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Back to section vi of this chapter II. Scipio, Rome, 219 - 218 B.C. vii In
early April, long before the Scipios’ departure for Spain, the Roman
ambassadors departed Rome feeling the city holding her breath. Unknown depths,
uncharted waters, lay before them. The
ambassadors reached Carthage after an uneventful sea voyage down the coast of
Italy, along the northern and southwestern coasts of Sicily, and finally across
the wide stretch of open water to the African promontory on which Carthage sat.
Although uneventful, the voyage had been edgy, with some of the delegates
wishing for success in Carthage while others preferred to fail. On
arrival in Africa, Gaius Licinius Varus felt a certain nostalgia for the place,
it being where he had first bloodied his sword, as a cadet during the ill-fated
Regulus expedition in the Punic war. Now, as an old consular of fifty-four, he
saw it through very different eyes. A
considerable part of what he felt was pain, an old, attenuated pain, but still
the memory of Africa and Marcus Atilius Regulus and the bleak failure of the
Regulus expedition lay upon him like old cobwebs. It had been especially strong
sailing down the northern coast of Sicily past Cape Ecnomus on the way. There
Regulus and his colleague, Lucius Manlius Vulso, had defeated a Carthaginian
fleet lying in wait. That had been the second of Rome’s sea victories in the
Punic war, but the scene also of the death of Varus’s friend Manius Atilius
Regulus. He
found these feelings heightening the sour dislike of war that had been growing
during the eighteen years since his consulship, and this—and his aching
joints—made him testy with his fellow delegates, particularly the advocates of
war. The
city of Carthage was old, older than Rome, but the prosperous owner of vigorous
fields of wheat and other grains planted far up the valley of the Bagradas
River. She looked vital, powerful. Ominous. Near the big, rectangular commercial
harbor, center of Carthaginian life as a nation of sea-going traders, lay the
Tophet, the chief temple of the god Baal Hammon and his consort, the goddess
Tanit. Dark rumors of foul doings here circulated in Rome like tendrils of acrid
smoke snaking into all the darker places—child sacrifices, they said,
murdering the tiny sons of her greatest citizens upon altars of flame, abhorrent
to Romans. The
tall buildings stared down at Varus like bronze gods, the high walls were
suffocating. The place reeked of anger, pestilence. War. He shuddered. For
several days the ambassadors were kept waiting for word that the Carthaginian
Senate, or at least its leaders, would see them. Fabius Buteo paced and cursed.
The springtime sea voyage had not sat well with his aging bones, and the
Carthaginian climate was much like Rome’s, though closer to the sea so that it
was chilly in April, and his joints were at least as stiff and painful as
Varus’s, who commiserated with his old colleague, some twenty years his
senior. “Might
have known they’d play with us a bit before pouncing,” Fabius Buteo told his
fellow delegates, his voice sour. All of them sat sipping a very poor wine
beside a deep pool teeming with fat goldfish. “We’re
like these fish,” Marcus Livius Salinator said. “Being watched, not
ignored.” “They’ll
hear us soon enough,” Lucius Aemilius Paullus said with an exasperated sigh.
He was known to dislike being so far from home and family and was no doubt just
as impatient as Fabius Buteo. But his dismissive manner irritated Varus. “They
hear us already,” Marcus Livius Salinator said, darting his eyes about the
room. “These walls have ears.” “What
are our chances of them agreeing?” Quintus Baebius Tamphilus asked. “What?
To turn Hannibal and his lieutenants over to us? As likely as presenting us with
a thousand gold talents each—in other words, not likely at all,” Livius
Salinator said. “I
still hold out hope the Carthaginians will be reasonable,” Fabius Buteo said.
“Surely they can’t want war any more than we do—they’re just having
trouble restraining a young hothead is all.” The old man heaved himself out of
the chair, a match in ponderousness for his younger cousin Fabius Maximus. “I
see you’re eager as ever for our mission to fail, Marcus Livius,” snapped
Varus, finally completely unable to conceal his peevishness. Livius
Salinator merely nodded at the statement’s content, ignoring its tone. He went
back to staring at the fish, which sometimes seemed to rise and stare back. Baebius
sat very still and quiet in his chair. Varus knew Baebius was bitter over the
way Hannibal had treated him when he and Publius Valerius Flaccus had tried to
reason with the Carthaginian over Saguntum three years earlier. Then Baebius
spoke: “I only hope the senators are more reasonable—and more
courteous—than Hannibal. That one’s an arrogant pup, not old enough for the
Senate were he Roman—twenty-nine, I think. But a dangerous pup—I’ve seen
his fangs.” “All
the more need to pull those fangs,” Fabius Buteo said. “And here’s the
place to do it if it can be done. I still hold for peace.” “Further
‘peace’ of this sort will only make the war far worse when you finally come
around to see its necessity,” Aemilius Paullus said. “Fah!”
Varus said. He’d had his fill of the necessity of war. He stood, gathered his
toga about him, and left the little sitting room. And
so it went for several days, the ambassadors cooling their heels, already
knowing what the Carthaginian response would be—even Varus, in his
heart—while the Carthaginians knew just as well how Rome would respond to
their refusal. But the game must be played out. They
waited, and irritations chafed. Tempers flared. Men in the party who had been
friends grew stiff with one another. Finally,
they were summoned before a meeting of the full Carthaginian Senate. The meeting
hall was perhaps larger than the Curia Hostilia in Rome, but plain of
decoration. There the three hundred senators sat with stony faces while a
graybeard named Eschmouniaton (to Varus it sounded like two or three whole
sentences mumbled through a mouthful of stones) harangued them at length in
flawless Greek, castigating Rome and all Romans for their perfidy, accusing Rome
of bad faith, demanding that Rome keep her large bumpy nose out of Spain. Eventually,
however, the ancient speaker ran down, and the lengthy silence made it plain it
was Fabius Buteo’s turn to present the Roman case. All those hard Carthaginian
eyes were on Rome’s own elder. Now
was the time, if war were to be averted. Varus prayed for it with every atom of
his being. Fabius
Buteo rose. Present the case he did, and briefly. “Rome
asks that Carthage turn over to us Hannibal, your provincial governor of Spain,
and his staff; that Carthage honor the Ebro treaty as well as the treaty ending
the Sicilian war; and that Carthage cease hostile acts generally, these being
the conditions for peace.” He sat down. “No!”
With few opposing voices, the majority of the Carthaginian senators thundered at
him, “No!” And they continued to thunder it for several minutes. Even
the mild word “asks” had not swayed them, Varus saw, having heard endless
arguments over whether Fabius Buteo ought to “ask,” or “demand,” or
“insist.” When
finally the rage subsided, many of the senators with purple faces, Fabius Buteo
stood again, carefully, like a sailor in the maw of a gale. He resembled the
buzzard of his cognomen, out of his aerial element lurching about on legs as
rotten as old tree trunks. On his feet at last, he reached into the fold of his
capacious toga. “I
have in my toga both peace and war,” he said quietly in his thready old voice.
“Choose what you will.” “You
choose!” they shouted. Raising
his cleft chin, and thrusting high the frail fist that had been inside the toga,
the old man roared, face red, his voice now strong but high, so that it carried
clearly across the whole large chamber: “Then
Rome chooses war!” *
* * And
that was that for the embassy, which came home. And for the prospects of peace. Now
Rome’s formal declaration of war, long since prepared and put through the
Tribal Assembly, became final. Gaius Licinius Varus felt the deepest gloom he
had felt since his days as a cadet during the previous war—he now had to see
it that way: the ‘previous’ war. For now there was a new one. And
how much of Rome’s bounty would this one sap, how many of her good young men
destroy? *
* * With
the consuls in a fever of preparations, Scipio made small repairs to his mail
shirt, helmet, sword, and other gear, touching up even what did not require
touching up, out of a need to be doing, not just waiting. On his own, he
purchased a new dagger and shield. He and his mother, assisted by Adonibaal,
went through his collection of woolen socks, tunics, boots, blankets. “Not
that tunic, Scipio,” Pomponia said. “It’s frayed at the hem.” “Think
what it will be after a month on campaign, Mother.” How could he care whether
the hem was frayed or not? It was a tunic. He’d need tunics. “You’ll
be glad I taught you to mend.” What
was in his mother’s mind? Useless to ask. Time
and again he pulled his brand new sagum from its wooden box at the foot
of his bed. Designed to protect him in all manner of foul weather, the
well-greased shapeless cloak of Ligurian wool—the best kind for a sagum—had
a hole in the center for his head and hung to his knees. It looked like a large,
floppy sack dropped over his head and smelled none too sweet. It was beautiful. Of
his Uncle Gnaeus and his father, he asked a thousand questions about Spain. How
big was it? What were the principal towns and the principal tribes? What was its
weather like? What crops did the tribes grow? How much of it did the
Carthaginians control? Where would they land the legions? What would be their
strategy—seek battle with Hannibal to dispose of him early? Or first
consolidate the north, above the River Ebro? That
their knowledge was limited—for Rome had so far stayed mostly clear of
Spain—Scipio cared not a bit. He’d find out the rest for himself. One
day in early April his father took a break from his harried recruiting. “Scipio,”
he said, “it’s time to lodge your will with the Vestals.” “Already
done, Father.” “Well,
that’s efficient. Though I would have enjoyed accompanying you.” “Thanks
anyway.” Scipio did note the look of disappointment on his father’s face,
but it looked like reproof to him—only what he would expect from Father, after
all. Indeed,
Scipio had long since gone to the Temple of Vesta to lodge his will with the
Vestal Virgins, caretakers of important documents. He’d written the slim scrap
himself, such as it was. All soldiers were encouraged to make a will before
going off on campaign. Every such step made Scipio feel all the more a soldier,
and there would be no fiddling. Finally,
in late April, came the word: War. Rome fell into a state of high dread and the
Senate began to meet daily, excepting only those days reserved for religious
purposes. Scipio
could not sleep, could not eat, could think of nothing else. Praise the gods! At
last. But
Scipio was to be disappointed. Shortly after the embassy failed in Carthage in
April, events in Italian Gaul once again interfered in Rome’s plans; it was
these that delayed his father’s departure for Spain. A
dispatch rider from Ariminum brought the news to Publius Scipio at his
recruiting tribunal on the Campus Martius. The consuls had only been recruiting
their legions for a few nundinae, with a little training begun, though
not much could be done in a mere nine-day market interval. Scipio happened to be
there, trying to assist his father with the paperwork. “The
new colonies in Italian Gaul have been attacked!” the dusty messenger said. It
was only two days before the Kalends of May, April almost gone. Standing
beside his father, Scipio blanched. More delays, no doubt—even a possibility
that he’d end up fighting Gauls instead of Hannibal. It seemed that Rome must
subdue the Gauls all over again every few years. A deep well of bitterness rose
up in him. To be so close to the great moment and then be frustrated. The world
was so unpredictable, aimless—messy. It was all he could do to restrain the
bitter tears from that well. Now
they were faced with fresh rebellion—the Boii and Insubres yet again—around
the two Latin colonies established on the ground just that spring: Placentia and
Cremona, placed there to help stabilize the area and get the Gauls used to a
permanent Roman presence. Yet
far from fulfilling their mission, the colonies had fallen prey to Gallic
treachery. Everywhere Scipio saw failure, ineptitude. People did not do the
things that must be done. Why was that? Why were they so fallible? His head
ached to think of it. The
Gauls had attacked the colonies almost before they had broken ground for basic
fortifications—now almost a month ago. It was most ill-timed, this uprising,
just when Rome was beginning a war with Carthage—almost as if Hannibal himself
had planned this action to delay the consuls’ departure. And
so some did say. Scipio thought it might well be true, and Rome at large shook
with fear that her two greatest enemies of old—Gaul and Carthage—might now
combine. Now it was not only Hannibal at the gates but the Gauls of old there,
too. And
delay the Consul Publius Scipio it did, for he found it necessary to send the
first of his two legions—the one a hair farther along in its training—to
Italian Gaul. Scipio
glared as the legion marched off up the Via Flaminia under Gaius Atilius
Serranus. Serranus—of all the men to have one of Scipio’s father’s
legions. Fabius’s man. Spain
seemed impossibly far off now, yet Hannibal seemed impossibly close. Next section of II. Scipio, Rome, 219 - 218 B.C. Back to Top
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