Blood and Steel

Chapter 37

Northern Italy

The Territory of the City of Aquileia,

Five Days after the Ides of March, AD238

The noise of the wagons strung out along the Via Gemina stunned the senses: the rumble and jolt of iron wheel rims on stone, the shriek of wood tortured against wood. One or two rustic carts would have been in keeping, but this armed convoy violated the peace of the countryside on a fine spring morning. In the sunshine the territory of Aquileia was beautiful, flat and fertile and well tended. Regimented lines of vine props, very black and tough with age, stretched away with geometric precision from fruit trees heavy with blossom. Violet flowers pricked the grass in between the rows. The land did not deserve this intrusion. With destruction its intention, this convoy was a violent harbinger of civil war.

Menophilus was tired, dog tired. He had reached Aquileia two nights before. After three days in the carriage from Rome, that first night he had been unable to sleep in an unsettlingly solid and unmoving bed. One night’s sleep had not been near enough to recover. His Stoicism made him despise the weakness of his body. He hated making decisions when fatigue clouded his judgement. But decisions had had to be reached.

His colleague Crispinus had arrived in the city the day before him. Crispinus had been with a Senatorial travelling companion, an ex-Praetor called Annianus. Also at the meeting was Flavius Adiutor, the Prefect of the 1st Cohort Ulpia Galatarum. The five hundred auxiliary infantrymen temporarily stationed in Aquileia were the only regular troops available in the vicinity. Two other equestrian officers had been present, Servilianus and Laco, as well as two locals of the same social status. The latter were the heads of the Barbii and Statii families. They owned many of the estates through which the convoy was passing. Both had senatorial connections. The Barbii had provided the late Emperor Alexander with a wife for one of his brief and less than happy marriages.

Crispinus was an Italian novus homo like himself, and Menophilus had tried not to be prejudiced against him merely because he wore a long beard of philosophical pretentions. Although standing somewhat on his dignitas, Crispinus clearly was competent and energetic. It could not be easy for the older man sharing this command, especially as he might well see Menophilus as an imperial favourite promoted too fast and above his merits.

Menophilus wondered if he had acted out of personal pettiness when insisting that Crispinus’ friend Annianus be sent to Mediolanum to raise recruits and see to the making of arms and armour. With the ex-Praetor gone, neither Crispinus nor he had any adherents among those in Aquileia. But the tasks were pressing, and the posting made sense, as did the other appointments. Laco was to go to secure the adherence of the fleet at Ravenna to the cause of the Gordiani. Servilianus would train the militia within Aquileia. Artillery, sulphur and other war materiel would be assembled by the troops under Flavius Adiutor. Of the civilians, Barbius had been assigned the repair of the town walls, and Statius the gathering of stockpiles of food. As nothing much could be expected of the defence of the Alpine Passes, Aquileia was likely be the front line. The city had to be ready to stand siege.

When the meeting was done, weary as he had been, Menophilus had gone to the Temple of Belenus in the centre of the town. He was not much given to the forms of tradi-tional religion. But if, as he devoutly believed, the cosmos was guided by an omniscient intelligence, then the plethora of individual gods worshipped by the masses could be seen as imperfectly understood reflections of that one Demiurge. Menophilus could not see why God should need the reminders of prayer or the bribery of sacrifice. Nor was it likely that the deity would make His will known via the flight of birds or the entrails of beasts. The Demiurge could find simpler and more elegant methods.

Yet Belenus was strongly revered in the area, and the loyalty of the townspeople was not above suspicion. True, Maximinus had earned some unpopularity by conscripting unwilling recruits from Aquileia for his northern wars, and by ordering the rich young men of the youth organizations to the undignified and hard labour of repairing the roads. But, on the other hand, he had given gifts to the city, and already in his brief stay Menophilus had seen several inscriptions praising and thanking a Saviour Emperor whose recently chiselled out appellation was of the right length to contain the names Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus.

The priests of the sanctuary had received a lavish monetary offering from Menophilus, as if granted by the Augusti Gordian Father and Son. Belenus gave oracles, and his priests conveyed them to humanity. In what lay ahead, suitably bracing divine encouragement might be invaluable, and it was not the moment to begrudge money.

The convoy shrieked and rumbled along. On either side of the road, the cut-back vines were low at this time of year. Enormous barrels stood in the vineyards, empty, waiting for the vintage. They were as big as a peasant hut, big enough to house not just a lone Cynic philosopher like Diogenes, but a number of his pupils as well.

Weariness caused images to slide without control through Menophilus’ mind. A philosopher sitting in a barrel, crawling out to tell the King to move out of the sunlight. Sabinus slumped in a dark storeroom, his head smashed like an amphora. The dazzling light from the polished walls of the courtyard on the Palatine they called Sicilia. His own reflection, disjointed and bloody, reflected back. Vitalianus pleading for the lives of his daughters.

A farm at the side of the road broke the train of unwanted thoughts. Soldiers were loading produce onto one of the wagons, strapping sacks onto pack animals, herding the occupiers away, tearing the doors from their hinges. The work of Mars had begun. War was a harsh master.

Another image came unbidden into Menophilus’ mind. An itinerary of the empire, straight black lines for the roads, the mileage between halts in neat numerals, and each place illustrated with a drawing of a building, as if done by a careful child. Along the roads tiny carriages rolled, raising diminutive clouds of dust. A messenger sped with a deadly despatch towards Dacia. The knife boy Castricius crossed the Alps, rattling ever closer to Maximinus. Worst of all, two barbarians lolled drinking as their conveyances took them towards the edge of the map, where the roads ended, where began the great blankness of barbarity, and where there was nothing but large letters spelling Sarmatia and Gothia. Sleepless the other night, Menophilus had remembered that when desperate even Marcus Aurelius had stooped to putting a price on an enemy chieftain’s head. The exemplum of assassination did not make Menophilus feel any better.

‘We are there, Sir.’

The Aesontius river was lined with willows. Its waters were wide and fast with spring melt from the mountains, white mist spraying up where it ran over rocks and met promontories. The bridge was built of light-grey stone. Its graceful piers and arches, above the roiling water, epitomized everything that was secure and good about the rule of Rome.

The convoy halted, men climbed out of the wagons, and Menophilus gave the orders to begin the hard toil of breaking the fine spans of the bridge.

In the dark days of the Marcomannic War, Marcus Aurelius had done worse than countenance political murder. The noble Emperor had succumbed to superstition and magic. The Emperor had been persuaded victory would be his if he allowed some outlandish charlatan priest to sacrifice two lions on the banks of the Danube. The beasts had escaped, and swum across to the barbarians, never to be seen again. If the wisest of Emperors, a man fortified by a lifetime’s study of the philosophy of the Stoics, could be brought so low, what chance was there for a lesser man? Menophilus knew he would never be the same again. The actions he was taking, which might secure power for his friends, would destroy that very friendship. Menophilus knew he no longer deserved the friendship of the Gordians, or of any men with claims to decency and virtue. In politics, the things you wish for, were the things you must fear. He was dying every day.