Scipio Rules Read online

  scipio rules

  Book Five of the

  Scipio Africanus saga

  Martin Tessmer

  Copyright © 2017

  All rights reserved

  Dedication

  To all my readers.

  Thanks for pursuing Scipio’s quest with me

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Among 20th and 21st century historians, I am primarily indebted to Professor Richard Gabriel for his informative and readable Scipio Africanus: Rome’s Greatest General, and his Ancient Arms and Armies of Antiquity. H. Liddell Hart’s Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon provided many valuable insights into Scipio the general and Scipio the man. Thanks to you both.

  Among classic historians, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Titus Livius (Livy) for Hannibal’s War: Books 31-45 (translated by Henry Bettenson) and Polybius for The Histories (translated by Robin Waterfield). Cassius Dio’s Roman History provided additional details and confirmed some of Livy’s and Polybius’ assertions. Appian, Dodge, Scullard, and Mommsen, thanks to you all for the many tidbits your works provided.

  Cato the Elder’s De Agri Cultura and Plutarch’s Roman Lives provided insight into Cato, the man who so influenced the course of Western History.

  I must give a tip of the hat to Wikipedia. Wikimedia, and the scores of websites about the peoples and countries of 200 BCE. The Total War Center and Forum Romanum were excellent sources of information, commentary, and argument.

  Susan Sernau provided invaluable copy editing. James Millington’s assiduous proofreading lent a final polish to the manuscript. Thanks to you both.

  Credits

  Cover design by pro_ebookcovers at Fiverr.com

  Roman Women at the Baths, provided by Wikimedia Commons courtesy of Lawrence Alma Tademadema.

  Antiochus III photo provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Carole Raddato

  Philip V photo provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of World Imaging

  Scipio Africanus photo provided by Bode Museum.

  Amelia Tertia image provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of the Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum

  War Chariot image provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Clare

  Cato the Elder mage provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Carlo Brogi

  Hannibal Barca image provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Carole Raddato

  War Elephant image provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Helene Guerber

  Macedonian Phalanx image provided by Wikimedia Commons

  Gladiatrices photo provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Carole Raddato

  Gallic Chieftains image provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of William Warde

  Thracian Peltast image provided by Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Dariusz T. Wielec

  Cover photo by Andreas Praefcke, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

  A Note About Historical Accuracy

  Scipio Rules is a dramatization of the events surrounding Publius Cornelius Scipio’s military and political activities after his conquest of Carthage, as recorded by Livy, Polybius, Gabriel, Appian, Mommsen, Bagnall, and Beard.

  This is a work of historical fiction. It is a story that weaves together elements of fiction and historical record. It is not a history textbook.

  The book’s major characters, places, events, battles, and timelines are matters of record, meaning they are noted by at least one of our acknowledged historians. You will see footnotes scattered throughout the text to document various aspects of the book. I have included several quotes of the character’s actual words, as described by Livy and Polybius, with a source footnote at the end of the quote.

  The Hellenic Party and Latin Party names were created to capture the recorded enmities between the faction favoring a more “decadent” Hellenic lifestyle and the agrarian traditionalists who disparaged them. Scipio and Cato were two notable examples of Hellenic and Latin attitudes, respectively.

  “...Even before Scipio came back from Africa the question was, would the conqueror of Hannibal raise any constitutional issues and how would he meet the challenges of the hostile faction that had been intriguing against him during his absence.”

  Howard H. Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970.

  ”In trying to determine the place of Scipio Africanus in the military history of the West, one cannot ignore Basil Liddell-Hart’s claim that Scipio was the greatest military commander in all antiquity, exceeding in military skill and ingenuity such luminaries as Hannibal, Caesar, and Alexander the Great.

  For more than a decade after Scipio returned from Africa in 201 BCE, he was the “first man in Rome,” the state’s most famous and influential person. Although he did not win every political battle in which he became involved...Scipio was an important political player in all the major Roman policy decisions, and had some share in every important movement or event.”

  Richard Gabriel. Scipio Africanus, Rome’s Greatest General. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc. 2008.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  I. Three Wars Blooming

  II. EASTERN POWERS

  III. Four Days from Rome

  IV. Assassin

  V. The Wrath of Philip

  VI. GLADIATRIX

  VII. SHIFTING ALLIANCES

  VIII. Philip’s Match

  IX. CYNOSCEPHALAE

  X. Surface Glory

  XI. Rising Powers

  XII. Cato’s Wars

  End Notes

  I. Three Wars Blooming

  ROME, 201 BCE. “You think this is his blood?” Scipio asks, scraping the rim of the battered infantry helmet. “I don’t want to remove it if it’s his.”

  “Oh my gods, you fuss like an old woman! Here, let me see.” Laelius grabs the helmet by its cheekpieces and turns it about, peering at the reddish-brown blotches that line its battered crown.

  “I think the blood’s from Korbis, that Balearic monster,” Scipio says. “Marcus took a spear in the back, and he fell forward into the earth. He wouldn’t have bled onto the top of his helmet.”

  Laelius sniffs the dome. He wrinkles his nose. “Phew! This is gut blood! It must have come from that Korbis, when Marcus slid under him and cut open his bowels.” Laelius’ mouth tightens. “Just before Marcus died.”

  “Just before he died protecting me,” Scipio adds. His eyes moisten. The sun-washed atrium is quiet as Lucius, Laelius, and Scipio mull the carnage of that dread day at Zama.

  “Blood from bowels?” Lucius suddenly blurts. “Get that thing away from me!”

  “Don’t be so prissy, brother,” Scipio says. “You’d think you’d never been in a war. Here, give it to me.”

  Cradling the helmet in his arms, Scipio plops down on one of the atrium couches that border the Scipio manse’s fishpond. He scrubs the helmet with a linen scrap, rubbing into every dent and crevice. Sweat trickles from his salt-and-pepper hair.

  Satisfied, Scipio pitches the scrap onto the stone tile floor. He lays the gleaming helmet next to him. “There. It is free from taint, as ever he was.” Scipio runs his fingers across the helmet’s dents, his eyes distant.

  “What are you going to do with it?” asks Lucius. “It’s just an old piece of armor.”

  “It’s the helmet of Rome’s greatest warrior,” Scipio snaps. “I’m going to keep it right here.” He glares at his brother. “Forever!”

  Scipio holds the helmet up and peers inside it, as if looking for its wearer. “Marcus will be with us at every military meeting. When we haggle over some issue, we have only to see it to wonder, ‘What would Marcus say about this?’ and gain his sage counsel.”

  “I already know what he would say to me,” replies Laelius, his green eyes twinkling. “He would say, ‘
Laelius, you make overmuch of a simple thing, just like the way you dress.’” His smile wanes. “Jupiter’s cock, I never thought I’d miss that dour little ape.”

  “He was the best of all of us,” Scipio murmurs. “He never wavered in battle, or in his morality. Were he born a patrician, he would have ruled Rome.”

  Laelius nods. “He would have been a great Tribune of the Plebs, too. Those of us from the gutters worshipped him: the native citizens, the freedmen, even the slaves.”

  “Why do we need to have meetings, anyway?” Lucius asks. “The war is over. You defeated Hannibal, and Carthage has capitulated. What’s left to do?”

  “He’s right, Scipio.” Laelius says. “What’s to do? The Senate has ratified the peace agreement. Are you afraid Hannibal will rouse Carthage against us?”

  Scipio shakes his head. “From what my spies tell me, Hannibal is too busy fighting his own enemies in their Senate! They’d never grant him another army.”

  He strokes the red horsehair plume on Marcus’ helmet. “No, our meetings will be about new enemies. Rome’s conquest has brought her to the world’s attention. We are a threat to nations that overlooked us before.” He shrugs. “But I make overmuch of that. War is not my concern anymore.”

  Laelius shoves him. “That’s right, and don’t forget it. You have saved Rome enough times. Now you can rest on the laurels of your victor’s crown. No more working at night, studying old scrolls and maps.”

  “Oh, I’ll keep doing that!” Scipio says with a smile. “I’m never less at leisure than when at leisure, or less alone than when alone.” [i]

  “You had best stay home regardless, or the Carthaginians will not be your worst worry!” says a taunting voice from the entrance.

  Amelia walks into the sunny atrium of the Scipio domus, towing three-year-old Cornelia and two-year-old Publius. Scipio’s wife wears a floor-length emerald gown, the thick cotton flowing over her prominent stomach. “For once you will be here for the birth of your child.”

  Laelius and Lucius chuckle. Scipio raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Well, I may be called away. The Gauls have been rambunctious, and that cagey old Philip, his Macedonians might—“

  Amelia flips back her auburn hair and raises her chin, her green eyes shining. “This time I will take no excuses. You will be standing right next to me when I sit on the birthing chair!”

  Scipio bows his head and taps his forehead. “I hear and obey! I shall stray no farther from home than the nearest wine bar.” He grins. “Or tavern.”

  Laelius throws up his hands. “I pray to Mars, you have just been elected Princeps Senatus,[ii] the first senator of Rome, yet you cannot rule your own home!”

  “As the poets say, we must all serve somebody,” Scipio replies. “My commander is certainly more beautiful than that new consul Publius Aelius. What is it they call him? ‘Long nose’?”

  “I have seen him. It is an appellation richly deserved,” Laelius says, grinning. “He’d better watch out or the Gauls will chop it off when that pudgy old fluff is parading around up north, acting like a general.”

  “Well, at least Aelius picked a good time to campaign,” Lucius says. “It’s pretty quiet up there. He won’t have to worry about a fight.”

  Scipio frowns at his brother. “I suppose avoiding conflict is desirable to some.”

  He stretches out upon the couch, watching the February rains pour down from the atrium’s open roof, cascading into the marble-tiled impluvium in the center of the room. Two young slaves rush in and dip their pottery jugs into the pool, rushing off to fill the kitchen’s cooking pots.

  Scipio watches the boys fill their jugs. By the gods, it has been ten years since I had the time to watch something this simple, without war plans buzzing about in my brain. I’d forgotten what it’s like to pay full attention to nothing!

  Laelius notices Scipio’s pensive expression. “Everything all right with you?”

  Scipio stretches languorously. “Oh, everything is just fine—I guess. It’s been two moons since I paraded through Rome, celebrating my triumph. The feasts and celebrations have finally died down, and I am no longer called to be at temple or Senate every night. I love the slower pace, but now I ask myself, ‘What next?’”

  Amelia hands her children to her slave nurse. She joins Scipio on his couch, toying with his tightly curled hair. “Now is the time for you to do something for the people, something that doesn’t involve you going to war. You are the most famous man in Rome, Husband. The people adore you.”

  She digs her fingers into his curls. “You can do more good here than on a battlefield. Use your political power while you’ve still got it!”

  “It’s true,” Laelius says. “Most of the Senate adores you.” He shrugs. “Then again, the rest hate your guts, especially the Latin Party! They think you’ll turn us all into Greek-worshipping artists!”

  Amelia glowers at Laelius. He sits down on a nearby couch, an ill-concealed smile on his face.

  “I am saying you have power—more power than anyone in Rome,” Amelia says. “You cannot waste your political capital by sitting idle.”

  “I have no intention of being idle. I can finally turn to tutoring, and scholarship. That’s always been my dream, remember? You heard me say that thirty years ago, when I was but a child of six. I told it to our tutor Asclepius.”

  “There is time for that when you are old, Husband. Seize the day! You can set the future for Rome. You can build that public library you’ve been talking about, like that one in Alexandria.” She pokes him. “That would be true scholarship, wouldn’t it?”

  “That would be a worthy pursuit,” he says, nodding, “but I can’t do it unless I’m a consul.” He frowns. “Our stodgy laws say I can’t run for ten more years, so I’d have to find another way to get it done.”

  Laelius snorts. “Consul! The two we’ve got can’t find their ass with both hands! And they are out there trying to play general against the Gauls and Iberians. You should go help them. That’s what you’re good at. Use your genius to keep our children from becoming slaves.”

  “At least you have children,” Lucius says, eyeing Cornelia and Publius.

  Laelius pats Lucius on the back. “You will have dozens of them, I am sure. Enough that you’ll regret ever having said that!”

  Lucius eyes grow shiny. “ I do not deserve children. Not after what I did at Orongis.” [iii]

  Scipio clasps his brother’s shoulder. “Come on, you couldn’t know there were children hiding under those shields. You did what any commander would do.”

  “Commit murder?” Lucius rasps, staring at his feet.

  “Protect your men from being killed,” Scipio says quietly. He hugs his brother. “You know, you should be the tutor and scholar in the family, not I. You have the sensitivity for it.” I should have never let him lead that Orongis mission, even with Marcus Silenus there to help him. I was a fool!

  Lucius glares at his brother. “You think I can’t be a general? I have Father’s blood in me, just like you. I can do anything you can!” He looks away. “I just need the chance,” he mutters.

  Scipio’s face flushes. Remember your promise to Mother. Help him make his way. He takes a deep breath. “I am sure you will be a fine officer. I will help you get the opportunities I had. Now let me put Marcus to bed.”

  Scipio walks down the corridor to his and Amelia’s sleeping room, cradling Marcus’ helmet in his arms. He walks over to the stone shelf that looms above their sleeping platform and places the helmet in the middle of it, next to the thumb-worn figurine of Nike that Amelia gave him, flanked by his limestone statues of Mars and Minerva.

  He shifts the helmet about. There! It’s perfectly straight. As Marcus would want, Scipio thinks, smiling to himself. He taps the top of the helmet.

  “Well, old friend, I may not need to consult you for a while. Peace is at last upon the land.” He walks back to the entrance. He stops and turns back to the helmet.

  “Do you thin
k I should be out there helping consul Aelius? He is not a military man.” Scipio stares at the helmet for several moments.

  He shrugs. “Ah, I make too much of myself. Aelius has Italia’s finest troops with him. He can handle a few fractious Gauls.”

  UMBRIA PROVINCE, NORTH ITALIA. “You want me to do what?” Gaius Campius splutters. The rangy Umbrian commander stomps around in front of consul Publius Aelius, his face reddening.

  The plump little consul leans back into his padded tent couch. “You heard me. We need more food.” He pops a chunk of roasted mouse into his mouth, staring placidly at the allied commander.

  “You want me to use ten thousand of my veterans to gather grain and cattle?[iv] We came up here to fight!”

  Campius pulls off his wolf’s head cap and flings it onto the consul’s thick carpet. “We don’t need grain to get rid of the Boii, curse it! We can reach the Boii camp in three days. We could run them back over the Alps and go home!”

  Publius Aelius stares coolly at the allied commander. “We will do that soon enough,” he says, biting into an olive. “After all, it’s part of my mission. Now that Scipio has vanquished Carthage, Rome has turned its eyes to Gaul. The Senate has designated the Po River Valley for Roman settlement. So I am here to, as you say, ‘run them over the Alps.’ But we need food for an extended campaign.”

  “Then you should have brought a legion of farmers with you,” Campius grouses. “Umbrians are born to the sword. We want revenge on those raiders!”

  Aelius closes his eyes. Gods save me from Umbrians! Always wanting to prove they are as good as Romans. “Yes, you are strong soldiers. As soldiers you take orders from your leader. You will harvest the fields, burn the land when you are done, and destroy any nearby towns that do not open their gates to you.”