Authors: David Anthony Durham
Fabius watched anxiously as the city of Beneventum repulsed the Carthaginian attack. He sent a messenger to them with the promise that they would be rewarded for their loyalty later. On the other hand, he failed to anticipate Hannibal's strike at Telesia. He took the town with ease and found vast stores of grain hidden hastily within it. Again, Varro shouted in his superior's ear, as if his hearing were in doubt as well as his sight. But the dictator was as determined as the invader. He held to his chosen course.
One evening as Fabius returned to his tent from relieving himself, Publius spoke out of the darkness. He said that he could not sleep for thinking about the suffering Hannibal was inflicting upon the people. Fabius searched out his cot with his foot and lowered himself to it. Once comfortably situated, he gave the young Scipio a moment's thought. He had thus far not voiced a personal opinion of the campaign. Unlike Varro, he had been raised well, by a revered family and by a father who took his son's upbringing seriously. Considering this, he decided to dignify Publius with a brief response.
“Our charge requires that we must sleep,” he said, “so that we may better work to free them on the morrow.”
“You are right, of course,” Publius said, “but do you not think of them at all? Do you not see them in your dreams?”
“No, I do not.” Fabius spoke firmly, in a tone meant to end the conversation.
But the younger man said, “Their suffering is like a scene painted upon a thin curtain through which I see the world. I still see beyond them, but I cannot forget their present turmoil for even a moment. I see faces of individual men and women, of children, so clear it seems they are people known to me, even though they are not. They ask me to remember them, to realize fully that each of them has only one life, like fragile glass crushed beneath Hannibal's foot.”
Fabius rolled irritably to his side. “You dream of poets, not of peasants.”
“At times, simple people seem much the same.”
“Such dreams do not serve you well. You should stop having them. It is not for a leader to think in specific terms: neither of strangers, nor of his own family. This is what the young do not understand. I consider a larger vision than you are capable of. Now go to sleep. You are my eyes, not my mouth!”
A few days later, the Carthaginian made another daring move. Hannibal departed Telesia. He snaked his army through the mountains not far from Samnium, crossed the Volturnus, and descended onto the plains of Campania. This country was in the full bloom of summer, as rich as the Nile delta, so far unscathed by the war and unprepared for its sudden arrival. Fabius did his best to send messengers ahead in warning, but he knew this effort was largely in vain. Hannibal had the whole of the Falernian plain at his mercy. If that were not bad enough, this move put him for the first time within striking distance of Rome itself.
Varro raged yet again, but still Fabius stood upon the hills staring out, firm in his resolve, ears attuned to the youth speaking softly beside him. It was Publius who casually mentioned that Hannibal's forces were now within a natural boundary, and that that could be used against them. Fabius pulled in his blurred gaze and focused on the soldier standing beside him, almost as if seeing him for the first time, though they had now been inseparable for weeks. He asked Publius to explain this notion. And the young soldier did, much to the older one's interest.
The situation became clear to Hannibal well before the body of his joyous army paused to consider it. They were afoot and unbeaten on Italian soil, enjoying the bounty of Campania, elated by their victories, fat from fine food, and sated from conquerors' sex. Most of the army had slaves they called their own in the train behind them, and these were laden with all they could carry and more: weapons and jewels; coins and tools and sacred items. Behind them followed hundreds of cattle, some newly slaughtered each evening, the scent of their roasting adding a pleasant air to camp. While they were constantly aware of the army following their every move, the Roman cowards did not dare engage with them. Hannibal several times set the army on a field perfect for battle and invited Fabius to engage, but the Roman sat on his hands and did nothing. None of the army of Carthage had ever imagined their lot could be this good. Campania had been a blessing to them; this Fabius had been less a foe than an escort. But Hannibal saw a problem stalking them, as gradual and inevitable as the change of seasons.
He called a meeting of his generals and opened it by asking them to study the charts of their current position, paying close attention to his notes detailing the best information he had on the Roman positions. They had entered the plain through the narrow pass of Callicula. Fabius took this pass shortly after, leaving a detachment of four thousand men sitting tight within it. The dictator then sent his master of horse to the defile of Terracina, where the mountains came down to the sea and the Via Appia could be easily held. He strengthened the garrison at Casilinum and lined the hills hemming in the plain with troops awaiting any weakness, easily called to arms, with a daylight view of all the Carthaginians might undertake.
“In short,” Hannibal said, “we are trapped. This plain is a joy for summer raiding, but it will not sustain us through a winter. Nor would it be wise to stay here with nearby cities like Capua and Nola still hostile to us. Fabius knows it. That is partly why he watched us and did not engage, so that we might confine ourselves to winter in a depleted land. What thoughts have you each?”
As was their custom each general spoke in turn, each espousing a different course of action, if not from conviction then from custom, for Hannibal always asked to hear all reasonable alternatives before settling on the best. Bomilcar argued in favor of fighting through the pass; Maharbal suggested a dash toward the Via Appia, double time, to beat the season and reach someplace more favorable; Bostar suggested, though doubtfully, that they might ford the Volturnus; Monomachus was adamant that they could easily survive the winter, for they carried with them more than just cattle to eat.
Hannibal was silent. If he disagreed with any proposal he did not say so at once; nor did he have to, for Mago found the faults of each. The Romans held all the positions of advantage. The toll the Carthaginians would suffer in dead if they tried to fight up through the pass would leave them fatally weak. They would be no wiser than the Persians at Thermopylae, and unlike the Persians, they did not have thousands of lives to waste. They could run for the south, but this would spread them dangerously thin. The men would have to abandon their booty; this would damage morale, cost them much of what they had gained thus far, and betray a measure of fear that would give the Romans heart. The river itself posed a formidable barrier, hard to cross at any time and certainly no favorable route with an army ready to pounce on them.
Mago tossed the dagger he had been using as a pointer down upon the table. “Trapped! Fabius has all of Latium and Samnium and Beneventum to call upon for supplies. They will get fat while we starve. This plain of bounty will be the death of us.”
Hannibal spoke lightheartedly, looking at Mago with a crooked grin on his lips. “My brother has a soldier's fire in his soul,” he said. “And yet there's still some of the poet in him. It is my joy to see him grow this way.”
Mago snapped his head up and stared at his brother, searching for sarcasm. Instead he saw a wry humor written on his face, like one who has thought of a joke and is about to share it. Mago had seen this look before. He smiled and shook his head at his own outburst. “Tell us, then,” he said.
On that prompting, Hannibal explained how they were to proceed.
In the days that followed, the sprawling army marched back toward the ridge of mountains barring entry into Apulia. The plain they crossed stretched right up to the base of the mountains, and the peaks rose in one thrust. They could make out the dispositions of Fabius' army, clinging to the heights, waiting, watching. The glow of their fires stood out in the night, showing by their size the various routes through the mountains. The widest pass had the largest contingent of soldiers, but Fabius left no possible route unguarded. Small units held the smaller openings against spies or messengers or any who might seek solitary escape. Though many among the army groaned at their situation, Hannibal saw only the conditions he had anticipated.
The men ate quickly that evening. They made tight bundles of their weapons and supplies. They secured what supplies they could to the backs of horses and donkeys and even cattle. Men rushed out under the dying light of day and gathered all the wood they could find: fallen branches and decaying trees and twigs of all sizes right down to finger thin. These they piled near the edge of camp. Beside it they collected a hundred select steers in one mass of uneasy bovine life. For this task, Hannibal wanted only the largest from the herd they had gathered over the summer, the ones with wide horns and the strength to endure the ordeal he planned for them.
Mindful of the gods and of his men's morale, Hannibal asked Mandarbal to sanctify the proceedings. The robed priest went to his task with a surly belligerence, uttering the sacred words that were his province. He explained little to the nervous eyes watching them, but moved among the beasts cutting nicks in their shoulders and necks. He grasped at invisible objects, snatching them down and pressing them into his heart and rubbing them along the shaft of his dagger. he slapped away the hands of any who were touching the steers so that none fouled them during his ritual. By the time he concluded, all believed the method of their hoped-for escape had somehow been married to a great offering: a religious sacrifice and their own deliverance, at once.
Once Mandarbal retired, Hannibal himself oversaw the next phase of preparations. With his own hands, he tugged one of the animals away from the rest and toward the woodpile. He picked pieces of wood and placed them between the creature's horns, balancing them carefully. He called for twine to secure them. Soon the creature wore a headdress of sticks and branches woven through and tied to its horns and smeared with the pitch used to fuel torches. Hannibal stepped back and studied the wary, dejected creature, head heavy beneath its load.
Standing beside his brother, Mago said, “This is a singularly strange undertaking.”
Hannibal did not disagree. He ordered that all the steers be similarly dressed.
The moon was thin and cast little light as the army left camp. They crept toward the base of the mountains and then up across their toes. For now, they went by the light of a few torches only. Fast behind them, herders drove the cattle forward. The rest of the army followed, awkward beneath their burdens, prodded by the feet nipping their ankles. Camp followers scampered in the rear, nervous about this whole venture but seeing no means to avoid it.
The route led some distance up toward two of the passes, the main way and a lower, narrower gap that was a plausible enough choice for Fabius to have positioned a small company there. When he could see the Roman fires in both camps, Hannibal whispered the agreed-upon command. The bearers of the few torches turned and offered them to those waiting near with unlighted wands. First one and then another and then many new flames sprang to life. In an instant they gave up all notion of stealth and watched each other's faces and bodies appear in wavering, warm yellow light. And then, before the beasts had time to panic, they were set on fire. The torch carriers moved among them, touching flame to the fuel carried on their horns. A moment later the herders shouted them into motion.
The cattle, unsure what was happening to them, sprang forward and ran upward, ducking their heads and weaving around trees and shrubs as if they might escape the flames through speed and footwork. The army trailed behind them. Though the beasts bellowed and snorted and filled the night with frantic sounds, the men moved as quietly as they could, coughing into their hands and shading their eyes against the smoke and trying to breathe through their mouths.
The Roman guards looking down upon this weaving herd of lights were mystified. They had seen nothing like this and could make no sense of the size of the fires, or of the way they moved, or of the eerie sounds carried by the night air. They woke the tribune in charge of the pass. He sent a messenger to Fabius, but he knew that he would not receive a reply in time to avert whatever mischief was afoot. He had to act. For lack of a better explanation, the tribune concluded that the Carthaginians were making a rush on the lower pass. Of course they were. That was the type of bold maneuver this African would attempt, to attack the weaker camp and push through with brute force. The tribune ordered the bulk of his men to speed across and down and reinforce the small contingent there. This maneuver would not be easy in the dark, but he had been warned of Hannibal's underhandedness and had no desire to be made a fool of.
Hannibal had, of course, counted on just this move. When he saw Roman torchlight leaving the high pass, he gave the order for the main body of the army to follow him. They moved away from the flaming cattle and proceeded, stealthily, toward the high pass, the one now being hastily deserted.
By the time the animals reached the Romans in the other pass, they were wailing like monsters under the torture of hide and flesh aflame. They came at the Roman infantrymen, a horde of beasts sent forth by the will of Baal himself, stepping from the dark frenzied, driven by smoke and flame. They shook their heads and raked them on the ground and bumped into one another and climbed in this chaos. A few Romans loosed their spears. One or two raised their swords as if to do combat. Most retreated, calling to each other, each asking the one beside him to explain this sight. None understood that at that moment Hannibal and the better part of his army were taking the high pass nearly unchallenged.
A few hours later the sky lightened just enough to reveal their gray forms. Fabius, watching through the eyes of the young Publius Scipio, saw the last of the Carthaginian army disappear over the pass. The remaining guards pulled up from their posts and bid the plains of Campania farewell. The whole army slipped out of sight, like the tail of a serpent into its den.