Iron and Rust

CHAPTER 8

Africa

The City of Hadrumetum,

Eight Days after the Ides of April, AD235

The curtains were drawn back to catch the breeze in the room designated for the court. Gordian looked at the others on the tribunal. His father, presiding as judge, was beginning to look his age. He still had a full head of hair, unlike Gordian himself. It had been silver for years, but now the face below was drawn, the cheeks sunken, the eyes rheumy yet somehow staring. There was a tremor in the elder’s voice and hand. It saddened Gordian, both for itself and for what it implied about his own mortality. He regarded the other assessors. Serenus Sammonicus, his old tutor, was elderly like his father. Valerian, Sabinianus, Arrian and the local Mauricius were of an age with himself; men in their forties, either in the prime of life or halfway towards death, depending on your viewpoint. Only Menophilus, the Quaestor, was younger, still in his late twenties. Not one of them, not even the two patrician Cercopes, looked as bored as Gordian felt.

The villa commanded a fine view of the harbour of Hadrumetum. Inside the jetties the water rippled gently, flashing in the sun. A gang of men were loading amphorae on to a big cargo vessel. They wore loincloths and their bodies glistened with sweat. An overseer dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. The olive oil was destined for the tables, lamps and perfume bottles of Rome. It had been centuries since the eternal city had been able to feed herself from her Italian hinterlands. All the staples — grain and wine as well as oil — had to be imported. Every year, vast quantities were shipped from Egypt, but the majority was sent from Africa. Long ago, in the reign of Claudius, a governor of Africa had cut off the supply when he made his bid for the throne. In those days, the Proconsul had still commanded the 3rd Legion, and he had raised another legion. None of it had done him any good.

A line of moored fishing boats formed a contrast to the relentless activity around the merchantman. They would have been out the previous night, but now, with their weathered paint, rough tarpaulins and piles of sand-coloured nets, they looked abandoned. Beyond them, at the end of one of the moles, a group of young boys sprawled on the rocks of the breakwater. When the mood took them, they would stand and dive into the water. Laughing, they would climb out, shake themselves and lie down again to let the sun dry their brown, naked bodies. They were poor, but they were free. Gordian wished he was back in Ad Palmam.

His plan had worked. The nomads guarding the camp had been so engrossed in the assault on the oasis that they had failed to notice the approach of Menophilus with the 15th Cohort. They had broken at the first contact. Their panic had spread to the animal holders, and from them had infected those fighting in the trees and at the gate of the citadel. Pell-mell, they had fled south. Most had got away. Apart from Nuffuzi’s son, there had been only about twenty captured, almost all of them wounded. No more than thirty bodies were found. There had been no pursuit. The 15th Cohort was on foot, and the horsemen with Gordian in the settlement had been handled too hard to be sent out. It would have made little difference. Nuffuzi had managed to keep a grip on many of those around him, and had screened the rout.

Gordian had remained at the oasis for five days. To win back self-respect for himself and his men, Aemilius Severinus had sent his Wolves patrolling south. They had ridden far beyond Thusuros and Castellum Nepitana, far out into the desert, but had encountered nothing except the carcasses of horses and camels. The other troops had buried the dead and tended the wounded. Despite the intensity of the fighting, there were not many of either, no more than forty all told, the majority speculatores, and at least twenty would return to the ranks. A caravan had been organized to take the freed captives back north to their homes. The plunder had been divided among the men. The complications of restoring it to its original owners were prohibitive, and soldiers need an incentive to fight. On the fourth day, those nomad prisoners able to march had set off under the guard of the 15th Cohort to its base at Ammaedara. Along with Nuffuzi’s son, who Gordian had kept in his entourage, they should make useful bargaining counters in the diplomacy which inevitably would follow. The remainder — seven of them — were killed.

With the governor’s horse guards and the African irregulars, Gordian had returned via Capsa, Thelepte and Cillium. He had halted for two days at Vicus Augusti, just short of Hadrumetum. Men and horses had needed a rest. He had paid a courtesy visit to the villa of Sulpicia Memmia just outside the little town. The Emperor Alexander had divorced her, but it was not unknown for the fortunes of such eminent exiles to revive. The short sojourn had given time for news of the victors’ arrival to proceed them to Hadrumetum, and for a suitable reception to be arranged. While he set little store on such things, the men appreciated them. As it transpired, the attention was not disagreeable.

‘Name? Race? Free or slave?’

The principals in the next case had been ushered in. The court had heard one already; a tedious dispute between two smallholders about an inheritance. The younger Gordian judged the position of the sun. Only mid-morning — at least three hours until the recess for lunch — and after that they would be confined in legal wrangling again until dusk. Thank the gods it was April. They had reached Hadrumetum in the middle of the Cerialia. There were just eight days between it ending and the beginning of the Ludi Florales, and three of those were given over to briefer festivals. This was the first of only five days when the governor could give justice until well into May.

The plaintiffs were a bunch of tenants from an estate owned by the Emperor. Gordian watched them make their offerings of a pinch of incense to the Emperor and the traditional gods. Their tunics were patched, but they were clean, and their hands and faces scrubbed.

The man they were accusing was an unctuous-looking Procurator who ran the estate. Clad in a toga with the narrow purple stripe of an equestrian, he was doing his best to appear unconcerned, as if their accusations were beneath him, barely worth answering.

The tenants seemed overawed, their spokesman as much as any. Nevertheless, when the water-clock was turned, he managed to get underway.

‘We are simple men, workers in the fields. We were born and raised on the Emperor’s estate, and we ask, in the name of the most sacred Emperor, that you succour us.’

As he realized that he would be given a hearing, he gained in confidence.

‘In accordance with the laws of the divine Hadrian, we owe the home farm not more than six days of work each year, two ploughing, two cultivating and two harvesting. This we have always done, with joy in our hearts, as our fathers did before us, and their fathers before them.’

The Procurator gave up inspecting his nails and, delicately, with one finger, adjusted his hair.

‘In the past more has been demanded of us by false reckoning. But last year the Procurator dragged us off so often that our own fields went untended. Our crops went unharvested and rotted ungathered. When I complained, he had soldiers seize me. On his command, they stripped and beat me, as if I were a slave and not a Roman citizen. Marcus and Titus here suffered the same shameful treatment.’

The others in the deputation murmured their agreement.

The Procurator shot them a look of contempt, tinged with menace.

The speaker, his blood up now, ignored him and moved on to detail many more instances of ill treatment and brutality.

Gordian’s thoughts drifted off to the festivals. The Cerialia, with its meagre offerings of spelt and salt, its priggish emphasis on purity and its fasting until a sparse meal at star rise, had never held much appeal. And the strange ritual on the final day was thoroughly uncongenial. He was always saddened watching the fox run and twist in its doomed attempt to escape the burning torch tied to its tail. On the other hand, he was looking forward to the Ludi Florales. Six days and nights of fine clothes and lights, drinking and love. The prostitutes slowly, teasingly, revealing their charms for all to see in the theatre. He remembered how Parthenope and Chione had welcomed him back from the victory at the oasis; their dark hair and dark eyes, their olive skin sliding against him, against each other, their fingers and tongues pleasuring each other, stroking and opening, pulling him into them.

Epicurus had said that if you take away the chance to see and talk and spend time with the object of your passion, the desire for sex is dissolved. But he also held that no pleasure is a bad thing in itself. Some desires are natural and necessary. Gordian could not imagine anything more natural and necessary than the pleasures of the bed, especially if you owned two girls like Parthenope and Chione.

The Procurator took the floor.

Gordian had no desire to listen to the string of denials that would follow. No doubt, respectable-seeming witnesses would be produced to appear in support. The side with better connections and greater money always produced more of them. Gordian was already reasonably sure the Procurator was guilty.

What was he doing here? Live out of the public eye, the sage had said. An Epicurean should not engage in public business, unless something intervened. All his life, something had intervened. Gordian looked at his father. The elder Gordian’s ambitions for his son, his love for his father: both had been constants. Now his father was old and was governing a major province. If Gordian did not take some of the burden, he would be tormented with guilt. To help his father was also to help himself. It was the right thing to do. Gordian bent his mind to the proceedings.

The Procurator opened his defence with a flourish. All men of education were brought up knowing bucolic poetry.

That was a conceit, Gordian thought, which neatly excluded the rustic plaintiffs and was intended to forge some link between the defendant and those on the tribunal. He looked at his father and the other assessors. Their faces gave away no more than did his own.

The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil showed a world of innocence and honesty, the Procurator said. Old men of antique virtue were bent and gnarled by their life-long labours. Young shepherds played the pipes as they chastely wooed virginal shepherdesses. The visitor found homespun hospitality and wisdom on offer at every humble hearth.

So far, so good — the Procurator appeared to be enjoying his own performance — but men who combined an active life with that of culture, men who accepted their duties towards their estates and towards the Res Publica, men who actually ventured into the countryside, knew different. There they found rough, uncouth accents and manners. Worse, they found squalid indolence and base superstition. Unguided by philosophy or any higher culture, the hairy locals learnt to lie as they took their mother’s milk. Untrammelled by compassion, they regarded violence and force as the ultimate argument. Who had not heard the saying Make your will before you venture down a country lane?

After the Procurator’s litany of rustic iniquity ended, three witnesses swore to his innocence. Finally, the elder Gordian ordered the principals to withdraw and asked the advice of his assessors.

Mauricius launched into an extempore oration of his own. His family was as old as any in Africa, descended both from local landowners and Roman colonists. For generations they had bred too many children. Equal inheritance had reduced them to poverty. He himself had been left just one small field by his father. At first he had worked it with his own hands. He had rented other fields, hired men. Gradually, by backbreaking labour, and the favour of the gods, he had rebuilt his family fortunes. Now he owned wide estates and sat on the city councils at Thysdrus and here at Hadrumetum. He offered his own life as evidence that poverty did not have to drive out honesty and virtue.

More relevant to the case in hand, Menophilus pointed out that the tenants had much to lose by bringing the case. If they lost, they had laid themselves open to the reprisals of the Procurator and his friends. All they were asking for was what the law should already give them.

One by one, Gordian included, the assessors agreed this was true.

Those involved were brought back into the court.

‘In the name of our sacred Emperor Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus, and by the powers vested in me as Proconsul of Africa, I find the complaint upheld. Let the plaintiffs erect an inscription on stone setting out this judgement and the laws of the divine Hadrian. Let no one in future demand more of them than the laws allow, and let no one offer them violence or oppression.’

The Procurator bridled. ‘These rustics are liars. Avoiding the duties they owe to the Emperor is tantamount to treason. Supporting them runs the risk of the same charge. As part of my duties, I am in regular correspondence with the sacred court.’

There was a silence in the courtroom.

‘You think the Emperor would value your word above mine?’ There was no tremor in the elder Gordian’s voice.

On an instant, the Procurator capitulated. No, no, nothing of the sort. Indeed he was sure the noble Proconsul was right. Some of his own agents may have been over-zealous in the interests of the sacred Maximinus. He would see it never happened again.

In the interests of the sacred Maximinus. The irony of the phrase struck Gordian. They had fought the battle of Ad Palmam in the name of Alexander, not knowing that the Emperor was already dead and mutilated. One Emperor died; another took the throne. The governance of the empire continued. It was unlikely this Maximinus would affect them much out here in Africa.