"How could this have happened without a single unfavorable omen?" asked one of them. "Since leaving Noricum, we have had an unbroken series of favorable omens. What has happened?"
A thought struck the princeps. "The gods gave us no
sign because this is not a serious defeat. Jupiter and Juno
would have given us warning had this been a true disaster,
threatening the city. The gods do not consider the deaths of
a few thousand mortals to be of great account. Only had it
signaled the fall of a great nation would they have considered it worthy of their notice."!
"That is very true," said the head of the college, one of the elders of the great clan of Brutus. "I'll wager our scouts return with word of the Carthaginians in full retreat, or if they come here and invest the city, our legions will come up. from the south and crush them against the walls like bugs."
Gabinius nodded eagerly. "That's the way to talk! Let the citizens hear that and all will be well. They're Romans, after all. It's just that, as Romans, they have never known news of a defeat in generations."
That evening, the princeps and consuls convoked a special meeting for further military planning. As always, Gabinius spoke first.
"Conscript fathers," he began, "I need hardly point out that the reconquest of our old empire has proven an even more formidable task than we had anticipated. It is clear that our legions will not be sufficient to the task unaided.
At the moment, we have no allies. We have drained the manpower pool of Noricum to build all these new legions. We need many cohorts of auxilia and where are we to find the men?" He paused for rhetorical effect, then went on. "Here in Italy, that is where!"
The Consul Scipio stood. "Princeps, Italy lost its manhood when our ancestors went north in the Exile! Those who stayed bent their necks to the Carthaginian yoke. They are little more than slaves! Early on it was proposed that they earn their way back into our good graces and limited citizenship by serving as rowers in our new navy. But to give them arms and place them in the battle line with our citizen legions? That is to give them too much honor." Applause greeted this.
"Honor can be earned," Gabinius answered, "and let us not fool ourselves. We have no alternative. We know from the battle of the Arnus that we were defeated not through the weakness of our legions, green though they were, but for lack of sufficient auxilia to support their flanks. We need light infantry, archers, slingers and, above all, cavalry!" He held their attention with his intensity and went on.
"North of the Rivet Arnus is what used to be Cisalpine Gaul. The people there were our allies in the old days. By all accounts, they suffered little from Carthage, and most of them never even saw a Carthaginian. I'll wager they have not lost all of their warrior heritage. Let's start there. Then we can scour old Latium and central Italy, paying special attention to the mountainous regions; the places where living is rough and the Carthaginians never went. Let's call in those bandits who infest this peninsula. Yes, I know what you'll all say: 'What! Bandits in Roman service?' And to that I say: 'Yes!' These are men of spirit; men who refused to till the soil for absentee landlords, who found more honor in taking arms and raiding. Were Romulus, Remus and their followers any different? Offer them amnesty with no demand that they lay down their arms. Offer them limited citizenship in exchange for service in our auxilia. I promise you we will quickly raise a sizable force of first-rate skirmishers and foragers!"
There were howls of protest but Gabinius smiled grimly. He knew he could bring them around. There was no question about it, because he and they knew that there was no choice. They were registering their protests for the sake of form. They knew now that Roman legions could lose a battle. He would get his way.
For a few days the city remained tense, until the scouts came pounding back down the Via Clodia with word that the Carthaginian force had, indeed, returned from whence it came. There was no jubilation, but a general sense of relief settled over the city. Sacrifices and omen taking resumed, and further scouts were dispatched to shadow Mastanabal's army and report upon its every movement.
When two legions arrived from Campania, they were sent north to the Arnus, there to undertake construction of extensive fortifications. It was defensive warfare, the sort Romans hated the most, but unavoidable since the main Roman forces had to be concentrated in the South. The legions in the North were also to raise, arm and train as many auxilia as they possibly could.
One question plagued the consuls, the princeps and the Senate: Where were Titus Norbanus and those four veteran legions?
The legions landed on the little pirate cove like a thunderbolt from heaven. By their thousands, the armored men poured over the narrow pass in the inland hills during the hours before dawn, moving with their now-accustomed quiet. By the time the village was awake, the soldiers were upon it, killing wherever they met resistance, taking prisoners where there was none. The pirates were sturdy men and tough fighters, but they had neither the numbers, the equipment nor the discipline of their pitiless conquerors. A few minutes of vicious fighting saw the utter destruction of the pirates; then came the sack of the town. The prisoners, mostly women and children, were herded into a compound and kept under guard.
Titus Norbanus rode in and inspected his latest acquisition. First, he assured himself that not a single pirate had escaped by sea. It would not do to let anyone spread the word of his coming to the many other pirate towns along the coast. Satisfied, he rode into the little town square and dismounted. His men had already secured the town's finest house for his use, and he seated himself upon its spacious, covered porch, sipping wine while his men piled the loot before him.
Norbanus was outrageously pleased with this stage of his march. It was proving incredibly profitable. The march north through Syria had been tense but uneventful. They had been shadowed the whole way by native soldiers, not a real threat but in enough strength to discourage any attempts upon the cities of the coast. Norbanus had sent word to the Seleucid governor that he meant no hostility, that he and his soldiers just wanted to get home. The governor had made no offer of help, but neither did he make any aggressive move. They passed within sight of the walls of splendid Antioch, and Norbanus was greatly tempted to sack the place, but that might have been more than the Senate could stomach, so he merely used its crossing of the River Orontes, paying the ferry companies meticulously and paying also for all the necessities they needed.
Then they turned westward, along the south-facing coast of Cilicia, and the Syrian troops had halted at the border. This rugged country was claimed by the Seleucids, but they had never occupied the place in any meaningful fashion. The only major city was Tarsus, which regarded itself as independent and was mainly Greek rather than native. Norbanus was diplomatic with the fathers of Tarsus and his army availed itself of the excellent water there.
Most of Cilicia was too mountainous and primitive for any kind of rule save the tribal sort. Its towns were virtually independent, and on the coast the only trade practiced was piracy. This was what made the Cilician stage of the march so lucrative.
Nearly every day's march brought them to a range of hills, and on the other side of those hills there was nearly always a little cove, with its own village and its own pirate fleet. There were never more than a few hundred to a few thousand men in each town. Except for the practice of piracy, these would have been nothing but squalid fishing villages. With it, they were fine little towns, their warehouses stuffed with the loot of the sea, taken in raids on coastal towns and from captured ships, and their treasuries filled with gold and silver, most of it ransom money, for the most profitable enterprise of the pirates was the capture of wealthy persons. All over the Inner Sea, there were factors that arranged for the ransom of captives on a fixed scale.