Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage

19

That night, Fabius had stayed up with Scipio and Polybius on the foredeck of the ship, drinking wine and leaning back against the raking artemon mast that extended out over the bows. The sea was flat and shimmering in the starlight, the wind having died down during the evening, leaving only a residual swell that lapped against the side of the ship. Hardly a sound came from the fleet anchored in the darkness around them, and Carthage seemed as quiet as a tomb. Fabius remembered the same silence in the night before Pydna, of two armies sleeping before battle. The men were marshalling their strength for the day to come, but also dreaming of themselves in the arms of loved ones, embracing their children and telling them that they would always watch over them, from this world or the next, as if their souls had left the machinery of war to return to their homes for a few precious hours before the day of battle dawned.

It was a moonless night and the heavens shone brilliantly, a thousand pinpricks that reflected like an undulating carpet of light on the water. Arched high above them in vivid folds of light and colour was the Via Lacteal, the Milky Way, its centre the constellation Sagittarius, the stars outlining the shape of the centaur drawing his bow towards the eastern horizon. Scipio took a deep drink from the wine flagon and passed it to Polybius, who took a mouthful and then passed it back. ‘I remember you teaching me about the Pythagoreans,’ Scipio said, gesturing with the flagon at the sky. ‘About how they think the universe is ruled by divine numbers, and by music. About how for them the number seven is sacred, representing the seven celestial orbits of the sun, the moon and the five planets, and the seven gates of the senses: the mouth, the nostrils, the ears, the eyes.’ He passed the flagon to Fabius. ‘What do you think, Fabius? What does a centurion think when he contemplates the stars?’

Fabius drank deeply, and stared up. ‘I’m not a philosopher, but I can count. If each one of those pinpricks is a star or a planet, then there are many more than seven celestial orbits.’

Scipio smiled at him. ‘You sound like Polybius.’

‘When I was a boy in your household Polybius taught me about astronomy, as well as the world map of Eratosthenes. He said that we needed to know the shape of the world if we were to conquer it, and to know the vastness of the heavens to keep us in our place.’

Polybius looked at the sky. ‘I also told you that the Stoics believe the cycle of the universe will last as long as it takes the stars to resume their original place in the heavens, and then all will be consumed by fire and fall into chaos, and it will begin again. And because everything is in a state of movement, there can be no fixed measure of distance, nor likewise of time.’

Scipio raised his arms in mock frustration. ‘My dear Polybius, I sometimes forget that you are a Greek, and therefore have a weakness for sophistry. I will fix our measure on the walls ahead, and I will not have you saying that an anchored ship and those walls are in constant movement in relation to one another, as Ennius will then be unable to aim his weapons with accuracy.’

Polybius gave a look of feigned surprise. ‘My point was merely that science allows us to contemplate but not to measure our allotted span, and our place in the universe.’

Scipio took another deep draught of wine, and wiped his mouth. ‘In which case I must be a god, for I believe I can measure the allotted span of those in Carthage who dare to confront Scipio Aemilanus, son of Aemilius Paullus and heir of Scipio Africanus.’

‘Spoken like a true general, Scipio.’

Scipio was quiet for a moment, and then squinted up at the sky. ‘Three years ago, when I was still a tribune and an assault on Carthage seemed a distant prospect, I went to sleep under the stars in our camp and had a dream. In it, my adoptive grandfather Scipio Africanus came to me, dressed in a ghostly white robe, like the shroud I remember as a child seeing on his body as it was taken to the funeral pyre. In my dream he took me by the hand and we rose high above the earth, higher than the birds and the clouds, until we were in the heavens themselves. I looked down, and I saw that the city of Rome had become a mere pinprick like the stars, and then it became nothing at all. Surrounding the Middle Sea I saw the inhabited lands of the earth, and beyond that the narrow band of Ocean, frozen at each pole and burning hot in the centre where the sun’s heat is strongest. I saw the convex plane of the earth, and beyond Ocean the outer edge and the stars beyond.’

He paused, drinking again from the flagon. ‘My grandfather pointed down, and showed how the inhabited parts are scattered and small, and how as you move away from the Middle Sea those inhabited places become fewer and more widespread as if separated by the spokes of a wheel, and how few who live in those areas can communicate between themselves or know of each other’s existence. He turned to me, and said this: What places can you name beyond the desert of Africa, or the Ganges in India, or the isles of Albion? Yet you see here that those places exist, and account for the larger part of the world. Who in those places will ever know your name? You see, therefore, the narrow bounds in which your fame will spread. He pointed to where the boundaries of nations that we fight and die for were no longer visible, where all that could be seen was sea and land. And how long, even in these inhabited parts where they know you, will they speak your name? The memory of your fame will be broken like that of all men, by devastation and fire and flood, by the ravages of time and war.’

Scipio took a deep breath. ‘I looked up, away from the earth and towards the heavens. There were stars we never see from down below, constellations and galaxies vast beyond our imagining, far surpassing the earth in magnitude. I had observed Sagittarius the night before, as clear as on this night, and when I looked to the stars I suddenly saw my father, Aemilius Paullus, riding across the heavens on a ghostly horse just like the centaur with his bow, as Aemilius Paullus is shown on the monument to the Battle of Pydna that is now in the sacred enclosure at Delphi. I yearned to join him, to ride with him, but as I stretched out my arms he only seemed to recede, galloping forever beyond my reach. I turned to Africanus, and asked him how I could ride alongside my father across the heavens. At first, he asked me a question: Do you hope for the future of Rome, or are you contemptuous of it? Will you know shadow and decline, or will you rise above Rome as you are now risen above the world, and see your future mapped out before you?’

‘How did you reply?’ Polybius asked quietly.

‘I told him that I did not know, that I could only know when I stood on the ruins of Carthage. He said that triumphs are hollow if they are only built on the praise of others. To the wise, the mere consciousness of noble deeds is ample reward for virtue. Statues of victors need clamps of lead to hold them to their pedestals, or else they will topple and fall. The greatest triumphs are soon enough graced by mere withering laurels, which dry and crumble to dust, as short-lived as the memory of the people. If you live your life for the esteem of the people, you will become disappointed, embittered in old age.’

Scipio paused. ‘I asked him again how I might reach my father. This time he answered me directly, that the way was justice and sacred observance, things of greatest value to Rome; that is the way to heaven. He said that everything people will say of me will be confined to the narrow regions they inhabit. Virtue alone can draw a man to true honour, not the opinions of others. Praise in speech is buried with those who die, and lost in oblivion to those who come afterwards.’

‘Your legacy of personal honour from your grandfather is a heavy burden for you, Scipio, but a worthy one,’ Polybius said solemnly. ‘You were dreaming the thoughts that have guided your life. These were the virtues that first drew me to you when I was brought as a captive from Achaia and made to be your teacher.’

‘In my dream, my grandfather said that there is music, a special sacred note that can open up a way to heaven,’ Scipio said. ‘But those who are not yet ready cannot hear it, just as they cannot look at the sun.’

‘You were remembering our visit when you were a boy to the Pythagoreans,’ Polybius said. ‘We joined them outside Corinth, watching the sun rise and feeling its warmth, wondering if we too were feeling the divine spirit enter our bodies.’

‘Africanus said that in heaven were all the things that great and excellent men desire; and so, he asked, Of what worth is earthly glory that across space and time is so limited? Look up to heaven, and you will no longer be restricted by having your thoughts of well-being based on that which men alone can bestow. From up here, you move about like a god, for that is what the gods are, the souls of those of us who have risen above the world as you are now, who can contemplate men and their battles as the gods did over the plain of Troy, divining the fates of Hector and Achilles and Priam as if they were pieces on a gaming board.’

‘And did he say how you were to conduct yourself before you reach heaven?’

‘If I keep my soul ready, aloof and contemplating my actions, I will be safe, but if I surrender to the temptations of bloodlust and power I will be no different from those who have surrendered themselves to the vices of drink and women.’

‘Those like Metellus whom you despised as a boy in Rome,’ Polybius said.

Scipio pointed up to the stars. ‘In my dream we were up there above the orb of the earth, and then my grandfather pointed down to a place by the sea and it was as if that place rushed up to me, so fast was our descent, and I saw a city as if from the clouds, dust-shrouded and on fire. He said: Do you see that city, which I brought to heel for Rome, but which now renews its old hostility and cannot remain quiet? Soon you will return to that place, and have the chance to earn that agnomen that you have inherited from me, Africanus.’

‘The soothsayers would call that a prophetic dream,’ Polybius murmured.

‘And do you?’ Scipio asked.

‘You know my opinion of soothsayers. A man makes his own life, though if he believes in a prophecy it may shape his destiny.’

Scipio looked away from the stars at the shimmering city walls, his face troubled. ‘He brought me back down to earth, but suddenly it was a different place: barren, scorched, shrouded in smoke, reeking of burned flesh like some wasteland of Hades. And through the smoke I saw that it was not Carthage but Rome, all in ruins: the Capitoline Temple, my house on the Palatine, the great walls of Servius Tullus — every building crumbled and blackened. And when I turned to find him, Scipio Africanus was no longer standing beside me but was lying contorted on the ground, grey and naked, fearfully gashed, his mouth open in a grimace and his arms extended towards the smouldering ruins of the city.’

Fabius remembered their last image of the old centurion, mutilated in the dust all those years ago in the Alban Hills, and wondered whether Scipio had melded that memory with the vision of Africanus, both of them men who had reached for glory but had been brought low by the machinations of Rome: the one bowing before those who wished to restrain him from destroying Carthage and living the remainder of his life in shadow and disappointment, the other hacked down ingloriously for training a new generation to take up where Africanus had left off, to add conquest to conquest and go where Africanus had not been allowed to go by the Senate, and by a sense of duty to authority in Rome that he would later come to regret.

Polybius looked penetratingly at Scipio, and then put his hand on his arm. ‘You have much on your mind, my friend: a burden that has played in your dreams for years now. It will be lifted tomorrow.’

Scipio continued to stare at the walls of Carthage, his eyes dark and unfathomable. ‘You taught me that the Pythagoreans believe in the power of music, just as Africanus told me in my dream, that a single note might purify the soul and prepare it for Elysium. I used to think I heard it, at night alone in the forest, or encamped by the sea when the water was dead calm. But now, when I try to listen for it, all I hear is discordance, clamour, distant howls like the wolves in the Macedonian forest, shrieks and yells, a terrible groaning. Sometimes I can only sleep with other noises around me to drown it out: the crackling of a campfire in the desert, the creaking of a ship’s timbers and the slapping of the waves when I am at sea.’

Polybius leaned back. ‘Just as we cannot look at the sun, so we cannot truly hear the divine note that would allow us to ascend to the heavens; it is a note that we can only hear when our souls are ready for Elysium. But the sounds that haunt you are the sounds of war, my friend, of war and death in your past, and war that is your future.’

‘Then that is my music,’ Scipio said quietly. ‘When I woke from that dream, night was over, and when I looked towards the sun in the east its rays seemed to encircle the earth, cutting it off from the heavens; when I gazed up I could no longer see the stars, and instead saw only storm clouds rolling in from the south. Tomorrow when we awaken, they will be the clouds of war.’ He picked up the flagon, tipped it up so that the last dregs spilled out, and then tossed it into the sea. ‘We need clear heads for tomorrow. Dawn is only a few hours away, and before then Ennius and his fabri will be cranking up the catapults in readiness for the assault. We should try to sleep now.’