Hannibal, page 32
The route led some distance up towards two of the passes, the main way and a lower, narrower gap that was a plausible enough choice for Fabius to have positioned a small company there. When he could see the Roman fires in both camps, Hannibal whispered the agreed-upon command. The bearers of the few torches turned and offered them to those waiting near with unlighted wands. First one and then another and then many new flames sprang to life. In an instant they gave up all notion of stealth and watched one another’s faces and bodies appear in wavering, warm yellow light. And then, before the beasts had time to panic, they were set on fire. The torch carriers moved among them, touching flame to the fuel carried on their horns. A moment later the herders shouted them into motion.
The cattle, unsure what was happening to them, sprang forward and ran upward, ducking their heads and weaving around trees and shrubs as if they might escape the flames through speed and footwork. The army trailed behind them. Though the beasts bellowed and snorted and filled the night with frantic sounds, the men moved as quietly as they could, coughing into their hands and shading their eyes against the smoke and trying to breathe through their mouths.
The Roman guards looking down from the main pass upon this weaving herd of lights were mystified. They had seen nothing like this and could make no sense of the size of the fires, or of the way they moved, or of the eerie sounds carried by the night air. They woke the tribune in charge. He sent a messenger to Fabius, but he knew that he would not receive a reply in time to avert whatever mischief was afoot. He had to act. For lack of a better explanation, the tribune concluded that the Carthaginians were making a rush on the lower pass. Of course they were. That was the type of bold manoeuvre this African would attempt, to attack the weaker camp and push through with brute force. The tribune ordered the bulk of his men to speed across and down and reinforce the small contingent there. This manoeuvre would not be easy in the dark, but he had been warned of Hannibal’s underhandedness and had no desire to be made a fool of.
Hannibal had, of course, counted on just this move. When he saw Roman torchlight leaving the main pass, he gave the order for the main body of the army to follow him. They moved away from the flaming cattle and proceeded, stealthily, towards the high pass, the one now being hastily deserted.
By the time the animals reached the Romans in the other pass, they were wailing like monsters under the torture of hide and flesh aflame. They came at the Roman infantrymen, a horde of beasts sent forth by the will of Baal himself, stepping from the dark frenzied, driven by smoke and flame. They shook their heads and raked them on the ground and bumped into one another and climbed in this chaos. A few Romans loosed their spears. One or two raised their swords as if to do combat. Most retreated, calling to one another, each asking the one beside him to explain this sight. None understood that at that moment Hannibal and the better part of his army were taking the high pass nearly unchallenged.
A few hours later the sky lightened just enough to reveal their grey forms. Fabius, watching through the eyes of the young Publius Scipio, saw the last of the Carthaginian army disappear over the pass. The remaining guards pulled up from their posts and bid the plains of Campania farewell. The whole army slipped out of sight, like the tail of a serpent into its den.
Sapanibal flew into a silent rage each time she heard of the Council’s refusals to aid Hannibal. It was intolerable that so much time was passing without his receiving a single token of support from the country for which he fought. Even now, with the commander so close to victory, they had no vision. The mood of the Council bore no resemblance to the unwavering enthusiasm of the populace. The common people knew Hannibal for the hero that he was. They sang songs to praise him. Poets crafted verses that dramatized his deeds. Children play-acted the parts of him and his brothers in the streets. Even slaves, it seemed, took some pride in his accomplishments. He belonged to the entire nation and exemplified the best of them. At least, this was true of all except a powerful group of councillors, centred around the elected leader of the Council, the Shophet Hadus, and fuelled by the Hannons’ old hatred. No matter what Hannibal achieved, they found fault with him. Out of necessity, they praised his accomplishments briefly, but it was clear the words withered and turned bitter on their tongues.
Sapanibal was above all a reasoning woman, tempered by long years of sacrifice, not inclined to show her emotions in the public sphere or behave in ways unsuited to her sex. She had never before felt inclined to voice her thoughts outside her familial home, but the men of Carthage were on so misguided a course that they might end up losing everything. She decided her brother’s enemies needed to be challenged. She had no faith that her allies in the Council were doing this with the necessary force. So she would have to see to it herself, and she knew just the setting in which to address the subject, to make a scandal of it, and through that to get tongues wagging. She attacked them where they spent most of their lives: the councillors’ baths.
Sapanibal strode past the attendants at the entrance before they could think to stop her, before they had fully even comprehended her presence. The room was warm, pungent with stewed herbs and thick with the haze of incense and pipe smoke. Special torches on the wall and small fires attended by nude boys dimly lit the chamber. The room’s high ceilings gave no feeling of lightness but instead intensified the gloom. Every inch of the walls had been painted with murals of war scenes and illustrations of carnal stories and images of black-faced gods, masks that added to the sinister air.
She found the men she was looking for lounging at their leisure. Hadus saw her from a distance and rolled his eyes. He did not adjust his position at all, but sat with his weak chest exposed, his genitals just barely covered by a fold of his gown.
‘What are you doing here?’ a councillor behind the Shophet asked. ‘This is not a place for women.’
‘Nor is it a place for cowards,’ Sapanibal said. She looked at Hadus. ‘Shall we leave together?’
Hadus furrowed his brow. He was a thin man given to wrinkles and this expression made his face almost unrecognizable. ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘You enter our place of leisure to offend me? Barca women are just as arrogant as the men.’
‘Why did you speak against Hannibal this afternoon? He would not request help unless he needed it, and unless he knew it would bring victory. Do you want him to fail so much that—’
‘What do you know of these things, woman?’
‘I know that my brothers are the greatest wealth our nation has. I know that Hannibal’s brilliance has brought victory where none of you believed victory was possible. I know it was here in Carthage that this war was declared, but that you are too cowardly or envious to see it through. What do you fear that you tie my brother’s hands?’
‘Someone take this bitch away before I lose my head,’ Hadus said, looking around as if he were addressing someone in particular but could not find him. ‘I’ve half a mind to smack her down and give her a good humping. She is no beauty, but rather that than hear her rattle on.’
‘Not even you could get away with that,’ Sapanibal said, dry and as composed as ever.
Hadus glanced around at his companions, his face puckered into an expression of utter, dismissive contempt. He did not look at Sapanibal when he spoke. ‘For my own part,’ he said, ‘I grow tired of talk of Hannibal. Never has Carthage known a man more presumptuous and vain. With the exception, of course, of the father who came before him. Only he surpassed his son in greed.’
‘You are mad to say such things!’ Sapanibal said. ‘Everything that Barcas do, we do for Carthage. Hearing you, I know that Carthage does not do likewise for Barcas.’
‘Is that so? Where, then, is the tribute of his successes? Why has he sent none home to us to prove his allegiance?’
Sapanibal’s jaw hung in disbelief. ‘Allegiance? How could he send anything to us when he must pay and feed his troops? He has borne the entire—’
Hadus interrupted her. ‘You say that the Council declared this war, but in truth the Council had little choice. The Barca brood was already running wild. They stirred Rome from its slumber. Had we denied that Hannibal was ours, Rome would have grasped for him and robbed us of our possessions. You cannot be expected to understand this, but our acceptance of the war was a defensive action. Unfortunately, your brother set off on his mad march without consulting us. He has brought no end of trouble upon himself and upon us. That is the real truth of it.’
The servants had been active at the margins of the chamber since she entered. Thin creatures, they seemed offended by Sapanibal’s intrusion but afraid to approach her. They had obviously sent for help, however. Two eunuchs entered the room with a purposeful walk. Sapanibal did not follow them with her eyes, but she was aware of their progress along the far wall, out of her view, and then approaching from behind her. She heard the pad of their bare feet pause.
‘Be under no illusion, Sa-pa-ni-bal,’ Hadus said, stretching out the syllables with calm contempt. ‘If I had my way we would call Hannibal home and strike that genius of a head from its body. That is how I would save Carthage and assure my sons a future. What a gesture that would be to Rome. As it is not within my power at the moment, I will just have to let him hang himself. And he will. He will. No man can reach for the sun without being burned.’
Sensing the eunuchs moving closer, Sapanibal snapped, ‘Do not permit them to touch me!’
Her voice was so sharp that several of the men winced. The eunuchs froze, eyes on Hadus for direction.
‘I will leave as I entered,’ Sapanibal said. ‘Hadus, hear me now and recall my words later. The time will come when my brother’s deeds exceed all others in grandeur. The time will come when he returns to Carthage victorious. I would not wish to be you at that moment. You will need eyes in the back of your head, for you shall have no future before you but will only look back on the things that might have been.’
She turned, yanked her elbow from the reach of one of the eunuchs, and exited the chamber with all of the straight-backed grace she could muster. She knew that she had spoken the truth, and she took some pleasure in cutting Hadus down as if she were an equal, but she also feared she had done nothing for her brother’s cause. And there was something else. Though she had given no indication of it throughout the exchange, her quick glance had noticed another man among the company: Imago Messano. He sat, bare-chested, towards the wall at the far end of the room. Carthage was a den of enemies, each one of the cowards scheming a way to become a lion killer. Why had she never seen this fully before?
Silenus lived from week to week in Emporiae. Each day he sought out and met with Diodorus. He tried to speak wisdom to him, to convince him to shake loose of his Roman rulers and accept the future that Hannibal offered. All he had to do was help a single prisoner to escape. That was all, and for it he would become as wealthy as a minor king. Like a man who takes sexual pleasure in being denied gratification, Diodorus heard his brother-in-law out each day. He teetered in his loyalties but never swayed fully to either side. At times he visibly licked his lips at the riches Silenus described to him in luxurious detail, but he would not consummate with action. He could not afford to make Rome an enemy. So Hanno’s imprisonment went on.
Silenus called upon his sister to ask her help, but quickly learned that she would offer little. In keeping with Greek custom, her authority was limited to the hidden world of the home. She would not even speak to her husband on the issue of Hanno’s release. After a few weeks, Silenus had stopped visiting her. Looking in her round woman’s face, he realized that they had little to unite them, only the memory of parents long dead. Of what significance was that in a world swirling with the currents of war?
Silenus, having no other mandate, simply persevered. As an anonymous Greek in a Greek settlement, he was as free as any in the occupied city. He walked among Romans in the streets and listened to their banter. He cocked his ear at news of their war in Iberia. He sat beside them in the baths, so close that he could have reached out a hand and touched their bare flesh. Thus he learned of Hasdrubal’s defeats and small victories, of his marriage, and of Roman schemes to press the conflict conclusively during the coming year. More than once he found himself the object of hungry, unsubtle stares. Romans knew little about amorous decorum. Like any men, they lusted, but they rushed into sex like four-legged creatures, humping quickly as if the chore were beneath them. Silenus rejected their overtures with all the disdain he could get away with.
Fortunately, not everyone in the city was an enemy of Hannibal’s or a. friend to the Romans. Many among the Greeks found the haughty Roman attitudes unpleasant, their arrogance that of cowherds drunk on the strange whim of Fortune that had brought them success. Silenus never showed his hand, but he did move from one circle to another, seeking out individuals with the deepest antipathy to Rome. Thus he chanced upon a group of Turdetani living in the city, in the lowest rungs of society, each and every one of them seething at the indignities done to Hanno, each of them wishing to see the Romans fail. Hannibal had attacked Saguntum to protect them, they believed, and they felt a loyalty to him unusual among Iberians. Silenus believed these men – coarse criminals that they were – might be just the actors for the play he had in mind. But Diodorus still denied him the fruits of his mission, even when he put forth a complete plan of action, argued with all his powers of persuasion.
‘I have the men,’ he explained. ‘They will do the bloody work of dealing with the guards. All you have to do is plan the rescue with me, gain all the details of where and how he is detained, the best routes to him, the rotation of his guards. Provide us the key to unlock his cell and chains. These are not difficult things for a man in your position.’
‘We will be found out,’ Diodorus said. ‘You may fly away with Hanno, but I’ll be left to suffer the Romans’ wrath.’
Silenus moved forward suddenly and grasped one of the man’s hands between his. ‘Listen. Just before we spring our plan, I will announce to one of the Turdetani just which magistrate is aiding us. I’ll give whatever name you give me. They will whisper of it to a few others. Think about that. An hour after the escape is known, the entire population will be tongue-wagging, and none of them will think to say your name. In the fury of rumour, you will be one of many to denounce that other man. He will take your punishment; you will, eventually, take the city. You are a creature of political life. Surely you have an enemy you’d like to see crucified.’
Though this speech was forcefully made, Diodorus clung to his indecision. Silenus wished he could communicate his efforts to Hannibal, but he knew that any letter would doom him if it were intercepted. Instead he prayed for some change of fortune. He called on gods he did not even believe in, asking them to prove themselves by divine intervention, promising that he would withdraw his complaints if they only showed themselves and acted on his behalf.
One day in the early autumn, something just as improbable happened; it changed nothing in his thoughts about the gods, for Silenus could name a man as its author. He waited in the morning outside Diodorus’ chambers, his head muddled from wine consumed the night before. He had drunk too much of it and it was too cheaply made, but the young student with whom he had shared it was more than worth the trouble. The night’s events were a clouded jumble of images and snatches of conversation, but still he knew he had prosecuted his conquest with rare skill. Later in the day, he hoped, he might pick up where he had left off.
When finally called in, he found the magistrate seated as always, with scrolls and documents spread before him. Everything was as it had been many times before, except that when Diodorus glanced up he seemed instantly ill at ease. His eyes quivered with a timorous energy and his hands moved like nervous birds across the paperwork, shifting and sorting and then undoing what they had just done.
Silenus began for the hundredth time. He stated again the generosity of Hannibal’s offer, the simplicity of his request. He recounted Hannibal’s victories, one example after another that he was superior to Rome. Two of them so far and counting. He began to name them, but Diodorus stopped him.
‘Two, you say?’ he asked.
‘Ticinus . . .’
‘Ticinus? You name Ticinus?’
‘Yes, I do. It’s a small victory but not to be ignored. Along with it, the Trebia . . .’
Diodorus interrupted him. ‘Why toy with me? We both know that the world has changed and everything in it has been cast in doubt.’
Silenus had not been aware of any such thing, but he answered coolly, as if he were in fact toying with the man. ‘Yes . . . and how was that achieved?’
‘You know full well how it was achieved. That madman you call master . . . He’s made a butcher’s block of all Italy. I know you rejoice over Trasimene, but don’t treat me as a fool.’
‘Trasimene?’
Diodorus stared at him. At first he fixed him with a slack-jawed expression of loathing. But the longer he stared, the more this faded into incredulity. Silenus could not hide his confusion completely and the politician’s eyes homed in on this. ‘You truly are ignorant of Trasimene?’
Silenus barely knew the name of the place, but he did not like to be found wanting by this man. ‘I’m ignorant of few things that pass in the world, my brother by marriage, but some things come to me slowly.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘Perhaps you have details that I do not.’
‘What do details matter? Either you know of it or you don’t. Granted, it is hard to believe what I’ve been told. Somehow, your commander made a trap out of the land itself. He slaughtered Flaminius and his entire army like hens gathered together in a pen. I never imagined I’d live to hear of this.’
The magistrate rose and fetched a jug of wine and a glass. It was early in the day, yes, but Silenus found himself thirsty as well. He motioned for the jug and drank directly from it, deeply enough to ensure that he would feel the effects. Diodorus took the jug from him and refilled his glass. A few moments passed like this, the two of them shuttling the jug back and forth, each captured by thoughts of his own.
