But when he reached the villa assigned as the Roman headquarters, he found the legions drawn up in fine array. The bearers carried him onto the terrace and the commander Norbanus greeted him with a martial salute. Hamilcar returned it, then frowned when he saw his sister standing in the shade of a portico, dressed indecently, as usual.
He stepped down from the great litter. "Good day, Senator." Then he turned to Zarabel. "I scarcely expected to find you here, Sister."
"I wouldn't miss a spectacle such as this," she said with her maddening calm. "At last we are to see these Roman legions."
"Yes. Well, Commander, shall we begin?"
Norbanus conducted them to the front of the terrace, where sumptuous chairs had been arranged. Hamilcar took the highest, Zarabel one lower and to one side. His officers and ministers arranged themselves as protocol demanded. Norbanus and a few other Roman officers on the terrace declined to sit.
Before them, the legions and auxilia stood in lines that might have been laid out by an architect. Each legion stood formed in a rectangle, its men divided into smaller rectangles formed by cohorts, smaller rectangles yet forming each cohort's centuries. The lines were separated by a pace, the rectangles by about three paces. Before each legion stood its commander, its tribunes, its senior centurion and its standard-bearers. Four golden eagles flashed in the sunlight. Next to the eagle-bearers stood men with huge curving trumpets and others with long straight horns. By each legion its attached cavalry stood mounted, each unit with its own standard-bearers and trumpeters. The cavalry had a special trumpet: straight except for its flaring mouth, which was curved back into a U-shape. It seemed that the Romans did not march to flutes, like Greeks, or to drums, like Carthaginians.
"We will begin with the Consul's review," Norbanus said. "This is how the legions parade before the consuls at the annual muster on the Field of Mars, when they renew their oath." He signaled to the trumpeter who stood before the terrace, and the man played a tuneless series of notes upon his long, straight instrument. It was an astonishingly complex musical construction to emerge from so simple an instrument. Other horns picked up the signal and repeated it.
With incredible speed and cohesion, the soldiers began their evolutions. As the trumpets performed their complex calls, the four legions and their auxilia came together to form a single rectangle, from which forward lines detached themselves to march ahead as if to engage an enemy. When the trumpets called again, these withdrew and the next lines stepped forward and seemed to pass through by magic, for neither the advancing nor the retreating lines were disarranged by the maneuver.
"This is how we keep fresh men at the front lines," Norbanus explained. "Only a small part of the army can actually come to grips with the enemy at any one time, so it is best that the bulk of the army rest. Each line goes ahead to fight for a few minutes, then it retreats and is relieved. While the others fight, those men rest, take care of their wounded and get fresh javelins."
"Very pretty," said a scarred Carthaginian general. "But I would like to see it under battle conditions."
"You shall," Norbanus promised him, "and soon."
To a new set of signals the legions separated by cohorts into a checkerboard formation. "This is far more maneuverable than a single, rectangular mass," Norbanus explained. He showed them how lines could be detached to form a solid front, how the squares could pass through one another to give a double or triple thickness if a flank was threatened or extra depth needed, how units could be wheeled about to face a threat from the rear.
As a final demonstration, the lines tightened into close order and the rectangles seemed to shrink as shield touched shield in the front line. Then the flankers turned their shields about to cover their exposed sides and the men inside the formations raised their shields overhead until they overlapped like tiles on a roof. Then they advanced toward the terrace. The Carthaginians laughed nervously at their awkward, waddling gait, but there was concern in their laughter. There was something implacably ominous in the armor-plated army coming toward them like some great, mythical beast. Indeed, that was the most unsettling thing about these legions: They behaved like a creature with a single nervous system.
"This formation we call the 'tortoise,' " Norbanus said. "It may be used by large formations or small ones and is very useful for advancing under heavy missile fire, or against an enemy fortification. When advanced against a wall, one formation can climb on top of another until they form a stair for the men behind to mount to storm the wall." He saw their disbelieving stares and added, "Not a very high wall, of course."
When the tortoise was twenty paces in front of them it halted, each man's left foot seeming to come down at precisely the same instant. Slowly, the formation subsided as the men within went down on one knee and the shields on the flanks slanted outward.
"Might we see one of these formations climb atop another?" the Shofet said. "That might be a sight worth seeing." "Oh, we can do better than that," Norbanus told them. At his signal, more horns sounded, these with a higher-pitched note. To the unutterable astonishment of the Carthaginian onlookers two cavalry detachments charged the tortoise from both sides. The horses leaped up the slanted shields and onto the roof, and then the men galloped about in a mock-battle, pelting one another with soft-tipped javelins amid a deafening thunder of hooves on shields.
"Why don't the horses slip?" Hamilcar wanted to know. "How do your soldiers hold so firm?" This time he did not bother to conceal his amazement.
"The men have good inducement to hold steady," Norbanus said. "A horse coming down through the roof would probably hurt."
At last the horsemen rode off and they could all hear the cheering of the citizens viewing the spectacle from atop the walls of the city. The legionaries separated into their formations and, at another set of trumpet calls, they marched past the Shofet, their centurions saluting him in passing, the men looking neither to the right nor to the left. As they did this, it finally occurred to Hamilcar that all of this had been accomplished with trumpet calls alone. He had not heard a single officer's voice raised in the usual sweating, swearing harangue. It did not seem possible, but he had seen this with his own eyes. He turned to his subordinates. "I think our money was well spent," he said.
Hamilcar got a final demonstration of Roman military practice two days later. It was the day for the march to Egypt. Hamilcar and his household troops, along with the Romans, would leave Carthage and march eastward, picking up the remainder of the army where it was quartered in Carthaginian territory, thence to join the bulk of his forces massed at the border.
With his principal officers, the Shofet rode from the city amid a multitude, chanting, cheering and waving holy emblems. Huge statues of the gods rolled through the streets on brazen wheels to witness and confer their blessings on the expedition. From the temple steps the priests and priestesses wailed their imprecations against the enemy and tons of incense burned to waft the prayers of Carthage heavenward.
As the procession passed the great temple of Tanit, he saw the princess Zarabel conducting the temple clergy in a hymn of praise. He did not see the cursing gestures she made toward his back, nor did he see her spit after him as she pronounced a terrible execration in a low voice.
Once outside the city, the Shofet descended from his litter and mounted a horse. With his entourage he rode to the Roman camp. It lay within an earthen rampart raised by the legionaries and he saw to his astonishment that the camp still stood: street after street of leather tents, arranged in the orderly, rectilinear fashion favored by the Romans. The men stood in the streets holding the reins of their pack animals, but not a single tent had yet been struck. He rode to the knot of officers centered upon Titus Norbanus.