Silvanus then turned round and stormed out of the room.
Aquila had trailed them round the saddle of Mount Etna, which was, as usual, smoking and rumbling threateningly, then followed them through the foothills until the whole mass of runaways, with their women, livestock and children, debouched onto the littoral north of the city of Catana. Coming down onto the plain, in their wake, he found empty farms, with the houses ransacked and storerooms stripped bare, but no bodies. Word spread quickly of this slave army and every overseer for miles around, and his guards, deserted their property and fled south to Syracuse. Even from a distance Aquila noticed the increasing size of the host as every freed slave, exposed to the flowing ideas of Hypolitas, flocked to join them. By the time the walls of Syracuse showed on the horizon their numbers filled the landscape.
Marcellus stood on the walls. To the north he could see the dust cloud created by the insurgents as they marched towards the city, behind him, if he had cared to turn, he would have seen numerous ships pulling out of the harbour as the less stalwart Romans, with those Greeks who had helped them, sought to escape across the narrow straits to Italy. Titus’s attempts to persuade them to stay had come to nought; indeed he had been asked, caustically, what he was doing on the island, supposedly a military legate, without a couple of legions to back him up.
‘They’ll be outside the walls tomorrow,’ said Titus.
‘Do we stay?’ asked Marcellus.
‘Yes. They have no ships, so they can’t blockade the harbour. They’ll soon find out it’s impossible to take Syracuse without a supporting fleet. We need to get a message to your father. If we can pin them down here, it will be easy to bring troops into the town by sea. If another legion came down the coast from Messana, we could trap them between two forces and destroy them.’
But they did not stop for the city; Gadoric was wise to the notion that he needed a fleet to subdue such a place, just as he knew, from the locals, that Syracuse had a history of withstanding lengthy sieges, even against enemies who possessed ships in abundance. It was too Roman and too well fortified to be easily taken. They invested it nevertheless, but only so that they could strip the countryside bare for miles around of food and slaves. The inhabitants of Syracuse who had stayed behind, under Titus’s command, and who had set themselves to fight until help arrived from Italy, woke one morning to find the plain before their city devoid of their foes, who had decamped during the night and headed south. Aquila watched the party of twenty mounted Romans, their red cloaks billowing behind them, leave the town and set off in pursuit. Too few to fight, they were obviously intent on shadowing their enemy.
Gadoric, turning west along the southern coast, ignored the offers of surrender from the small conurbation of Camarina, moving on quickly to stay ahead of the spreading panic, by-passing the major city of Geta by fording the river well to the north. He forced-marched his trained bands to the next river, one of the two that hemmed in the city of Agrigentum, leaving the mass of untrained slaves to follow. Mounted detachments were sent to cut the bridges and hold the fords on the river to the west and he ordered the straggling mass of slaves into the foothills north of the city, then spent two days sorting them into manageable groups. Finally, with no moon to warn of their arrival, he ordered everyone down onto the plains that stretched away on either side of Agrigentum.
The inhabitants, who supposed this threat, if it existed at all, was still well to the east of Geta, woke one morning to find what looked like a huge army camped outside their crumbling walls, with a simple offer available to them. Open your gates and you will be spared; resist and the whole city will be put to the sword. The recently freed slaves, in truth useless in a fight, looked formidable enough in their newly rehearsed and static formations, so for someone looking out from the crumbling walls of Agrigentum, the position seemed hopeless. Hypolitas, with Gadoric and Pentheus at his side, rode forward to talk to the leading citizens who lined the walls. He spoke of the tyranny of Rome, told them that he had no desire to hurt fellow-Greeks, and promised that his army would not occupy the city in strength, but would instead disperse to the surrounding farms to assist, as free men, in the cultivation of the land. He promised to respect the temples and the women and to abide by the statutes of the city, as long as he was afforded the same civility he intended to give to them.
Even those who wanted to resist knew that it was impossible. Given time, the walls could have been repaired, making the city as formidable as it had been a hundred years before, but there was no time, the enemy was at the gates. Only Roman legions, backed by a strong fleet of ships, could oppose this slave army. The legions were nowhere to be seen and, besides, in such a Greek city, they would scarcely have been any more welcome than Hypolitas. He capitalised on this, talking of freedom for the whole island, of throwing off the Roman yoke, with slave and freedman combining to create a prosperous future. Such a dream, such words, in the mouth of another man, would have been risible, but Hypolitas had that compelling voice, which could hold the attention of the largest crowd, plus the finale with his magic fire. For him, the gates were open before the sun had reached its zenith.
Marcellus looked at Titus to see how he would react but the face was still, as if set in stone, gazing on the gates of Agrigentum, wide open, with the runaway slaves as free to enter as the citizens were to leave. Hypolitas and his ramshackle horde had a city and a fine harbour and they could see that some of that army was already busy repairing the walls.
‘Well, Marcellus,’ said Titus finally, gesturing towards the white walls. ‘What do you suppose this means?’
‘A long hard fight, a fleet to blockade the harbour, siege engines to batter the walls and several legions to carry out the assault.’
Titus swung his horse round. ‘The first thing we must do is seal the approaches east and west. That army is big enough. When word gets out that they’ve taken a city, every slave in Sicily will be trying to join them.’
Marcellus pointed towards the solitary horseman watching them from the ridge. ‘He’s still there. Is he following us, or the slaves?’
‘Time to find out,’ shouted Titus, who had studiously ignored the man trailing him, though the constant presence, like an itch you could not scratch, had annoyed him greatly. He kicked his horse and headed straight for him, followed by Marcellus and the rest of his men.
Aquila watched them for a moment; they were aimed at him like an arrow, with the billowing clouds of dust raised by their hooves adding to the effect of their streaming red cloaks. He hauled his horse’s head round, and calmly trotted off the ridge. Only when he was out of sight did he kick the mount into a gallop, heading for the deep ravines that furrowed the foothills of the mountains surrounding Agrigentum. Losing his pursuers was simple.
‘A fleet is the first priority,’ said Titus. ‘We must commandeer ships from Rhegium and Neapolis. Anything will do, just as long as we can man them with proper soldiers.’
Lucius listened carefully, his face drawn; still feeling the effects of his chest wound, the journey had not been kind to his health. ‘You fear they will seek allies?’