Iron and Rust

CHAPTER 3

Rome

The Senate House,

Four Days after the Ides of March, AD235

It was still dark when Pupienus walked down from his house on the Caelian Hill. Not a star showed, not even the Kite or the Lycaonian Bear. The torches of his link-boys sawed in the gusting breeze. The pavements were dry, but the air smelt of rain.

Pupienus was in the habit of leaving his home at this hour. Normally, unless it was the day of some festival and piety demanded leisure, he would bear off to the right towards the Temple of Peace and the well-appointed offices of his high magistracy. Today was far from a normal day.

He walked under the Arch of Augustus and out into the Roman Forum. Off to the right, above the great façade of the Basilica Aemilia, the sky was beginning to lighten. Tattered black clouds could be distinguished, pressing down from the north. To most they would bring no more cheer than had the news from that direction the previous afternoon.

Down in the gloom, torches guttered across the Forum, each followed by an indistinct figure in shimmering white. All were converging on one point, like moths to a flame or ghosts to blood. The Senators of Rome were meeting in extraordinary session.

Pupienus was one of their number. Even after all this time, nearly thirty years now, it both thrilled him and seemed somehow unlikely. He had attained membership of the same order that had included Cato the Censor, Marius and Cicero. And he was not just anyone, not just a foot-soldier. Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus, Vir Clarissimus, twice Consul, was Prefect of the City of Rome, responsible for law and order in the eternal city, and up to one hundred miles beyond. To enforce his will, he commanded the six thousand men of the Urban Cohorts. He had come a long way since his youth in Tibur, let alone his childhood in Volaterrae. Pupienus stamped down the unwelcome thought of Volaterrae. The gods knew all too soon he would have to make another clandestine trip there and face the past he had taken so much trouble to hide.

The Curia stood four-square in the corner of the Forum, as if it had always stood there and always would. Postumus knew this building was not the original, but in some way that made no difference to the impression of permanence. He climbed the steps and passed under the portico. Pausing, he touched the statue of Libertas on the toe for luck, then went in through the bronze doors. He walked the length of the floor. He looked neither left nor right, not at friend or foe, not even at the presiding Consuls. He walked slowly, hands decorously hidden in his toga, eyes fixed upon the statue and altar of Victory. Dignitas was everything to a Senator. Without that potent mixture of gravity, propriety and nobility he would be no better than anyone else.

Pupienus ascended the tribunal. He made a libation of wine and offered a pinch of incense at the altar. The fumes curled up intoxicatingly from the little fire. The gilded face of Victory gazed down without emotion. He placed his right hand flat on his chest, bowed his head and prayed to the traditional gods. His prayers were for the health of the Res Publica, the safety of the imperium and the good fortune of his own family. They were all heartfelt.

His obligations to the divine met, Pupienus turned to the mundane. He greeted the Consuls and went down to his accustomed seat on the front bench. His two sons, Maximus and Africanus, were there. He let them wait, first hailing his wife’s brother Sextius Cethegillus, Maximus’ father-in-law Tineius Sacerdos and his own long-term ally and confidant Cuspidius Flamininus. Age and rank should come before familial affection. Finally, he embraced his sons. ‘Health and great joy,’ they repeated to each other. ‘Health and great joy.’

The house was very crowded, all the seats taken. Senators of less account stood packed together at the back. This would be a day to tell your grandchildren about. A new reign was beginning, the first for thirteen years. Anyone might seize the throne, but only the Senate could make him legitimate, vote him the powers necessary to rule. Without the Senate a new Emperor was no more than a usurper.

Pupienus let his eyes wander over the ranks on the other side of the Curia. The smooth, open face of Flavius Latronianus smiled at him. Pupienus smiled back. Some of the others he acknowledged more formally; none was his particular friend but, like Latronianus, all were Consulars, and all were men who had done the Res Publica good service and whose opinion carried weight. They returned his gesture.

The sight of those on the front bench immediately opposite gave him far less pleasure. Caelius Balbinus had the heavy jowls and florid face of the hardened drinker. He raised a hand to Pupienus with an ironic courtliness. As rich as Croesus, and as decadent as any oriental ruler, the aged Balbinus claimed descent from, among many other families and individuals of antique fame, the great clan of the Coelli. He revelled in the kinship this gave him with the deified Emperors Trajan and Hadrian.

Balbinus sat surrounded by other patricians cut from much the same cloth. Caesonius Rufinianus, Acilius Aviola and the grossly obese Valerii brothers, Priscillianus and Messala — all professed at least one ancestor who had sat in the very first meeting of the free Senate more than half a millennium ago. In recent times Emperors might have granted patrician status to the families of certain favourites, but Balbinus and his ilk looked down on the recipients. For them, no man was a true patrician unless his ancestor had been in the Curia on that day of liberty after Brutus had driven out Tarquinius Superbus and ended the rule of the legendary kings. Some, of course, boasted much more. According to Aviola, his line went back all the way to Aeneas himself and thus to the gods. Neither divine descent nor centuries of privilege tended to breed humility.

The young relatives of these patricians were still worse. Aviola’s cousin Acilius Glabrio and Valerius Priscillianus’ son Poplicola were two of the three-man board of junior magistrates who ran the mint. They were not even Senators yet. But they stood on the floor of the house, hair artfully curled, drenched in perfume, as if it was their entitlement. They knew as well as anyone that their birth, the smoke-blackened busts of their ancestors displayed in their palatial homes, would bring them office and advancement, irrespective of effort or merit, as it had for generations of their families.

Pupienus considered that he had nothing against the patriciate or the wider circle of the inherited nobility in general. The men on either side of him, Cethegillus and Sacerdos, came from the ranks of the latter. They each had several Consuls in their lineage, but remained men of sound mind and hard toil. They were men who could put public duty before their own self-regard and pleasures.

Pupienus himself had ennobled his family when he had held his first Consulship. Cuspidius had done the same, as had his other closest friends. Rutilius Crispinus and Serenianus were absent in the East, governing the provinces of Syria Phoenice and Cappadocia respectively. Part of Pupienus wished they were here now. He would have valued their advice and support.

Across the way, Balbinus was telling a joke, laughing at his own wit, his face porcine. Pupienus detested him. The higher Pupienus and his friends had climbed the cursus honorum, the ladder of offices, the more the likes of Balbinus had sneered at their origins. Their families were immigrants. Rome no more to them than a stepmother. Not one of their ancestors had been worthy of admittance to the Senate. What did that say of their heredity? What could a new man know of the age-old traditions of Rome?

The snide comments infuriated Pupienus. A novus homo had the harder path. He had to rise by his own services to the Res Publica, by his own virtue, not by the deeds of his distant ancestors. There was no comparison between the two. True nobility was to be found in the soul, not in a pedigree.

Balbinus finished his joke with a flourish. The patricians laughed, the corpulent Valerius Messala immoderately. Perhaps he was nervous. Perhaps it had penetrated even his obtuse understanding that in this changed landscape his splendid marriage to the sister of the murdered Emperor Alexander might leave him in a dangerous eminence.

One of the Consuls, Claudius Severus, rose to his feet.

‘Let all who are not Conscript Fathers depart. Let no one remain except the Senators.’

Some moments after the ritual sanction, the young patricians Acilius Glabrio and Poplicola sauntered towards the rear of the house. They did pass the tribunal, but stopped before the doors, still well inside the Curia itself. Pupienus was not alone in eyeing them balefully. There was always a majority of new men in the Senate.

The other Consul, the polyonymous Lucius Tiberius Claudius Aurelius Quintianus Pompeianus stood.

‘Let good auspices and joyful fortune attend the people of Rome.’

As he recited the injunction which always proceeded a proposal there was something of a disturbance behind him in the crowd of onlookers wedged in one of the rear doors.

‘We present to you, Conscript Fathers-’

Acilius Glabrio and Poplicola turned. Abruptly, the two arrogant young patricians were thrust aside, Poplicola so hard that he stumbled. A pair of Senators pushed past and got on to the tribunal to make their offerings.

The Consul exhibited the admirable self-control to be expected of a descendant of the divine Marcus Aurelius, and continued speaking.

Having paid their respects to the deities, the two latecomers descended and walked to the floor of the house. They stood there, glaring about them defiantly.

Pupienus regarded them with what he hoped was well-hidden disfavour.

Domitius Gallicanus and Maecenas were inseparable. The former was the elder and the instigator. He was an ugly man with a shock of brown hair and a straggly beard. His toga was conspicuously home-spun. Everything about his ungroomed appearance chimed with his self-proclaimed love of antique virtue and old-style Republican freedom. He was in his mid-forties. He had been Praetor some years before, but his ostentatious free speech and continual truculence towards the imperial authorities had stalled his career and so far prevented him becoming Consul.

Pupienus had never had much time for Gallicanus — a noble spirit should seek the reward of virtue in his consciousness of it, rather than in the vulgar opinion of others; he had even less since last night.

‘And that it be lawful for him to veto the act of any magistrate.’ The Consul had no need of the notes in his hand. ‘And that it be lawful for him to convene the Senate, to report business, and to propose decrees, just as it was lawful for the divine Augustus, and for the divine Claudius …’

Claudius Aurelius was proposing Maximinus be voted the powers of a tribune of the plebs, which gave an Emperor legal authority in the civil sphere. Distracted by the theatrical entry of Gallicanus and Maecenas, Pupienus must have missed the other of the twin bases of an Emperor’s rule: the clauses about the Emperor’s overriding military command.

Events had moved fast since noon the previous day when Senator Honoratus and his escort had arrived from the North, pushing their foundering horses down the rain-swept Via Aurelia and into Rome. It had been three days after the ides of March. It was the day of the Liberalia, when boys are awarded the toga virilis of manhood. Attending family ceremonies, the Senators had been scattered throughout Rome and beyond. It had been late in the afternoon before enough had been gathered in the Curia.

Honoratus was another novus homo. His hometown was Cuicul in Africa. Pupienus did not hold that against him. Honoratus had worked his way up the cursus honorum. After he had held a Praetorship, he had been given command of the 11th Legion up in Moesia Inferior, and from there appointed to a special command with the field army in Germania. Honoratus knew the ways of the Senate House as well as the camp. There had always been much to admire about him. Now there was something to fear as well.

Still in his mud-splattered travelling clothes, Honoratus had told the tale simply, without affectation. The Emperor Alexander had been murdered in a spontaneous and unsuspected uprising of the troops. The senior officers and the army had proclaimed Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus Emperor. With mutiny in the ranks and a barbarian war on hand, there had been no leisure to consult the Conscript Fathers. Maximinus hoped the Senate would understand the need for alacrity. The new Emperor intended to take advice from the Conscript Fathers, and to continue the senatorial policies of his predecessor. Maximinus was a man of proven courage and experience. He had governed Mauretania Tingitana, and Egypt, and held high command on both the eastern and the northern expeditions. Honoratus commended him to the house.

It was a fine speech, Honoratus’ slight African accent — where the occasional ‘s’ was lisped into ‘sh’ — notwithstanding. The Senate would have voted Maximinus the imperial powers immediately — some had even begun to chant acclamations — had it not been for Gallicanus.

Like a hirsute revenant from the old Republic, Gallicanus had risen up and thundered against the vitiation of senatorial procedure. It was well past the tenth hour of the day. After the tenth hour no new proposal could be put to the house. It was almost dark. Were the Conscript Fathers ashamed of their deeds? Did they seek to hide in obscurity like foul conspirators, or depraved Christians? Had they forgotten that a decree passed after sunset had no legality?

The Consuls had been left with no choice but to end the session and call for the Senate to reconvene the following morning at dawn.

Custom demanded the Senators escort home the presiding magistrates. Pupienus was one of those who accompanied Claudius Severus through the rain to his house. At least it had not been at all out of the way. The Consul was his neighbour on the Caelian Hill.

Returned to his own home, Pupienus had time only for a quick bath and to put on dry clothes before his secretary, Curius Fortunatianus, had announced the presence at the door of none other than Gallicanus. For once, his shadow, Maecenas, had not been with the arbiter of traditional senatorial mores. Indeed, Gallicanus had made a request to speak to the Prefect of the City in complete privacy. The circumspect Fortunatianus had suggested Pupienus receive his visitor in the garden dining room. The hidden back door would allow the secretary, and for certainty perhaps another trustworthy witness, to listen unobserved. Although tempted, as it would ensure his own safety, Pupienus dismissed the idea as unworthy. Gallicanus might be unsavoury, a seeker of notoriety, and his conversation might move towards the treasonous — under the circumstances, Pupienus would have been amazed if it did not — but Senators should not inform against each other, and most certainly they should not set underhand traps.

Fortunatianus had shown Gallicanus into the small room where Pupienus had dressed and then left them alone. Gallicanus had never been known for subtlety. Peering into every corner, only just stopping himself from tapping the panelling, he had demanded Pupienus swear that no one could overhear them and that nothing said would be repeated. The oaths taken, Gallicanus had launched directly into business. This new Emperor was but an equestrian. Only one man from the second order in society had ever taken the throne. Pupienus would recall the weakness and brevity of the reign of Moorish bureaucrat Macrinus. This Maximinus was worse still. At best, he was a peasant from the remote hills of Thrace. Some said one of his parents was from beyond the frontiers, a Goth or one of the Alani. Others said both had been barbarians. He was a man of no education, no culture.

Pupienus knew the law of treason was ill-defined, but its malleability tended towards inclusion and condemnation. Gallicanus had already said more than enough to lose his estates and find himself heading towards either an exile-island or the executioner. Still, Pupienus had given his word. ‘What would you do about it?’ he asked.

Gallicanus had not answered directly. The principate of Alexander had been good for the Senate. Gallicanus’ tone was earnest. Both the Emperor and his mother had shown respect to the Curia. They had given the Senators the chance to regain their dignitas. More than that, with the creation of the permanent council of sixteen Senators always in attendance on the Emperor, they could be thought to have admitted the Senate into a real sharing of power. You might call it a dyarchy.

Although he had done very well under the regime, a dyarchy would have been far from what Pupienus would have called almost a decade and a half of ineffective and corrupt rule by a weak youth and an avaricious woman who had attached various ambitious and often venal Senators to themselves in an unavailing attempt to gain a reputation for statesmanship. He said nothing in response.

The Senate had been reawakened, Gallicanus had ploughed on. Not since the first Augustus had cloaked his autocracy in fine-sounding words and smothered the last of true freedom — maybe not since long before that — had the Senate been stronger. This Thracian barbarian had not yet squatted securely on the throne. Maximinus had few backers. Most of the Senators with the army would welcome his fall. Maximinus had no legal authority. The Emperor had never been weaker. It was time to bring back libertas. It was time to restore the free Republic.

It had been a measure of Pupienus’ many years of public service that he neither snorted in derision nor laughed out loud. Apart from the court fools and a man in Africa who had been driven out of his wits by the sun, he had never heard anyone say anything more insane.

Gallicanus must have taken the continued silence of his interlocutor as a sign of something else. ‘The Urban Cohorts under your command number six thousand men. Almost all the Praetorians are with the field army on the northern frontier. There are no more than a thousand left in Rome. Many of your men are quartered in their camp. It would be easy to win them over or crush them.’

‘Herennius Modestinus?’ Pupienus had said, speaking at last.

Gallicanus had smiled like a not over-bright student asked a question he had been expecting. The Prefect of the Watch was an equestrian of the traditional type, imbued with a respect for the Senate. Anyway, if he proved contumacious, the vigiles he commanded were just seven thousand armed firemen. There were almost as many in the Urban Cohorts, and they were real soldiers. Modestinus himself was only a jurist, while Pupienus had commanded troops in the field.

‘The detachments from the fleets of Ravenna and Misenum?’

At this question Gallicanus had shrugged with a certain irritation. ‘A few sailors in Rome to put up the awnings at the spectacles.’ It was evident they had not previously crossed his mind.

‘One thousand from each fleet, all trained and under military discipline.’ Pupienus had always tried to know such details: the numbers of troops, their billeting and mood, the disposition of their officers, the family connections of the latter. He had always talked to all sorts of people. Since his rise, especially since he had become Prefect of the City, he had also paid good money to know such things.

Gallicanus had waved the sailors away as of no consequence. There was something vaguely simian in the motion.

‘If I threw my lot in with you-’ Pupienus spoke slowly and carefully; even in the security of his own house he felt a vertiginous fear at saying these things ‘-and if I gathered under one standard all the armed forces in Rome, I would command some sixteen thousand. Of which, as you say, almost half are merely firemen. The imperial field army numbers some forty thousand, before reckoning what further forces could join it from the armies on the Rhine and Danube.’

Gripping him by the arm, Gallicanus thrust his ill-favoured face close to that of Pupienus. ‘My dear friend.’ Gallicanus squeezed the arm. His gaze and voice were fervent in their sincerity. ‘My dear Pupienus, no one doubts your commitment to libertas, your devotion to the Senate, or your courage. But in a free Republic it will not be for us to assign ourselves commands. As it was when Rome grew great, the Senate will vote who leads its armies.’

Gallicanus released Pupienus’ arm and began to pace the room. He was babbling about electing a board of twenty from the Senate, all ex-Consuls, to defend Italy. Others would be sent to win over the troops and the provincials. In his eagerness he was bobbing about the confined space and swinging his arms like an agitated primate in a cage.

Pupienus was seldom flabbergasted, and he had not been so angry for a long time. What sort of fool was Gallicanus? He had come into Pupienus’ home and endangered everyone in it with his talk of treason. And he had done so not to offer Pupienus the throne, not even to offer him a leading role in a new regime. Instead the ape had wanted Pupienus to seize the city for his insane cause, and then, rather than reap the rewards, simply give up his legitimate authority and step down to the level of a private citizen.

‘This must stop.’ Pupienus had recovered quickly.

Gallicanus had rounded on him, suspicion and anger in his eyes.

Pupienus had smiled. He had hoped it looked reassuring. ‘All we Senators wish we had lived in the free Republic. But you know as well as me that the principate is a harsh necessity. The imperium was tearing itself apart in civil wars until Augustus took the throne.’

Gallicanus had shaken his head. ‘We can learn from history.’

‘No-’ Pupienus had been adamant ‘-the same would happen again. The leading men would fight for power until one of them won or the empire fell. You have read your Tacitus. Now we must pray for good Emperors, but serve the ones we get.’

‘Tacitus served under the tyrant Domitian. He was nothing but a quietist, a time-server. He was a man of no courage, a coward.’ Gallicanus had shouted the last words.

‘You and I, we both held office under Caracalla.’ Pupienus had pitched his voice at its most reasonable. ‘Give up this scheme before you bring disaster on your family and your friends.’

Gallicanus stood wringing his hands and pressing them together as if he could physically crush this opposition. ‘I thought you were a man of honour.’

You ape, Pupienus thought, you stupid, arrogant Stoic ape. ‘I hope you will think so again, because I will never mention this conversation to anyone.’

Gallicanus had left.

The mellifluous tones of the Consul brought Pupienus back to the Senate House:

‘… And that whatsoever he shall deem to be according to the custom of the ResPublica and the greatness of divine and human, public and private matters, there be right and power for him to undertake and to do, just as there was for the divine Augustus …’

The Consul had reached clauses that were surely otiose. As Maximinus had already had been vested with the tribunician power, which brought the ability to make and unmake all laws, of course he could do whatsoever he should deem according to the custom of the Res Publica, and any other thing as well. Pupienus was only half listening. He was still watching Gallicanus posturing in his near-rags on the floor of the Senate House. The previous evening he had forgotten that Gallicanus had moved from following the doctrines of the Stoa to those of Diogenes. Not a Stoic ape then. A Cynic dog instead. It made little difference. The ragged Senator was still a dangerous fool, made all the more dangerous by a conviction that profoundest philosophy underpinned all his beliefs and actions.

Gallicanus had not been the only visitor to the house on the Caelian that night. Pupienus and his wife were starting their belated dinner when Fortunatianus had announced another caller. This time the secretary had suggested no ingenious espionage. He was plainly terrified. Honoratus was outside. The street was full of soldiers.

Pupienus had dreaded such a moment since first he acquired wealth and position. The knock on the door in the night. The imperial official standing in the torchlight, the armed men at his back. The muted terror sliding through the corridors of the house. In the reign of Caracalla, it had happened to several men close to Pupienus. Neither those vicarious experiences nor the years of expectation had made the sudden reality any easier.

Surely there had been no time for Gallicanus to have approached someone else. Even that hairy fool must have realized that he could never seize Rome without the Urban Cohorts. Pupienus had felt a hollow deep in his stomach. Could he have so misread Gallicanus? Was all that conspicuous virtue no more than a mask? Was all his talk of the Res Publica no more than a trap?

The new arrival could be unconnected. But still lethal. A new regime often began with a purge. But it could be nothing. With all the courage and dignitas he could muster, Pupienus had told Fortunatianus to bring Honoratus to him. While waiting, he had managed not to touch the ring on his right middle finger which contained the poison. Instead, he had put his hand on that of his wife, squeezed, and forced himself to smile into her eyes.

Honoratus was still wearing the same clothes muddied from the road in which he had addressed the Senate. He entered alone. Pupienus fought down a surge of hope. If it was premature, it would be all the more devastating.

‘Forgive the intrusion, Prefect.’ Honoratus had spread his arms wide, showing his empty palms. ‘I should have sent a messenger ahead. I have been somewhat occupied.’

‘Think nothing of it, Senator.’

Honoratus had bowed to Sextia. ‘My Lady, I need the advice of your husband.’

Like a true Roman matron, she had spoken some graceful words and withdrawn. Only the slightest catch in her voice betrayed the relief that her husband would be neither hauled off to the torturers in the palace cellars nor butchered in front of her.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘No.’

‘Please, do.’

Honoratus stopped his host calling for a slave to remove his boots. ‘I will do it myself. Discretion might be best.’ He pronounced it ‘dishcretion’.

Pupienus had watched the younger man wash his hands, tip a libation and start to eat. He sprinkled some salt on a hard-boiled egg, dipped it in some fish sauce. He ate it delicately. He reached for another. The speed of his feeding increased. He was hungry. Pupienus had forced himself to keep quiet. Behind the dirt and fatigue, Honoratus was still ridiculously good-looking: dark hair, dark eyes, the cheekbones of a statue. Pupienus had thought it would be almost unseemly to be killed by someone so beautiful.

Honoratus drained his glass.

‘Shall I call for more?’

Honoratus smiled. ‘You were never one for much wine, Pupienus. No, leave it until they bring in the next course.’

Pupienus had passed him more bread.

‘Alexander had to go,’ Honoratus had said. ‘He was trying to pay off the Germans. He was too scared to fight. The soldiers despised him. It would have been a disaster, much worse than the East. His mother’s greed was getting worse. The troops’ pay was late. If we had not acted, someone else would have.’

Pupienus had made an understanding noise.

‘Maximinus is a good soldier, a good administrator. He has courage. He will fight the German tribes, and he will win.’

Pupienus had repeated the noise, with just a hint of a question.

‘As an equestrian, Maximinus has no experience of the Senate. Although he has governed provinces, his whole attention must be on the northern war. Often he will be beyond the frontier, deep in barbaricum. In civil matters he will delegate and listen to advice.’

‘Whose advice?’

‘I rather hope mine, among others.’ Honoratus had laughed. He had very straight white teeth. ‘The new Emperor also puts particular faith in the governor of Pannonia Superior, Flavius Vopiscus, and the commander of 8th Legion, Catius Clemens.’

Pupienus considered his words. ‘I have known Flavius Vopiscus for many years. Catius Clemens I do not know so well, but if he is like his brother Celer, who is one of the Praetors this year in Rome, then the new Emperor has chosen his confidants well. All three are men of judgement.’

Honoratus had raised his empty glass to acknowledge the compliment. ‘Loyal friends are always the pillars of the throne. Maximinus would embrace you in his friendship. Your excellence as Prefect of Rome argues for its continuation.’

Now Pupienus toasted the kind words.

‘You have two sons. When the two Consuls who have given their name to this year step down in a couple of months, Maximinus is minded to appoint your elder son, Pupienus Maximus, as one of the Suffect Consuls. I will be the other. A still greater honour is being considered for your family. Next year the Emperor will take office on the kalends of January. Maximinus is thinking of taking your younger son, Africanus, as his colleague as Consul Ordinarius. For eternity, it would be the year of the Emperor Gaius Iulius Maximinus and Marcus Pupienus Africanus. So that the Emperor can get to know your son, form a true estimate of his virtues, Africanus will accompany me back to the field army.’

It was neatly done, Pupienus had thought, the blend of high honours binding the family to a potentially unpopular regime and the taking of a hostage. He spoke. ‘It will be difficult to live up to the benefactions shown, but we will try.’

‘Excellent,’ Honoratus had said. ‘Who was it who said, “Scratch the surface of any government and you find an oligarchy”?’

‘I cannot remember.’

‘No, nor me. Of course, you must keep Rome quiet: no rioting from the plebs, no conspiracies among the nobility.’

‘Of course.’

‘Excellent,’ Honoratus had said, again. ‘Now perhaps your servants could stop listening at the doors and bring in the main course. I am shtarving.’

Pupienus had rung a little bell.

‘One thing,’ Honoratus said. ‘I brought a new equestrian down to take command of the vigiles. I think you will like the new Prefect of the Watch. He is called Potens.’

‘Herennius Modestinus?’

‘Oh no — gods, no! Nothing like that.’

Inwardly, Pupienus had cursed. His voice must have betrayed him.

‘What do you take our new Emperor for? A barbarian?’ Honoratus had showed his teeth as he laughed. They really were perfect.

Pupienus had kept a very straight face.

‘Not half an hour ago, I thanked Modestinus for his noble efforts patrolling the streets night after night for fires and malefactors. I told him how much the Emperor appreciated his labours, but Maximinus had decided that a skilled jurist might be more sensibly employed handling all the legal entreaties addressed to the throne. When your son and I set off to the frontier, Modestinus will accompany us. At the imperial court the position of Secretary for Petitions awaits the man of law. Modestinus will make a fine a Libellis. He has always been dutiful, but somehow it was not right he remain in Rome while the Emperor was elsewhere. It was just that some said he was a little too fond of the old free Republic.’ And Honoratus had gazed hard at Pupienus.

The rest of the meal had passed without anything of significance, the conversation harmless.

Up on the tribunal, the Consul finally reached the end of the lengthy list of overlapping powers, privileges and honours proposed for the new Emperor. ‘And we recommend that these things be approved by you, Conscript Fathers.’ Claudius Aurelius sat down with the air of a task well done.

Laboriously, the Father of the House, Cuspidius Celerinus, used his walking stick to pull himself to his feet. An octogenarian, Celerinus was frail, but his reason remained acute. He knew what was wanted: something of moderate length, traditional in tone and panegyric in nature. His reedy old man’s voice still carried all through the Curia.

Like Cincinnatus summoned from the plough, Maximinus had answered the call of the Res Publica. The time for vacillation was past. Mars had come down from the heights. Grim-visaged, the god stalked the fields and villas, howled around the walls of towns. The dangers had never been greater. In the time of Cincinnatus, the lone tribe of the Italian Aequi besieged one legion on Mount Algidus. Now, all the barbaric tribes of the frozen North raged against the Romans, held the entire empire under siege, threatened humanitas itself. Come the hour, come the man. Hardened by war on every continent, only Maximinus, spurring the flanks of his foaming warhorse, could bring defeat to the savage Germans. As far as the Ocean, they would bow their heads to the majesty of Rome.

With his victory won, great Caesar would return to Rome. In the metropolis the antique virtues bred in his rustic home — piety, frugality, self-control — would cleanse away the stains of recent luxury and wickedness. A second Romulus, he would scour away the filth of corruption to bring forth another golden age. Justice would return to earth. All would salute him: the lands, the stretching leagues of the sea, the unplumbed sky. Let us salute him. Let Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus become Emperor!

A roar of approval went up to the high ceiling, startling a pair of sparrows and sending them racing out over the heads of the spectators at the open doors. Old Celerinus sat down. His neighbours congratulated him. Pupienus walked over to join them. It had been a good speech, with echoes of Livy and Virgil, the patriotism of both suitable to the occasion.

In order of precedence, the Consuls asked the opinion of the assembled Senators: I agree. I agree. One after another, the four hundred or more assented. The Consuls put it to the vote.

With much shuffling and even a little barging, the vast majority of the Conscript Fathers rushed to arraign themselves on the indicated side of the Curia. They packed themselves together like herd animals threatened by a predator. Some were slower, through age or infirmity, or overtly paraded independence. Gallicanus and Maecenas moved tardily and but a little. Gallicanus barely crossed the middle of the floor.

Perhaps, Pupienus thought, I should have given you to Honoratus. The handsome friend of the new Emperor knew Gallicanus had visited, and must surmise that he talked treason, although possibly not the fanatic scope of it. The free Republic had been dead nearly three centuries. To revive it was a fool’s dream. But Gallicanus was a fool. A yapping Cynic dog of a fool. Like an undermined bastion, his arrogance could bring ruin on those around him at any moment. Perhaps indeed he should yet be handed over to Honoratus. But no, an oath was an oath. The gods were not to be mocked. Yet, if a way could be found, it might not stand to the discredit of Maximinus and those around him if an example were to be made of Gallicanus.

‘This side seems to be in the majority.’ The formal words of the Consul were an understatement. No one, not even Gallicanus, was fool enough to vote openly against the accession.

The Senators began to chant their thanks to the gods for their new Emperor: ‘Iupiter optime, tibi gratias. Apollo venerabilis, tibigratias.’ It echoed around the marbled walls of the Curia like plainsong.

‘Iupiter optime, tibi gratias. Apollo venerabilis, tibi gratias.’

Singing with the rest, Pupienus wondered how long the gratitude to Jupiter the best, to venerable Apollo, to the other gods not yet thanked, would last. Could Honoratus, Flavius Vopiscus and Catius Clemens control the creature they had elevated? Could they mould Maximinus into something acceptable to more than the soldiery? Perhaps they could. They were men of ability as well as ambition. And there was Paulina, the wife of Maximinus. She was from the nobility. The Thracian was said to love her. She was reckoned a good influence.

Yet, no matter how he behaved, would the Senators ever truly accept Maximinus? They had fixed views on the person and role of an Emperor. He should be chosen from the Senators. He should respect the Senate and share the lifestyle of its members. Above all, he must be a first among equals, a civilis princeps. A shepherd boy from the North risen to equestrian rank via the army could not be such a primus inter pares.

Pupienus debated the wisdom of his actions the previous night. There was nothing else he could have done, nothing reasonable. But it might not pay to be too close to this new regime. Circumspection was the order of the day. Information should be gathered, a keen ear kept open for hints and whispers. He should be prepared, but nothing precipitous should be ventured. Ignorance breeds confidence, reflection leads to hesitation, as the saying went.

Iupiter optime, tibi gratias. Apollo venerabilis, tibi gratias.