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Against Rome |
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Samples: Prelude Casus Belli, Carthage, 255 B.C. The Tophet was a long series of rooms beside the harbor. In the central chamber, awash in chaotic shadows purposely thrown helter skelter by flickering torches, a crowd of anxious senators and wealthy merchants knelt with their tiny sons before the priests in front of a series of small pyres—intermingled branches taken from the most resinous woods. Among the senators knelt Hamilcar Barca and his little son Hanno. Behind the row of pyres loomed the cold bronze images of Baal Hammon and his consort Tanit. Most of the supplicants in the chamber bore frightened, crying sons in their arms. All of the boys were under four years old—most under a year. Hamilcar, a soldier and senator, head of one of Carthage’s great houses, the Barcas, cradled his little son Hanno, only two years old, in his arms. It was iron-bound tradition that dictated he bring his son for this ritual. Hanno began to weep. Probably he sensed the tension and fear in the room, for other children were weeping, too. "Hush," Hamilcar said. It was all he could do to say it. His hand around the boy’s tiny fingers, each smaller than the shaft of an arrow, shook so hard that he pulled the hand against his side to still his tremors. The boy looked up at him, frightened anew. "Hush," Hamilcar said again. Hanno’s wailing subsided, but he continued to sniffle. The highest priest stepped forward, stood before the fathers and their children. He appeared robustly healthy despite his long tenure in the dim temple chambers. Behind him torchlight animated the great bronze gods, their expressionless faces rippled with shadows, alive, yet dead of eye. "It is time," he said, his voice causing Hamilcar to start in shock, not unexpected, yet dire in its finality. The voice was strong, resonant—full of Baal’s authority, deep tones echoing in the chasing shadows of the chamber. "Once again," the priest said, "Carthage is threatened. Unless you good men gathered here pay the cost that you must pay, Carthage may die. Stand firm, be resolved." Then, as the priests intoned solemn prayers, the gods’ empty eyes beckoned and, one by one, the city fathers carried their wailing little ones forward, handing them over to the priests for the ceremony called the Moloch. Fear haunted the fathers’ eyes, but the gods demanded much—especially Baal. When Hanno’s turn came, he began howling in terror. But Hamilcar gave him over to the priest, who took his little arm and pulled him forward. The priest swooped Hanno off the ground and held him high over his head. Hanno screamed. "Papa!" Hamilcar looked away. His fingernails bit into his palms. The priest set Hanno down and quickly bound his wrists, then his ankles. The man’s face bore no expression at all. Now the priest laid Hanno face down, still howling, atop one of the long row of pyres, about half of them now holding small bodies. "Quiet," the priest said, his voice so stern that little Hanno shut up instantly, though his small frame still shivered. Then, as he had done with the preceding children, the priest reached down with both hands. He took gentle hold of the child at the base of his neck and his brow. He snapped the tiny neck. The massive bronze gods slouching above the scene still gazed with pitiless eyes. Hamilcar jerked. He might be a man hardened by war, but tears began running down his cheeks, blurring the scene before him. Hanno! Hanno, my lion cub! What might you have done in the world? Yet the city’s crisis warranted this—even this. For Rome had sent a conqueror to Carthage herself, one Marcus Atilius Regulus, and the city fathers—and especially the priests—could see no other way to stem defeat. This Regulus had just sunk thirty Carthaginian warships off the coast of Sicily, capturing fifty more—unheard of from the landlubber Romans! They here in the Tophet must submit all to their gods in this terrible way. When all the pyres were occupied, the priest seized a torch from an acolyte. He walked down the long row, setting each pyre ablaze. Acolytes with large fans briskly fanned the flames to ensure complete combustion. The heat rising from the pyre quickly caused little Hanno’s arms and legs to contract against the bonds. The extremities rolled up and the little head, now hairless, the skin cracking, rolled to one side, revealing the corners of the child’s tiny, dead mouth as they drew back in a grisly rictus, as if he grinned most hideously. At the last moment, the priests moved down the line tossing little animals onto the pyres. On Hanno’s they tossed a dead sparrow. When all the offerings had perished amid their collective screams and the wails of grief from their fathers, when all had been immolated to soot and a few fragments of bone in Baal’s holy flames, the supplicant fathers, ashen, filed out to grieve—and to pray. After they had gone, and after the pyres had cooled, the priests would scoop the ashes into large jars and carry them to other rooms in the Tophet for ceremonial interment. Hamilcar trudged home, eyes streaming tears so his progress was halting as he stumbled along unable to see. Like the others he had done his duty to the dark, demanding gods, even to the sacrifice of his lion cub. Although this was almost more than he could bear, he imparted a vicious kick to a stone in the street and vowed that there would be more lion cubs—am I not the lion?—and they would be the seed of a great vengeance upon hated Rome, the author of all his woes.
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