Blood and Steel

Chapter 23

Rome

The Villa Publica,

The Ides of March, AD238

Hangover cures were all nonsense. Garlanding yourself with violets, being rubbed with aromatic oils, wearing an amethyst next to your skin, eating owls’ eggs — what sort of dedicated voluptuary had such foresight or went to such lengths? — none did any good. Only time would heal. Despite his scepticism, Menophilus had ordered fried cabbage to go with the mountain of eggs and bacon the two barbarian hostages were consuming.

Zeno had counselled that the good man will not get drunk. The Stoic master had considered that an inebriated man will reveal secrets. As far as he could remember, Menophilus had let slip nothing of any importance last night. Of course he could not be sure; by the end, unable to walk straight, the whole room had been spinning as if in a cyclone.

Drunkenness inflamed and laid bare every vice, removing the reserve that acts as a check on impulses to wrong behaviour, as Seneca had written. The girl had still been there this morning. Menophilus knew he had a weakness for sex and drink. The vices were not habitual, but they were recurrent. She had been a slave girl, waiting on table, so no harm had been done. Better her than a free virgin or a respectable matron. Adultery was nothing but theft. Not that it had felt like that in Carthage with Lycaenion. At least he had been discrete, not flaunted it in the face of her husband. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

Unable to face the eggs, Menophilus tried to chew a small piece of bacon. His head throbbed, and he felt slightly sick. He was sweating, and it was difficult to swallow. Cniva the Goth and Abanchus the Sarmatian showed few ill effects of the debauch. The barbarians were shovelling in the food. Bits kept getting stuck in the Sarmatian’s luxuriant moustache. It made Menophilus feel worse.

Menophilus forced himself to eat some cabbage. It would give him energy. Even without the drinking, he would have been tired. Yesterday had been a long day. But both tasks had been accomplished.

In the morning, in yet another fractious meeting, at long, long last the Twenty had apportioned out the posts among their number for the coming campaign against Maximinus. Days of wrangling had produced, at best, an imperfect strategy. Only six or seven of them could be considered military men. Factional interests had precluded their straightforward appointment to the necessary stations. In the name of Republican collegiality, amid many invocations of the mos maiorum, all commands were to be shared by two men. How this was to function had not been explored. The ancestral way, where two Consuls alternated days of command, had been rejected, thus laying bare the unspoken imperative that each was there as much to watch his colleague, prevent him gaining too much glory, as to fight the enemy.

At least Menophilus himself would be accompanied by Crispinus in the defence of Aquileia. He knew something of Pupienus’ friend. A novus homo, Crispinus had entered the Senate after a long succession of equestrian military commands. As governor of Syria Phoenice, he had led troops with distinction in Alexander’s Persian campaign. Things elsewhere were less satisfactory. In the Apennines, Lucius Virius was saddled with the indolent patrician Caesonius Rufinianus. Organizing the defence of Rome, Pupienus would have to contend with the philosophical ineptitude of Maecenas. The task of preventing reinforcements reaching Maximinus across the western Alps, given to Cethegillus, would not be aided by the presence of the unmilitary nobilis Valerius Priscillianus.

The hand of that fat fool Balbinus was in everything. His vexation at the betrothal of the plain daughter of Praetextatus — his former ally — to one of Pupienus’ sons would have been comical, if it had not led to still further contention, when unity was a necessity.

Yet Balbinus could not be blamed for what was possibly the worst aspect of the arrangement, the holding of the front line at the eastern Alpine Passes. The two descendants of the Divine Marcus Aurelius, Claudius Aurelius and Claudius Severus, had demanded the honour of being the first to meet the barbarian tyrant on the battlefield. It had been impossible to deny their prestige and high birth, even though it had been precisely these qualities that previously had ensured no reigning Emperor had entrusted them with any military high command. Maximinus and his veteran army might be expected to make short work of two elderly aristocrats and whatever makeshift forces had been scrapped together. Menophilus had got the Twenty to agree to Timesitheus going with them. Officially the equestrian would merely provide technical advice, while levying troops and gathering supplies in the foothills and across the plain of the river Po.

The selection of ambassadors from the remainder of the Twenty to venture abroad and win over the provinces had not been easy. The luxuries of the eternal city, and its place as the ultimate residence of legitimate power, in the minds of most, seemed to outweigh the dubious honour and the discomforts of travel. To be fair, there was also the evident danger. It was near certain that any governor who did not join the revolt would have the envoys loaded with chains, bundled into a closed carriage, and conveyed post-haste to Maximinus. What the Thracian would do to them when they arrived did not bear thinking about. After some prevarication, two of the faction of the Gordiani agreed. The aged Appius Claudius Julianus would go to Gallia Narbonensis, and, if the gods were kind, the northern provinces beyond. Egnatius Marinianus — a waste of one of the rare military talents — would cross first the Adriatic to Dalmatia and the Balkan provinces, then the Hellespont to Bithynia-Pontus and Asia Minor. The independent Senator Latronianus volunteered to sail for Syria and the East. He was one of the few in the Twenty who had emerged with an enhanced reputation from the endless discussions.

Everything was concluded, but Menophilus was very aware that of those fully committed to the Gordiani only Valerian would remain in Rome. He finished the bacon and cabbage, took some more, and asked a servant to bring him some eggs. He was feeling a bit less bad, actually hungry. If you could get some food inside you, and keep it there, it helped. As did focusing your mind on something other than your physical suffering. The two barbarians were talking in some language Menophilus did not know. Despite the wine fumes in his head, he continued to reconstruct the events of the previous day.

The afternoon and evening had been the idea of Timesitheus. They had taken the northern hostages to the Equirria. The festival’s two-horse chariot races in the Stadium of Domitian on the Campus Martius always made a fine show. Cniva the Goth was from the Tervingi, Abanchus the Sarmatian an Iazyges. They had seemed to appreciate watching from the imperial box. Usually men of their tribes should consider themselves fortunate to be granted a place in the Senatorial seating. There had been drinks throughout the spectacle. Both had wagered large sums of money, and laughed without restraint, slapped their thighs, at every crash, as a barbarian would.

After sunset, when they escorted them back to their nearby lodgings in the Villa Publica, they had found Timesitheus had provided a splendid feast; huge amounts of roast meat and wine, attractive serving girls, things guaranteed to please any barbarian nobleman.

At first Menophilus and Timesitheus had talked together in Greek, confident the barbarians could not understand. Timesitheus had argued at some length that he should be sent to the East. Their conversation came back to Menophilus with a strange clarity.

‘Who better than the Praefectus Annonae to ensure the supply of Egyptian grain?’ Timesitheus had said. ‘I know the East from Alexander’s campaign, and since then have governed provinces there. The envoy Latronianus was the earliest patron of my career; we would work in harness like a well-schooled chariot team.’

Menophilus had been forced to interrupt. ‘You had better know what is really expected of you in the North.’

‘I love secrets,’ Timesitheus had said.

‘The Julian Alps around Mount Ocra are dominated by a landowner called Marcus Julius Corvinus. Rumour has it he is more highland chief than respectable equestrian. It is said the bandits who infest the Passes either are his men or pay him a part of their loot.’

Timesitheus had appeared interested.

‘You are to go to his principal residence, a mountain fastness called Arcia. If he can be persuaded to raid the baggage trains of Maximinus’ army, assure him that such a service would not be forgotten by the Gordiani.’

The Greek had still not looked totally reconciled.

‘Nor will your scheme for the barbarian hostages,’ Menophilus had added.

That had won over the Graeculus.

The next part of the evening — the business with the barbarian envoys — was more fragmentary in Menophilus’ memory.

While detained in Rome, both Cniva and Abanchus had learnt enough Latin to make conversation. Late that night, well warmed by the wine, they had agreed readily to win their freedom by swearing to get their tribes to act in the interests of the Gordiani.

Menophilus worried about the morality of the arrangement. Posterity might judge it harshly. Fighting for the throne, Vespasian had rejected offers of foreign aid. Any good Emperor would. But Vespasian had the armies of the Danube and the East at his back. The Gordiani had no such array. The Iazyges of Abanchus would draw troops from Maximinus’ field army. The Tervingi of Cniva would prevent reinforcements reaching him from Honoratus on the lower Danube. Yet unleashing Sarmatian horsemen into the Pannonias, and Gothic warriors into Moesia Inferior would cause untold suffering to innocent Roman provincials. And a taste of plunder only incited barbarians to want more. Once you have released such animals, it was hard to call them off. In politics the things you hope for are the ones you must fear.

Menophilus had finished eating. He wondered if the hostages would ever do the same. He toyed with a piece of bread and honey.

Gordian had given him strict instructions. He had left them far behind. No one in Rome was to die, except Vitalianus. Menophilus had gone on to kill Sabinus as well, smashed his skull like a pottery vessel. Neither Gordian nor his father would have countenanced the massacre of Roman citizens by barbarians. But they were in Africa, and he was here, fighting for the empire on their behalf. Someone had to make the hard decisions. When Vespasian had taken the throne, he had cast aside the generals that had won him the civil war. Probably the Gordiani would turn from him in revulsion. He already missed their companionship. But friends were like figs, they did not keep. Better sacrifice his good reputation, take the odium, and ensure their safety. His Stoicism enjoined that a good man will take part in politics, unless something intervened. It was an irony that he had been put in this dreadful position by a man he loved whose Epicureanism urged the opposite.

The barbarians had finished. They sat back, wiping greasy fingers, belching.

‘Now you show us real drinking.’

It was the Ides of March. The day the plebs urbana made merry in the open parkland at the north of the Campus Martius. They erected tents, makeshift shelters of reeds. Every cup of wine a man or woman drank ensured another year of life. No one wanted to die young.

Menophilus could imagine little worse. He was leaving for Aquileia the next day. There was much to be done. But he had promised the hostages. Once you have undertaken something, it had to be seen through.