Hannibal. Ross Leckie

      

      FOR

      SOPHIA

      oἰ μὲν ἰππήων τρότον, οἰ δὲ πέσδων, οἰ δὲ νάων ϕαῖσ’ ἐπὶ γᾶν μέλαιναν ἔμμεναι κάλλιστον, ἔγω δὲ κῆν’ ὄτ-τω τις ἔραται

      – Sappho

      CONTENTS

       Prologue

       I Carthage

       II Mercenaries

       III Spain

       IV Command

       V War

       VI March

       VII Italy

       VIII Delay

       IX Defeat

       X Death

       Epilogue

       Nullus amor populis nec foedera sunto …

       Litora litoribus contraria, fluctibus undas

      Imprecor, arma armis: pugnent ipsique nepotesque.

      Neither love nor treaty shall there be between the nations … Let your shores oppose their shores, your waves their waves, your arms their arms. This is my prayer: let them fight, they and their sons’ sons, forever.

      Dido, Queen of Carthage’s curse upon the Romans.

      Virgil, Aeneid IV, 624 ff.

      Bellum maxime omnium memorabile quae unquam gesta sunt … Hannibale duce Carthaginienses cum populo Romano gessere.

      The war fought by the Carthaginians under Hannibal against the Romans was the most memorable of all wars ever waged.

      Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, XXI. 1

       PROLOGUE

      I am old now, and the time of my people is past. No more will the lineage of Barca fight the Romans whom we hate. The Paradise of Mithra holds all those that I have loved, souls whom the River of Ordeal could not scald. Soon I shall join them.

      The ravens and the vultures gather over Carthage. I see its doom. Our ships have long been sunk or captured. Their oars of the oaks of Bashan and the Ashurites are broken, sound no more. My army is dispersed. I am far away.

      I sit now naked from the heat in a borrowed room in a foreign land alone. They sent for me. I would not go. Soon they will come. They have thought it too hard, too hazardous a task to wait for the death of an old man.

      My body stiffens. My wounds throb. I am as an old and wizened oak tree in a field, against which cattle have rubbed too long. Yet shall I tell my story, and be done. I see my body and its many, many scars. All are in front. The Romans shall not have me.

       I

       CARTHAGE

      Children’s memories are deep and strange. Grown men must struggle through the past to reach and to know them. It is best done while one lives, but if postponed will surely come with or after death. I have often seen it so, for I have known too many deaths. My friend Maharbal took three weeks to die after a sword thrust caught him in the stomach. We were deep in Campania, high in the hills when a Roman patrol surprised us. Only I was with him at the end. No-one else could bear the stench of his putrescence. In his death-fever he returned to our childhood in Spain, calling out to me as we raced our ponies hard along the strand of Gadez. Through that last night he turned over such many things. Then, at dawn, he gave up his spirit, but in peace.

      Tanit-pene-Baal, the god of dreams and death, would have it thus. We must first cross the River of Ordeal, then the River of Forgetfulness, Ashroket in our Punic tongue, and remember all our lives before our spirits can be free. If we do not, we linger for eternities with the undead by Ashroket’s banks. There stands a great and giant elm tree, its branches spreading like arms, full of years. The undead make their home there, clinging everywhere beneath its leaves, as many as the leaves of the forest which fall with autumn’s chill, and stretch out their hands in longing for the farther bank.

      Let me now prepare to cross. I, who have always been fighting, now give the god his due. Time for me, time for the thousands who died for me and need me now to account for their memories so they too may pass in peace. There is so much blood.

      Blood. And hate. I must have been three, turning four. I was playing with marbles in the courtyard of our home in Carthage, my brother Mago with me. A breeze stirred the palm trees all around. Suddenly the wail of the corynx, the Carthaginian war-trumpet, filled the air. My mother, heavy with child, ran to us. “Come quickly, boys. Your father is home. He has sent for you. Come.”

      We followed her to my father’s hall, rising from its massive foundations to a terraced storey. Onto its walls of bronze were set diamonds, beryls, the three kinds of ruby, four kinds of sapphire, twelve of emeralds, topazes from Mount Zabacra, opals from Bactria, glossopetri fallen from the moon. Never before had I passed through its scarlet doors quartered with a black cross, beyond its grilles of beaten gold which kept out scorpions.

      It was silent inside, despite the press of people. As well as Carthaginians, there were Ligurians there, Balearics, Negroes, Numidians, Lusitanians, Cantabrians, Cappadocians, Lydians, Celtiberians, Dorians, men from every corner of the earth, for this has always been the way with us. They parted to let us pass. Standing on a dais at the far end of the hall was Hamilcar, my father, tired and dirty from journeying, his sweat making lines through the grey dust on his forehead.

      Before my father stood a man, strange of dress and skin. “I ask you, Marcus Atilius Regulus, what mercy you should have of us. Answer me!” In the stillness, the man’s reply was clear: “I answer you, Hamilcar Barca, as will many greater than you could ever be: Summa sedes non capit duos. Do with me as you must.”

      Of course I did not have enough Latin then to understand. Only later did my tutor, Silenus of Caleacte, explain: “Supreme power cannot be shared,” words which form the more so now, I fear, the policy of Rome. I smile as I remember how I returned the words of Regulus in kind, the cry of fear, “Hannibalis ad portas, Hannibal is at the gates,” filling the thoughts of Romans for the many years in which I made them dance.

      What I did understand was the roar of anger that rose to meet the man’s reply. My father stood still. He held up his hands for quiet. “Carthaginians, allies, friends, you have heard what this man has said. You know him, Regulus, the Roman consul we defeated and captured when he invaded our own Africa ten years ago. We should perhaps have crucified him. Yet we sent him to Rome to treat for peace on condition he would return. For what have we ever sought of the Romans, we who knew the bounds of the world before they were even a people, than that they should leave us in peace? When have we ever sought out war, unless when these vipers, these conquerors and colonisers of greed tamper with our trade and seize our lands? Three times has Carthage made solemn treaties of peace with Rome. Three times have the Romans broken their word. As we must, we resist them.”

      A murmur of agreement, of anger, rose and died away, as hiss of pebbles on the shore when wave recedes.

      “This Regulus we sent to Rome. And what did he urge on their Senate?