Total War Rome: Destroy Carthage (14 page)

In a flash it leapt, and the crowd gasped. It happened so quickly that the man had no time to scream. The lion sank its jaws into his back and wrenched him from the pole, shaking him violently to and fro, breaking his bones just as if he were a beast caught on the plains of Africa. The
bestiarius
released the rope entirely and stood back with the crowd. A fountain of blood erupted from the man's neck, spraying the boys in the front row. The lion dropped his body, sat down on his haunches and began to eat. It took a huge bite from the man's chest, crunching through the ribs and leaving a gaping hole in his side, ripping out one lung and swallowing it, the windpipe and arteries hanging down from its jaw. It slurped them up and took another mouthful, this time from the abdomen, gorging itself on the man's stomach and intestines, its face dripping with blood and bile.

Scipio turned to Julia, who had been watching with rapt attention. ‘That's the end of the entertainment here,' he said. ‘It will carry on all night in the Field of Mars, but I promised my friend Terence that I'd look in at the play he's put on specially for the games, in the peristyle garden of his patron Terentius' house on the Palatine. Before then, Polybius and I have arranged to meet. I want to tell him something that Terence told me, and Polybius apparently has something to tell me. Will you come along?'

‘My mother will find I'm missing, and send out the Vestals to hunt me down,' Julia said, smiling. ‘But that'll make it more fun. She's not watching now, so we can go.'

They stood up, making their way through the others seated on the stand, Fabius following them. Already the crowd around the lion had begun to disperse, some moving to the other wagons where the executions had yet to happen, others heading off towards the Field of Mars. Fabius glanced at the lion as they passed by, its stomach visibly bloated, the man's dismembered body reduced to a mess of blood and bone. The lion had taken the man's head in its jaws and crushed it as they passed. He remembered the feast that would follow the sacrifice of the bulls in the Forum, and the slabs of meat that the priests would hand out to be roasted on a fire below the rostrum. Fabius had promised to meet Hippolyta's slave girl Eudoxia there later on, so he hoped that Scipio and Julia would not stay too long at the play. He was already beginning to feel hungry.

*   *   *

Back in the Forum they met Polybius inside the Basilica Aemilia, the great law court where he had been addressing a gathering of Greek scholars and teachers who had been brought by Aemilius Paullus to Rome for the triumph. As they arrived, he was seeing off a cluster of white-robed men with flowing grey beards and unshorn hair, holding wound-up scrolls and staring haughtily ahead. Scipio turned to Polybius, grinning. ‘Unless I'm mistaken, my father has captured Greek philosophy and brought it to Rome.'

‘They are not captives, but a delegation from Athens,' Polybius muttered. ‘Come at your father's invitation to teach the miscreant youths of Rome how to think.'

‘You sound sceptical, Polybius.'

‘I've seen what it's like in Athens. The wisdom of the true philosophers, of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, has been diluted and debased, by men who think that wearing the robe of a teacher and sporting a flowing white beard qualifies them for our esteem. Most are men like those ones: constitutionally incapable of original thought, yet trying to peddle their muddled ideas to the weak and the gullible. Rome is like a bright but uneducated youth, eager for learning, but with no critical facility. These men do not teach philosophy, but mere sophistry, wordplay, and will only speak in riddles as the Sibyl does, but without the benefit of Apollo to guide them.'

‘You underestimate us, Polybius,' Scipio said, looking at him with mock seriousness. ‘To most of us these men are mere ornaments, like those bronzes and paintings we took from Macedonia. They will provide after-dinner entertainment in the villas of Rome and Neapolis, at Herculaneum and Stabiae. It will doubtless become imperative to have a Greek philosopher among one's slaves, just as it has become the fashion to have a Greek doctor and Greek musicians. But they'd better have some good tricks up their sleeves. Nobody at those dinner parties will actually listen to what they say. They will be mere performers.'

‘Even so, Scipio, I know you will attend their lectures. You are too inquisitive to stay away. Beware of Greeks speaking in forked tongues.'

Julia nudged him. ‘Does that include you, Polybius?'

Scipio laughed, and slapped Polybius on the back. ‘Not a chance. What Polybius really loves is the war horse and the boar spear. Isn't that right, Polybius? That's why you're so fascinated by us Romans. You love our practicality. For you, to study history is not to muse about the human condition like a philosopher, but to understand past battles and find out the best way to use a skirmishing line or deploy light cavalry. Am I right?'

Polybius eyed him keenly. ‘Speaking of hunting, I hear that your father has given you the Macedonian Royal Forest as a coming-of-age present. Did you know that I learned to hunt there as a boy? It has the best boar in any forest south of the Alps.'

Scipio glanced at Julia. ‘See what I mean? Mention boar spear, and he's yours.' He turned back to Polybius, grinning. ‘You're right. I can't wait to get there. But it's really only a temporary present while Macedonia is my father's personal fiefdom, in the afterglow of Pydna. In a few years' time he reckons that Rome will try to annex Macedonia as a province, and they'll send out a praetor. The forest will no longer be mine to hunt in, so now's my chance.'

‘You said you wanted to see me,' Polybius said.

Scipio nodded, suddenly serious. ‘Since we last saw you, Publius Terentius Afer has been telling Fabius and me about Carthage.'

‘Terence the playwright? You keep interesting friends.'

Scipio nodded. ‘Terence was a slave in Carthage, and his mother was an Afri from the Berber tribes of Libya, related to Gulussa's Numidians. Do you remember the model of Carthage I made in the academy?'

‘The one you used to plan a possible assault on the city? I remember wondering how you'd got the details. I'd been meaning to ask you, but then the call to arms got in the way. Rome hasn't bothered having spies in Carthage since the end of the war against Hannibal, and now Romans who try to enter the city are turned away. It is said that great construction works are afoot, but all of it behind the high sea walls and so invisible to ships sailing by.'

Scipio glanced behind. ‘Tell him, Fabius.'

Fabius cleared his throat. ‘My mother worked in the household of the senator Publius Terentius Lucanus, who kept Terence as a slave and freed him after educating him and seeing his talents as a playwright. Terence and I became friends while he was still a slave. He told me that Carthage was far better for hide-and-seek than Rome, because of the tightly clustered houses around the foot of the Byrsa, the acropolis hill. When Scipio years later said that he was planning to build a model of Carthage, I brought Terence along and he advised on the construction.'

‘Do you remember how I war-gamed the assault?' Scipio said, turning back to Polybius. ‘I said that too often we just focus on the obviously defensible features: the walls, the temples, the arsenals. Those features were all that the veterans of the last war against Carthage were able to tell me about, but that was before I met Terence. He told me about the ring of ancient houses that surround the Byrsa, to a depth equivalent of two or three of our tenement blocks. Think of the houses of the plebs that surround us now in Rome, pressing up against the edge of the Forum. A general planning an assault on Rome would hardly concern himself with them, because they're in city blocks and you could march straight past them down the streets towards the Forum. If there was any resistance, you'd simply torch them because they're mostly wood and plaster. No defender worth his salt would set up a position there, but would instead fall back on the stone buildings of the Forum.'

‘But Carthage must be different,' Polybius said pensively. ‘There's less timber available in Africa, so more use of stone for even the rudest of dwellings.'

Scipio nodded enthusiastically. ‘
Precisely.
Those houses seen by Terence are made of stone: the walls from upright pillars, the spaces in between filled with masonry. Terence says they've inset wooden beams as joists for the floors, but you wouldn't be able to burn them easily unless you could rain fire through the roof. For that, you'd need siege engines, or catapults on ships anchored close up to the sea wall. And the houses themselves are like a rabbit warren, not laid out in regular blocks but with narrow alleyways and rooftop walkways, as well as underground cisterns in each house where defenders could lurk. That's what Terence meant about hide-and-seek. An assaulting force within a stone's throw of the Byrsa might think they'd won the day, but they'd be sorely mistaken. The elite forces of mercenaries and special guards who are usually the last to hold out in a siege – the ones who know they'd be shown no mercy if they were to surrender – could organize a defence in depth and make the assault force pay dearly for it, at precisely the time when the legionaries would have begun to turn their thoughts to victory and booty. The assault commander would have to ensure that they kept up the momentum and rolled forward into those houses with the bloodlust still high. It's a tactical insight I wanted to share with you. I've been thinking of Carthage again, Polybius. I've got Terence to thank for that.'

Polybius gave him a wry smile. ‘Well, I've always been sceptical about playwrights. But now I can see they have their uses.' He stood up and looked through the columns of the entrance at the massed ranks of Latin troops who had begun to march past them along the Sacred Way, the beginning of a long procession of victorious allies who followed on behind the legionaries and the spoils of war. ‘You'd better get going and get your dose of drama before the evening festivities really take off. I've just spotted Demetrius of Syria with his bodyguards, and I want to catch him for any intelligence about another upstart who's claiming the succession from Perseus in Macedonia. It's not often that you get so many of Rome's allies in the city at one time, and I need to use the opportunity.'

‘We have a little over an hour until the play begins,' Scipio replied. ‘You wanted to tell me something too?'

Polybius turned to gaze at Julia and Scipio, and Fabius saw something else in his eyes, a faltering look, even a sadness. ‘This day is a chance for you to be together without others watching you, or knowing where you are. I wanted to tell you that the doors of my little house below the Palatine are open, and my slave girl Fabina knows you may be coming. You do not know when you may have the chance again. As for me, I'm off.
Ave atque vale.
And remember what I said. Seize the day.'

6

The courtyard of the house of Terentius Lucanus on the Esquiline Hill had been designed in the Greek fashion, with a colonnaded peristyle surrounding a garden and a pool in the centre. One end had been built up into a stage for performances and the garden had been partly boarded over to provide seating for a small audience. Fabius had followed Scipio and Julia in from the atrium of the house, and sat down with them among the two dozen or so others who had come to see the play. An hour earlier he had left Scipio and Julia at the entrance to Polybius' house below the Palatine, and had quickly made his way back through the Forum to find Eudoxia, leading her to a hidden garden he knew on the far side of the Circus Maximus. They had met up again in time for Julia to walk visibly through the Forum on their way to the Esquiline, ensuring that word would pass back to her mother and the Vestals that she had not somehow absconded. On the way they had passed Metellus and a group of his friends, all of them the worse for wear, staggering between the temporary stalls along the Sacred Way that were serving wine without restriction now that the procession was over. Metellus had looked darkly at Scipio, swaying slightly with a wine pitcher in his hand, and had followed them with his friends, shouting and jeering, until he was diverted by a favourite tavern near the Mamertine Prison. Fabius knew that the more drunk Metellus got, the more he would want to claim Julia, as his wife to be, and that there would be nothing Scipio could do to stop him without causing a furore within the
gentes.
Fabius could only hope that the house of Terentius Lucanus was sufficiently far from the taverns to deter Metellus from making an entrance here, and that he and Scipio could spirit Julia away after the play and return her to the house of the Caesares before Metellus could get his hands on her.

As they sat down, a lithe man with the dark skin of an African saw them from the stage and came bounding over, smiling broadly. ‘Julia, Scipio Aemilianus, Fabius. Welcome, my friends. I'm glad you've come. We're waiting for the arrival of my patron and the owner of this house, Terentius Lucanus, who is making a sacrifice in the Temple of Castor and Pollux, praying, I trust, for the success of my play.'

Scipio looked around. ‘A delightful venue, though small and a good way off the beaten track tonight, I fear.'

Terence sighed. ‘I sent plans to the Senate for the construction of a Greek-style theatre in Rome, but they were rejected by the aedile in charge of public works on the grounds that a theatre with seating would turn Romans into effeminate Greeks.'

Scipio grinned. ‘What did you say?'

‘I said he was right, Roman backsides weren't yet tough enough for stone seats.'

‘You really know how to please them, Terence. I'm amazed you haven't been hounded out of Rome by now.'

Terence shook his head glumly. ‘As a playwright, you can't win. I'd wanted to present works of my own, plays in a gritty, realistic style, suited to Roman taste. But no, those who finance my productions insist on pastiches of well-known Greek plays, because they say that's what the people want. In fact, it's what my backers want, not what my fans want. My backers want the old, but my fans want the new. My backers want repeats of the same tired old plays that have brought in pots of denarii in the past, and so, they surmise, will do so again. These people are here today only because they are clients of Terentius and are obliged to him. They'll be talking to themselves all the way through the play, hardly noticing it. The theatre's been reduced to a place for meeting friends and exchanging gossip, before going off to the real fun in the taverns.'