his place, knowing that watching officials might look suspiciously at a merchant pitching in alongside his servant to help the crew. The helmsman and the captain heaved lines ashore from bow and stern and then leapt ashore, securing them through looped stone bolsters set into the side of the quay. They left a little leeway in the ropes, enough to take account of the small drop of a foot or two in the tide at this time of the month, and then two of the sailors laid a plank from the gunwales to the quay, ushering Scipio and Fabius off in turn. Fabius landed heavily, glad to be on land again but swaying precariously. He walked a few steps along the quay to get his legs working properly again, and then stopped and looked around. He forgot the sea, and felt himself course with excitement. They were in Carthage.

* * *

Half an hour later they were still on the quay, waiting for a messenger to return with the merchant’s seal that the captain had sent to the port authorities as credentials. Fabius and Scipio were taking in the scene, discreetly absorbing every detail. Hundreds of pottery amphorae lay against each other in the shade under the city wall; slaves picked them up by their necks and spikeshaped bases, heaving them on their shoulders and taking them to the warehouses of merchants along the quay. Fabius could see Carthaginian olive oil amphorae — long, cylindrical shapes with small handles below the shoulders — but by far the largest number were wine amphorae, fat-bellied forms with long necks and handles. He recognized the distinctive high-handled types from Rhodes and Knidos, made to transport the best-quality Greek wines, and further down the quay a large batch of longer-bodied wine amphorae produced in Italy around the Bay of Naples, the old Greek area now controlled by Rome where vines had been cultivated since the first Greek colonists had arrived below Mount Vesuvius centuries earlier, about the time that the Phoenicians were settling Carthage. Scipio had seen the amphorae too and turned to the kybernetes, talking quietly so that he was not overheard. ‘I thought all trade between Rome and Carthage was banned by the treaty that followed the Battle of Zama. It’s why my credentials state that I’m an independent merchant, Roman but not representing the state.’

‘Trade with Rome, yes, but not with other cities in Italy that still consider themselves to be free agents as far as commerce is concerned,’ the kybernetes replied. Where there’s profit to be had, merchants can always find a way around a trade treaty.’

‘There are clearly big profits to be had here,’ Scipio murmured. ‘Far more so than the Senate in Rome would have believed. This place looks even more prosperous than Ostia. But surely all of this wine is not being imported to be drunk in Carthage itself?’

The captain snorted. ‘You forget your history. These people are Phoenicians, the most wily traders the world has ever known. Do you see that ship down the quay?’

He pointed to the one vessel they had seen berthed along the exposed seafront as they came in, a ship whose beam was too wide to get into the enclosed harbour but was large enough to have ridden out even a minor storm without much difficulty. Fabius shaded his eyes against the sun, following his gaze. ‘It’s huge,’ Scipio said. ‘It looks like one of the ships that put into Ostia on the way to Massalia in Gaul, carrying Italian wine to trade with the warrior chieftains of the interior.’

‘That’s exactly what it is,’ the captain said ruefully. ‘You see my ship here, the Diana? She can carry three hundred amphorae, four hundred at a stretch. That ship over there, Europa, can carry ten thousand.’

‘I can see slaves taking wine amphorae off, and others taking them on,’ Scipio said. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, the ones going off are Italian, and the ones coming on are Greek, Rhodian and Knidian.’

The kybernetes nodded. ‘Europa should have sailed with her cargo of Italian wine directly from Neapolis to Gaul, but she diverted south to Carthage. Instead of taking Italian wine to Gaul, she’ll be taking Greek.’

‘I don’t understand. Where’s the profit?’

‘You need to think like a Phoenician. Poseidon knows, if we did we’d all be rich. It goes like this. At the moment, the most profitable venture in all of the Mediterranean is the wine trade to Gaul. It’s made a lot of Romans wealthy: the owners of the wine estates in Italy, the shippers, the middlemen in Massalia who deal with the Gauls. But there’s been no way that the Carthaginians could get a foothold in it. If they showed up in Ostia or Neapolis or Massalia offering their services as shippers, that would raise the ire of Rome. But if you can’t join a trading enterprise, you can always undermine it. A consortium of Carthaginian traders supported by the governing council has struck a covert deal with Greek traders in Rhodes. It was quickly done: the Greeks too have come to resent the dominance of Italian wine in the west, pushing aside their own produce.’

Scipio nodded slowly. ‘And the Greeks would have known that Carthaginian trading schemes invariably turned a profit for all parties involved.’

‘Correct. On that basis, the Greeks have agreed to supply the Carthaginians with as much high-quality wine as they can produce, but without a drachma being required up front. The Carthaginians then replace the Italian wine on these ships with Greek wine, and send it up to Massalia. Before embarking on this venture, they’d researched their market, of course, being true to their Phoenician roots, sending out agents who arrived with wine samples at the oppida of the Gauls, discovering that the barbarians have refined taste and are easily able to appreciate the superior Greek wines. So with shiploads of ten thousand Greek amphorae reaching Massalia, the Gauls will see that the higher-quality wine can be had in abundance. The Italian wine trade will collapse, and the Carthaginians will reap the profits.’

‘Which, if the Carthaginian council has a share in the trade, is ploughed back into the city.’

The kybernetes gestured at the sea walls. ‘How do you think these new fortifications were financed? Much of the marble facing is from Greece, and the masons do not come cheap. You’ll be amazed by what you see inside. Carthage may not yet again control the overseas territory it did three generations ago, but behind those walls it is a richer city than it ever was before.’

Fabius indicated the amphora ship beside the quay. ‘One thing puzzles me. How did the Carthaginians convince that Roman shipper to divert his vessel here? They say that a single amphora of Italian wine trades in Gaul for a slave, and in Rome slaves sell at a high premium these days because there have been too few wars to provide a decent selection. If that cargo of Italian wine was worth ten thousand slaves then the owner would stand to make a fortune in the slave markets in Rome. Why buy into a Carthaginian scheme when such profits are already certain?’

‘Because the Carthaginians let it be known that they would offer twice the profit margin, the equivalent of two slaves per amphora, if the shippers took on Greek wine instead. They have guaranteed them security, even in the event of shipwreck. The more high-quality Greek wine that floods into the Gaulish market, the more certain the Carthaginians will be that the Gauls will reject the inferior Italian vintages. The bottom will fall out of the Italian wine trade, especially if the Carthaginians continue to offer more lucrative contracts to the shippers who had previously taken the Italian wine, persuading them to sail down to Carthage like the Europa and load up with wine shipped in from Greece for the trip north to Massalia. Once the Carthaginians have cornered the Gaulish market, they’ll be able to up the price from one slave to two and even three, and demand other goods that have always been a Phoenician speciality, particularly copper and tin for bronze, as well as iron.’

Scipio nodded. ‘Metals that are in short supply in Africa and are needed so they can make their own armour and weapons.’

‘But there’s more to it than that,’ the kybernetes said quietly, looking around again to make sure that nobody else was listening. ‘There’s a dark side that you won’t like. It’s an open secret that many Roman senators of the old gentes, men who profess to despise trade and only invest in land, have made enormous profits through allowing middlemen to take wine off their estates and export it to Gaul. But there are other senators, novi homines, new men, those with no landed wealth, who are not above dirtying their own hands with trade.’

‘I know it,’ Scipio said grimly. ‘I served under one in Spain, Lucullus. He made his fortune after the Spanish triumph by using the prize money voted to him by his cronies in the Senate to buy up large stocks of excess grain from Sicily at a rock-bottom price, and then to sell it at an extortionate premium the next year to the same people when there was a drought. He has used it to buy land, but the gentes will not forget how he made his fortune.’

‘Rumour has it that a group of these men banded together and bought the vessel you see here today, along with her cargo, in a secret deal very profitable to the owner, and that they have done the same with several other shiploads of Italian wine. Rumour also has it that these same senators are the ones who are so strongly opposed to further military action against Carthage, as well as in Greece.’

‘Jupiter above,’ Scipio murmured. ‘This goes to the heart of our problem in persuading Rome to go to war. Now I see what Cato and Polybius are up against.’

I have another question,’ Fabius said. ‘With all that Italian wine being offloaded here, what are the Carthaginians going to do with it? They’re hardly going to drink it themselves, or sell it back to the Greeks. Better to dump it in the sea.’

The kybernetes raised his eyes. ‘Phoenicians? Throw away a trade commodity? Not likely. That wine is part of another scheme, of even greater profitability. Beside the inner harbour, away from prying eyes, they have begun to build huge warehouses, large enough to house a ship as big as that amphora carrier on the quay. Soon these warehouses will fill up not with amphorae of wine but with something even more precious: sacks of an exotic spice called pipperia. It comes from India, and will be shipped across the Erythraean Sea to the shore of Egypt, and then transported across the desert to the Nile and Alexandria and to Carthage. The first Greeks to reach the shores of southern India found that the local spice merchants loved their wine, and wanted more; even rough Italian wine is like nectar to them. That’s where all of those amphorae are destined.’

‘But to transport tens of thousands of heavy amphorae across the Egyptian desert would be an expensive undertaking,’ Scipio said. ‘I’ve been there, and the cost would be prohibitive.’

‘The Carthaginians are prepared to do so, underwriting the transport cost with the profits from the trade with Gaul. They intend to send only enough to seed the trade, to bring back shiploads of pipperia and other spices and luxuries of the east, enough to fire up demand among the wealthy in Rome itself: among the wives of those whose greed they had exploited to set up the trade in the first place, the senators whose ship you see on the quayside now. But then the Carthaginians will move from exporting wine to another commodity that the Indians love, something transported much more easily with profit margins far higher. I mean gold: gold coin, gold bullion, gold specie, gold in any form. The Carthaginians will channel the gold of the Mediterranean to the east, emptying the wealth of nations to create in their own city the richest nation-state the world has ever seen, here where we stand now.’

‘How do they get the gold?’ Fabius asked. ‘Another ingenious trading scheme?’

The kybernetes did not reply, but raised his eyes at Scipio, who turned to Fabius, his expression hard. ‘It will come from another source. This time old Phoenician guile takes a back seat, and new Carthaginian strength will be to the fore.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean war. War not of defence, but of conquest. War against Rome, and war in the east. Wars that may even see Carthage allied with those Romans who, it seems, have already thrown in their lot with her.’

Fabius felt a cold shiver down his spine. They were no longer talking about extinguishing an ancient foe, about finishing business and satisfying honour, about Scipio’s own destiny. They were talking about a war that could change everything, a war that could escalate to swallow up the entire known world, from the shore of the Erythraean Sea to the furthest reaches of Gaul and the Albion Isles. The reason for Scipio’s presence here now to gather intelligence suddenly seemed so important that it made him feel faint, as if he were standing at one of the pivotal points of history. The stakes could not be higher.

The kybernetes eyed Scipio. ‘Perhaps you have now seen all that you need to see. Even Polybius knows little of this, as my knowledge of these plans came since I last saw him in person, and I could not trust others to tell him. But now you have seen enough with your own eyes to trust that what I say is true.’

Scipio paused for a moment, his eyes narrowed, and then shook his head. ‘You have told us of the strategic threat. But we came here also to evaluate the tactical challenge of an assault on Carthage. I need to see the soldiers, their equipment, the fortifications, the new war harbour. Without that intelligence, we will be severely hampered. And I cannot yet use the strategic threat as an argument in Rome. If what you say is true, there are too many in the Senate implicated against us, names that I can guess, and to suggest in public that they are treacherous to Rome without clear evidence of Carthaginian military build-up would destroy my case and probably my life. It’s the detailed evidence for war preparation that will win the day. After that, I will ponder what you have told me and decide how that will shape my own strategy after the army I lead here is victorious, if they give me the consulship.’

The kybernetes waved at someone, and they could see that the messenger they had sent with their seal was returning from the customs house. ‘Good,’ the captain said. ‘There are no guards returning with him, so we will be let through.’ He turned to Scipio, and spoke intensely. ‘I’m glad you’re confident. But I’ll speak my mind. From what I’ve seen of the Roman forces so far here in Africa, those helping Masinissa’s army, I’m not so sure. You’ve got a lot of work to do, Scipio Aemilianus. Perhaps the name of your father and of the great Scipio Africanus will carry the weight of history forward. Meanwhile, remember that for today you are a mere merchant, and you must play your part with caution. You must be on the alert.’