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Back to section v of this chapter I. Hannibal, Spain, 221 - 218 B.C. vi In
the year of Hannibal’s eleventh birthday, Gaius Licinius Varus, consul of
Rome, sat his black mare looking out over the Padus River valley from the
foothills of the Apennine Mountains. The invisible Alps lay not so far to the
north. Early in the month of Quinctilis, the day promised only a little breeze
and less dust than there had been in June. Five years had passed since the end
of the great twenty-three-year war between Rome and Carthage. Varus
sat comfortably with one leg hooked over the pommel of his saddle. He had
engraved the lines and fissures of his rugged face in a lifetime of soldiering.
His hair had thinned considerably and his body filled out from the slighter
frame he had worn as a cadet in the legions in Sicily and Africa. “Gaius
Licinius, you served in Africa with Marcus Atilius Regulus, didn’t you?”
asked his companion, a young officer with the imposing name Tiberius Sempronius
Longus. Sempronius was well beyond cadet but still in his early twenties, a
big-boned fellow hard of muscle but ample of rump. He needed a large
horse—larger than the weary-looking beast he rode today. The
day floated by, a pleasant summer lull in hard fighting against the Gauls of
northern Italy, the Boii. The two men had ridden out of camp companionably and
settled on this hill to watch the birds and let their talk drift easily like the
smoke that issued from numerous fires in the camp to their northeast. Behind
them the mountains rose neither sharp nor shallow. It was the sky that towered
with puffy clouds. “Africa?
Oh, yes—briefly. I landed with Regulus and his colleague Lucius Manlius Vulso
and fought in the easy early going before Vulso came home, leaving Regulus to
hold ground until the next spring. All of the cadets came home with Vulso, of
course. But I bloodied my sword before I left. I doubt I’d have continued to
soldier if not for that.” When
the war over Sicily had dragged on inconclusively for eight years, Regulus had
invaded Africa, aiming to attack Carthage directly. His attack had failed. “Not
continued to soldier? Why not?” “Because
of Manius Atilius Regulus, who still gives me nightmares.” “The
consul’s brother?” asked Sempronius. He shifted in his saddle. “Not
his brother, Gaius, who was consul the year before Regulus. Manius was Marcus
Atilius Regulus’s son, his youngest son, a fellow cadet. A friend of mine.” “And
why would Manius Atilius Regulus have caused you to forgo a life as a
soldier?” “I
saw Manius die, which sickened me—I was little more than a boy then. And
it’s not just that he died, but how.” “I’ve
never heard of him. How did he die, then? Fighting in Africa?” “Not
fighting, no. Or not as you and I see fighting. But Manius had a fight on his
hands nonetheless.” “I’m
intrigued.” “Manius
had a problem, you see. He was afraid of gangplanks.” Varus
stopped to look Sempronius in the eye. “It
was right after the battle of Ecnomus, off Sicily. You know the one, the second
great sea battle against Carthage. “Manius’s
father executed him aboard ship for that fear.” Indeed,
Varus told Sempronius, Manius Atilius Regulus had been on his father’s
flagship during the battle. It was a time when the tide was turning in the war
over Sicily, for Rome had only a few years earlier beaten the mighty
Carthaginian navy at its own specialty. No small achievement for a nation
hitherto a land power only. Aside from her astonishing ability to build hundreds
of ships in a matter of months and to train enough sailors, Rome’s secret
weapon, unveiled first at the Battle of Mylae, was the Roman corvus—the
“raven.” Each of the warships that Regulus and Vulso commanded carried its
own corvus. Before
the corvus had been proven in battle, a Roman squadron of seventeen ships
under Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Asina had sailed to the island of Lipara, just
north of Sicily. But when Scipio Asina arrived to negotiate Lipara’s
surrender, the Carthaginians surprised him and took him prisoner. On hearing of
this outrage, Scipio Asina’s consular colleague, Gaius Duilius, put out with
the whole fleet from Messana, sailing straightaway into Rome’s first serious
sea battle of the war. And
Duilius had the secret weapon. At
the time, having put Scipio Asina away, the Carthaginian fleet was plundering
the coast not far from Messana, off Mylae on the northern coast of Sicily. When
they became aware of the Roman advance, their contempt for Roman seamanship
lulled the Carthaginian admirals—for they had not yet seen the corvus. When
the Roman fleet drew close enough, the Carthaginian captains sneered at the
ships’ ungainly appearance: each had a long wooden platform hoisted vertical
by a pulley atop a special mast at the vessel’s prow so it towered ten feet
above the sailing masts farther astern. The Roman quinqueremes wallowed along
like great, pregnant sows, and the Carthaginians rubbed their palms together and
crowed with glee. The
ships finally met. The
Carthaginians were first startled, then horrified, when they realized the corvus’s
purpose. As a Roman ship came alongside a Carthaginian, the top of the raven
dropped onto her deck, driving a great spike into the deck planks. Caught
fast, the Carthaginians were next treated to the spectacle of Roman marines
pouring across these makeshift boarding ramps, bright swords in hand. The swords
soon ran red. Stunned,
the Carthaginians put up little resistance to the marines. It
made no difference from which quarter a Carthaginian ship charged a Roman—if
the Roman was not successfully rammed, the corvus always fell, a Roman
claw always nailed the victim, and the marines always swarmed aboard. Roman
ingenuity trumped superior Carthaginian seamanship, turning a sea battle into
the kind of land encounter at which the Romans excelled. The
Carthaginians fled, abandoning fifty ships and two admirals to the enemy. “And
that,” Varus said, “was the source of the first of the ships’ prows we see
today affixed to the Rostra in the Forum. Rome’s orators speak to the crowds
over the beaks of Carthaginian ships.” In
the long run, Rome had retired the corvus, despite its advantages, for it
did tend to make the narrow warships top-heavy and ungainly, a serious
disadvantage as ships became larger and less agile, as even the Carthaginians
had seen. But
when Regulus and Vulso fought at Ecnomus, they still had the corvus. Manius
Atilius Regulus had shrunk from crossing the corvus onto an enemy ship,
his first fight as a cadet. Varus had seen him in formation with the marines,
seen the command given, the marines press forward onto the corvus. And
seen Manius break at the last minute, to dash below decks, where they’d found
him cowering at the stern in a stack of hawsers, blubbering like a baby. “Gods!
Cowardice?” Sempronius said. “His own father executed him for cowardice? And
you saw him die?” “Yes.
It’s hardly the first time a Roman commander has executed a son for his
actions in battle. Titus Manlius Torquatus killed his son in the Latin war for
disobeying a command not to engage in personal combat with the enemy.” “So
Manius suffered the fustuarium.” “Yes.
I watched him beaten to death by his mates who had crossed the corvus.” “But
what do you mean about gangplanks? Why should anyone fear gangplanks?” “The
corvus is a gangplank,” said Varus. “Understand that Manius wasn’t
afraid to fight. It was the corvus. I think he could not cross the corvus
because he somehow knew that, for him, the corvus—the gangplank—meant
certain death,” Varus said. He
paused. “And so it did.” Next section of I. Hannibal, Spain, 221 - 218 B.C. Back to Top
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