Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad-free right now.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

The cold wind howled down from the mountains to the south. It sliced through thin tunics and made

bronze helmets and iron chain mail freezing to the touch. The thousands of assembled soldiers

shivered and suffered in the chill as concerned with staying warm as the prospect of impending death.

A light dusting of snow covered the top of the single peak, a mountain called

Cipilus, but the gray winter clouds obscured most of the uplands towering above the plains.

A Roman centurion named Marcus gripped his shield and javelin and spat onto the frozen ground,

trying to clear the salty aftertaste to preserve beef and sour wine from his mouth.

In all his years with the legions, Marcus had never been this far from home,

not in Sicily, not in Africa, not even during those two years of schlepping up Iberian

hillsides in pursuit of painted tribesmen. He was somewhere in Asia now, Marcus knew,

but after this many campaigns, the flat, dry plains,

and looming hills in the distance, that all started to look alike.

Marcus had never really intended to be a soldier. The first time, he had been called to the

legions 20 years before he had just turned 17. His father, short two fingers, thanks to a gulls

sword and never the most patient with his

son's carousing and fighting, pushed him out the door of their farmhouse and onto the road that led to Rome. When Marcus returned from Iberia with a Libyan slave and a pocketful of gold, he couldn't have said that his father was happy to see him, and it was only a matter of time before he was once again on campaign, this time in Africa. He remembered the trumpeting

of Hannibal's elephants on the plane of Zama, and he could hear that sound again now, coming

from the Selucid King Antiochus's army just ahead. Back then, it had been enough to turn his bowels

to water. Now, he knew that the gigantic creatures didn't like having javelins hurled toward their eyes,

and they were prone to panic when they felt threatened.

...