The Amber Road

IV

Olbia

Aulus Voconius Zeno, Vir Perfectissimus, special envoy to the far north of the Augustus Gallienus, Pius, Fortunate and Invincible, sat in the seat of honour, such as it was, in the council house of the city of Olbia. Light came from the open door and windows. There was no glass in the windows. Obviously, the building, high on the acropolis, had once been the praetorium of a Roman army unit. The Boule must have moved into the officer’s quarters when, after the disaster at Abritus thirteen years before, the new emperor Gallus had withdrawn the troops from the north of the Euxine. By the look of it, the council had spent nothing on repairs or decorations since.

The meeting had been in session for an hour or more. A lifelong career in imperial service had equipped Zeno with deep reserves of patience. After lengthy prayers to the gods, a magistrate titled the agoranomos had taken the floor, and showed no signs yet of relinquishing it. First he had set out, in bad Greek and exhaustive detail, the grain shortage afflicting the town. The public granaries were virtually empty, prices rising steeply; there were dark rumours of hoarding and profiteering. A citizen of Olbia now resident in Byzantium had donated a shipload of wheat. The Boule had decided to recommend the assembly vote this man a statue at public expense. Given the straitened circumstances of city finances, an old statue should be rededicated. Despite this godlike generosity, the agoranomos had continued, much more was needed. With no overt reluctance, two councillors had announced they would provide grain from their private stores. More fulsome praise had followed, and two more forgotten benefactors of an earlier age lost the dedications on their statues.

The agoranomos now was talking about temple treasures. Zeno’s thoughts drifted towards the baths and dinner. At least one of the baths was still operative, diminutive and foul though it was, and he had instructed one of his boys to buy oysters and bream. Seafood was wonderfully cheap in this backwater compared with Byzantium, let alone Rome. Raised voices with uncouth accents brought him back. Apparently, the previous year the Boule had authorized the priests of Apollo to pawn some sacred vessels of gold. The foreigner who held them was threatening to take them abroad and melt them down. The somewhat acrimonious apportioning of blame continued for some time, growing steadily more heated, until the first archon Callistratus announced he would reclaim them with his own money. The loan would be for a year, interest free. The members of the Boule then had to endure Callistratus launching into an extempore oration on homonoia; did they not realize civic harmony was the greatest treasure a polis could possess?

There were only twenty members of the Boule. Zeno studied them. They were all dressed in native style: embroidered Sarmatian tunics and trousers, small black cloaks, long swords on their hips. Zeno thought of the story of Scyles in Herodotus. Scyles had been king of the nomadic Scythians in these parts, but his mother had been a Greek woman. She had taught him that language, and brought him up to love all things Hellenic. When Scyles had come to Olbia he had left his army outside the walls and entered the gates alone. Inside, Scyles had changed his Scythian clothes for Greek. He had a home in the city, in which he kept a woman he treated as his wife. Maybe they had children; Herodotus did not say. Each time, he had stayed for a month or more. This state of affairs had persisted for a number of years. In the end a citizen of Olbia had told the Scythians, who could say for what motive. Rejected by his people, hunted and finally betrayed, Scyles was decapitated.

Looking at the councillors of Olbia, Zeno thought the cultural influences now ran strongly the other way. They had done so for a long time. The citizens of Olbia had been wearing nomad garb over a hundred and fifty years before when the philosopher Dio of Prusa had come to the town. Yet Dio had judged them Hellenic, had found merit in them. They were brave, knew Homer by heart, some of them loved Plato, and — always an important factor with Dio — they had listened to his philosophizing and honoured him. Dio had been a slippery man, often saying more or less than was true about himself and others. Zeno knew one thing which Dio had suppressed about the Olbians. Many of them carried barbarian names, like this agoranomos Dadag, or Padag, whatever he was called.

At long, long last the Greek magistrate with the Sarmatian or Persian name ceased talking. The floor was taken by the strategos in charge of the defence of the city. The name of this one was entirely Roman. Marcus Galerius Montanus Proculus, like many in the Boule, was clean-shaven. Zeno smiled at the recollection of Dio claiming only one man in the whole town had shaved — in flattery of the Romans; and all his fellow citizens had reviled him for it. Maybe fashions had changed, or maybe again Dio had played with the truth. Many intellectuals were not to be trusted.

Montanus told another story of woe. A group of slaves had run. They had stolen a boat and made their way to somewhere called Hylaea. Evidently, this place was nearby, somewhere in the great marshy estuary where the rivers Hypanis and Borysthenes came together. There were altars and sacred groves there, which the slaves had violated. The heavily wooded terrain was blamed for the failure of the Olbian militia under Montanus to kill, capture or dislodge them. Lately, the runaways had turned to piracy.

Zeno was wondering if he needed to relieve himself, when he realized he was being directly addressed. So there was a reason beyond the killings in the waterfront bar why his presence had been requested. Montanus was claiming a providential deity had sent an imperial warship and its forty crew to aid the city in this trial.

In the hush, Zeno got slowly to his feet, walked the three paces to the centre of the shabby room. He looked at Montanus, then at the floor, furrowing his brow, nodding thoughtfully. He did not care much for modern sophists — much preferring a recitation of Homer — but he had attended enough of their display oratory to learn a trick or two. He let time pass before looking up sharply, as if his weighty deliberations had reached some inescapable conclusion.

‘It is a grave situation, and my heart urges me to help.’ Again Zeno paused, the very image of philanthropy wrestling with duty. ‘Yet in all conscience, I cannot. I have the honour to be charged with a mission by the most noble Augustus himself. To delay would amount to disobeying imperial mandata.’

There were loud mutterings about the triviality of his task. Some, perfectly audible, questioned what type of emperor concerned himself with amber ornaments over the wellbeing of his subjects. One called out Gallienus’s infamous line on being informed of the revolt of Postumus in Gaul: Can the Res Publica be safe without Atrebatic cloaks?

‘It must be remembered, failure to carry out imperial orders is nothing less than maiestas.’

At the Latin word for treason, the Boule became very quiet.

‘As I understand, the city of Olbia falls under the military competence of the governor of Moesia Inferior, and you should apply to him.’ Zeno resumed his seat. Whenever possible, pass responsibility. All he had said was true, as far as it went, and this backwater meant nothing to him.

The councillors fell to wrangling about what measures, if any, they could take about the slaves.

Gods below, thought Zeno, it was hard to imagine Olbia was once a powerful city that had defied Alexander the Great, defeated an army of thirty thousand men and killed his governor of Thrace. Now what sort of polis hoped one river patrol boat and forty men would bring them salvation? Was Olbia a Hellenic polis at all?

To take his mind off his growing need to urinate, Zeno turned over the question in his head. What made a polis? An urban centre, buildings of course; Olbia had these, if in a much reduced state. Certain institutions were vital: magistrates, council, assembly. The latter had been mentioned. Zeno wondered what it was like, given the Boule seemed just to consist of four or five rich men who dominated the magistracies and some fifteen others who lacked the means or initiative to leave this beleaguered outpost. Then there was culture. Did the Olbians possess paideia? It was true they worshipped the traditional Greek gods, among them Zeus, Apollo and Demeter. Zeno had witnessed no barbaric religious practices. They spoke Greek, if with bad pronunciation and strange word order. Wearing Sarmatian clothes could be dismissed as a thing of no importance. But blood will out. Some philosophers might argue that a man of any race could become Greek if he adopted Hellenic paideia. Zeno did not agree. These Olbians were descended from waves of nomadic horsemen. Their names gave them away: Padag, Dadag, the names of dogs or slaves. They could never be truly Greek. Zeno himself was born in the heart of the Peloponnese, in Arcadia, under the sheer peak of Cyllene. He would remain a Hellene, even if he lived alone in a hut on the side of a remote mountain, cut off from men and gods, never speaking his native tongue.

Callistratus brought the debate about the slaves to an end by volunteering to equip and serve on an embassy to the governor of Moesia Inferior. The first archon moved on to raise matters he described of the utmost importance. This spring the king of the Gothic Tervingi had not appeared with his men on the borders to demand his customary gifts. The councillors called out like a disturbed flock of birds. Zeno, his bladder ever more urgent, could not see the cause of their alarm. Surely given the impecunious state of their civic treasury they should welcome the absence of the Goth?

There was more, Callistratus continued. Word had come downriver that the Castle of Achilles, the most northerly fortified settlement on the right bank of the Hypanis, was deserted; the half-Greek inhabitants had fled. Zeno nearly snorted with derision. Who were these Olbians to judge others half-Greek?

What was he doing in this barbarous place? How had it come to this? Four years before, he, Aulus Voconius Zeno, Vir Perfectissimus, had been governor of Cilicia. In the revolt of Macrianus and Quietus, he had remained loyal. Although unable to defend his province, his fides — and his devotion to paideia — had been rewarded by Gallienus with the post of a Studiis at the imperial court. Zeno had carried out his duties with diligence, searching out the texts Gallienus wished to read and the intellectuals he wanted to talk to, discussing them with him. He had spoken out in the consilium with the freedom of speech expected of a friend of the emperor, always arguing for the traditions of Rome. Despite it all, last year he had been dismissed, sent away to the Ister as deputy to the senator Sabinillus on a diplomatic mission to turn the tribes of the Carpi, Gepidae and Tervingi against each other. Of course the attempt had failed. Yet — and here he could barely stomach his bitterness — Sabinillus had been summoned back to court, while he had been ordered to undertake this most likely equally hopeless and certainly far more dangerous embassy.

Zeno had had enough of this; his bladder could take no more. On the point of leaving, he was addressed by Callistratus.

‘Vir Perfectissimus, those under your command have committed public affray. Two men are dead. What — ’

Zeno cut him off. ‘All the men involved, the killers and the victims, are under military law. It is of no concern to the polis.’ He stood. ‘Now, if you will excuse me.’

Sat on the latrine, relief flooding through him, Zeno thought about the impression he had made on the Boule of Olbia. Pompous, abrupt, even rude; a typical, arrogant imperial functionary employed on a trivial errand. Perhaps they would change their minds, if he were able to reveal the real intention behind his journey to the north. Although the odds against its success were long, even to try to bring the tribes around the Suebian Sea ruled by the Angles back into allegiance to the rightful emperor Gallienus, to break their recent alliance with the pretender Postumus and once again to turn their ships against the coasts he tyrannized, was a noble undertaking.

As he dried his hands, Zeno wondered if, should they know it, the members of the Boule would also appreciate the irony that one of the killers he had just removed from their justice was the very man who had driven him from his province of Cilicia. Zeno despised all barbarians, but there was a special place in his animosity for Marcus Clodius Ballista.

Germania Inferior

Marcus Cassianus Latinius Postumus Augustus, Pius Felix, Invictus, Pontifex Maximus, Germanicus Maximus sat perfectly still on the raised throne in the great apse of the Basilica of Colonia Agrippinensis. The five years he had worn the purple had inculcated in him one of the vital skills of an emperor, the ability to sit motionless, alert yet remote, godlike in his imperturbability, while men made speeches.

It was the same the imperium over. In a sense, Postumus thought, it was not men under arms, not money and materials, not even ties of amicitia that held the Res Publica together, but men delivering and listening to formal, public orations. By their mere presence they pledged allegiance to a specific regime, more generally to a way of doing things, to an ideal of humanitas, to Rome itself. Yet the Gauls who formed the core of his breakaway regime were particularly addicted to rhetoric. They were as fond of verbosity as the Greeks. His son, Postumus Iunior, was as bad as any. Educated by the finest, and most expensive, rhetors in Augustodunum, Lugdunum and Massilia, left to his own devices the boy did nothing but scribble and declaim speeches for imaginary law suits. His Controversiae were said to show skill. Postumus was no judge of such things. He had sent the boy away south to act as Tribune of the Vocontii. It was a minor administrative post, but Censor, the governor of Narbonensis, would make sure he applied himself. It was necessary he acquire proficiency in governance: one day the youth would be Caesar.

‘To proffer advice on an emperor’s duties might be a noble enterprise, but it would be a heavy responsibility verging on insolence, whereas to praise an excellent ruler and thereby shine a beacon on the path posterity should follow would be equally effective without appearing presumptuous, as the excellent senator from Comum once said to the best of emperors Trajan.’

Postumus looked at the speaker, a smooth, rounded figure in a toga, standing beyond the low altar where the sacred fire burned. Simplicinius Genialis had done well by the regime. When, at the outset, Gallienus had invaded across the Alps, Simplicinius Genialis, as acting governor of Raetia, had declared for Postumus. The implicit threat of an invasion of Italy in his rear had sent Gallienus back over the mountains. Since then rebellions — the Macriani in the east, Mussius Aemilianus in Egypt, the prolonged defiance of Byzantium — and barbarian incursions — above all, the Goths in the Aegean — had held Gallienus back. But war was coming, if not this year, certainly the next, when Gallienus had completed his preparations. When it came, Simplicinius Genialis would be in the front rank. Gallienus was gathering a huge field army on the plains around Mediolanum. There were only two ways he could march; west into the Alpine provinces and then into Gaul, or north into Raetia. Whichever way he chose, a diversionary force would have to take the other route to prevent a descent into Italy when his comitatus had left.

The forces in Raetia were not numerous, but they were of proven worth. The one legion in the province, III Italica Concors, unusually for the times, was near up to strength, with about four thousand men under the eagles. Their commander, the Spaniard Bonosus, was renowned as a drinker, but also as a fine fighting officer. The legionaries were matched in numbers by auxiliaries, divided into two alae of cavalry and eight cohortes of infantry, all much below their paper strength. When the Semnones and Iuthungi had crossed the Alps on their way back from plundering Italy, Simplicinius Genialis had had to beg vexillationes of troops from Germania Superior and levy the local peasants. Despite his ad hoc army and his urbane and well-upholstered appearance, he had won a great victory.

In recognition of the importance of Simplicinius Genialis to his regime, Postumus had appointed him one of the two consuls of the year. Now, as tradition demanded, Simplicinius Genialis had travelled from his province to give his thanks in this panegyric.

‘For what gift of the gods could be greater and more glorious than a princeps whose purity and virtue make him their own equal?’

The introductory invocation of the gods was moving into the concept of divine election. Tactful, Postumus thought, given the reality of his accession. Doubtless it would be followed by the Gauls, oppressed by the tyranny of Gallienus, left undefended from the savagery of the Germans, spontaneously acclaiming a reluctant new emperor. The whole actio gratiarum would take quite a time. Postumus blamed the long-dead Pliny of Comum. Once, the speech of thanks by a consul was a brief thing. Then Pliny had reinvented the genre as this interminable parade of flattery.

Postumus had never wanted to be emperor. He did not now. From a modest beginning among the Batavians, he had risen through the army to be a general, to be governor of Germania Inferior. He knew himself a good commander. It had been enough. Ironically, it was his own skill — that and the jealousy and greed of that bastard Silvanus — that had made him emperor.

At Deuso near the Rhine, Postumus, at the head of his mounted bodyguard, and one legion had intercepted a war band of Franks returning from Spain. He had defeated them. Almost all of them were killed or captured, their booty distributed among his soldiers. Silvanus, the governor of Germania Superior, was Dux of the whole frontier then and had charge of the Caesar Saloninus, the young son of Gallienus. In effect, Silvanus had been left in charge of the west when Gallienus had hurried back to Italy to fight a marauding horde of Alamanni. Postumus had received a peremptory command from Silvanus to hand all the booty over to him. In point of law Silvanus was right; all manubiae should go to the imperial fiscus. That had all been very well in the silver age of the Antonine emperors. In this age of iron and rust the troops had to be mollified. Postumus had been left between Scylla and Charybdis. If he had attempted to get the plunder back from the soldiers they would have killed him. If he did not, Silvanus would have accused him of maiestas and executed him for his treason. Postumus had consulted those with him in the field, Lollianus the Praefectus Legionis of XXX Ulpia Victrix, Victorinus the Tribunus of his Equites Singularis Consularis, and Marius, his Praefectus Castrorum. The commanders of the legion, horse guards and camp agreed — he had no choice but to bid for the throne.

A donative had been given to the troops. The images of Gallienus and his family had been torn from the standards; idealized portraits of Postumus had replaced them. A purple cloak had been taken from the sanctuary of Hercules Deusoniensis and draped around the shoulders of his devotee, the new Augustus.

Perhaps there had been a way back, even then. A message had come from Gallienus, ambiguous in its brevity: ‘What are you doing? Behave! Do you seek battle?’ Postumus had written back, playing for time: ‘Do not come north across the Alps, do not put me in a position of fighting Roman citizens.’ Gallienus’s response had smacked of madness. ‘Let it be settled by single combat.’ By then events had gathered their own momentum. A judicious distribution of some more of Postumus’s share of the Frankish loot had won over I Minerva, the other legion in his province, along with its commander, Dialis. The same cause lay behind Laelianus and Servilius Rufinus, the commanders of the two legions in Germania Superior, declaring for Postumus. The defection of the legions in his own province catching Silvanus by surprise, he had retired with Saloninus and a handful of loyal troops behind the walls of Colonia Agrippinensis. Postumus had laid siege to the town.

It might be a negotiated settlement had still had a chance. Postumus had written to Gallienus saying he had been elected by the Gauls and was content to rule over them. But no answer had come back. The siege had dragged on, and the attitude of those camped outside the walls had hardened. When the citizens ran short of food, they bought their own salvation by handing over Silvanus and the young imperial prince. And then — Lollianus and Marius had urged him to it; Postumus regretted it now — and then both Silvanus and Saloninus had been beheaded. With that, all hope of peace had gone. Postumus knew Gallienus would not rest until one of them was dead. He could not blame him. If someone killed his son, he would do the same.

Postumus had not wanted to be emperor, but once you had taken the wolf by the ears you could not let go. He would do everything in his capacity to keep his grip. He would do anything, absolutely anything, to ensure the survival of his family and himself, and, if it were possible, of course he would be of benefit to those he ruled.

‘By his presence he will safeguard the soldiers in the camp, civil rights in the forum, law-suits at the tribunal, the dignitas of the senate house, and he will preserve for each one his personal possessions.’ Simplicinius Genialis had moved his oration into an exegesis of qualities thought by the elite desirable in their ruler.

Postumus shifted his gaze to the high, shadowed beams of the ceiling. A princeps cannot scruple at deceit or betrayal. Love the treachery, hate the traitor — unless circumstances dictate you love him, too. The agents of Vocontius Secundus, his Princeps Peregrinorum, had brought him the names of those who served Gallienus whom they considered might be suborned. The frumentarii had been diligent, but the list was not over-long, nor, with a few exceptions, were its contents over-mighty. Four caught the eye. Placidianus, the Prefectus Vigilum, still owned lands in Gaul near his birthplace, Augustodunum. The vigiles comprised seven thousand paramilitary firemen in the heart of Rome. It could be useful. Then there was Proculus. He was the Prefect of a unit made up of vexillationes of soldiers drawn from the legions of Pannonia and was now stationed with the comitatus of Gallienus at Mediolanum. Proculus hailed from Albingauni in the Alpes Maritimae. Many of his family were still there, and his cousin was no less than Maecianus, Prefect of Postumus’s Equites Singulares Augusti. For what it was worth, Proculus was an inveterate womaniser, always bragging of his conquests and prowess. The third man of interest was a young officer called Carus, recently appointed a protector. No one was closer to Gallienus than the protectores, and they were assigned the most important tasks. Carus was from Narbo, and retained property there. Finally, there was Saturninus. His long and distinguished career of civil and equestrian offices had been rewarded with the signal honour of being Gallienus’s colleague as consul this year. The ancestral estates of Saturninus spread across Narbonensis into Aquitania.

Postumus’s eyes followed the smoke of the sacred fire as it coiled through the dark patterns of the ceiling. One of the stranger aspects of this undeclared but truceless civil war was that — despite its potential efficacy and the disposable wealth it would yield — so far, neither he nor Gallienus had threatened to confiscate the properties in their territories owned by the families of men serving on the other side. Tempting as it was, Postumus would not take the first step. He had more to lose. The old law that every senator must have one third of his property in Italy was not always observed. Yet many of the key supporters of his regime had holdings in lands under Gallienus. His amici Ragonius Clarus and Trebellius Pollio were from Macedonia and Italy respectively. Lollianus came from Syria Phonice. Tetricius, his governor of Aquitania, might be a native of that province, but he possessed one of the finest houses in Rome, a beautiful building on the Caelian Hill, between two groves and facing the Temple of Isis. Postumus would remember to tell Vocontius Secundus to have the frumentarii keep an especially close watch on Tetricius and the others.

‘Under the tyrant, humanity’s former blessing of friendship had withered and died, and in its place sprung up flattery and adulation, and, worse even than hatred, the false semblance of love. It was you, Caesar, who brought friendship back from exile. You have friends because you know how to be one.’ The consul’s words rolled out, sonorous with sincerity, seemingly never-ending.

Enthroned in lonely eminence, Postumus’s thoughts ran their own course on loyalty and betrayal. His gaze tracked down to his German bodyguards at the doors of the basilica. Heart and courage. Arkil and his Angles would keep to their oath. Yet it had been a timely act of treachery by one of their own that had put them in Postumus’s power.