Blood and Steel

Chapter 11

Africa

Carthage,

Seven Days before the Ides of March, AD238

Gordian the Younger stood outside the governor’s residence. The quickening north wind fretted at his dark clothes, tugged at the black fringes of his cloak. They carried the corpse feet first, out through the door decked with its doleful branches of cedar. With much solemnity, they lifted Serenus Sammonicus onto the bier.

It would have been a comfort to believe they would meet again in some afterlife. But that could not happen. This world was just one among an infinite number created and destroyed without design or purpose, just unceasing atoms moving in the void. A soul was so fragile, composed of such minute particles, it dissolved with the last breath.

If death was just sleep, then it could not in itself be a bad thing. A true Epicurean believed that no death could come too soon or too late. Yet, if pleasure was the true aim of life, what of those who died before they had enjoyed all the pleasures they desired? At least Serenus had been old. Devoted to his books, to scholarship, in his quiet way Serenus had lived exactly as he wished: eight decades of reading and writing, eight decades of pleasure. Perhaps, when you lived to be very old, death lost its dread. Gordian found that hard to believe. Unless you were in agony, you would always plead for another year. All ways of dying are hateful to us poor mortals. Serenus had no children, but in a sense, a very attenuated sense, he would live on in his books, both those he had written and those he had gathered from all over the empire. It had been an unexpected, yet characteristic gesture of his old tutor to leave Gordian his library. An estimated sixty-two thousand volumes, too many to read in the longest lifetime.

Under the stern, marble eyes of the Capitoline triad high on their temple, the cortège set out across and out of the Forum. In the streets, warned by the sounding trumpets and wailing women, the citizens cleared the way. When the procession passed, they stopped what they were doing, put down their tools, and watched.

First came the torchbearers, their role symbolic in mid-morning, and then the musicians, flautists mingled with the trumpeters. In front of the bier, tearing their hair, scratching their cheeks, ripping their clothes, and beating and gashing their exposed breasts until the blood ran, the hired women acted as macabre midwives to the chthonic life to come. Serenus lay on a double mattress placed on a litter carried by eight strong men. The mourners followed. The locals aside, they were pitifully few in number: just Gordian himself, his father, and Sabinianus. Gordian remembered when the fellowship had been together, when the Gordiani had been gods. A summer evening, not two years before, in the villa of Sextus, outside the city walls, close to where they were going. He had worn the helm of Ares. His father had wielded the thunderbolt of Zeus, Valerian the trident of Poseidon. The winged hat of Hermes askew on Arrian’s head. Serenus as Pluto — now the religious might take that as some omen — Sabinianus as Hephaistos, Menophilus as Dionysus. Their women half-naked as goddesses, a wonderful dinner. They had been so drunk, so happy, so very united. And now they were scattered. And they were in danger. And it was all Gordian’s fault.

Slowly, they left the city, and in due course, reached the burial ground by the aqueduct, not far from the fish ponds on the Mappalian Way. A member of the city council, a gloomy looking rhetor called Thascius Cyprianus, oversaw the sacrifice, as if he had doubts about the whole procedure. The sow dead, and the grave consecrated, Gordian’s father stepped forward to speak the eulogy.

Gordian the Elder was unshaven, his hair unkempt and matted with dirt. It was excessive. Friends were like figs, so Menophilus often said, they did not last. Death was just sleep. Gordian’s father did not share his son’s Epicurean philosophy, but he put much store in the mos maiorum. Gordian thought the way of the ancestors should have curbed this immoderate display of grief, should have held his parent to the restraint of antique Roman virtus.

Yet his father was old. Serenus had been his lifelong friend. Gordian knew his father needed his support as never before. Already he had done what he could to use this ceremony to gather popular support. A distribution of meat after the funeral had been announced, and a gladiatorial show would follow in a few days. The populace would appreciate both, the more so if the rituals went well. Gordian just hoped his father would not mention either the portent or the words of the astrologer.

‘Where shall I begin my lamentations? How shall I share my grief at what has happened?’ The wind plucked away the words, but the voice of Gordian’s father contained no more tremor than age should allow. ‘Serenus was, as it were, a shining torch lit for our example, and Fate has put it out.’

It was four days since Serenus’ death. Gordian the Elder had spoken of attending the ninth-day funeral feast. That would be unwise. Menophilus’ messenger had made port first thing this morning, his ship running before the wind. Vitalianus was dead. The Senate had declared for Gordian father and son, voted them all the customary powers of Emperors. Rome was theirs. And yet, Gordian knew, it had to be secured. Valerian was a loyal friend, but not a natural leader, and Menophilus was young. The plebs urbana were fickle, and Senators trimmed their sails to the prevailing breeze. Rome needed to see its new Emperors, and Italy had to be defended from Maximinus. And then there were the provinces. Arrian would secure Numidia, Sabinianus keep Africa safe. It was unthinkable that friends such as Claudius Julianus in Dalmatia, Fidus in Thrace, and Egnatius Lollianus in Bithynia-Pontus would fail to come out in their favour, but what of the others? Above all what of the East, with its great armies? Perhaps Gordian could travel ahead to Rome, leaving his father in Carthage? Or go and rouse the East, while his father went to Rome?

‘I feel convinced that he who has gone dwells in the Elysian Fields. Let us therefore praise him as a hero, or rather bless him as a god. Farewell, Senerus.’

Gordian’s father had done well. The eulogy had been of moderate length, measured in tone, yet full of real sentiment. Now it remained for Gordian to play his part, try not to dwell on it too much, keep his thoughts on superficial actions.

The pyre was well made; the logs neatly layered, each at right angles to the one below. Only the faintest waft of corruption under the scents of cinnamon and cassia. Serenus lay with a scroll in his hands. Gordian took a coin from an attendant, and placed it in the cold mouth. The ferryman would be paid. One hand gripping the waxy, repellent skin of the face, with the other Gordian forced the dead eyelids up. At the last a man should have his eyes open to the heavens. Mastering his reluctance, Gordian leant down and kissed the cold, dead lips.

The papyrus caught easily. The fire spread to the kindling, and with a whoosh to the incense-soaked timber. Tongues of flame licked up at the corpse.

Gordian looked up at the sky, distancing his thoughts. The smoke was pulled away into the interior. Dark clouds scudded high up. A storm was coming down from the North, racing in across the sea. If the gods existed, it was as if they were mocking his plans to leave Africa.