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