My name is Novius Didius. I was a Centurion, with fifteen years to my name. I had a farm and a family and I fought because the Carthaginians were evil. Oh, not as individuals. I had known a few traders from Carthage. Businessmen, gave fair value. But I knew behind those bland faces were the Dark Gods that drank human blood.
Of course that was not my affair for many years. I married and grew a crop of children along with the other crops my farm produced. But some years after the first war (one in which I was too young to fight) I decided that my duty to the Lord Jove, to my city and to my family required me to join the army.
I had the advantage of some learning — not much but I could read and write a bit. I worshiped Jove, the one “in whom we live and move and have our being.” Not the Jove described in so many lies, as if he were no better than the rudest and most dissolute of the men under my command. But I was a practical man with little time for deep study and thought. Even though I was a man of war, I loved peace and so did not worship that soldier God Mars, though many thought me unwise and even unlucky for such neglect. But I knew that he was a man-eater behind his peace-loving guise. [“Although (the Greek God) Ares was viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force, Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace, and was a father (pater) of the Roman people.” — Wikipedia article on Mars] Nor did I worship Venus. I had my own Venus — the mother of my children. And I could never bring myself to seek release among the camp followers that so many of my men used. It just seemed ungrateful to my beautiful doe, my lovely rose.
The war started again — and it looked bad for Rome. Carthage had a new general, Hannibal. Some said he was inhabited by a Dark God. He was known to have vowed before those evil ones that Rome would be destroyed. Perhaps they lent him their powers.
Suffice it to say that he was a magician with his army. It was everywhere and nowhere. By some miracle of generalship he managed to cross the Alps with his elephants. Such a feat seems little less difficult than if he had simply called upon his Dark Gods to conjure his army across that great barrier.
Coming into Italy he began to chew up Roman armies. Several major skirmishes established the superiority of Carthage’s cavalry over their Roman counterparts — a superiority that played a large role in my own fate. He defeated Scipio at a battle by the River Trebia. Somehow he got past Flaminius — again it seems that it would have been easier for him to have conjured his army into position than to have crossed the Apennines and the marshes of Etruria. Rumor had it that the eye he lost during this time was given in sacrifice to his Gods in exchange for safe passage. Whether or not this is true, the result was that nothing now stood between him and Rome.
Flaminius, in a panic, hurried back to save the city. But Hannibal cared little for the city while the Roman army stood ready to oppose him. Trapping Flaminius’ army by Lake Trasimene, he killed fifteen thousand. His Dark Adviser no doubt fed well at that battle.
… to be continued …