"Why do you keep so many out of the fight when we are outnumbered to begin with?"
Norbanus hid his impatience. He hated dealing with amateurs. "They are my reserve. At any given time, only the front-line soldiers do any actual fighting. To commit everyone at once merely tires them out without accomplishing anything. They might as well stay to the rear and husband their strength. Should I see an opportunity or a great danger, I have them ready to meet the situation without having to disengage them from the battle first. It's the best way."
"Of course," Jonathan muttered. "It is just-Manasseh has so many men."
"And they are all out there, most of them able to do nothing except wave their arms and shout. They are getting very tired, I assure you." He was not as sanguine as he pretended. It was indeed wearing on the nerves to hear a battle without being able to see it clearly. He took great comfort from the presence of that legion behind him. Should the situation prove disastrous, they would extricate him and the bulk of his Romans from the fight.
He was not pessimistic, but anything could happen. He knew the story of Xenophon, who had been in a situation very much like this. His Greeks had won their part of the battle, but their Persian ally lost his part and the Greeks were forced to make their epic march to the sea. Norbanus's confidence in his legions was absolute. His confidence in Jonathan's forces was slight.
And, he thought, where were the Parthians? They could appear at any time, and there were few more disastrous occurrences than the sudden advent of enemy reinforcements after Roman forces were already committed to battle. But then, he thought further, the whole Manasseh-Parthian alliance might be nothing more than a rumor.
He shook these unproductive thoughts from his head and returned his attention to the battle before him, or as much as he could see of it. He cursed the dust once again.
Gabinius relaxed in the courtyard of his ancestral home, enjoying the cool of the evening. The house was new, but it felt right. He was where he should be. He heard a small commotion from the atrium. A visitor, no doubt. A man of his importance received guests at all hours: clients in need of a favor, friends from other towns come to claim hospitality. His steward entered the courtyard.
"Princeps, a lictor has come to summon you to the curia."
"Good news or bad?"
"He would say no more than that you are summoned."
Gabinius rose. "Lictors. How they love their little secrets." He knew that it had to be something momentous for a Senate meeting to be called after sunset. Even the news of the disastrous fire in the harbor at Carthage had waited until morning. It had been by no means a decisive blow to Hamilcar, but it bought the Romans time, and time was what they needed. They were conquering too much, too fast. How long will the gods bless us in this fashion? he wondered.
His fellow senators milled on the curia steps, some of them looking a bit tipsy from their after-dinner drinking. At the summons of another lictor, they filed inside. The nearby forum began to fill as word spread of the extraordinary meeting.
Inside, they took their benches. The consuls were already in place. When the doors shut, the Consul Scipio stood and raised over his head a broad wooden tablet of traditional design, the letters SPQR blazoned on it in large, gilt letters. A laurel wreath encircled the tablet. A hiss of satisfaction went up from the assembly. Laureled dispatches meant victory.
"Syracuse has fallen!" Scipio announced, producing a general uproar. "Sicily is ours!"
When the cacophony died down, Scipio read the terse message. "The Proconsul Titus Scaeva sends greetings to the noble Senate. On this day, the nineteenth of Quinctilis, the city of Syracuse passed into the possession of Rome. About the middle of the second hour the undermining operations I had pursued bore fruit and a large section of the northern city wall collapsed. I immediately ordered my legions into the breach. The Carthaginians and their citizen allies fought with desperation, but they were lost when they had to face Roman soldiers at close quarters. The fighting was street-by-street and ended in the square surrounding the great temple of Zeus. Resistance ended by the seventh hour, and the inhabitants were put to the sword to let all foreigners know the price of resistance to Rome. At sundown I signaled a halt to the slaughter. In coming days I will render the noble Senate an accounting of the plunder of this very rich city. Death to Carthage. Long live Rome."
The Consul Norbanus stood. "I propose, pending a full report from both the Proconsul Scaeva and the Senate's observers in Sicily, that Titus Scaeva be voted the right to celebrate a triumph. I further propose that he be awarded the title 'Siculus' in honor of his conquest of Sicily."
Amid further cheering Gabinius made his way to the consuls' dais. Norbanus noticed him first. "I see from the princeps's sour look that even this wonderful news fails to elate him."
"Oh, I am quite elated," Gabinius assured him. "I'd always rather hear of victory than defeat. But has anyone given thought to what we are going to do with Sicily?"
"Do?" Norbanus said. "We are going to divide it up, naturally. That's what you do with conquered territory."
"And who's to get it, eh?" Gabinius asked. "You've read Cyclops's reports: The land is unbelievably rich and fertile, better than Campania. Are we to have the whole Senate at each other's throat over who gets what piece of this prize?"
"There is danger there," said the Consul Scipio. "What are your thoughts, Princeps?"
"Right now we are all a bit drunk with success and with favorable omens. A good drunk is always followed by a bad hangover. Even if we are fully successful in every campaign we undertake, there may be serious consequences. Foreigners are not the only enemy. We've expanded our legions to unprecedented numbers. What will we do with them when Carthage is destroyed and the fighting is over? Has anyone considered that?"
"They will go back home," Norbanus said uneasily.
"They will not," Gabinius assured him. "They came to Italy as farm lads and tribesmen of Noricum. Now they have seen the riches of the civilized world. Before this is over, they will have campaigned not just in Italy and Sicily, but in Africa, Egypt, Syria and the whole East. A common trooper will win more loot in a day than his father and grandfather saw in their lifetimes of toil.
"And these wars," he went on pitilessly, "will not be over soon. These early victories have come easily because nobody expected our arrival and they underestimated our strength. That will not last. Soon there will be alliances against us. Already we are looking at danger from Spain. Young Norbanus is stirring up a hornet's nest in Judea. Macedonia is watching us with alarm. We'll never be safe until we've conquered all the lands that border the sea, and that will be the work of many years. We are raising a generation of men who have no trade save war. In time they will be a great danger to the state."
"I take it you have some sort of suggestion," Norbanus grumbled.
"Exactly. Senatorial families already claimed most of Italy and there has been no little strife over conflicting claims. The new lands we are taking have no ancestral claims on them. Let's set aside some of them right now as reward for the soldiers when they are demobilized. Otherwise, the soldiers will not want to leave the profession of arms, since it will be their only source of livelihood. But with the prospects of rich farms and slaves to work their land, they'll be eager to trade the rigors of continuous campaigning for the life of gentlemen planters."
"That won't be easy," Scipio said. "Look at them." He gestured to the ebullient house. "Some of them are already in ecstasies of greed at the prospect of these Sicilian lands. They won't want to see them pass into the hands of common soldiers." He rapped his knuckles on the armrest of his curule chair. "I'll speak with the tribunes of the people. They can start groundwork for passing a new agrarian law. Maybe at first it will be best to declare the new conquests public land to keep it out of the hands of the major aristocrats. Later they can agitate for its distribution to veterans."