Читать книгу Hannibal - Ross Leckie - Страница 8

Children’s memories are deep and strange. Grown men must struggle through the past to reach and to know them. It is best done while one lives, but if postponed will surely come with or after death. I have often seen it so, for I have known too many deaths. My friend Maharbal took three weeks to die after a sword thrust caught him in the stomach. We were deep in Campania, high in the hills when a Roman patrol surprised us. Only I was with him at the end. No-one else could bear the stench of his putrescence. In his death-fever he returned to our childhood in Spain, calling out to me as we raced our ponies hard along the strand of Gadez. Through that last night he turned over such many things. Then, at dawn, he gave up his spirit, but in peace.

Tanit-pene-Baal, the god of dreams and death, would have it thus. We must first cross the River of Ordeal, then the River of Forgetfulness, Ashroket in our Punic tongue, and remember all our lives before our spirits can be free. If we do not, we linger for eternities with the undead by Ashroket’s banks. There stands a great and giant elm tree, its branches spreading like arms, full of years. The undead make their home there, clinging everywhere beneath its leaves, as many as the leaves of the forest which fall with autumn’s chill, and stretch out their hands in longing for the farther bank.

Let me now prepare to cross. I, who have always been fighting, now give the god his due. Time for me, time for the thousands who died for me and need me now to account for their memories so they too may pass in peace. There is so much blood.

Blood. And hate. I must have been three, turning four. I was playing with marbles in the courtyard of our home in Carthage, my brother Mago with me. A breeze stirred the palm trees all around. Suddenly the wail of the corynx, the Carthaginian war-trumpet, filled the air. My mother, heavy with child, ran to us. “Come quickly, boys. Your father is home. He has sent for you. Come.”

We followed her to my father’s hall, rising from its massive foundations to a terraced storey. Onto its walls of bronze were set diamonds, beryls, the three kinds of ruby, four kinds of sapphire, twelve of emeralds, topazes from Mount Zabacra, opals from Bactria, glossopetri fallen from the moon. Never before had I passed through its scarlet doors quartered with a black cross, beyond its grilles of beaten gold which kept out scorpions.

It was silent inside, despite the press of people. As well as Carthaginians, there were Ligurians there, Balearics, Negroes, Numidians, Lusitanians, Cantabrians, Cappadocians, Lydians, Celtiberians, Dorians, men from every corner of the earth, for this has always been the way with us. They parted to let us pass. Standing on a dais at the far end of the hall was Hamilcar, my father, tired and dirty from journeying, his sweat making lines through the grey dust on his forehead.

Before my father stood a man, strange of dress and skin. “I ask you, Marcus Atilius Regulus, what mercy you should have of us. Answer me!” In the stillness, the man’s reply was clear: “I answer you, Hamilcar Barca, as will many greater than you could ever be: Summa sedes non capit duos. Do with me as you must.”

Of course I did not have enough Latin then to understand. Only later did my tutor, Silenus of Caleacte, explain: “Supreme power cannot be shared,” words which form the more so now, I fear, the policy of Rome. I smile as I remember how I returned the words of Regulus in kind, the cry of fear, “Hannibalis ad portas, Hannibal is at the gates,” filling the thoughts of Romans for the many years in which I made them dance.

What I did understand was the roar of anger that rose to meet the man’s reply. My father stood still. He held up his hands for quiet. “Carthaginians, allies, friends, you have heard what this man has said. You know him, Regulus, the Roman consul we defeated and captured when he invaded our own Africa ten years ago. We should perhaps have crucified him. Yet we sent him to Rome to treat for peace on condition he would return. For what have we ever sought of the Romans, we who knew the bounds of the world before they were even a people, than that they should leave us in peace? When have we ever sought out war, unless when these vipers, these conquerors and colonisers of greed tamper with our trade and seize our lands? Three times has Carthage made solemn treaties of peace with Rome. Three times have the Romans broken their word. As we must, we resist them.”

A murmur of agreement, of anger, rose and died away, as hiss of pebbles on the shore when wave recedes.

“This Regulus we sent to Rome. And what did he urge on their Senate? Why, not peace but more war. Then war he shall have. As Sufet of Carthage I speak for the Council of Elders and I say: let that which is customary be done.”

It was as all had expected. Two men came forward and seized Regulus by the arms. A third gave to my father a short sharp knife and turned Regulus towards us. In one swift movement my father seized the Roman’s long nose with the thumb and finger of his left hand. With the knife in his right he cut it off. Regulus screamed and sank to the floor. The pool that gathered in the dust beside him was my first sight of Roman blood. I felt nothing. Mago beside me began to sniffle. My mother grabbed him by the hair and made him watch.

Next my father knelt. The Roman was pinned down on his back. I knew as my father began to reach out. I was to cut out tongues myself in years to come. The Roman’s screams were drowned in his own blood. My father rose, said: “Send him again to Rome. Then will he treat for neither peace nor war,” and left.

My mother sent us to our room. Mago cried. I lay on my bed. I did not understand. I understood somehow that I did not need to. The door opened. My father was there, washed, in clean clothes. I sat up, quickly. “Hannibal, Mago,” he said, “you are young. But what you learn today you cannot learn too soon. Come in, Hamilax.”

Hamilax was my father’s High Steward. How long he had served our house, I do not know. But he was old, his face deep-lined. “My sons,” said my father, “there are many things that words cannot capture. What you have seen today is one. Here is another. Hamilax, take off your tunic.”

Standing before us, Hamilax took off his shirt. From the waist up his skin was angry, red and rippled, like the surface of the sea when the wind ruffles it in a dying sun. He turned. His back was the same, but for the welts that crossed it. We looked. “Thank you, Hamilax. You may go,” commanded my father. I saw the Steward wince as he knelt to pick up his tunic. His skin, I saw, was stuck to his ribs.

“The Romans did this to him.” My father sat down on my bed. “He served my father Hasdrubal before me and was captured fighting the Romans at the great sea battle of Mylae. My father offered an exchange: ten of them for Hamilax. They agreed. When the ship bearing him came to Carthage, I was with my father waiting at the docks. But we could not see Hamilax standing on the deck. He was carried ashore on a litter.

“Understand this: yes, the Romans had released him, but first they had flayed him with red-hot sand. It was to be weeks before we knew if he would live or die. This, I learned, is Roman faith. What you saw done to Regulus was right. The gods demand it. Do not forget.” Then he was gone. There was only the creak of the great wheel which carried water through the palace, turning, turning.

As I grew, I felt alone not least because my father was so seldom with us. He was away, fighting the Romans in Sicily. He would come when he could, perhaps three times each year, sometimes for a night and a day, sometimes for more. Even then, he had no time. Strange men would arrive, borne to our palace on rich litters. They and my father would talk and argue late into the night. I heard snatches of discussion about trade, about money, for I slept in a room above that in which they met. One I came to know as Gisco was always loud. “Let the Romans have Sicily, yes, and Sardinia too. All we need from them is freedom to trade as did our fathers’ fathers’ fathers. Let us look south, to Africa.”

“And will the Romans stop,” my father scoffed, “with Sicily? What about Spain and our mines there?”

“They can have all that, if they leave us Africa …”

I slipped into a fitful sleep.

It was during one of these visits – was I four, five? – that my father woke me. It was still dark, but from the garden I heard the calling of the storks that marked each dawn and, through the window, carried on a gentle breeze, the sound of Eschmoun’s horses, safe in their sacred glade, whinnying towards the sun. “Hannibal, get up.” Shivering, I rose, slipped on my tunic, sandals. “Come with me.”

Through the sleeping house I followed my father down. We passed through the great front doors of porphyry, on down the staircase of ebony, the prow of a defeated galley in the corner of each step. On the main path of black sand mixed with powdered coral we went along the avenue. The double rows of cypresses swayed softly in the breeze. In the garden, past the orchards of fig trees and pomegranates, white-tufted cotton shrubs, roses and vines, we walked, on beyond the fish ponds and the great pits where the elephants, smelling us, stirred.

The wall, the great wall of Carthage where I was forbidden to go, rose up from the darkness. It was, I knew already from Silenus, a marvel of the earth. Of dressed stone, forty feet high and thirty feet thick, the wall ran for twenty-two miles round Carthage. Double-storeyed, it held within its bulk the stables for 300 elephants with stores for their caparisons, their tethers and their food. Above were more stables for 4,000 horse, their harness, gear. There were barracks too for 20,000 soldiers and 4,000 cavalry. A city within a city above which soared up towers, each of strong battlements, shrouded in bronze shields. My servants said it was the work of our god Baal, but I knew that man had made it.

Reaching forward in the darkness, my father felt the great smooth stones. He paused and heaved. One swung open, startling me. He stepped forward, into the wall. I followed. He turned and pulled shut the stone behind us. “This is a way, Hannibal, known only to me and to Hamilax. You will tell none of it.” In the dark, I followed him, as I was to follow through much greater darknesses to come.

Pushing up another stone, my father climbed onto the rampart, I behind. No sentries called. We were on a stretch of wall defended by the sea, impregnable. “I have brought you here, Hannibal, to look and to learn. Be silent now, and see.”

In the east, pink light swelled. White foam girdled the peninsula and the sea was still. Dogs barked. Birds called. As the light grew, the water-courses of Megara in the city below unwrapped their white coils, serpents against the greenery of the gardens that they served. Houses grew, taking shape and massing from the darkness amid the lengthening, empty streets. On the roofs, water tanks caught the brimming sun and shone like stars. The lighthouse on the promontory of Hermaeum grew pale. Baal Hammon was pouring over Carthage the golden rain of his veins.

Now I could make out below the wall the rampart of turf and, beyond that, a great ditch, deep and wide and dark. In the shadow of the rampart was Malqua, the sailors’ and dyers’ quarter, a place of dirt and ugly hovels. About it lived the Un-named, people of no Punic blood but of unknown race and origin, eaters of porcupines and shellfish, hyenas, snakes. Their huts of seaweed and slime clung to the cliff like nests. They had lived so, without rulers or religion, execrated, naked, sickly and wild, as long as the memory of man.

Turning, I looked over the city within the wall on which I stood. Cube-shaped houses rose in tiers towards the Acropolis. Public squares stood levelled here and there. The greenery of temple precincts broke up the uniformity of grey. First the golden tiles of Khamon’s roof caught the rising sun, then the coral of Melkarth’s. My eye was drawn on, up to the Acropolis hill, in the centre of Byrsa. The strengthening light caught its copper cupolas, its capitals of bronze, the white Parian marble of its architraves, its obelisks of azure stripes, its buttresses from Babylon. Here, drawn together from the corners of the earth, was the soul of Carthage.

As day broke, the city stirred to life. Great wagons and laden dromedaries approached the gates. Passing in, they moved lurching on the flagged streets to the market. At the crossroads, the moneychangers rolled up the awnings of their booths. From the potters’ quarter, Mappalia, the kilns began to smoke. From Tanit’s sacred glade came the sound of the chants and tambourines of her holy harlots.

My father spoke. “You are a Barca, Hannibal, and my son. You see this great city unfold before you. You feel its call, yes?” I nodded. “It calls you because its life is your life. Your forefathers came to this place from Tyre in Phoenicia and found poor and huddled huts. See what we have made. Always has our family been pre-eminent among the Carthaginians.

“But do not be deceived. Carthage has no friends. We rule through fear and greed, not love. What you see is an island, alone against the world. We must trade to live and the Romans would pen us in” – and his voice grew rough and angry – “like cattle. Of the Elders, I see this and fight. When I am gone, this fight will be yours.” He held my shoulders. I can still see his burning eyes. “Do you understand?”

I held his gaze. “Yes, Father,” was all I said. It was done.

“Good. Then your training will begin. Go back to your room. Hamilax will come for you.”

Within the hour, Hamilax and I were gone, I knew not where. We slipped out of Carthage through an obscure wicket gate, then walked east through terraces of olives and vines. A man met us. We mounted mules, went on.

Peaceful were the months that followed. Hamilax took me to a distant beach, three days’ ride from Hadrumetum, to a shore of turtles and high palms. Above the beach were cliffs of sandstone, caves. In one of these we made our home and the learning began.

Hamilax began to teach me, as he had been told, such things as I had need to know. I learnt of our gods, of Melkarth first, honoured by the Phoenicians, our ancestors, and how he waged a great war against Masiasbal to avenge the serpent queen. For forty ages they fought, then forty more, locked in bitter combat. From the depths of Tartessus they fought, to the high mountains of Ersiphonia until they came to the utmost bounds of the world. There the she-monster Masiasbal turned at bay, against the flaming walls of the world and, under a blood-red moon in the sight of women dragon-tailed, Melkarth slew her.

All this I learned and more. It was for Silenus to teach me Greek, but Hamilax was versed in the old Canaanite tongue of my people and this too he began to teach me, that which is written in the books of Sakkun-yathon.

Aesneth karith nago

Walkhah um ubefo

Karith an shem …

Being but a man I walk alone

Seeking in the darkness

Under the eye of god …

By day, I began to learn the ways of animals and how to trap them, the art both of the javelin and the sword. I went barefoot, like a shepherd. Of all my childhood, these were golden days.

Hamilax was a man of grudging words. One evening we were sitting on the beach, watching a huge and flaming sun set in the sky. I asked him what was the sun, and why it was leaving. “Ask your own heart, Hannibal,” he said. “Many things become clear to those who learn to ask their own hearts in silence.”

We returned to Carthage in silence, as we had gone. At home, nothing had changed. The servants went their way. The bakers baked, the weavers wove. I did not see my mother at first, for she had given birth. I had, I learned, another brother, Hasdrubal, but he was with a nursemaid. My mother was confined to bed. My brother Mago seemed afraid of me. We played no more. Something had come between us. We kept to separate ways. My father was away. I felt alone.

But Silenus had been told and a new learning had begun. Day after day I was with him alone. He had instructions that I was to learn not just Latin, but also Greek, the language of command for Carthaginian armies since the generalship of the Spartan mercenary, Xanthippus.

Both were hard, but as one year passed, then another, I began to see the rigour in the first, the beauty in the second. I owe much to Silenus, that wrinkled, stooped old man who knew so much, had seen so much. And he tried to make the learning fun. We had been studying the Latin imperative. “The imperative, Hannibal, is the voice of command. Study it with care, for you are born to command. It is a clear part of speech in Latin. The Romans are a people who command clearly and simply.”

But I didn’t find it clear at all. I foundered on the irregular imperatives. Rather than being angry, Silenus was patient. He made up for me mnemonics – I knew already that this word was from the Greek for “remember” – and still I remember them. “Dic the duc has no fer and that’s a fac – tell, lead, bear, do,” the irregular Latin imperatives. And we played with little poems. I thought we were just having fun, but of course Silenus was teaching me. He was pleased, I remember, with my:

Puella Carthaginis ridebat

Quam tigris in tergo vehebat.

Externa profecta

Interna revecta

Sed risus in tigre manebat.

There was a young lady Carthaga

Who rode with a smile on a tiger.

They returned from the ride

With the lady inside

And the smile on the face of the tiger.

What else did I learn that shaped me? Of Alexander, great golden Alexander. As my Greek improved, Silenus brought from his chest and gave to me those treasured rolls of papyrus that were a copy of the work of Eumenes of Cardia, Alexander’s Ephemerides, his Journal. We read this together many times.

We studied again and again Alexander’s victories: how, at Issus, he made the Persians fight on unfavourable ground and then routed them with his cavalry, his golden armour gleaming in the sun. How, at the Hydaspes, he defeated even the great Indian elephants of King Porus or how, at Gaugamela, he showed the virtue of patience before the mortal strike. At Tyre Alexander was patient and, in the end, that great city fell for all its mighty walls.

Once my father came in when we were reading the Ephemerides. “Reading again, Hannibal? Silenus, I want a doer of deeds, not a reader of words.” But I knew what I was reading to do and what I did not even Alexander could have done. I had none of Alexander’s Macedonians. I took a mercenary army, men brought together from the corners of the earth, and held them together through fear and love. They were often hungry and unpaid, but they did not betray me. For sixteen years we fought in Italy alone.

But let my story tell itself. I am still in Carthage. I am six or seven. Silenus teaches me. I learn. Those days seem still. Each passes as the last. I sit alone with Silenus from breakfast. A slave brings us lunch. Then two hours more of learning, then my ride. An hour of instruction from Abdolonim, my father’s chief groom, then freedom to gallop far.

How 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 clan. All are now but souls clamouring for passage across the River of Ordeal. Of our allies, the bodies of Arcteus, Adeus, Pheresseues, Pharnuchus swirl and butt against some cliff where rock-doves nest. As for Tharybis of Lyrna, death scabs his black beard red. Seisames the Mysian, he is dead, and Syennesis, Cilician king, Ariomardus too and Matullus of Chrysa.

“I could take the orbit of the sun and not tell all and I am weak and faint. I have seen that which I would not, disaster on disaster. All is lost.”

The man slumped in Hamilax’s arms. Nothing stirred. Fear spread through the crowd. Gisco, to his credit, spoke out. “Go home, now, all of you. The Council will meet and declare what is to be done. Hamilax, take this man inside.” Signalling for his slaves to bring his litter, Gisco was gone.

He returned later. With several other Elders, he questioned the man further. Hanno had fled with three other ships back to Holy Isle. The Romans, victorious, had not troubled to pursue them but returned to Lilybaeum. From Holy Isle, Hanno had sent two messengers by skiff — the first to us, the second to my father. He was following on to face such fate as the Elders might determine. When I asked Silenus what that might be, he would not say. I was to find out soon enough.

From that day of the messenger, my life changed. Although my normal ways were soon resumed, even Silenus was unsettled. My mother, Hamilax and the entire household were busy with preparations for what was thought to be my father’s imminent return. The whole of Carthage seemed occupied with itself and the news of the disaster of the Aegates Islands. From Eschmoun’s sacred grove the smoke of votive offerings rose daily in the air. The Elders, it was said, had not left the chamber of the Council, considering under the roof of Baal Hammon what was to be done.

I continued with my studies, my riding lessons, my practice under Hamilax with sword and spear, but all my teachers seemed distracted. Then I learned from Silenus who had it from Hamilax who had it from his brother Astegal, Steward to the Council, that the Council had instructed my father to reach terms with the Romans and then come home. On what basis, Astegal did not know.

Was it eight days after the coming of the messenger, nine? Silenus and I were reading Plato in the stillness of the classroom. The clamour of excited voices broke the peace. I shall always remember the point we had reached in Plato’s Republic: “We are each accustomed to posit some one form concerning each set of things” – eidos hen hekaston peri hekasta ta polla in Greek: I can still remember it now – “to which we apply the same name.” Silenus had explained this to me in terms of the many gods of Carthage, how in their multiplicity they were the same. I was about to witness in life, not philosophy, something to which we might give many names, and of all my childhood memories this is one with which I wrestle still.

The hubbub outside was in response to a call to a general Assembly. My mother, my brother and sister, I and all those of our household of the rank of freedman slave and above were to go at once to the great public square below the Acropolis. Hanno had returned. Judgement was to be given by the Council. Following the standard of our house, a black scorpion on white, held by Hamilax, we left my father’s house.

Through the narrow streets we went. As we drew nearer to the square our passage slowed, such was the press of people. My sister Sophoniba began to cry. Silenus picked her up and carried her. As we came to Byrsa, the heart of Carthage, seat of her temples and her courts and of her Council, members of the Sacred Legion lined the way.

Seeing our standard, one of them fell out and led us through the crowd. The great square was, to a young boy, vast. To the north, below the Acropolis, was the Chamber of the Council. On either side of that within the square were benches, reserved for the principal families of Carthage. There we took our place. A line of soldiers kept back the swelling crowd, leaving an area of perhaps a hundred strides clear before the Chamber of the Council.

Trumpets rang out. Slowly, with dignity, the forty Elders came out from their chamber, Gisco last, and took their seats of hammered bronze on the terrace above us. I had almost hoped to see my father, true Sufet, come after Gisco. When would my father come? Behind each chair a slave fanned his master. At the side, Astegal, High Steward of the Council, watched.

What is it, more than fifty years later, that I remember of that day? What is it that I cannot forget? I think above all the silent menace of the crowd. As Hanno was led towards us from the harbour gate, a profound and dismal silence fell. He was manacled and chained. It was a long walk from the far side of the agora to where the Elders awaited him. It was a walk life-lasting. Behind him came the Elders’ servants, brandishing lashes to keep back the crowd.

There were too many who had lost a son, a brother, a father, a husband, a lover under Hanno’s leadership. As he shambled towards the waiting Elders, in silence a thousand fingers pricked and ripped. A child tore at his cheek. A girl, who had hidden a knife under her sleeve, slashed his neck. Hands, reaching across the ropes that marked the path, tore out handfuls of his hair. Blood spurted from a wound in his thigh. They threw broken glass under his feet, burning oil, excrement and filth. None felt the lashes of the servants seeking to drive them back. Hanno fell, and as he lay a hand stretched out a red-hot poker. He screamed. Even from that press, I smelt his burning flesh. The servants turned their whips of hippopotamus hide on him, driving him on.

Crawling on his hands and knees, Hanno drew level with us, blood on his face and hands, his tunic torn and fouled, safe now from the crowd but not from judgement. Gisco stood up. He did not need to ask for silence. “Hanno, you have betrayed the sacred trust of Melkarth and Eschmoun, of Baal Hammon, Tanit. The priests have consulted the auguries, the virgins of Eschmoun the entrails of a fawn. You are condemned. Let that which is customary be done.”

The howl that rose from the crowd as from one throat was not of this world. Four soldiers stepped forward. No patricians, these, but burly men, seasoned veterans who served the Council for gold and women. I saw from my place on the bench the calloused patches – we called them “carobs” – under the chin of the first that come from years of the helmet’s chin-strap.

They seized Hanno, lifting him to his feet. Two held him up. The third tore his filthy tunic neck to knee. The fourth brought forward a great stake and placed it in its socket in the ground. The crowd’s noise fell away as Hanno was tied, his back to us and the crowd, his bloody face to the Council, to the stake. The whoosh of the whip through the air was followed by a sound like no other, a sucking, tearing sound as the iron in the thongs of the whip tore at flesh, breaking the bones of Hanno’s back. Flecks of blood and blobs of skin stained the ground around. Only with the ninth stroke, or was it the tenth, did Hanno scream.

They untied him. He fell to the ground, inert. A bucket of urine, thrown over his head, revived him. One of the veterans seized him by the hair, held up his torso to the view of the crowd. They moaned. The head of a heavy mallet glinted in the sun, fell, rose and fell again. So were broken the legs of Hanno, admiral of the fleet. The soldiers lifted down the stake. With three great nails the soldiers nailed him lying to the cross, a nail in each hand and one through both ankles. Straining now, one pulling on a rope tied to the top of the cross, they raised Hanno, crucified. As it lurched into its socket and Hanno cried out, the crowd’s roar surged and swelled. His belly torn by the whips, Hanno’s intestines hung and swung from the settling of the cross. It was done.

I have seen many crucifixions. I have ordered many. But the first of all things is the best and the worst. For Hanno I felt and I feel now pity. The ways of the gods I know are cruel and strange. But of many strange wonders, none is stranger than man.

That afternoon, Silenus told me to read on my own. He said nothing, but I felt the distaste of a cultivated man, a Greek, for such practices as crucifixion. “Why are you withdrawn, Silenus?” I asked.

“Get on with your work!” he snapped. But soon he rose from the table at which he was working and paced up and down the room. “Because, because …” he said, and I had never heard him angry before. “Because …” He turned sharply to his chest, drew out a scroll I had not seen before. Finding his place, he began to read, his voice trembling:

“If the soul really is immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, hut of eternity! There is no release from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom …”

“‘The highest virtue and wisdom,’ Hannibal, do you hear, do you? Now listen, listen to Plato’s Phaedo!” And he read on:

“The way to the other world is not a straight and single path – if that were so, no guide would be needed; but there are many partings of the road, and windings … As for that soul which is impure or has done impure deeds … from that soul everyone flees and turns away; no-one will be her companion, no-one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil …”

“To whom does that apply, Hannibal? To Hanno, or to those who crucified him?”

I did not answer. Even now, I do not know.

The days that followed were tense. The whole of Carthage swelled with talk. My father had been instructed by the Council to reach terms of peace with Rome after twenty-four years of war. Despatches went back and forth. Through Astegal and Hamilax came the news.

We were to evacuate the whole of Sicily, swear not to attack Syracuse nor the allies of Syracuse, surrender all prisoners-of-war without ransom and pay an indemnity of 2,200 talents within twenty years. Then, we learned, the Roman commissioners had been instructed by the Senate that the indemnity should be paid within ten years. To Roman demands that all their deserters should be given up for execution and that our troops should give up their arms and pass under the yoke, my father replied that he would rather fight on. Those points the Romans conceded, winning instead an increase in the indemnity by a further 1,000 talents and the promise that we would evacuate not just Sicily, but Corsica and Sardinia as well.

Silenus was sad. “This is the end,” he said to me, “of nothing. Your father has made peace because Carthage is exhausted. The Romans have made peace because they too are exhausted. But Regulus was right. There is not room for two great powers. One must be destroyed.” But I thought not of such things. To me, a boy, the peace meant that my father was coming home – to stay.

We were at the harbour to meet him, I, my mother, my siblings Mago, Hasdrubal and Sophoniba, Silenus and, of course, Hamilax. None of the Elders came. There would be time enough for councils. The people had come, of course, warned of my father’s return by the trumpet heralds high on the temple of Eschmoun. They would have seen his galley round the great mole and enter the commercial harbour and we heard their shouts of welcome and of joy. But we awaited Hamilcar Barca within the inner military harbour, shut off from the outer by great nail-studded gates.

One of these opened. I heard a harsh command. My father’s quinquereme leapt into our sight and swept across the basin to its quay marked by two columns, the scorpion of our house on each, the horns of Ammon on their capitals. He vaulted over the thwart and was with us, taking first my mother then each of us in his arms. Only when he embraced Hamilax could I see him fully, tall and lean, a full hand taller than Hamilax, strong. It was his eyes, though, that held us all, clear, deep brown on purest white. He smiled. “Come, let us go home,” he said, and led the way to the wagon waiting by the quay.

I hoped to hear it all from him in time: the fires, the legions, Eryx, Sicily, the years of battle. I hoped for time. I knew that at first he would be deep in council and seeing to affairs. But the war was over. There would be time. That was not to be. The Truceless War began.