LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      ‘And so, my esteemed colleagues of the Senate, I now call for a vote on my revised proposal, I call for a division of the house to settle the matter.’

      Scipio sat down and surveyed the crowded chamber with inner disgust. The senators were having mumbled conversations with those around them at this new call to vote. Scipio had estimated that it would take a week for the Senate to decide on a course of action to defeat the Carthaginian blockade. He had been wrong. The debate was now in its tenth day and the seemingly endless rounds of debate and voting, over ridiculously minor points, had frayed his patience to a thread. On the fifth day the Senate had finally decided that a fleet was needed. The following two days had been taken up with a decision on the size of the fleet and two days after that on how the fleet would be financed. Only now were the senators debating the command of the campaign.

      The leader of the house banged his gavel on the lectern and called the assembly to order.

      ‘Following the senior consul’s submission and the aforementioned views of the junior consul, we will now divide the house. All those in favour please move to the eastern wall, those against to the western.’

      Scipio remained seated in the front tier, his position in front of the eastern wall a call to all his supporters to rally to his side. Scipio inwardly scoffed at the term ‘supporters’. He had spent the past ten days cajoling and subtly bribing half of them in an effort to gain their backing. Only a tiny minority of them actually voted in line with the conviction that their actions were in Rome’s best interest. Only a tiny minority of them had that courage. The rest of them needed to be led like cattle.

      In the centre of the chamber, Gaius Duilius stood abruptly. Scipio watched him like a hawk. Of the three hundred individual votes of the Senate, only two really counted in this debate, Scipio’s and Duilius’s. The direction of the junior consul’s turn would decide the matter, one way or the other. Scipio watched the man’s calm exterior, hating him anew. Duilius had thwarted his proposals at every turn, but always through intermediaries and always with a subtle, clever approach that never really jeopardized any proposal as a whole. In this way important decisions like the one to build the fleet were made, but Duilius had chipped away at Scipio’s propositions, undermining his authority at every turn. Scipio had needed to give ground each time, including this last proposal on leadership, and so he watched with the bile of hatred rising ever further in his throat as he waited for Duilius to react, unsure if he would be able to control his actions should the junior consul vote against him this one last time.

      As the tension in the chamber reached breaking point, Gaius Duilius turned.

      From the beginning of the debate ten days earlier, Duilius had believed in the fundamentals of Scipio’s approach. The fleet was needed, of that there was no doubt. Given the Carthaginians’ superiority in naval skills, the fleet would need to outnumber any force the Punici could put to sea. Simple logic that needed no debate. The city would need to fund the building of the fleet from the public coffers, and taxes would need to be levied to make up any shortfall. Again this fact was irrefutable. And yet Duilius had challenged Scipio on each occasion.

      The exercise had been expensive, but necessary. Duilius needed to show Scipio that he could hold up his ambitions indefinitely in the senatorial quagmire if he did not give ground on the most important proposal, that of leadership of the fleet. The debates had been taxing and the individual votes tedious but now, as the members of the house stood up to vote, Duilius felt real power surround him. He had always known the motivation behind Scipio’s proposals, the thirst for power that drove his actions – as it did Duilius’s; and, as the entire Senate chamber looked to see which way the junior consul would turn, Duilius felt the power of Rome in his hand.

      Scipio had amended his proposal on leadership. He had had to. Scipio would indeed go to sea with the fleet and he would be the overall commander, but Duilius would sail too. The junior consul would take the vanguard and would be tactical commander of the fleet, while Scipio would have strategic command, the senior consul’s position in the rear of the fleet giving the illusion of safety that the Senate demanded. Duilius had engineered the debate to highlight this compromise to Scipio and the senior consul had accepted, each man knowing that once the fleet was out of sight of Rome and beyond the Senate’s gaze, the power struggle would start afresh. But now, on this day and at this time, Duilius was ruler of Rome and he savoured the sensation.

      Duilius turned and walked towards the eastern wall, his supporters immediately following to leave a forlorn minority of twenty senators on the other side of the chamber. The men of the Senate cheered at this final decision, this conclusion to their debate, the tension of the previous ten days released in a moment of shared relief. Scipio stood and was surrounded by senators who slapped congratulatory hands on his shoulders and back, as they did for Duilius, the two men seen together as the joint saviours of the Sicilian campaign, an accolade Scipio had planned as his own. The senior consul walked towards Duilius through the press of cheering senators and magnanimously offered his hand in a show of shared responsibility for the battles ahead that would be faced together. Duilius took the hand and the crowd cheered anew. The expressions of both men were expansive, both reflecting the thrill of the moment and atmosphere of the crowd. Both expressions were only skin deep. As their eyes locked only an astute observer would have seen the momentary exchange. For Scipio and Duilius the surface solidarity hid the challenge that had been thrown down and accepted. From here on the glory of Rome would take second place to the power struggle that the Carthaginian blockade had ignited between them. Both men knew that there could be only one ruler of Rome.

      ‘No, no, no, Gaius,’ Lucius argued, ‘we can’t rely on every helmsman having your skill. Any new ships built will be sailed by, at best, fishermen and traders.’

      ‘Even so,’ Gaius countered, ‘the ram is still the best way for a

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