‘Do you remember how I war-gamed the assault?’ Scipio said, turning back to Polybius. ‘I said that too often we just focus on the obviously defensible features: the walls, the temples, the arsenals. Those features were all that the veterans of the last war against Carthage were able to tell me about, but that was before I met Terence. He told me about the ring of ancient houses that surround the Byrsa, to a depth equivalent of two or three of our tenement blocks. Think of the houses of the plebs that surround us now in Rome, pressing up against the edge of the Forum. A general planning an assault on Rome would hardly concern himself with them, because they’re in city blocks and you could march straight past them down the streets towards the Forum. If there was any resistance, you’d simply torch them because they’re mostly wood and plaster. No defender worth his salt would set up a position there, but would instead fall back on the stone buildings of the Forum.’
‘But Carthage must be different,’ Polybius said pensively. ‘There’s less timber available in Africa, so more use of stone for even the rudest of dwellings.’
Scipio nodded enthusiastically. ‘Precisely. Those houses seen by Terence are made of stone: the walls from upright pillars, the spaces in between filled with masonry. Terence says they’ve inset wooden beams as joists for the floors, but you wouldn’t be able to burn them easily unless you could rain fire through the roof. For that, you’d need siege engines, or catapults on ships anchored close up to the sea wall. And the houses themselves are like a rabbit warren, not laid out in regular blocks but with narrow alleyways and rooftop walkways, as well as underground cisterns in each house where defenders could lurk. That’s what Terence meant about hide-and-seek. An assaulting force within a stone’s throw of the Byrsa might think they’d won the day, but they’d be sorely mistaken. The elite forces of mercenaries and special guards who are usually the last to hold out in a siege — the ones who know they’d be shown no mercy if they were to surrender — could organize a defence in depth and make the assault force pay dearly for it, at precisely the time when the legionaries would have begun to turn their thoughts to victory and booty. The assault commander would have to ensure that they kept up the momentum and rolled forward into those houses with the bloodlust still high. It’s a tactical insight I wanted to share with you. I’ve been thinking of Carthage again, Polybius. I’ve got Terence to thank for that.’
Polybius gave him a wry smile. ‘Well, I’ve always been sceptical about playwrights. But now I can see they have their uses.’ He stood up and looked through the columns of the entrance at the massed ranks of Latin troops who had begun to march past them along the Sacred Way, the beginning of a long procession of victorious allies who followed on behind the legionaries and the spoils of war. ‘You’d better get going and get your dose of drama before the evening festivities really take off. I’ve just spotted Demetrius of Syria with his bodyguards, and I want to catch him for any intelligence about another upstart who’s claiming the succession from Perseus in Macedonia. It’s not often that you get so many of Rome’s allies in the city at one time, and I need to use the opportunity.’
‘We have a little over an hour until the play begins,’ Scipio replied. ‘You wanted to tell me something too?’
Polybius turned to gaze at Julia and Scipio, and Fabius saw something else in his eyes, a faltering look, even a sadness. ‘This day is a chance for you to be together without others watching you, or knowing where you are. I wanted to tell you that the doors of my little house below the Palatine are open, and my slave girl Fabina knows you may be coming. You do not know when you may have the chance again. As for me, I’m off. Ave atque vale. And remember what I said. Seize the day.’
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Acknowledgements
Introductory Note
Maps
Characters
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Part Two
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Three
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Four
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Five
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Six
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Author’s Note
Also by David Gibbins
About the Author
Copyright
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to my agent, Luigi Bonomi of LBA, and to Rob Bartholomew of The Creative Assembly for having set this project in motion; to Jeremy Trevathan, Catherine Richards and the team at Macmillan for their work in getting this book into production, as well as to Peter Wolverton and Anne Brewer at St Martin’s Press in New York; and to the team at The Creative Assembly and at Sega® for all of their support and input. I owe special thanks to Martin Fletcher for his excellent editorial work, to Jessica Cuthbert-Smith for her excellent copyediting and to Ann Verrinder for proofreading and scrutinizing the manuscript at every stage and giving much useful advice.
I am grateful to Brian Warmington, Emeritus Reader in Ancient History at the University of Bristol and author of Carthage (Penguin, 1964), for having taught me Republican Roman history in such a memorable fashion and for having encouraged my interest in the Punic Wars. My involvement with the archaeology of Carthage owes much to Henry Hurst, my doctoral supervisor at Cambridge and director of the British Mission in the UNESCO ‘Save Carthage’ project, who invited me to join his excavation at the harbour entrance and supported my own underwater archaeology expedition to Carthage the following year. That project was made possible by the British Academy, the Cambridge University Classics Faculty, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Dr Abdelmajid Ennabli, director of the Carthage Museum; I am also grateful to the many expedition members for their work on those projects.
I first studied the battlefield of Pydna and the sculpture from the monument of Aemilius Paullus on travels in Greece funded by the Society of Antiquaries of London. My knowledge of ancient naval warfare was greatly expanded during my tenure of a Winston Churchill Memorial Travel Fellowship in the east Mediterranean, when I was able to spend time in Haifa, Israel, and study the Athlit Ram — the only surviving ram from an ancient warship — and then in Greece to examine the trireme Olympias. My interest in ancient Rome developed over many visits to explore the archaeology of the city, most memorably with my father, when we discussed the possibility of pinpointing remains from a particular date and creating a book out of it; that led me to trace the likely route of the triumphal procession of Aemilius Paullus in 167 BC, and to study structures still extant among the ruins of the Forum and elsewhere in Rome dating from that period. I am also grateful to my brother Alan for his photography and film-making, and to Jordan Webber for her help with my website www.davidgibbins.com.