Rome's lost son

CHAPTER VIII

Even though its walls were not intact, Tigranocerta was impressive, cascading down a high foothill of the Masius range. Framed by snow-capped peaks soaring up behind it, the city was built in concentric squares, each one higher than the last until the hill’s summit was crowned with a royal palace of Caligulan proportions. It had been founded by King Tigranes the Great, over a hundred years before when Armenia was at the height of its power. It lay on the western bank of the Tigris, opposite the river’s confluence with one of its tributaries, the Kentrites. It had been built to guard the Royal Road as it followed the eastern bank of the Tigris through the narrow Sapphe Bezabde pass in the Masius range; the road then bridged the Kentrites and then swung west, carrying on its journey to the Aegean Sea. However, an army could leave the road before the bridge and follow the Kentrites north into the heartland of Armenia. To guard against incursions from his larger but more fractured neighbour, the Seleucid Kingdom, Tigranes had built two further bridges connecting Tigranocerta with the road, both across the Tigris: one to the east bank before the river reached its confluence with the Kentrites and making its ninety-degree turn to the west, and one after the bend to the north bank. Strategically this forced any invading Seleucid force to take both bridges and then the city itself if it wished to proceed without a constant threat to its one supply line through the Sapphe Bezabde pass. The inevitable lengthy process of the siege gave Tigranes time to assemble his army and march south to repel the Seleucid invaders. But that vestige of Alexander’s empire had been ripped apart by Rome and Parthia, and since the rise of those two superpowers Tigranocerta had changed hands many times, occupied both by Rome and Parthia until the most recent settlement, which had handed it back to Armenia on condition that its defences remained in ruins. That condition was now being broken, much to the relief of its reduced population.

‘Paelignus complained to me this morning about his precious troops being used for what he terms “slaves’ work”,’ Vespasian said as he and Magnus made a tour of the works on the fifth day after their arrival. Auxiliaries worked shoulder to shoulder with all able-bodied male citizens while the women and children kept their menfolk supplied with food and water.

‘Just goes to show how little he knows about soldiering,’ Magnus said through a half-chewed mouthful of onion. ‘What did you say to him?’

‘I suggested to him that he should address his complaint to the commanding officer and pointed out that of all people he was the person most likely to get a fair hearing.’

Magnus laughed, spraying onion over the calves of a kneeling auxiliary shaping stone with a hand-pick. The man turned round, invective ready on his lips, but it stayed there and died when he saw who was responsible. Since the sack of Amida, ten days previously, Vespasian and Magnus had become objects of curiosity to the auxiliaries. It was known that Vespasian had prevented Paelignus from giving the men two days’ rest — one of the centurions gossiping, he assumed — and it was also known that he had recommended some executions to help bring the men back into line; over twenty had lost their lives. This had made Vespasian someone to fear: a man who ostensibly held no command and yet could order death and countermand their commander. Being auxiliaries raised in Cappadocia, none of them recognised Vespasian from Rome where his time as consul, admittedly for only two months, had made him a familiar face in the Forum Romanum, but not here in the southern foothills of the Masius mountains between the Tigris and the Euphrates. So the rank and file did not know Vespasian’s identity and the officers, if they did, kept it to themselves, having been warned to do so.

However, the auxiliaries had more pressing concerns than the identity of the man in their midst with the power of life and death: why were they fortifying a city in order to wait behind its reconstructed walls for a Parthian army that was rumoured to be heading their way and would surely outnumber the small Roman force by tens of thousands? But that question was not answered as their centurions and optiones bullied them and their civilian co-workers into working harder, faster and longer, hauling stones, shaping stones, lifting stones, placing stones and doing just about anything with stones that could be conceived even by the most imaginative of centurions.

In five days the four thousand men of the five cohorts and roughly the equivalent number of citizens had repaired most of the large gaps in the two-mile wall to a tolerable standard and it once again stood twenty feet high continuously around the entire city. Now the men were working on the lesser damage in the hope that they could bring the defences up to a state of near-perfection so that the host coming up from the south would break upon the walls when it arrived.

‘Then he said,’ Vespasian continued, ‘that we should at least reduce the number of hours spent repairing the defences every day from twelve to six.’

Magnus looked up to the royal palace that dominated the whole city. ‘So Paelignus is still trying to make himself popular with the men? It’s beyond me why he bothers. None of them is ever going to show that hunchback any respect more than is due to his rank. The way he tries to buy their favour is by slackening their discipline, which, of course, will make them into weaker, sloppier soldiers; and they’re the sort that generally end up dead. Who wants to be popular with dead men?’

‘Quite. I think that if I hadn’t been here, Paelignus would have four thousand very drunk and surly men with which to defend Tigranocerta from the Parthians.’

Magnus knotted his brow, puzzled. ‘From what I can make out, if you weren’t here then none of us would be. And I’m still trying to work out why we’re here anyway.’

Vespasian stopped and looked out to the south, shading his eyes from the midday sun, down the length of the Sapphe Bezabde pass with the Tigris glinting at its base, the Royal Road coupled to its eastern bank; at its far end, thirty or so miles away, the pass opened up into the Parthian satrapy of Adiabene in what had once been Assyria. ‘We’re here because we want the Parthians to attack us; whoever heard of a war without someone attacking someone else?’

‘Yes, but why do we want the Parthians to attack us? And if we do then why didn’t we bring enough men to make a decent fight out of it?’

‘We don’t want a decent fight. In a decent fight lots of men are liable to be killed.’

‘Oh, so fewer of our lads will get killed if we’re outnumbered ten to one than if we had even numbers; is that what you’re saying?’

‘It is indeed.’

‘Then you evidently know less about soldiering than Paelignus.’

‘That’s about to be tested,’ Vespasian said very slowly as his eyes narrowed.

Magnus followed his gaze south to the horizon and then after a few moments he too saw what had taken his friend’s concentration. ‘Fuck me!’

‘I think that we’re all going to be far too busy to take you up on that very kind offer.’ Vespasian did not look away from the dust cloud smudging the horizon.

‘I think you’re probably right,’ Magnus agreed, his eyes also fixed on the brown smear that stained the clear blue sky.

They both stood still staring into the distance because, even though it was thirty or forty miles away, they could tell that the cloud was not caused by a herd of cattle or a trading caravan; no, it was far too big for that, far too big for a legion or even two. This was the dust cloud caused by an army of magnitude.

The Parthians had come; and they had come in force.

‘We should leave immediately!’ Julius Paelignus squawked, recoiling, as if he had been punched, at the sight of the approaching horde.

‘And go where?’ Vespasian asked. ‘Even though they’re still two days away they would catch us out in the open if they were so minded. And I’m sure they would be; their cavalry can move a lot faster than our infantry. We’re safer in here; heavy cavalry are useless in a siege no matter how many they’ve got and their light horse archers will only shoot arrows at us from a distance. As for their infantry, they’ll be mainly conscripts who’re treated not much better than slaves and would rather be anywhere but here.’

Paelignus looked up at Vespasian, his eyes blinking rapidly as if there were specks of dirt in both of them. ‘But they’ll swarm all over us.’

‘How? We’ve got ample men to man the walls now that they’re rebuilt. Their numbers mean little to us. In fact their numbers aid us.’

Paelignus scoffed. ‘Aid us?’

‘Of course, Paelignus. How are they going to feed that massive army, eh? The crops haven’t even sprouted; they won’t be able to stay here for more than half a moon. Now, I suggest you use the time before they arrive to send out foraging parties and get everything edible within a ten-mile radius and bring it within the walls. And also check that all the cisterns are full.’

‘I still think we should leave.’

‘And I suggest that you stay — if you want to live, that is.’

Paelignus’ gaze flicked across the faces of his prefects, each with a wealth of experience of fighting in the East, and each nodded their agreement with Vespasian’s assessment of the situation. ‘Very well; we prepare for a siege. Prefects, send out foraging parties; as many men as we can spare from the final work on the walls. And have the city council round up anyone with suspect pro-Parthian or anti-Roman sentiments.’

‘That’s a very wise decision, procurator,’ Vespasian said without any hint of irony.

Two days later the entire length of the Sapphe Bezabde pass was filled with men and horses; but this huge host was not a dark shadow on the landscape but, rather, a riot of gay colours. Vivid hues of every shade adorned both man and beast as if all were competing to be the most garish in an army where conspicuousness was equated with personal prowess. Banners of strange animal designs fluttered throughout the multitude adding yet more colour and giving Vespasian, who had seen the apparel of many different peoples’ armies in his time, the impression that here was a culture totally alien to him.

The auxiliaries, drab in contrast to the arriving foe, lined the walls of Tigranocerta in regimented ranks of russet tunics and burnished chain mail, their expressions dour and fixed as they watched a party of a dozen or so horsemen cross the east-west bridge and then pick their way gently up the hill towards the main gate under a branch of truce. Each rider had a slave scrambling to keep up with him, holding a large parasol over his master’s head even though the sun had yet to pierce the cloud cover.

Vespasian stood next to Magnus with Paelignus and his prefects on the wall above the gates as the delegation halted a stone’s throw away: a line of bearded men, nobles, on fabulously caparisoned steeds, the richness of which was outdone by the dress of the riders. Brooches of great value, precious stones set in worked gold, fastened vibrant cloaks edged with silver thread over tunics decorated with rich embroidery that would have taken a skilled slave months to achieve. Trousers of contrasting colours were tucked into calf-length boots of red or dun leather that seemed as supple as the skin they protected. Dark eyes stared out solemnly from beneath dyed or hennaed brows that matched the curled and pointed beards protruding from each chin. The delegation’s lavish appearance was topped, literally, with flamboyant headgear littered with pearls and amber and then laced with gold thread.

‘He can’t just rush out of bed every morning,’ Magnus muttered as one man, even more elaborately dressed than his companions, his beard a bright red, kicked his horse forward to address the waiting garrison.

‘I am Babak,’ the noble called out in fluent Greek, ‘the satrap of Nineveh; the eyes, ears and voice of King Izates bar Monobazus of Adiabene, loyal vassal of Vologases, Great King of all the Kings of the Parthian Empire. To whom do I address myself?’

Paelignus puffed up his pigeon chest and stepped forward and then glanced involuntarily at Vespasian, who nodded his assent.

‘I, Julius Paelignus, Cappadocia procurator, commanding here,’ Paelignus shouted in appalling Greek. ‘What want you, Babak, Nineveh of satrap?’

If Babak was surprised by the standard of Paelignus’ Greek he was far too well mannered to show it; Vespasian now understood why the procurator had addressed his troops in Latin.

Babak indicated the rebuilt walls. ‘The tidings that were brought to me were not unfounded.’

Paelignus looked momentarily confused as he tried to translate in his head; then his eyes brightened. ‘What news to bring found you?’

Babak frowned and then held up his hand for silence as his fellow nobles began muttering amongst themselves. ‘I bring no news, Paelignus, just a request: dismantle what you have rebuilt and return to Cappadocia with your lives.’

This was evidently far too advanced for Paelignus and, as he struggled with the meaning, Vespasian walked forward to take over the negotiations before there was a calamitous error of translation. ‘Honoured Babak, satrap of Nineveh, I can speak for all here without fear of misunderstanding. We are here to safeguard the border of the Emperor’s client kingdom of Armenia while a state of uncertainty prevails.’

‘You have rebuilt the walls of Tigranocerta; there is no uncertainty about that. Equally, there is no uncertainty that that is in direct contravention of the treaty that we have between us. I must ask you to undo what you have done and leave.’

‘And if we do, Babak, will you too leave with your army or will you stay to impose your master’s will on this country and bind it closer to Parthia?’

‘Although my master Izates has recently embraced Judaism, I remain a follower of Assur, the rightful god of Assyria, and continue to fight hitu, the False, with kettu, the Truth. I will not dishonour either the Lord Assur, myself or you, Roman, with a lie; no, we will not leave. We will garrison Tigranocerta and then move on to Artaxata where we will remove this Radamistus and replace him with Tiridates, the younger brother of the King of Kings, Vologases, as he himself has commanded.’

Vespasian smiled inwardly, impressed by Tryphaena’s accurate prediction of events. ‘I thank you for your honesty, Babak. I am sure that you will understand our position: if you will not leave then we cannot do so either; not until honour has been satisfied. However, Babak, we will not cast the first javelin nor release the first arrow.’

Babak nodded to himself as if he were unsurprised by the answer he had received, his fingers twisting the point of his beard. ‘So be it; we shall see honour satisfied. I shall dress for battle.’ With a deft twitch of the reins he pulled his mount round and set off at a canter back down the hill; his entourage followed, leaving their parasol-bearing slaves scampering after their masters to the jeers of the auxiliaries lining the stone walls of Tigranocerta.

‘Well, that told him,’ Magnus observed as shrill horns blared out from the Parthian host. ‘You had him pelting off with his tail between his legs to change his clothes, no doubt for the fourth time today.’

‘Honour to be satisfied? What does that mean, Vespasian? What have you condemned us to?’ Paelignus hissed, his Greek evidently just adequate enough to understand that phrase.

‘Nothing that we can’t cope with, procurator; I suggest you order your prefects to stand the men to and have the Civic Militia mustered and issued with bows and javelins.’

‘You do it, seeing how all this seems to be your suggestion.’ With a suspicious glare Paelignus stalked off.

Vespasian called the prefects over. ‘Gentlemen, our esteemed procurator has left it to me to make the dispositions, which I think is, in the circumstances, a very wise and far-sighted decision.’

‘In that he doesn’t have a clue what to do?’ the prefect Mannius asked.

‘He is the best judge of his own abilities.’ Vespasian suppressed a smile. ‘Mannius, your First Bosporanorum cohort takes this southern wall.’ He looked at the four other prefects. ‘Scapula the east, Bassus the west, Cotta the north, and you, Fregallanus, will keep your lads in reserve. All of you will mount your ballistae on the walls; fix them well — we won’t need to dismantle them for we’ll not be taking them with us when we leave.’

‘When we leave?’ Mannius questioned.

‘Yes, Mannius, when we leave.’ Vespasian’s tone precluded any further discussion on the subject. ‘All of you divide up the Civic Militia equally between you until we get a clue as to which of the walls the Parthians will be favouring with their attentions.’

‘With an army that size it’ll be all of them at once,’ Fregallanus, a battered-looking veteran whose nose seemed to take up half his face, commented sourly.

Vespasian gave him a benign smile. ‘Then splitting them evenly between the walls now is the right decision.’ He glanced south at the enemy; there was much movement within their ranks as units of both light and heavy cavalry peeled off to either side followed by scores of covered wagons. ‘I suggest, gentlemen, that you keep one half of your men resting and the other half on watch and rotate them every four hours. Have the women set up kitchens every two hundred paces and tell them to keep the cooking fires going day and night; I don’t want any of the lads to complain about fighting on an empty stomach. And also have teams of boys and older men ready with fire-fighting equipment, as I imagine that Babak will try and warm things up for us. It would be churlish not to return the favour, so have as much oil and sand heated as possible in case they should make an attempt to get over the walls.’

The five prefects saluted with various degrees of enthusiasm, although Vespasian judged that they would do their duty, and dispersed to carry out their orders. Vespasian joined Magnus who was watching the unfolding manoeuvres of the Parthian army. The cavalry were still splitting off left and right but were making no attempt to encircle the city. One column were crossing the bridge to the western bank and then dismounting and setting up tents and parking their covered wagons on a grassy hill half a mile to the south of the city while the other column headed north, past Tigranocerta, following the Kentrites towards the pass in the next mountain range, some fifty miles distant, leading to Lake Thospitis and the heartland of Armenia.

‘Babak doesn’t seem to be very interested in using his cavalry,’ Magnus observed as yet more of the troopers disappeared north.

‘I think we’ll see why very soon,’ Vespasian replied, straining his eyes further down the Sapphe Bezabde pass. ‘In fact, I can see them now.’

Magnus shaded his eyes and squinted as the last of the cavalry left the pass leaving behind an infantry force that would easily outnumber the defenders of Tigranocerta by at least five or six to one and, behind them, as many slaves. ‘Fuck me!’

Vespasian, once again, declined the offer.

For the remainder of the day the Parthian conscript infantry and slaves crossed the bridge to the western bank and swarmed like ants around the walls of Tigranocerta, just within bowshot and well within the range of the carroballistae, which by midafternoon were all rigged on the defences. Vespasian, however, kept his word and did not give the order to shoot; he knew it was vital for Tryphaena’s scheme that Rome should not be seen as the aggressor, and the more he had thought about her plan, the more he had become determined to see it through to a successful conclusion.

When the last of the Parthian force had crossed the bridge the middle two arches were destroyed making retreat impossible.

‘Well, that makes Babak’s intentions quite clear,’ Vespasian mused. ‘He’s not going to give his conscripts the chance to run. Excellent.’

Magnus looked gloomy. ‘You should have held the bridge.’

Vespasian was unrepentant. ‘I’m trying to do this with minimal loss of life. Their heavy cavalry would have forced a crossing sooner or later and then their light cavalry would have destroyed our retreating lads before they gained the city. What we have now is the same result: a siege, but without our first incurring casualties. And I’m very happy to watch them get into position.’

And so the Parthians laid out their siege lines unmolested. As night fell, thousands of torches were lit so that the great works could continue in the golden light encircling the town like a halo. Unrelenting in their exertion and goaded on by the bullying of their officers or the whips of their overseers, the silhouetted figures levelled ground, dug trenches and raised breastwork while the unsleeping sentinels on the walls watched, the torch-glow flickering on their faces set hard with the determination that all the enemy’s work should be for nought.

Vespasian repaired to a room in the palace at the top of the city and slept, knowing that in the coming days he would have precious little time to do so. When Hormus brought him a steaming cup of hot wine the following dawn he rose and donned his armour, feeling refreshed and ready for the coming ordeal. Sipping his morning drink he pulled aside the gently billowing curtains and stepped out onto a terrace that commanded a view south; his gaze wandered down the slope of flat roofs punctuated by thoroughfares and alleyways, over the walls lined with artillery and sentries and on to the fruit of a day and night of unceasing Parthian labour. And the sight took his breath away: the city was encircled by a brown scar scored in the verdant upland grass of the Masian foothills; but it was not the scale of the works nor the speed with which they had been completed nor the thousands of waiting troops within them that astounded him, it was what was behind. Scores of siege engines that had been dismantled for the march were being reassembled by the slaves in the growing light. But these were not the light carroballistae that fitted onto mule-drawn carts that the auxiliaries travelled with; these were far heavier. Squat and powerful with a kick like the mules they were named after, the onagers’ throwing arms were capable of hurling huge rocks to smash walls and, if Tryphaena’s information was to be believed, of delivering a weapon of far greater terror; a weapon of the East that Vespasian had heard of but had never seen deployed. One look at the stacks of earthenware jars next to the piles of rounded stone projectiles behind the fearsome engines told him that he would soon witness the destructive power of that strange substance named after Apam Napat, the third and lesser of the trilogy of deities in the Parthians’ Zoroastrian religion; Mithras and Ahura Mazda, the uncreated creator, being the other two.

‘You’re to keep everything packed, Hormus,’ Vespasian said, taking a tentative sip of the scalding wine. ‘With what they’ve got down there honour may be satisfied sooner than I thought.’

‘Master?’

‘We may be leaving in a hurry.’ Vespasian raised his gaze and surveyed the mountains, towering with majesty up from the foothills to form the natural barrier between Armenia and the Parthian Empire. ‘A shame really; it’s beautiful country, don’t you think so, Hormus?’

Hormus stroked the scraggy beard that tried but failed to disguise his undershot chin as he contemplated the scenery, uncertain how to respond having very rarely been asked his opinion by his master on anything more aesthetic than the order of precedence that clients should be received in. ‘If you say so, master.’

Vespasian frowned at his slave. ‘I do; but you should have your own opinion on the subject and not just take my word for it.’ He gestured at the expanse of natural beauty that dominated the vista, dwarfing the relatively insignificant disfigurement that humanity’s belligerence had scratched in its shadow. ‘This should speak to you, Hormus; after all, it is somewhere around this area that your family came from — you told me Armenia, didn’t you?’

Hormus’ smile was wan beneath his equally feeble beard. ‘Somewhere near Armenia, master, but I don’t know where. My mother told me in her tongue but when she died I forgot that language as it was of no use any more, and with it I forgot the name of my land.’

‘It’ll come back if you hear it again,’ Vespasian assured him but then hoping that he was wrong; a sense of belonging was not what he wanted for Hormus, preferring his slave to be compliant and meek — no, perhaps meekness was not something to be wished upon him either.

There was a scratching on the door and Hormus crossed the room, his footsteps muffled by the sumptuous rugs of deep reds, blues and umbers with which the floor was littered.

‘You’d better come quick, sir,’ Magnus said as the door opened; he was wearing the chain mail of an auxiliary. ‘Paelignus has seen that the Parthians have got some serious artillery and he doesn’t want to play any more, if you take my meaning?’

‘I do. Where is he?’

‘Mannius caught him trying to slip through the gate; he has him under arrest in the gatehouse.’

‘You have no right to hold me!’ Paelignus shrieked as Mannius showed Vespasian and Magnus into the small room where the nominal commander of the expedition was being held.

Without pausing, Vespasian slapped Paelignus’ cheek as if he were punishing a recalcitrant slave girl. ‘Now listen, you rapacious worm, I’ll do anything I like to you if you try to go over to the enemy again. I may even hang you on a cross and see if that does anything to straighten out your back.’

‘You can’t do that; I’m a citizen.’

‘Perhaps I’ll forget that fact just as you seem to have forgotten where your loyalties lie. What were you trying to achieve?’

Paelignus rubbed his cheek, which was coming out in a reddish welt. ‘I wanted to save us. There’re thousands of them and they’ve got artillery.’

‘Of course they’ve got artillery, but can they use it?’ He grabbed the procurator by the arm and dragged him from the room, past the guards on the door, who were unable to conceal their amusement at the sight, and up the stone steps next to the gates that led to the walkway running along behind the crenellated parapet. Magnus and Mannius followed, the prefect putting the two guards on a charge as he passed for failing to show due respect for an officer.

Vespasian held Paelignus’ chin in a cruel grasp and forced him to look through a crenel at the enemy lines. ‘See there, procurator, thousands of them, just as you said, but they’re conscripts. None of them have had any training beyond being shown which end of an arrow or a javelin to aim at the enemy. They look impressive but they’re nothing compared to our lads; they’re just cattle, human cattle, to be stampeded forward knowing that they cannot retreat because the bridge is down. Their best troops are their cavalry, half of whom have disappeared north and the other half are sitting on that hill and, apart from shooting arrows at us, will take no more part in the proceedings than the spectators at the Circus Maximus. As to the artillery; even if they make a breach in the walls, who’s going to storm through it? The crack Parthian infantry? The Immortals and the apple-bearers are with their King of Kings; this Babak is just a satrap of a client king, we have nothing to fear from his infantry.’

As he finished the last word, a single arrow soared into the sky, trailing a thin furrow of smoke over the Parthian host. A mighty roar emanated from the siege lines followed by the massed release of thousands of archers and Vespasian knew that he was about to have the veracity of his words tested as the sky went dark with tens of thousands of arrows.

The Parthian assault on Tigranocerta had begun.