The Art of War

Chapter 46

Rome, 16 December AD 69

Geminus

Lucius was gone!

It was the sixteenth of December, the rain was relentless and Lucius had gone, taking six of Rome’s nine Guard cohorts with him, leaving me to man the entire city with the remaining three, but still, I felt a lightness of heart that I’d forgotten was possible.

He had gone south, ostensibly to put down the calamitous rebellion of the Misene fleet, but in truth, as everyone knew, he had gone to hunt Pantera; by now, he cared about nothing else.

You need to know something of what brought us here. It went like this.

We didn’t catch Pantera after he left the House of the Lyre. We came excruciatingly close and Lucius had all sixteen of the men who had let him kill his little gelded priest flogged. If we’d got that one home alive, I truly believe we’d have had Pantera by the nightfall.

The next few days, we all walked gently round Lucius, even Vitellius, but he was already planning his moves.

Clearly, Pantera had gone south. Clearly, Lucius needed to follow him. He just needed a good excuse, and within a double handful of days he had it.

We were taking wine in the emperor’s quarters when a dissolute ex-marine by the name of Claudius Faventinus arrived with the news that, after a brief show of fighting, the thousand hand-picked, hand-trained gladiators and the entire cohort of the Urban cohort who had accompanied them on their march south had all sworn an oath to Vespasian.

They had been ordered so to do by their officers, led by Julius Claudianus.

I thought Lucius might explode then, but fast on the heels of the first messenger came a second, with news that the newly treacherous gladiators had joined forces with the marines at Misene and marched on to capture a small town called Tarracina, nestled on the Appian Way about sixty-five miles south of Rome. There they dug in and partied, celebrating their victory.

So Lucius had the best excuse possible to head after Pantera. He slammed his way into the emperor’s presence, and found that Vitellius had already heard the news. A fraternal spat took place, along familiar lines.

Vitellius, mournfully: ‘We have lost! We face a winter of no supplies and in spring Vespasian will land with his legions from Egypt, men well fed and in good heart who will fall on us like locusts and destroy the very fabric of our city!’

Lucius: ‘No, brother, they will not, for I will not let them. Give me six of the seven cohorts you brought back from the north and I will uproot these vermin and make safe the port of Misene.’

Vitellius: ‘I thought you were needed here, in Rome?’

Lucius, at the end of his tether: ‘And I thought the gladiators were true to us. I was wrong. Geminus can hold Rome while I’m gone. I have no choice now but to go south.’

V: ‘To thwart your enemy, the spy Pantera? Is that it?’

L: ‘Pantera has nothing to do with it.’

Lucius was lying, obviously. I knew it, and one can only suppose that the emperor, being his brother, knew it too, but Vitellius had never yet stood his ground in any familial confrontation and so, on the ninth day of December, Lucius marched out of Rome, at the head of six cohorts of the Guard. He left an order behind for his brother to implement in his absence.

‘Instruct Juvens to withdraw to Narnia; it’s not far back up the Flaminian Way and it is far more defensible. Have him sit there and prepare to hold the road against Antonius.’

This, then, was the position by the sixteenth of December: Juvens was in a hilltop town which commanded the only bridge over the river Nar, an easily defended position that his men could hold for months if they had to. The officers might have melted away like sealing wax in a forge, but the men were holding firm.

Lucius had taken six cohorts of the Guard south to crush the rebels — and to find and kill Pantera. He was camped in the Volscian hills, trying to work out how to take back the town of Tarracina. I had stayed behind to hold Rome with the last three cohorts of the Guard and the notional help of Sabinus’ three remaining Urban cohorts plus the fire-fighters of the Watch.

Vitellius, meanwhile, had been making an idiot of himself, offering daily inducements to knights and senators in an effort to hold them to his cause. He had gold, and he gave it away. He had property, and he gave that away, too. He offered entire provinces freedom from tribute in exchange for loyalty that could change in a moment on the back of promises that no incoming emperor was ever going to honour. Men laughed in his face.

At the last, when nothing you have has value, there is nothing to give but yourself. And so he gave it, in tears and praise and blandishments; and men despised him more every day.

None of this kept me from rising in the mornings with a song in my heart. Lucius was gone!

If I had known how to contact Pantera, I might have been tempted to tell him where Lucius was, just to make sure they met and fought it out, but actually there was no need; the emperor’s brother was riding a chestnut stallion with gold braided into its mane and peacock feathers on its brow and he had led six thousand men down the Appian Way. Even if you weren’t a spy with ears in every household, you’d know exactly how to find him.

In the darkest, most hidden corner of my heart, I wished Pantera the best of luck.