El Escorial, July 1992
The Two Numantias
TO PLÁCIDO ARANGO
Oh walls of this city!
If you can speak, then say …
THEY, the Spaniards, are a coarse, savage, and barbarous people whom we Romans lead, whether they like it or not, toward civilization. Thanks to the Greeks and Phoenicians, there is some development in the peninsula’s coastal areas. But just penetrate this surly, arid land the slightest bit and there’s nothing: no roads, no aqueducts, no theaters, and no cities worthy of the name. They have no idea what wine, salt, oil, and vinegar are. Which is why our soldiers have such a hard time of it in the Iberian campaigns. They’re forced to eat barley and rabbit boiled in salt water, so dysentery has become endemic among our troops. Our satiric poets laugh, but so do our ordinary foot soldiers. We’re fertilizing Spanish soil with Roman shit. And one more thing: the Spaniards never bathe.
But they are brave. We found that out during the hundred years (a hundred and four to be precise) of our constant war against Spain: from the moment Hamilcar Barca crossed from Africa to Cádiz and challenged us by sacking Spain and turning it into a base for Carthage’s campaign against Rome, until the fall of the hardheaded and suicidal city of Numantia to the cohorts of our hero Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus.
They live on an island. Or almost. Surrounded by water on all sides except the narrow but thick neck of the Pyrenees, the Spaniards are insular beings. Or peninsular, to be precise. To them the world matters nothing. Their land, everything. And to the world they matter nothing. It’s possible we Romans might have left them in peace: let them choke to death on their barley and boiled rabbits. But Carthage intervened and transformed Spain into a gamble and a danger. The road to Rome from Africa runs through Spain. In Spain, Africa defeats Rome. And after conquering Rome, there will be nothing more to conquer. That was the threat, and Carthage placed its bet on Spain.
They always viewed themselves as the end of the world, the tail end of the continent. That’s how they wanted to be seen, and that’s how they were seen. The farthest point, the limit, the corner, the hole, the ass end of the known world. What a shame Carthage chose Spain to defy Rome. Rome had to come to Spain to defend itself and to defend Spain.
Hannibal, son and successor to Hamilcar, marched on Saguntum, surrounded the city, and laid siege to it. The Saguntines gathered all their possessions in the forum and burned them. Then they left the city to fight instead of dying of hunger. They were decimated by Hannibal. From the city walls, the women watched their men die in unequal combat. Some of them threw themselves from the rooftop terraces, others hanged themselves, still others killed themselves along with their children. Hannibal entered a ghost town.
That’s the way they are. That’s how Carthage’s war in Spain began and also how it ended: Saguntum was the prophetic mirror of the siege of Numantia.
* * *
YOU people don’t know how to tell history from legend. Rome feels it’s civilized. I, Polybius of Megalopolis, Greek of ancient lineage, tell you you are mistaken. Rome is an immature nation, as coarse and barbaric as the Celtiberians. Less so than they, but in no way comparable to the refined Greeks. And yet, something that has abandoned us Greeks has taken its place in the heart of Rome: Fortune, what we Greeks call Tyché. In matters of history, Tyché leads all the affairs of the world in a single direction. All the historian has to do is provide an order for the events determined by Fortune. My great good fortune (my personal luck) consists in having been a witness to the moment in which Rome became Fortune’s protagonist. Until then, the world lived under the sign of dispersion. Beginning with Rome, the world becomes an organic totality. The affairs of Africa are linked to those of Greece and Asia. All these facts lead to the same end: the world united by Rome. That is history’s very reason for being. All of you are the witnesses of my good fortune. In fifty-three years (which is how old Scipio was when he reached Numantia), Rome has subjugated almost all of the inhabited world. Fortune gave Rome dominion over the world. If I respect the goddess Tyché, I would have to say: this occurred because Rome deserved it. You will remember this history. I leave the rest to antiquarians.
* * *
WE Romans began and finished the war against Carthage in Spain and then against the Hispanic resistance once Carthage was swept from the peninsula. We, the young Roman republic, wanted to infuse into our undertakings a tradition of both military power and civilization. Luckily, we could count on heroes from the same family, the Scipios. Two brothers, Publius Cornelius Scipio and Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus, were the first to whom the Senate and People of Rome assigned the mission of subjugating the Hispanic tribes and incorporating their territories into the Roman republic, wiping out proud Carthaginian ambition forever. The two Scipios brought the war against Carthage to Spain. They arrived with sixty ships, four hundred cavalrymen, and ten thousand infantrymen. The Carthaginians sent Hasdrubal with thirty masked elephants. The Scipios killed many elephants, which were blinded by masks that were supposed to save them from the vision of fear. But death killed the two Scipios.
The two of them were taking their ease, as is usual in wars when winter comes. A tacit truce is established, and the adversaries take refuge in mountain passes. Sometimes the power of the storms is so great that the wind smashes the very eagles against the flanks of the mountains, and their feathers fall like a dark rain on the snow. A real warrior, however, is not disheartened by the whims of the seasons. He’s devoured by the worm of war. Publius Cornelius, nervous and stiff with cold, decided to catch Hasdrubal the Carthaginian by surprise. But Hasdrubal, even more nervous, had already come out searching for Publius Cornelius: Hasdrubal surrounded his force and killed him.
* * *
THE other Scipio, his brother, Gnaeus Cornelius, knew nothing of what had happened. Moved by an obscure fraternal instinct, he marched out to reconnoiter the frozen countryside. He was guided by a dread apprehension. The Carthaginians attacked him, forcing him to take refuge in a tower, which they immediately set on fire. There that valiant man died, amid the flames and the frost. Thus we confirm that in winter truces, there can only be rest if one of the adversaries abstains from fighting, because it is certain that the other will always be lying in ambush. Who can understand the fatality of these mortal games?
The collapse of the winter truce was an evil omen. Five Roman commanders followed one after another in Spain. Marcellus came with a thousand cavalry and ten thousand foot soldiers. He failed resoundingly, to such a degree that his defeats gave virtually all of Spain — except for a tiny corner in the Pyrenees — to Carthage. That’s how we discovered that in Spain a perverse Archimedes’ Principle obtains: give me a tiny corner, however dark, however small it may be, from which to fight, and from there I’ll move the world …