Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage (11 page)

ROME

167
BC

The Triumph of Aemilius Paullus

4

Fabius shut his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling his chest swell against his breastplate and smelling the heady aroma of incense that filled the air. He opened his eyes, and was dazzled by the view. All of Rome seemed to be on fire that night, not a fire of destruction but of celebration: a thousand basins of burning oil lining the processional route from the Ostia gate through the Forum to the Field of Mars. Here on the podium below the Capitoline Temple they were at the apex of the procession, at the end of the Sacred Way where the legionaries marching towards them veered west towards the open ground of the Field of Mars for the games and spectacles that would carry on through the night.

He and Scipio had left the head of the first legion a few minutes before to bound up the steps so that Scipio could stand beside his father Aemilius Paullus as the procession reached its climax. Polybius was there too, standing behind Aemilius Paullus, and beside them was Marcus Porcius Cato, in his rightful position on the podium as elder statesman of the Senate, a former consul and censor who was one of Aemilius Paullus' oldest friends and supporters. Fabius glanced at the general, who raised his right hand in salute and held it steady as each legion marched by. Beneath the burnished armour he was now an old man, gnarled and leathery skinned like Cato, both of them veterans who had stood here as young tribunes watching triumphal processions long before Fabius and Scipio had even been born. This day would be the last dose of glory for the generation who had fought Hannibal, for those who knew they would soon follow Scipio Africanus to Elysium but only truly rest once Carthage had finally been vanquished.

Fabius cast his eye over the young men in armour and the older men in togas crowding the steps of the podium below. The patrician women were absent, waiting in the stands that each
gens
had erected at the end of the processional way to watch the execution of deserters, but Metellus and the young bloods among the tribunes were all thronged below, joined every few minutes by others who left the head of their legions and maniples as Fabius and Scipio had done to mount the steps and view the spectacle. The most conspicuous absence was the old centurion Petraeus, who had hung up his armour for good once Scipio and the others had gone off to war in Macedonia and the academy had closed. For him, war was in the past, and his pasturage in the Alban Hills had beckoned; it was November and he had needed to reap his corn and sow his winter wheat before the frost. He was a true Roman, farmer first and soldier second, more true to the roots of Rome than any of the patricians who vied with each other to claim the oldest
gens
and the strongest lineage from Romulus or some other semi-mythical warrior in Rome's past.

But there were others missing too. As he had marched past the consular
fasti
at the head of the Forum, Fabius had seen the marble plaque inscribed with the names of officers of the patrician
gentes
who had fallen at Pydna. Among them was Gaius Aemilius Paullus, temporary tribune in the fourth legion, still only sixteen when he had died. Fabius remembered the last time he had been with Gaius Paullus in Italy, seeing his exhausted face at the end of their march south to the Bay of Naples, and then the mangled body that he and Scipio had helped to carry to the funeral pyre after the battle. The boy's maniple had been the first Roman infantry unit to charge after the Paeligni had hurtled themselves into the phalanx, but after the shock of the Paeligni the Macedonians had been ready for what came next; those first legionaries did not have a chance. There were some who said that Gaius Paullus had been screaming in terror and had turned in front of the phalanx, others that he was bellowing like a bull and had turned only to fall on the body of a wounded legionary and take the thrusts of the Macedonian spears himself, an act that would have won him the
corona obsidionalis
had enough survived to vouch for it. The entire front row of the maniple had sacrificed themselves on the spears of the phalanx so that the following ranks could charge through. Fabius remembered Petraeus' brutality towards the boy, no worse than the brutality they had all experienced from him, but different because of Gaius Paullus' youth. He wondered whether in those final moments it had strengthened him, or whether he had been broken by it. The truth might never be known, but he hoped that Gaius Paullus' shade was able to stand easy in Elysium and hold his head high alongside those who had died with him.

The last of the legionaries passed by, leaving the Sacred Way empty as they waited for the next stage in the procession. Fabius looked along it now, at the monuments and temples swirling with smoke and bedecked with wreaths, and remembered racing Scipio along it when they had been young boys, and then accompanying him every day from Scipio's house on the Palatine towards the academy in the Gladiator School. Never in their dreams could they have imagined that only a few years later they would be standing here watching the greatest triumphal procession ever seen, not as gawping boys envious of the young tribunes and legionaries in the procession but as returning soldiers who had fought and killed for the glory of Rome.

He felt his cheek throb, and brushed his finger over the livid scar where his wound was finally beginning to heal. It had been over a year since the Battle of Pydna, a year during which he and Scipio had served with the occupying force in Macedonia as Aemilius Paullus had tried to establish a client republic, a province of Rome in all but name. At first their job had been to hunt down those who had refused to surrender after the battle, mainly Thracian mercenaries who knew that they faced almost certain death if captured. It had been exhilarating work, with Scipio in command of a unit of fifty light cavalry and Fabius as his companion-in-arms, ranging far and wide across Macedonia as they chased men down like wild beasts, cornering them and showing no mercy. Occasionally the enemy had banded together and their clashes had been proper skirmishes, brief and bloody encounters of several dozen men fighting to the death, but more often than not it had been single combat, ferocious duels fought by Scipio himself and sometimes Fabius with only one possible outcome, as the rest of the
ala
encircled the killing ground and prepared to spear the enemy if he should gain the upper hand. Scipio and Fabius had each accounted for more than a dozen men that way, and after six months of it they had felt more like proper veterans of a campaign than simply the survivors of one battle.

After the mopping up was over, Aemilius Paullus had recalled Scipio to the Macedonian capital Pella to gain experience acting as an arbiter in local disputes, a role he had found difficult to settle into after the excitement of the previous months but had excelled at, his reputation for
fides
and fair play putting him in great demand throughout the region under his control. They had arrived back in Italy only three weeks before, after settling a spurious claim by a man to be the vanquished Macedonian king Peleus' son and therefore the rightful head of the new republic, a misapprehension about how a republic worked that Scipio had resolved admirably by explaining how Rome had rejected its kings more than three hundred years earlier and broken the line of succession, building the Republic from new men who were elected to office. They were due to return to Macedonia after the triumph, not to more administrative work, but for some well-earned leave, hunting in the vast expanse of the Macedonian Royal Forest that bordered the towering mountain range to the north.

Suddenly a horn sounded – a shrill, strident note from somewhere behind them – and the crowd that lined the Sacred Way became silent, watching with bated breath for what might come next. From a pedestal part-way up the Palatine Hill a giant Nubian slave hurled a burning taper high into the air, aiming it towards a metal cauldron on the rostrum below the podium. The taper cartwheeled lazily, the flame whooshing as it tumbled down, and then disappeared into the cauldron and was seemingly extinguished, the taper barely hitting the sides. The crowd erupted in applause, astonished at such a prodigious feat of marksmanship. But Fabius knew it was not over. The noise of the crowd died down, and all eyes turned to the far end of the Sacred Way, where the procession would resume. Without warning, an enormous explosion erupted from the cauldron, sending a ball of fire high into the air until it too exploded, showering the crowd with sparks and leaving a billowing black cloud that darkened the sky above the Forum, making the fires along the road seem even more brilliant. This time the crowd were too stunned to applaud, staring with open mouths at something they had never seen before, a presage of the sights to come that Fabius knew would soon have them baying for more.

Scipio turned and nudged him. ‘Ennius will be pleased. I told him that if he couldn't yet make his naphtha mixture into an explosive weapon, at least he could make a spectacle out of it for the triumph. He's been working on it for months.'

Aemilius Paullus turned to Scipio, and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Enjoy this spectacle, but do not be seduced by it,' he said gruffly. ‘Remember this: there are true triumphs, and there are false triumphs. A victorious general may be treated like a god on a day such as this and then be the scourge of the tribunes on the next, beaten out of the city like a dog. Even today the tribunes of the people tried to prevent my triumph, by stirring up the plebs and trying to make then believe that my legionaries were immoral and out of control, that they would return to loot Rome as they looted Macedonia. And there are triumphs ordered by consuls who have exaggerated their victories, intent on creating glory for themselves when there is none, desperate to claim a military success during their year in office.'

‘The defeat of Perseus is the greatest triumph ever celebrated in Rome,' Scipio replied, raising his voice against the din. ‘With victory at Pydna you passed to Rome the legacy of Alexander the Great, and laid open the east to Roman conquest.'

‘Such may be the judgement of history, of men like Polybius,' Aemilius Paullus said. ‘But the judgement of Rome on a man's achievements in his lifetime is a fickle thing, swaying this way and that like the wind that twists through these seven hills. Heed my words today. Cato and I have discussed it, and we see dark times ahead. Until Rome truly reawakens to the threat of Carthage, there will be years in which war may seem a distant memory, in which your own destiny may seem clouded and uncertain. You must hold true to yourself, and always remember what Homer said: Those fare best in life whose fortunes swing one way and then the other. When fortune is in your favour, your ability to excel will be boosted by the strength that you will have gained in times of adversity.'

Aemilius Paullus turned back towards the Sacred Way, and Fabius caught Polybius' eye, seeing the hint of a smile on his lips. The evening before, they had walked together along the bank of the Tiber and Polybius had predicted it: that at the moment of greatest spectacle there would be a solemn moral message from father to son. He had said it was the thing he admired most about the Romans, their moral rectitude, something that had made him turn his back on Greece and make his home with those who had been his captors. He believed that it was what made the Romans such good generals and so different from Alexander the Great, his brilliance as a war leader weighed down by excess and immorality that fortunately seemed so far from the Roman character.

Fabius followed the general's gaze and watched the legionary standards shimmering in the distance, where they rose above the height of the surrounding buildings on the route to the Field of Mars. Aemilius Paullus had been right about the disaffection of the people. After parting with Polybius the evening before, Fabius had spent much of the night in the taverns with comrades from the first maniple of the second legion, the unit he had trained with before leaving for Macedonia, and he had seen their anger. Men returning to Rome from glorious battle had been turned away from their homes by their wives and shunned by their children. He knew from Polybius what had caused it, not the tribunes of the people but those who had bribed them to spread disaffection, the same group of senators who had opposed the formation of a professional army and the foundation of the academy. It was the first time that Fabius had recognized the power that those men wielded, and how they could bring the plebs to their side. He had also realized that Metellus and his followers could use the enmity of that faction in the Senate towards the Scipiones and the Aemilii Paulli to their advantage, poisoning opinion against Scipio. That was part of the message from his father, about dark times ahead, caused not by an enemy abroad but by an enemy within. Half of those men who were standing around the podium now in togas enjoying the esteem of the people would as soon see Aemilius Paullus cast out of Rome and his triumph discredited. The general had been right about that too. The wind had blown in their favour this day, but it might not the next.