Scipio. Ross Leckie

from Sosius of ravaged Italy. It was astounding that Rome had fought on. Sosius said his village was typical. There were no men left there over fourteen or under sixty – well, no whole men, anyway. There was one in his twenties, called Ostio, I think, but he had lost both legs to the surgeon’s saw after Trasimenus.

      That was one of Hannibal’s most effective ploys. The Romans were used to the straight sword-thrust, trying to push past the shield and through the breastplate. Either that, or the hacking swing down to the neck and the space between breastplate and helmet. In Celtiberia, for hour after hour Hannibal had his men practise both those cuts on dummies filled with straw. But then he introduced a third.

      I remember the evening. We were sitting round the fire, eating. Castello, one of Hannibal’s lieutenants, had been saying we must move camp, because where we were seemed to be the centre of the world’s flea population. We all had them. ‘Yes, yes, Castello,’ Hannibal said, distracted, pushing the stew round and round in his bowl.

      Then he leapt up, and we watched him as he strode across to the exercise ground and the dummies. In the weakening light, we saw him take off his greaves and strap them to a dummy’s legs. He stepped back, concentrated, still.

      ‘What’s he doing?’ Castello said. ‘His supper’s going––’ I remember how quickly Hannibal drew his sword. I’ve never known anyone who could do it faster. The blade shone in the last of the light as it swung, back and down and then sweeping up to cut off the dummy’s leg at the thigh.

      Hannibal was smiling when he ran back. ‘There. I’ve got it,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Castello, tomorrow a new drill. Everyone. It’s an awkward stroke, but we’ll learn. If Achilles had been a Roman, I’d have found his heel! Now, where’s that stew?’

      Hannibal taught his men well. The stroke needed more room than most, but there are many one-legged Romans living who can show how well it worked.

      Ostio sat all day in his hut, morose and alone. I saw him only once or twice, swinging himself along on his hands to the latrine.

       ‘What does he live on?’ I asked Sosius.

       ‘His grief, Bostar, his grief.’

      The only other younger man had his legs, but no hands. He was the village’s goatherd, rarely seen. The first time I saw him was when he came to the spring and Sosius’ wife filled his water-gourd, held between his stumps. I was turning hay nearby with Sosius. ‘And him?’ I asked.

       Sosius didn’t even look up. ‘Deserter.’

       ‘But I thought the Romans crucified deserters.’

      ‘They do, when they have time. It would have been better for him if they had.’

      Sosius was an intelligent man. I learnt from him something I had not understood before. Because only Capua had joined Hannibal, I had assumed that the whole of Italy was loyal to Rome. ‘Never,’ said Sosius as we talked one night. ‘I am a Bruttian, not a Roman.’

       ‘Then why did you serve Rome?’

      ‘Because until the Carthaginian came, curse him, Rome brought us peace. There was that pirate Pyrrhus, but they soon saw him off. Our roads were safe from brigands, our seas from pirates. We could trade. The year I returned from Sicilia, this village sold twelve wagon-loads of barley. Twelve, even after we had paid to Rome the decuma, the tithe of a tenth of our grain! Come and see, Teacher.’

      Putting down his hoe, Sosius walked off. I followed, across the ford, up the rise, north. We walked in silence to the top. ‘Now look.’

      On the plain below, stretching into the distance, were fields. Or, rather, what had been fields. Their walls were crumbling, their irrigation channels blocked. I saw the odd stalk of barley, but the crop of these fields was weeds. ‘Now we can barely feed ourselves,’ Sosius said.

       ‘But this can be put right,’ I replied.

      ‘It could be, but won’t be in my lifetime. Our whole country is laid waste, teacher. Our young men are dead or maimed. Our––’ Sosius’ voice cracked. ‘Let’s go back to our beans.’

       How had Rome fought on?

      A Roman’s gens, his clan, is not all. Consider how our families are bound together even by our language. Familia means not just immediate family but the entire extended household, including slaves: the word comes from famulus, slave. A paternal uncle, patruus, is only pater, father, with a different suffix. Our words ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandchild’ are almost the same as those for maternal uncle and niece. I knew my paternal uncle’s wife, Julia, as ‘amita’, the same kind of word as ‘mummy’ or ‘nanny’. My mother’s sister, Antonia, I knew as ‘matertera’, in effect ‘mother’. All my maternal cousins were – and some still are – sobrini or consobrini, obviously connected with soror, sister––

      All right, Bostar, I heard that. The cough again. You think I should be dictating my memoir, not a treatise on linguistics. What is my point? That Hannibal was fighting not individuals but members of a gens and then, too, members of a familia. In killing one member, he drew on himself the vengeance of the rest. Hannibal would not have won so long as one Roman remained alive. It was through ties of blood that Rome fought on. This point may be over-didactic. But it is true.

      Not only that. There is an extraordinary stubbornness about these people – but that is not the word. It is more than that, the quality I mean. It is a capacity to endure, always to go on. Any other people would have surrendered after Cannae. But when news of the disaster reached the Roman Senate, the praetor mounted the rostra in the Forum to tell the people and ‘Pugna magna victi sumus’ was all he said. ‘We have been defeated in a great battle’ – that and nothing more.

      There cannot have been in all of Italy someone who had not lost a father, husband, cousin, friend. Yet the Senate declared a prohibition on mourning – which was, of course, obeyed – and raised new legions. When we heard they were made up of slaves, Hannibal laughed. What we didn’t understand was that, as Scipio has just observed (actually, my cough this time was genuine), these were not slaves as Carthaginians know them. These were all members of a familia. They may not have been free, but they belonged. They didn’t fight for their freedom, granted. That didn’t matter. They fought for Rome. Those who were not slaves were men like Sosius.

      He and I were hoeing, again. He worked hard, despite his lack of thumbs. He had been telling me, matter-of-fact, of all that he and his village had suffered in the war. ‘But why did you put up with all this?’ I asked him. ‘Why didn’t you just give up and go away?’

      Sosius straightened, squinted in the sun. With the back of his hand, he wiped the sweat off his forehead. ‘Teacher, we are born to this, born to fight for Rome. My father fought in the first war against Carthage. My uncle was killed in the battle of Ausculum, trampled by one of Pyrrhus’ elephants. His people almost starved.’ Sosius kicked a clod of earth. Disturbed, the ants underneath it scurried away.

      ‘My father’s favourite story, Teacher, was about a Bruttian peasant, much like him or me. His wife died in childbirth. His sons were killed in Gaul. His crops were ruined by a freak hail storm. Then, to crown it all, his hut caught fire and burned to the ground. When he saw the smouldering remains, he fell to his knees and raised his eyes to heaven. “Jupiter, Jupiter, why me?” he called out. “Why me?”

      ‘Well,