good Silenus was. He would marry ride and lesson with Xenophon. “You can’t know too much Xenophon,” he would say. “Good for your Greek and even better for the life that awaits you.” So would we read from the Pen Hippikes, On Horsemanship. “Look well at the horn of the hoof. A thick horn makes for much sounder feet than a thin one. Take care, too, to see the hoofs are high front and back, not flattened …” Silenus told me that Xenophon wrote this for the instruction of his own sons, Gryllus and Diodorus. I liked to know that. I wondered what they were like, these sons. One fell at the battle of Mantinea, fighting the Thebans. “But how did he die?” I asked Silenus. He did not know. Bravely, I was sure.
So these days came and went untroubled, calm. Sometimes at night I would wonder at my solitude as I drifted into sleep. But I knew in my youth of something to come for which all this was preparation. I did not question. Then the messenger came.
I had never heard the gong before, though I passed it every day. It stood below the terrace of the great hall. Each morning, as I crossed the courtyard to my classroom, two slaves would be polishing its bronze surface, taller than a man, until it shone like a mirror. Above the crossbars of beki wood on which it hung was a great hammer, a thing as old, they said, as Carthage itself. This gong was heard as Aeneas deserted Dido, Queen of Carthage, and as she mounted her own funeral pyre in her madness and her grief. None knew who had sounded it.
Its sound that afternoon made my neck hairs bristle, so pure was the pitch. I was studying with Silenus. My boisterous brother Mago burst through the door. His stammer was always worse when he was excited. “H-H-H-annibal! A aa messs-senggger has come!” Outside, the household was already assembling in the yard. From below the gardens in their cages, my father’s elephants were trumpeting, disturbed by the gong. Hamilax was busy here and there, marshalling the folk, for all had come at the wondrous sounding of the gong, the kitchen slaves, the gardeners, the bakers, the water-carriers, all. In a corner on a makeshift bier there lay a man, his clothes torn and filthy, his beard matted with salt, his face the face of one who has made a long journey.
Standing on the steps that led to the hall, by a statue of a Cabirian called Aletes, discoverer of mines in Spain, Hamilax saw me come from my classroom, Silenus behind. Hamilax led me with him through the crowd. “We are waiting for the Elders,” he said. “Word has been sent. It is as well, for the man we are to hear needs time.” He left to see to the messenger. I stood where he had stood, on the steps alone, the crowd thronging about me.
When the Elders came, they merely joined me on the steps, boy though I was. But was I not Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, of the line of Barca, yes, even of Dido? I remember still the smell of Gisco, Sufet of Carthage and Chief of the Council, his sweating body reeking of frankincense and musk. He was appointed Sufet only in my father’s absence for war. The folds of his neck hung down like a donkey’s ears. His stomach overflowed to hide the scarlet breeches on his upper thighs. His pig’s eyes glinted at me from the fat that was his face.
His right arm round the shoulders of Hamilax, the messenger limped to join us. The crowd hushed, expectant. This memory is far away, and I was but a boy. Yet if I cannot now remember exactly what he said, I remember how he said it. In a voice that faltered, he began, “Elders, people of Hamilcar, Carthaginians, I have come in haste from Hamilcar and from Sicily to tell you, to tell you …”
“Speak, man!” ordered Gisco angrily.
“…that our fleet is lost.”
A murmur drew across the crowd, as a wind rustles leaves. Gisco snapped the spatula of aloe that he carried to scratch his scrofulous skin. “Go on, man, go on!”
We all knew of the fleet we had sent two months ago to support my father’s campaign against the Romans in Sicily. Though secure enough at his base on Mount Eryx, my father was short of supplies – and pay. His Balearic slingers were paid in women, and there had been few enough of those, cooped up as the army was with the Romans holding the rest of the island. The other troops, especially the Numidians, were paid in gold. Of that my father had none.
All this we knew from my father’s regular despatches. So, at last – the Council had been most reluctant, Silenus told me – a special tax was levied. It had to be. After twenty-three years of war, our resources were spent. The trade that was our greatest wealth was much reduced for want of galleys to reach to the far shores of the Tartessians and the Oestrymnians, to the islands of the Cassiterides and its mines of tin. Rebellions on the Cyreniac frontier meant our trade in precious silphium was now a trickle. We had no troops to spare for mere marauding tribesmen. Sicily, from which we always drew so many of our slaves, was almost closed to us.
Yet the tax, largely on the merchant class, was raised and paid, a new fleet built, equipped. One hundred and fifty quinqueremes, replacing those we had lost earlier in the war at the naval battles of Mylae and Ecnomus, set sail for Sicily, laden with supplies. All this I knew, patiently explained to me by Silenus. Since then, there had been no news.
The messenger resumed. “The plan of our admiral Hanno was always clear, discussed, agreed by many here. Burdened with supplies for Hamilcar, he was to avoid the Roman fleet, sail to Eryx and land his stores. Taking on board Hamilcar, your father, Hannibal” – and he raised a weak hand to gesture to me: how proud I was – “and the best of his troops to serve as marines, he was to seek out and destroy the Roman fleet.
“So was it planned, and well so. I was myself on Hanno’s craft, a quartermaster, as has my family – though we are poor – served this state for – ”
“Shut up, man!” shouted Gisco. “We want none of this. The fleet, man, the fleet!”
Raising his head, the man continued in a monotone that cleared and grew as his tale. “We mustered at Holy Isle, Hanno planning a final run from there to the coast of Sicily before the cursed Romans learned of our intent. But, by Melkarth, by some great doom, the Romans knew. The wind was behind us and our ships ran fair across the sea. I was on deck. Through the spray, through the early morning mist I looked for the coast of Sicily. Then the lookout cried, ‘Ahead, ahead, ahead!’ Above me on the poop deck I could see Hanno grasp the rail and stare. Becoming clearer by the moment and lying just off the Aegates Islands was a double-tiered crescent – of Roman ships.
“But the sea was behind us. To attack, the Romans would have had to row into a heavy sea head on. Our sails were full. Had the Romans stayed on their stations, we could have swept past them, laden as we were. And, as was right, Hanno gave the commands. The arrowhead of our fleet in tight formation tacked seawards, swerving to avoid disaster. But, but – ” This time Gisco did not upbraid him. Hamilax brought water. The man drank, continued.
“But disaster came to us. Into that sea, breaking over their prows, drenching their soldiers, their galleys came, the Romans rowing at us, incredible, impossible, their oars flaying sea to foam. Against the wind, still there was only the boom, boom, boom of their drums, setting the rowers’ stroke. Then trumpets flamed and fired their ranks.
“In line, ordered, full against us they came. Seeing disaster, Hanno had our ship, then three more, heave to. The rest sailed on – to death. We saw, we saw” – and tears choked his voice – “we saw it all. Full ahead, ship skewered ship. Bronze beaks stripped wood, bit and bit. Oars smashed, sterns caved in. Ship after ship capsized. At first, our fleet held firm, hoping to force through. Then, one by one, they tried to slip away, but Romans grappled them. The sea was swamped with wreckage, corpses, provisioning for Hamilcar. The Roman soldiers boarded one by one our almost unarmed ships and gaffed and stabbed and smashed and killed till all the sea was shrieks and dying cries. Of our own Carthaginians, Artembares died there, though he was master of 10,000 stades and pious too to Melkarth, and Dadaces the chiliarch, Tenado and Asdrubal, Metallo the myriarch, Arabo, lord of my own
