Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage

15

The guards at the entrance from the outer harbour through the city wall were typically Carthaginian in appearance: dark-skinned, swarthy men with curly black hair and beards, the descendants of Phoenician forefathers who had left their homeland in the east Mediterranean centuries before to escape the turmoil that followed the Trojan War, founding Carthage not much before the Trojan prince Aeneas had first alighted on the coast of Italy and set eyes on the site of Rome some six hundred years ago. The two guards closest to Fabius carried long thrusting spears with butt tips of bronze so they would not rust when rammed into damp ground, as well as curved Greek-style kopis slashing swords: fearsome-looking weapons with the edged blade on the inside, yet less effective in a close-quarter melee than the straight-bladed Roman thrusting sword. Instead of metal armour they wore the distinctive Carthaginian hardened linen corselet, not thick enough to deflect a determined thrust yet with a white exterior and lighter weight that made it better suited to the African sun than Roman metal armour.

Their most striking equipment was their helmets, made of highly burnished iron with a bulbous crown that rose and extended forward, and detachable cheekpieces; the cheekpieces covered the face entirely, leaving only apertures for the eyes and mouth, and were embossed to represent facial hair. Seeing those helmets made Fabius catch his breath and remember the dreams of his boyhood. They were exactly as his father had described them from the Battle of Zama more than fifty years before, the last time the Romans had encountered the Carthaginians in a set-piece battle. Polybius in his Histories had derided the Carthaginians for using too many mercenaries and for fielding an untrained conscript force of their own citizens, but Fabius knew from his father that Polybius’ sources had exaggerated to deflect attention from deficiencies in the Roman line, especially the division of forces within each legion according to experience and the quality of their weapons and armour. Seeing these guards here today, confident in their poise and the way they held their weapons, so similar in appearance to his father’s description of those supposedly ill-trained levies, Fabius could begin to understand how the infantry battle at Zama had raged for hours before Masinissa’s cavalry had arrived and tipped the balance in favour of the Romans. Yet these men today did not look like shadows from the past, a token police force allowed to a vanquished foe, but like highly trained, toughened warriors, men who had probably been blooded in the border clashes of the last three years with Gulussa’s cavalry and the Roman expeditionary force. If there were more men like this mustered inside the walls of Carthage, then an assault on the city by the Romans would not be the walkover that some might have predicted.

The kybernetes returned from talking to the customs officer, nodded at Scipio and gestured to the entrance in the city wall beyond the guard tower. ‘You are authorized to go through to the merchants’ hall, the name they give to the colonnaded space between the outer harbour where we are now and the two inner harbours, the rectangular harbour for state-controlled trade and the circular war harbour. Officially you cannot gain access to those inner harbours or the city beyond. Whether you find a way of doing so is up to your own devices. I will set sail as soon as you return. Your stated purpose here is to conclude a deal with a Carthaginian wine merchant, no more. If you linger any longer than you need to, the port guards will become suspicious. And if I come into the merchants’ hall with you I’m liable to be press-ganged into the Carthaginian navy. The only place where sailors have immunity is out here, and I’ll busy myself with the chandlers’ stores to stock up on supplies for my ship. Whatever happens, you must never reveal your name. For the Carthaginians to have caught the heir of Scipio Africanus on a covert mission within their walls would be to sound the death-knell for any Roman attempt to take this city. They would demand an extortionate ransom, hold you up as a laughing stock that would undermine Roman prestige everywhere, and shatter the morale of the legions. Far better, if you are threatened with capture, to die fighting, or to fall on your own sword. Good luck.’

He scurried off towards a cordage seller beside the quay. Scipio walked confidently past the soldiers, Fabius an appropriate distance behind, and in a few moments they were through the city wall. The colonnaded space they had entered was long and narrow, lined not with warehouses like the quay outside but with small officinae fronted by marble tables and seats. The place seemed less like the animated chaos of the merchants’ square that Fabius knew well from the port of Rome at Ostia, a favourite haunt of his as a boy, than one of the law courts in the Forum, with clusters of men engaged in solemn discussions. Sitting in the office next to the entrance was a man wearing a robe dyed deep purple, the colour that the Phoenicians extracted from a rare species of seashell; it was the easiest way to spot a Carthaginian state official. On the stone table in front of him was a steelyard weighing scale and a line of balance-pan weights resting in carved-out depressions in the stone, and in the back of the officina was a stone strongbox guarded by two burly soldiers. It was evidently an exchange facility, and Fabius could see others interspersed among the colonnades. This place was clearly run by Carthaginian officials, not by free merchants, and their transactions were not the small deals built up piecemeal of a typical shipper’s business in Ostia, but instead high-value exchanges, evidenced by a transaction a few offices down, where the pan in the scale was piled high with gold coins.

Scipio walked along the colonnade, looking to the left and right as if searching for a specific merchant, and then turned casually to Fabius and nodded at the opposite colonnade. ‘There’s an entrance between the columns,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a narrow passage guarded by two soldiers about halfway along, out of sight of anyone here unless they were really looking. It must lead to the landlocked harbours. Our disguise as a merchant and his servant is no use to us any more if we want to get in there. Our only chance is to go as Carthaginian soldiers. When I give the signal, you deal with the one on the right.’

Fabius followed Scipio as he turned down the alley and walked up to the soldiers, who wore the same style of armour and equipment as the men at the entrance. They both had their cheekpieces down, obscuring their faces, but by their long beards they looked to be eastern mercenaries, perhaps Assyrian. The man on the left stood forward, slamming his spear butt on the ground. ‘You are not allowed through,’ he said, his Greek barely comprehensible. ‘By order of the high admiral.’

‘The high admiral?’ Scipio said, pretending ignorance. ‘So this is the way to the circular harbour?’

‘Yes, but it’s not the harbour you want,’ the man growled. ‘Your harbour is back the way you came. You merchants are even bigger fools than I thought. You have no sense of direction.’

Scipio turned, affecting a puzzled expression, but in reality looking down the alley to make sure they were not being watched. He caught Fabius’ eye, and nodded almost imperceptibly. In a lightning movement he swivelled round and punched the soldier hard in the throat, catching him as he fell and twisting his head violently to one side until he could hear his neck break. In the same instant Fabius did the same to the other man, keeping hold of his head afterwards and lowering him gently to the ground. There had been no noise, and there was no blood. They dragged the two men out of the alley into a dark space behind a wall, and then quickly stripped them, taking off their own clothes and donning the soldiers’ armour, pulling on the helmets and snapping the cheekpieces shut over their faces. The bodies lay with their eyes wide open, caught in the shock of instant death. Scipio kicked their discarded clothes over the corpses so that it looked like a pile of cloth. They picked up the spears, walked out into the alley, turned and moved swiftly along the columns of a portico that extended at right-angles from the merchants’ hall for several hundred feet, and then veered right through an opening towards a shimmer of water.

Scipio stopped for a moment, listening for any sign of pursuit, hearing nothing. Fabius took a deep breath, and saw that his hands were shaking. It always happened after he killed, the energy rush, like taking a deep draught of wine at the end of a long run, his heart pumping the nectar through his veins and making him shake. And it was not that he had come to relish killing for its own sake. Taking out those two men had seemed like the first act in the endgame, as if the assault on Carthage was finally in train.

They had come out on the edge of the enclosed rectangular harbour, a basin that led to a fortified entrance at the eastern side, with the twin-peaked mountain of Bou Kornine visible in the background. Fabius realized that the harbour must be parallel to the outer one where the Diana had berthed, only completely man-made and landlocked. There were only two ships berthed inside, one a typical Phoenician-style wide-bellied merchantman with eyes painted below the bows, and the other a sleeker design that was neither warship nor merchantman, with gunwales higher and more robust than Fabius was used to seeing. The wharf beside the vessel was lined with baskets filled with fragments of stone, some of it shimmering and metallic. As he and Scipio passed, a slave came down a gangplank and heaved another basket to the ground, sweating and cursing. He glanced ruefully at Fabius, who had stopped to look. ‘Feel free to give a hand, if you have nothing better to do,’ the slave said in heavily accented Greek. ‘I’m just about done in.’

‘What is it, in the baskets?’ Fabius asked.

‘Tin ore, from the Cassiterides, the Tin Isles,’ the man said. ‘At least, that’s what the Punic sailors call the place, after the Greek name, but I know it differently. Some of us from the west of the island call it Albion, and others Britten. You see, it was my home, where I was happily going about my own business until I was snatched during a raid by a neighbouring chieftain, sold to the Gauls, traded by them for an amphora of wine to an Italian shipper, and then given by him as a present to a Carthaginian merchant to oil some deal. So I find myself here, the slave of a Phoenician captain who is about to take me by sea right back again to my home island to help load more of this stuff. I wouldn’t mind so much if they shipped it in ingots, which would be easier to carry. They keep it as ore because the weight of the rocks acts as ballast in the rough seas of the Atlantic Ocean.’

‘It could be worse,’ Fabius said. ‘You could be a galley slave.’

‘Or mucking out seasick elephants.’ The man jerked his head down to the far end of the harbour. ‘You see that shipbuilding yard? They’re building elephantegoi, elephant carriers. They say that not even Hannibal had specialized elephant ships like that.’

Fabius followed his gaze, and then stared at the man. He clearly had no love for the Carthaginians, and was garrulous. Fabius knew that to enquire more might have aroused suspicions had the man not been a slave, but in this case he could take a calculated gamble. He reached into a pouch on his belt and took out one of the Macedonian gold staters that Scipio had given him earlier in case they needed to bribe potential informants, and tossed it to the man. ‘Tell me more.’

The man took the coin, eyed Fabius for a moment and quickly concealed the gold. He began to talk animatedly, telling him about the elephant carriers, but after a few minutes a swarthy man appeared on deck, cracking a whip and glaring at him. Fabius shouted at the slave as if telling him off for talking to him, and then marched on. They could not risk suspicious eyes alighting on them, and stopping to talk to the slave had been pushing their luck. Scipio stood waiting at the edge of the channel linking the rectangular harbour to the circular war harbour, and Fabius hurried up to him, talking under his breath. ‘It’s just as the kybernetes said. The Carthaginians are importing metal not only from Gaul, but also from the Albion Isles. That cargo is worth its weight in gold.’

They walked briskly along the portico beside the channel to the war harbour. As they approached it, an extraordinary structure came into view. The kybernetes had described it to them the night before, but even he had never seen it from the inside. The harbour was built around a circular basin that Fabius estimated at a stade and a half in diameter, about a thousand feet, large enough to accommodate the four-banked quadriremes and five-banked quinqueremes — called by the Carthaginians pentereis, their Greek name — that had traditionally been the biggest vessels in the Carthaginian fleet. In the centre of the basin was an island perhaps half a stade across made up of a circular structure that rose to a watchtower in the centre. The same style of roofed portico had been used around the island and the outer edge of the basin, a uniform design that made the structure more grandiose than anything yet built in Rome. Most remarkable of all, the spaces between the columns served as shipsheds, around the outer edge as well as the island; he could see the prows of warships poking out, galleys that had been drawn up on slipways. There must have been at least two hundred openings, at least half of them occupied. On the far side, a section of sheds was being used as a shipbuilder’s yard, with stacks of wood and cordage visible and the partly built shells of vessels propped up on wooden formers. Only one warship was floating in the basin itself, drawn up against the wharf just beyond the entrance, a small, single-banked lembos that looked like the vessels that Fabius had seen at the Roman fleet base at Misenum on the Bay of Neapolis, used by crack teams of oarsmen to send people and messages faster than the larger galleys could ever manage.

Fabius remembered Polybius in the Macedonian forest ten years earlier, telling then of rumours that the Carthaginians were rebuilding their war harbour; this structure could not have been much older than that. The marble veneer was still sharp edged and mirror bright, and stacks of it lay in a mason’s yard beside the entrance. The marble was a high-quality stone that must have come from Greece, and the columns of the portico were a beautiful honey-coloured stone that Fabius recognized from a stone bowl that Gulussa had shown him, from a newly discovered quarry in Numidian territory south-east of Carthage. This harbour was not some hasty half-measure, built by a people desperate to restore some vestige of their military pride, but was an arsenal far superior to anything of Rome herself or in the Greek world, a structure built by a people who confidently expected to project their power far beyond these shores once again.

He knew that Scipio would be using every moment to size up the tactical implications of a naval encounter with the new Carthaginian warships. Just before the entrance to the circular harbour was another checkpoint, this time one that Fabius knew they could never hope to penetrate, though they might be able to get close enough for a better glimpse of what lay inside. Two guards with spears firmly planted barred their way as they approached. ‘No entry without authorization,’ one of them said in Greek, guessing that they were mercenaries and not Carthaginians. ‘I am the optio of the guard. State your business.’

Scipio stood before the man and saluted, holding his fist to his chest. ‘Urgent message from Hasdrubal to Hamilcar, strategos of the pentereis squadron.’

The man grunted. ‘I don’t know of a squadron commander with that name, but I’m new to the job. From Hasdrubal himself, you say? I’ll need to go to the admiral’s island to find out. Wait here.’ He clicked his fingers and another guard sauntered out from the guardhouse beside them to take his place. Looking annoyed, the optio stomped off around the edge of the harbour towards a wooden bridge that led to the island in the centre. Scipio yawned, sighed heavily and turned away from the harbour, feigning a lack of interest. He paced slowly back towards the rectangular harbour, stopping and putting his hands on his hips when he knew they were out of earshot of the soldiers. Fabius had followed him and spoke in a low voice. ‘Who in Hades is Hamilcar the strategos?’

‘Every third male in Carthage seems to be called Hamilcar, so the chances are there’s someone with that name stationed in the harbour. I guessed that the guard at the entrance wouldn’t know the name of all of the captains and squadron commanders, but I spotted a five-banked galley in the sheds opposite us, a pentereis. We just have to hope that the strategos of that squadron isn’t called Hamilcar. Our chance to size this place up is now, before the optio returns, but we must be careful. We don’t want to appear too interested.’

Scipio stretched, turned, and then walked back in front of the guards, peering beyond them and drumming his fingers impatiently against his thigh. ‘Bide your time, soldier,’ one of the guards said. ‘It’s always difficult finding people in this place. There are two hundred and twenty sheds to check, as well as the headquarters rooms on the island.’

Scipio pursed his lips. ‘You know what it’s like. If I don’t return to the Byrsa soon with my message delivered, I’ll be for it. Anyway, I thought this place was the pride of Carthage. It should be the height of efficiency.’

The man snorted. ‘How long have you been in Carthage, soldier?’

‘Only a matter of days. We’re Italian mercenaries, got into trouble while we were with Demetrius’ army in Syria and ended up as galley slaves, but then slipped ship in the harbour here and offered our services to the guard before our captain could reclaim us.’

‘Well, if you’re skilled oarsmen, I’d keep quiet about it. Otherwise the Carthaginians will recruit you for their war galleys. They’ve built this harbour and these ships, but they don’t have the slaves to man them. Carthage hasn’t conducted wars of conquest since the time of Hannibal, and war is the only way you get a good supply of fit men for the galleys. If you ask me, that’s why they’ve started up this war against Masinissa again: not to conquer a few more square miles of wasteland but to capture Numidians to use as galley slaves.’

The other guard joined in. ‘They say they’ll use Gauls, too, brought back as slaves by the wine traders.’ He jerked his head towards the island. The optio was returning, and the two guards stood to attention. After a few minutes the optio rounded the portico and marched up to them, eyeing Scipio suspiciously. ‘There’s a Hamilcar who’s a captain of the triremes, currently seconded to the infantry, but not a squadron commander of the pentereis. In fact, there’s no such squadron. There’s only one of those big ships left, and it’s a relic. The largest vessels in the fleet now are triremes. Unless you can explain yourself to me, I’m to take you to the admiral for questioning.’

He nodded curtly to the two guards, who stomped their legs apart and held their spears at the ready. Fabius felt his pulse quicken: this was precisely the kind of encounter that they had wanted to avoid. Scipio affected nonchalance, shrugging. ‘It was a new appointment, for one of Hasdrubal’s cousins. Maybe it was more of an honorary rank. This place is so cut off that information doesn’t pass often enough up to the Bysra, and Hasdrubal’s eyes have been elsewhere, on the war with Masinissa. I’ll return and tell him that his cousin Hamilcar is nowhere to be seen and that ships are still under construction. Maybe that will make him come here himself for an inspection.’

‘Don’t do that,’ the man said hastily. ‘You don’t know Hasdrubal yet. If he finds fault and loses his temper, heads will roll.’

Scipio slapped him on the shoulder. ‘All we soldiers want is to go off-duty and get to the taverns, right? We were told that if we didn’t find Hamilcar here, he might be in the Tophet sanctuary, as he’s also a priest. We’ll go and look for him there.’

‘Your nearest route is directly opposite us. I’ll escort you past the guards.’ The optio turned and walked to the left, heading along the southern side of the portico around the harbour, and Scipio and Fabius followed. They walked within a few feet of the docked lembos and past the first shipsheds, and then they veered right through a gap in the portico. Moments later, the optio had left them at the guard post and they were in the city proper, in a street that ran parallel to the high retaining wall of the harbour complex. They made their way quickly out of sight of the soldiers, and past the busy fish market that lined the street. Scipio turned to Fabius as they walked, speaking urgently. ‘Did you see that lembos?’

‘It looked Roman.’

‘It was Roman. I saw bundles of pila in the stern. No other soldiers carry spears like ours. And the amphorae of wine and olive oil for the crew were Italian.’

‘Captured?’

Scipio shook his head. ‘That would be an act of war, and they can’t risk that until they have the slaves to man their galleys and confront us at sea.’

‘This war harbour is an empty threat until then.’

‘But it might only take one victory in the field to supply enough slaves. Once that happens, the threat is very real.’

‘We’ll have to tell Gulussa to redouble his efforts not to let his men get captured.’

‘I don’t think we need to worry,’ Scipio replied. ‘His men will fight to the death.’

‘There’s something else,’ Fabius said, navigating his way around a pair of bullock carts. ‘The warships I saw in the sheds were small, most of them liburnae, double-bankers at most.’

Scipio nodded. ‘There were only a few triremes. That’s our most important intelligence for Polybius so far. We know they haven’t got the manpower for a fleet of large galleys as in the past. But last night the kybernetes said that many of the Carthaginian merchant captains have been conscripted by the state. Those men would make up a highly experienced cadre of officers for a new fleet of liburnae, with the oarsmen of an elite squadron perhaps made up not of slaves but of mercenaries attracted by the promise of higher pay, and a cut of the profits. Liburnae are well-suited to break through a blockade and take messages to allies. But they’re also suited to another kind of war, perfectly in keeping with a state that prides itself on its prowess and ruthlessness in trade.’

Fabius stopped and stared at him. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘Some would call it trade war, taken to its logical conclusion.’

‘You’re talking about state-sponsored piracy.’

‘With a fleet of this size, Carthage could sweep the seas clean of rivals, and the liburnae could return in safety to their lair. The profits to the state might be less in what they actually plunder than in ensuring that Carthaginian merchant ships and their trade partners have a monopoly of the sea lanes. The cargoes of captured ships could even be split among the liburnae crews as an incentive. With her present constitution, Rome would be powerless to stop it. Look how difficult it is getting the consuls to agree to raise the legions for a campaign that might extend beyond their year in office, giving no glory to them. Imagine the problems suppressing organized piracy on this scale. It would be a proxy war with Carthage, but would have to be fought piecemeal over years, even decades. It would require Rome to sanction an admiral with a remit unlike any other given to a war leader, and to authorize the formation of a truly professional navy. The Senate in Rome is too wrapped up in its own politics and gens rivalry to allow that, and Carthage knows it.’

‘There’s another purpose for those liburnae, and that’s as escort vessels,’ Fabius said. ‘It’s something else that the slave carrying the tin ore pointed out to me. At the far end of the rectangular harbour is another shipbuilding yard, with huge wooden formers and a vessel being built up from the keel. He said the timbers were cedar of Lebanon supplied by a convoy that came under naval escort from King Demetrius of Syria, with his son leading a special delegation from Syria that was met by Hasdrubal himself at the harbour entrance.’

‘Demetrius?’ Scipio exclaimed. ‘So he has finally turned against Rome.’

‘That might not be the way he sees it,’ Fabius said. ‘Perhaps he’s just aligned himself to a new Rome, one that sees Carthage as an ally.’

Scipio strode forward grimly. ‘Do you have anything else to tell me?

‘It gets worse. The vessel under construction was at least the size of the Europa, the huge amphora carrier we saw at the quayside. Yet the slave said this was no amphora carrier, but an elephantegos, an elephant transporter. He said that it was being built by Egyptian shipwrights who specialized in ships for bringing elephants and other beasts up the coast of the Erythraean Sea from the land they call Punt. He said the shipwrights arrived with a delegation from your other friend, Ptolemy Philometor, King of Egypt, and that his treacherous wife and sister Cleopatra herself accompanied them.’

‘Jupiter above,’ Scipio muttered. ‘Ptolemy too? He never was cut out to be a king. Cleopatra must be behind this.’

‘With Demetrius and Ptolemy siding with Carthage, perhaps in secret alliance with Metellus in Macedonia and his supporters in the Senate in Rome, it means that more than half of those who were in the academy are now aligned against you and against the Rome that you were trained to defend. Demetrius and Ptolemy may have spent their adult lives entangled in the power politics of Syria and of Egypt, but they were both trained in the academy by Polybius and the old centurion; put in charge of an army, they could be formidable strategists and tacticians. If there is to be a world war, the balance of power is swinging dangerously against us.’

‘A world war,’ Scipio exclaimed. ‘Could it come to that?’

‘Think of that elephantegos,’ Fabius said. ‘What other purpose can such a vessel have for the Carthaginians than to send elephants to war? I saw other formers in the yard beyond, for other hulls under construction. Shipwrights specialized in making large vessels for elephants could easily transfer their skills to making troop transports.’

‘I understand now what you mean about the liburnae making perfect escort galleys,’ Scipio said. ‘If the Carthaginians are intent on conquest to increase their gold reserves, they will find little in Africa beyond the Numidian towns, only hundreds of miles of impassable desert. What we’ve seen here, the harbours and the ships, is not just about increasing trade and controlling the sea lanes. Carthage is building an invasion fleet, a fleet that could land troops anywhere along the Mediterranean shore and besiege the great cities of Greece and the east. With support from Demetrius and Ptolemy as well as Metellus, the entire territory of Alexander’s empire could fall before such an alliance.’

‘And while Metellus may be focusing on consolidating the east, Hasdrubal may have his eyes set elsewhere. The legacy of history remains as firmly embedded for Carthage as it is for us, the legacy that generations of war and bloodshed have yet to resolve.’

‘You mean he will look to conquer Rome.’

Fabius nodded. ‘Carthage may be unfinished business for you, for the gens Scipiones. But Rome is also unfinished business for Carthage. Just as Scipio Africanus stood before Carthage after the Battle of Zama and then turned away, so Hannibal stood within sight of the walls of Rome before he too was forced back. Just as you have a legacy from your grandfather, so Hasdrubal has his own legacy from Hannibal.’

‘And yet we have no invasion fleet in preparation, only a token force in Africa and a dithering Senate,’ Scipio muttered.

Fabius squinted up, seeing the sun low in the western sky. ‘Where to next? We don’t have much time.’

Scipio took a deep breath. ‘Remember Intercatia? The Celtiberians defended their oppidum in depth, with that second wall within the main circuit. From what Terence told me, the Carthaginians may have done the same. We’ve seen evidence of Hasdrubal’s offensive strategy, but now we need to see his defensive plans. We’ll go past the Tophet sanctuary and up the main street from the harbours towards the Byrsa. We need to see as much as we can. Let’s move.’