Scipio felt the tension and excitement rise within him as he turned the final corner into the Forum Magnum, the hub of the city, still bathed in the afternoon’s sunlight. The Curia Hostilia rose above him to his right and the praetoriani guard wheeled neatly towards the base of the steps leading to the Senate. The senior consul’s thoughts still dwelt on his junior counterpart and he revelled in the triumph of stealing a march on his rival. As junior consul this year, Duilius was in a prime position to attain the full title next year. But it was not to be, Scipio thought. The Carthaginians had seen to that. They had given Scipio a chance to write his name into history, and to write Duilius out. As the senior consul began to climb the steps that led to the very heart of the Republic, his eyes wandered upwards to the porticoes flanking the entrance into the inner chamber. He noted with pride that a junior senator was stationed at the top of the steps to watch for his arrival. As the man recognized the approach of the leader of Rome, he spun on his heels and ran into the interior beyond to announce that Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio had arrived.
Atticus squinted towards the evening sun as he gazed out over the inner courtyard adjacent to the guards’ quarters of Scipio’s house, his thoughts ranging over the events of the previous days. He turned to face Septimus, the centurion lying supine on his cot in the sparsely furnished quarters, taking advantage of the forced inactivity as they waited for the consul’s orders.
‘Back in Brolium, Marcus said that under blockade the legions would become “survivors not fighters, scavengers of food instead of hunters of men”,’ Atticus said. ‘What did he mean exactly? How quickly will the legions lose their ability to fight effectively?’
Septimus paused for a moment before replying.
‘Cut off from resupply, once the Second and Ninth exhaust the supplies they carry with them, they’ll be faced with three shortages, two of which they can survive.’
Atticus walked over to his own cot and sat down.
‘Which two are those?’ he asked.
‘Food and equipment,’ Septimus replied, sitting up to face Atticus. ‘The first is always an issue for every army. A hot meal in a soldier’s belly lifts his strength and morale. An empty belly fuels discontentment. If the food supplies that the legions carry are consumed, the men will go hungry, but they won’t starve. Once in enemy territory the army will be free to forage, stripping passing farms of their livestock and grain, leaving famine in their wake but keeping the men of the Second and Ninth marching.’
‘Marcus called it scavenging,’ Atticus remarked, ‘and he didn’t relish the prospect.’
Septimus nodded, his face grave. ‘It’s a precarious practice, with foraging teams open to ambush from the enemy; and should the army pass through more barren mountain land, their foraging would become more desperate and widespread.’
Atticus nodded, slowly understanding the difficult challenges faced by a campaigning army. ‘You said equipment was also a surmountable problem,’ he prompted.
Again Septimus nodded. ‘After the stocks of replacements are exhausted, the men will switch to patching up their existing kit. There’s countless ways to keep a legionary’s kit functional, although the end result might not pass a parade-ground inspection. The only vital pieces of equipment are a soldier’s weaponry, his short sword, javelins and a shield. His armour takes second place to these essentials, although men fight more aggressively when they have the protection of segmented armour over their chest and a helmet on their heads. Either way, though, the legions will go into battle and the fallen will provide replacement equipment for the survivors.’
Atticus nodded his understanding. Now only one problem remained.
‘So what’s the third shortage?’ Atticus asked. ‘The one the legions can’t do without?’
‘The most essential supply for any army, Atticus. The supply of men.’
‘But between them the Second and Ninth encompass nearly twenty thousand men. Surely it will be months before any loss will become so significant as to affect the ability of the legions as a whole?’ Atticus countered.
Septimus shook his head. ‘The total might number twenty thousand, but a legion’s strength is not in its sheer numbers but in the individual formations within its ranks.’
Atticus’s puzzled expression prompted Septimus to continue. ‘A maniple consists of one hundred and twenty men. At any one time there are always at least a half-dozen excused duty because of illness. Once the enemy is engaged, the problem intensifies, as the injured swell the ranks of those unfit for duty. A campaign like this one will be riddled with minor engagements, each one sapping the strength of each fighting maniple. With no supply of replacements getting through from the mainland, maniple after maniple will be struck off the fighting roster and, before long, individual commands will disappear as maniples are cannabilized to provide replacements for others. Mark my words, Atticus, this natural attrition of the army’s most basic raw material, through illness, battle injuries and death, and the inability to resupply that raw material to the front line, will destroy the Second and Ninth within a matter of a couple of months.’
Atticus drew in a slow breath as he absorbed Septimus’s words, the centurion’s explanation painting a vivid picture of the Roman army’s demise. The army was like an individual soldier, its loss of men like the flesh wounds sustained in battle, injuries that healed as new men were fed in to fill the breach, the residual scar tissue hardening the man beneath. Without the ability to renew itself, the army, like the individual soldier, would fall from its wounds, its lifeblood soaking into the arid soil of Sicily.
‘Senators!’ Scipio began, his voice holding the absolute attention of the three hundred men who represented the political power of the Republic. The senior consul was standing tall at the lectern positioned at the centre of the semicircle of three tiers of seating in the inner chamber of the Curia. Only moments before, his arrival had been announced by the princeps senatus, the leader of the house, a ceremonial, almost powerless position granted to one of the senior, long-standing senators. Scipio had swept into the chamber with a determined stride, the senators rising as one as a mark of respect to his rank; he had noted with satisfaction that nearly all were in attendance, including Duilius.
Scipio paused before continuing.
‘Senators, I come with grave news from our campaign to remove the Carthaginian horde from the shores of our beloved Sicily. I have come in great haste, enduring great personal risk, to deliver this message to you. You men of courage and intellect hold the key to saving the brave men of the legions now fighting overseas.’
Duilius could sense the charged atmosphere of the Senate as they hung on every word Scipio uttered. Although the junior consul knew what was to be announced, he couldn’t suppress the tingle of anticipation at Scipio’s words, admiring his eloquence and ability to control the mob that was the Senate. Duilius smiled inwardly at the choice of words: ‘you men of courage and intellect’. He knew that Scipio, like himself, had little respect for the other senators of the chamber, and yet so powerful was Scipio’s ability to control the crowd that those same men firmly believed the senior consul’s description of them was fully warranted, believed that both individually and collectively they held the power of Rome in their hands – while in reality it rested neatly on the shoulders of men like Scipio and Duilius alone.
When Duilius had stalked out of the Curia on receiving the news of Scipio’s return, he had known there was only one course of action open to him. With the long-before-learnt lesson on the value of information dictating his movements, he had rushed to his town house behind the Forum Holitorium. He had immediately called for Appius, his senior servant, a freedman who ostensibly ran the affairs of the junior consul’s town house, but who in reality was the head of a network of agents spread throughout the homes of the senior men of the Senate. Included in their number were four men in Scipio’s household, all freedmen who were sold into the house as slaves to spy on Duilius’s most powerful rival. The junior consul