Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage

20

Shortly after dawn, Fabius stood with Scipio and Polybius on the quay beside the rectangular harbour. Around them lay all the panoply of war, piles of supplies brought in by ship over the last two days: stacks of amphorae filled with wine and olive oil and fish sauce, crates of iron-tipped ballista bolts, bundles of new pila spears and fresh swords. The stores were stacked where there was space among the rubble and collapsed warehouses that still smouldered from the fighting three days before. They picked their way over to a group of legionaries stripped to the waist working on a large pile of masonry that blocked an entrance into the main street of the city. Ennius detached himself from the group and came over to them, his stubble and forearms white with dust from the fallen masonry and his forehead glistening with sweat. Fabius could see the forged war hammer hanging from the left side of his belt, a gift from Scipio on his promotion to command the specialized cohort of fabri, the engineers, and on the other side the vicious makhaira sword with its curved cutting edge that showed his lineage from the Etruscan warriors of Tarquinia to the north of Rome. He stood before Scipio, and raised his right fist in salute over his chest. ‘Ave, Scipio Aemilianus Africanus.’

Scipio put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Ave, Ennius. You look as if you could do with a week in the baths of Dionysius at Neapolis.’

‘When this job is done, Scipio.’

‘How go the preparations?’

Ennius swept one hand back in the direction of the harbour and the massive wall dividing it from the open sea. Through gaps smashed in the masonry by Roman ballista balls six months previously they could see the prows and curved stems of war galleys hove-to just offshore, their oars angled forward ready to launch the ships into the quay and disgorge waves of legionaries to scale the walls. Fabius knew there were hundreds of ships now, quinquiremes, triremes, ram-tipped Ligurian galleys, all anchored in rows before the sea wall ready for the final assault. Ennius turned back to Scipio. ‘Twenty-five specially built barges with catapults lie two stades offshore, beyond the range of the Carthaginian archers,’ he said. ‘They are anchored at all four quarters, and the quinquiremes to seaward are positioned broadside on to the waves, making a breakwater to keep the barges as stable as possible. As we speak, my men are mixing the final ingredient of the Greek fire. At your command, the catapults will rain fireballs on the city and wreak destruction as you have never seen it before in a siege.’

‘And you are able to keep the barrage falling ahead of our advancing legionaries?’

‘We have forward observers concealed at the highest points on the sea walls, sharp-eyed Alpine Celts who can spot a deer in the mountains at a hundred stades. They will use coded flag signals to direct the ballista crews to adjust their aim. We have Polybius to thank for that, the code that he has given us.’

Scipio looked sceptical. ‘Do your men truly know this code?’

‘It’s brilliant. You’ve got to hand it to those Greeks. All twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet are arranged in a square, numbered from one to five vertically and the same horizontally, with one letter fewer in the last division. The signaller raises his left hand to indicate the vertical column, his right hand for the horizontal. He raises a torch in each hand the correct number of times to signify a letter. We’ve practised it in the desert for weeks now. We even have a short-hand to indicate directional changes to the ballista crews.’

‘All right.’ Scipio looked from Ennius to the tall Greek beside him, cracking a smile. ‘Good to know you’ve been keeping Polybius’ nose out of his books.’

‘It was books that taught me the code, Scipio, as you very well know,’ Polybius said. ‘To be specific, an ancient hieroglyphic scroll in the possession of an old priest in the Temple of Saïs in the Nile Delta. It told how the earliest priests used this technique to signal from pyramid to pyramid.’

‘Is there anything else you need to tell me?’ Scipio asked Ennius, looking up at the sky and sensing the wind, and then back at the wooden observation tower on the island in the centre of the harbour. ‘We have only hours before I intend to order the final assault.’

‘Then there is time for a quick look at this. Polybius asked me to watch out for any inscriptions that might help with his history of Carthage. We found this bronze plaque with lettering, which had been used to strengthen a door. We’re about to melt it down to make arrowheads for the Numidian auxiliaries, which is why Gulussa is here.’

Polybius took the sheet of bronze from Ennius. It was about two feet across, and the lettering on it had been smoothed by polishing. He glanced over at Gulussa, who had just joined them. ‘Can you read this? I believe the script is an old version of Libyo-Phoenician.’

Gulussa knelt down beside the plaque, tracing his hands over the letters. ‘Two of these plaques used to be set up outside the Temple of Ba’al Hammon on the acropolis. I saw them there when my father Masinissa allowed me to accompany a Numidian embassy to Carthage when I was a boy. They’re an account by a navigator called Hanno of a Carthaginian expedition through the Pillars of Hercules and down the west coast of Africa over three hundred years ago. On the same pillar outside the temple was nailed the desiccated remains of skin, like old camel hide but covered in thick black hair, that Hanno cut from a savage he called a gorilla. The Carthaginians tried to kidnap their women but were no match for them in strength.’

‘How far south did the expedition go?’ Ennius asked.

Gulussa pointed at the base of the plaque, where the last line of text ended abruptly. ‘It is said that the rulers of Carthage ordered the lower part removed because they were fearful of giving away Carthaginian secrets to foreigners who might read this,’ he replied. ‘But my father was told by a priest that Hanno circumnavigated Africa, and came back through the Erythraean Sea to Egypt.’

Ennius looked at Polybius. ‘When I was in Alexandria learning about Greek fire I spoke to a ship’s captain who had sailed beyond the Erythraean Sea to the east and claimed to have seen mountains of fire emerging from the sea on the horizon, at the very edge of the world.’

‘If the world is a sphere, then there can be no edge,’ Polybius said patiently.

Ennius stood up, his hands on his hips. ‘How do you know it’s a sphere?’

‘If you had been attentive in Alexandria, you would have visited the school of Eratosthenes of Cyrene and learned how he had determined the circumference of the earth by observing the difference in the sun’s angle from the zenith on the day of the summer solstice at Alexandria and at Syene in upper Egypt, a known distance away.’ Polybius picked up a splinter of wood and used it to sketch a rough image in the dust. ‘This is Eratosthenes’ map of the world. You can see the Mediterranean Sea in the centre, surrounded by Europe and Africa and Asia, and the thin band of Ocean surrounding that. But the edge of the map isn’t the edge of the world. It’s the edge of our knowledge. What lies beyond that is open to exploration.’

‘And conquest,’ Ennius said.

Scipio put his sandalled foot on the line representing the coast of North Africa, and then on Greece. ‘We are here, in Carthage, and Metellus is there, in Corinth,’ he murmured. ‘The world is divided between us.’

Gulussa pointed at the map. ‘If Hanno the Carthaginian went south along the coast of Africa, surely others have gone through the Pillars of Hercules to the north?’

‘Timaeus writes of it,’ Ennius said. ‘And Pytheas the Greek navigator in Massalia is said to have gone to the northern tip of the Cassiterides, the Tin Islands, to a place called Ultima Thule. If the Carthaginians had found those routes, they would have kept them secret too.’

Polybius curled his lip in disdain. ‘Timaeus claims to be the pre-eminent historian of the west, but he never leaves the comfort of his library in Alexandria. When I decided to write my history of the war against Hannibal, did I not speak only to those who had seen the war with their own eyes? And did I not trace the route of Hannibal with my own two feet, marching from Spain through the Alps in the path of his elephants?’

‘And did you not muck out Hannibal’s last elephant with your own hands, when we were young warriors in the academy at Rome?’ Gulussa said with gentle mockery. He gestured at the leathery back of the beast tethered on the other side of the harbour. ‘And do I not smell that very ordure here with us now?

Polybius cast him a withering glance. ‘I write history that I see with my own eyes. I am neither a mythographer like Herodotus, nor a writer of fables like Timaeus. My history is not for entertainment. It is to teach us better tactics and strategy. It is to guide our course of action in the future.’

Fabius put his centurion’s staff on the map above Europe, and spoke quietly. ‘The Cassiterides exist; my wife’s people call it Pritani, land of the painted people, and others call it Albion. She was the daughter of a Gallic chieftain who shipped wine there from Massalia, exchanging it for slaves and tin.’

Polybius eyed Fabius shrewdly, nodding, and then he turned to Scipio. ‘It is not to the east that we should be looking, but to the west. And it is not tin or slaves that interest me, but strategy.’ He put his pointer on the map beside Fabius’ staff. ‘We should be seeking a route for our transport ships to sail around Iberia and land our legions in Gaul, to sweep south over the expanse of land occupied by the Celtic tribes. We have already fought them, and know them as formidable enemies. During my travels across the Alps I learned of fearsome tribes to the north of the mountains, in the forest lands of the upper rivers. If we do not conquer these tribes, they will grow ever stronger and in years to come will sweep down on Rome itself, as the Celts of northern Italy did two centuries ago. Once we control the west and vanquish these tribes, then the world is truly open to us.’

Scipio put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘When we have laid waste to Carthage, I will provide you with a ship to sail west through the Pillars of Hercules to find these fabled isles and a northern sea route to Gaul.’

‘I should like that above all things,’ Polybius said fervently.

‘But now is not the time for future strategy. Now is the time for war.’ Scipio looked piercingly at Ennius. ‘Do you remember what I told you, when I allowed you to create this special cohort of fabri?’

Ennius grasped the head of the war hammer with one hand. ‘You said I must be a soldier first, an engineer second. My armour lies to hand, ready to put on when the work on the wall is done. And once the ballistas have unleashed hell, I will lead my cohort of fabri through the breach in the wall on the north side. We will fight through the streets and destroy the enemy. We will win more crowns and wreaths and bear more battle scars than any other unit in the army. My hammer and my sword will be steeped in Carthaginian blood.’

‘Good.’ Scipio slapped him on the upper arm. ‘Now, to the preparations for war.’