by Simon Turney
I was free. Commodus was mine and all my opponents had gone: first Quadratus, then Lucilla, then Bruttia, now Cleander. Rome was ours. The world was ours. And I was going back to it on the arm of my Hercules.
PART FOUR
A ROMAN ICARUS
‘As the thinning blood ebbed from Hercules’ body: so may the baleful venom devour your body’
– Ovid: Ibis, trans. Kline, 2003
XX
NO MERCY
Rome, ad 190
Anger and misery may be the blackest of twins, but they are not the same. In fact, anger can be every bit as much the antidote to misery as can joy. Thus it was that Commodus’ anticipated slide into that old, familiar melancholy was arrested by his ire at Cleander and what he had done to Rome in the emperor’s name.
We returned to the Palatine to the surging acclaim of the people. Even wallowing in starvation, eaten at by plague and impoverished by Cleander’s constant taxation, the people had heard Eclectus in the forum. The emperor was coming home and he would make things right.
That began with killing, of course.
Cleander had been in power now for so many years that his tentacles had worked their way into every aspect of government and administration. With the aid of Eclectus, the emperor set about identifying any person who owed their career or position to Cleander alone. Each one was brought to the Basilica Iulia and there their accounts were examined, their deeds in office reported, evidence produced and witnesses located for and against. Any man found to have gained at the expense of Rome, been part of Cleander’s corrupt web, been a detriment to society, or found to have abused their power or position, was condemned. And there was no mercy. No clemency. Those men who had been Cleander’s creatures were killed. Few were given the treatment of traitors and tortured and abused, thankfully – most were simply executed, their families allowed to go on. A few knew what was coming and threw themselves upon the points of their blades like failed generals of old, preferring that to the ignominy of trial.
The two prefects of the Praetorian Guard who had been little more than Cleander’s sword and dagger were removed. Regillus and Gratus met their end publicly with unexpected stoicism and professionalism. Pompeianus, that wily old dog who had been Aurelius’ top general and had survived a coup led by his wife, stood trial, denounced by several of his fellows, yet no evidence could be produced against him. He returned home in peace, his honour intact, as he always did.
One sad morning was that upon which I watched the grain commissioner, Papirius Dionysius, bow his head in acceptance of the verdict at his trial. I was nervous for a time. Dionysius was one of those three conspirators I had found who, together, had engineered Cleander’s downfall. Few in Rome knew how he had been part of a convoluted plan to starve his own city purely in order to bring about the end of the corrupt chamberlain. But he could not proclaim his innocence without condemning all who were part of the plan, and on the surface he appeared to have worked in collusion with Cleander to withhold the grain. Fortunately there was no torture, and Dionysius went to the grave with his lips sealed as I, Septimius Severus and Prefect Rufinus, among many others, watched the blade fall.
It was a bloody time. I saw men I had known for years go to the sword, men I was surprised to find had been in Cleander’s purse. Yet no man went without there being evidence against him. This was not a massacre, but a purge.
The people cheered and thrilled to see their corrupt masters being punished.
The senate watched, silent, pensive. Many of those sent to Elysium were of that class, and while the people saw this as a rightful cleansing of corruption, to a certain sector of society it looked as though a wildfire were tearing through their world. The senators began to wonder who would go next. Commodus was, as ever, seemingly oblivious of the danger from that quarter. He had always shared his uncle Verus’ unshakable belief in the power of skill over blood and continued to rely upon freedmen in spite of that august body that had once ruled Rome alone, without an emperor.
The senators, initially hopeful at the fall of Cleander, began to seethe as Eclectus slid neatly into his place as chamberlain. Indeed, matters were hardly helped when Commodus, so long removed from the corridors of power, put onto Eclectus’ shoulders the burden of selecting new Praetorian prefects. In the event, he selected only one, returning the Guard to the sole command of the competent African Laetus, that very same man who I had once enlisted in my network of conspirators when he had been but a centurion in the Guard. Once again, the senate watched a powerful freedman choose a friend from the equestrian class to command. I knew Eclectus well enough to know that his motivations were good, and undoubtedly Laetus would prove to be the right choice, but to the senate this looked like an echo of Cleander’s rise.
In the cold light of day I might be forced to acknowledge a certain level of overreaction in Commodus that spring. Certainly there will have been men who died in those months who had been driven to such acts by fear or coercion. Still, a cleansing fire was necessary to clear out the chaff of Cleander’s regime, and that is what Rome got. In some ways it reminded me of that horrendous list of proscriptions after Lucilla’s plot, though this time the list was not by Cleander’s influence, but of it.
Servilius and Dulius Silanus, Antius Lupus, Petronius Sura Mamertinus, Antoninus, Allius Fuscus, Caelius Felix, Lucceius Torquatus, Larcius Eurupianus, Valerius Bassianus, Pactumeius Magnus, Sulpicius Crassus, Julius Proculus, Claudius Lucanus. The catalogue read like a guest list for a consular dinner . . .
Against the background of this death and the growing worry of the senate, Commodus did many good things. True to his word, a new grain fleet was ordered, and construction began in the great shipyards of Carthage. The entire Misenum fleet was put at the city’s disposal by its new prefect, ferrying vast quantities of grain, which the emperor paid for out of the imperial coffers. The storehouses guarded by Cleander’s Praetorians in Rome were thrown open, their contents distributed among the poor and starving.
Still, it was not enough. Once the grain flowed and Cleander’s men were gone, the world of the ordinary Roman returned to one of disease and poverty. The senate continued to bristle.
The subject of finance came to a head one balmy afternoon. Commodus and I were sitting in the octagonal fountain garden of the palace when a deputation of senators sought an extraordinary audience. The ad admissionibus bowed and retreated, and a party of half a dozen toga-clad luminaries entered, along with two men I knew to be involved in finance from their repeated presence at such meetings. The senators stopped a respectful distance from us and bowed as the Praetorians and gladiators standing guard watched them carefully.
‘Gentlemen.’
‘Majesty. It has come to the attention of the senate that the recent increase in taxation, which was a far from popular measure but was ratified on the understanding that it was connected to the need for new grain import, is being gathered for an imperial expedition instead?’
Commodus’ left eyebrow rose a little.
‘I was not aware that I was required to detail every nuance for the senate. But since you ask, yes. I have gathered together funds for a journey to Africa to see the commissioning of the new grain fleet enacted and to personally oversee the organisation of the new flow that will help ease matters in Rome. So in a way, the tax will most certainly be connected with new grain import.’
The senators shared a number of looks, and then another man spoke up.
‘It is the belief of the senate that direct imperial oversight is not necessary in such matters, Majesty. It is suggested that such a use of tax is a waste.’
I saw Commodus’ hand begin to twitch. He did not like to be spoken to like that, and less so to be dictated to by the senate.
‘Is it?’
A third man tried another tack. ‘Even the plebs, Majesty, might take offence at their emperor using newly gathered funds to visit f
ar provinces when the city struggles in the grip of hunger and plague. They will wonder why no one pays to alleviate their troubles.’
Commodus spoke again, and now his voice had a hard edge to it that suggested peril for a number of dignitaries in the garden. ‘I had no idea the senate cared so for the plebs. I honestly thought that the vast majority of senators saw the people as little more than livestock. Very well. I shall call off the trip.’
That first speaker bowed his head obsequiously. ‘Might the tax be rescinded and repaid, Majesty?’
‘Gods, no,’ snorted Commodus. ‘The senate can afford to bleed a little gold. Since you are so concerned with the plight of the commoner, the funds shall go on public games. We shall take the people’s mind off their misery with your money, senator. How philanthropic you must be feeling.’
The men, their expressions of gratitude painted over sour faces, bowed, made appropriate noises, and retreated.
Once we were alone again, I smiled. ‘Bravo, my love. Your uncle would applaud you. Your father too, I think.’
Commodus nodded. ‘It is a small thing, though. I alleviate the people’s burdens, punish their detractors, feed and entertain them, but I still cannot make Rome smile. The people are simply too broken. The plague has ravaged the city for so many years now that it seems like an old friend. The plebs have become used to starvation and oppression. Gone are those happy faces that greeted us ten years ago when we came back from Vindobona with my father’s ashes, commanding a new golden era for all.’
‘You do all you can. No emperor could do more.’
‘But I must,’ he said. ‘Can you not see? Whatever I do it is not enough. The senators disapprove of me, and they resent what I do, but they obey sullenly. I do not worry about the senate. And the army is loyal, for sure. In the last ten years they have known peace for the first time in nearly half a century. They are loyal to the core. But the people have always been mine. I have always been their golden son. Yet now they have become quiet and miserable. Such cheering I hear is rote and strained. These are not the people I remember from when we came to Rome. Something must be done. When I acceded to the purple, Rome hailed that new golden age. I must bring it about. If I am to do anything for my empire, I must do that.’
I nodded. ‘With the corruption gone, you have a chance. But it is about you, my love. All about you. When you were the new golden emperor of Rome, the people thrilled. But for years now they have seen only the pitted iron monster of Cleander. They must see you in your imperial glory once more.’
He nodded his agreement.
The rebirth of the empire began slowly, but it began then, in the aftermath of that meeting.
Despite the worries of the bean-counters in the administration, Commodus funded more games. He drained the treasuries to a new low, keeping them alive with a trickle of fresh taxes or the sale of unwanted imperial estates. But before long, rarely a day passed when there was not a race on at the circus, or a day of events in the amphitheatre, or some play in one of the great theatres.
The grandest of the shows in the amphitheatre was one of the strangest for me, as a Christian. It is a long-standing tradition, of course, to recreate ancient tales and legends in the arena, from the battles of Achilles’ Myrmidons in the form of the eponymous gladiators, to the great recreation of the Battle of Actium replayed in the naumachia. But one day a reworking of the war between the gods and the giants was held in the Flavian amphitheatre, and I think that event in some ways spurred on what was to come.
The doors of the Gate of Life swung open and the entire crowd of the colossal amphitheatre hushed, tense, waiting to see what spectacle the emperor had planned for them that day. Then, into that expectant silence, stumped twelve men, dragging their way through the sand. Each one was enormous. The lanistas must have scoured the empire to find a dozen such giants. Each man carried a huge, iron-bound club and was dressed only in a loincloth and leg wrappings that had been fashioned to look as though serpents writhed around their shins as they moved. I was not sure how it had been engineered, but somehow those leg wraps hobbled the giants to some extent and they moved slowly and with difficulty to an appointed space at the centre of the arena.
The crowd cheered as the twelve giants moved into position. They truly were imposing men and I pitied whoever they were set against. My knowledge of pagan myth is not strong, and I had only a passing understanding of this tale of the dawn of gods and men.
The twelve deities of Olympus entered next, each dressed as their character, some armoured, others in only a robe, some naked. They were men and women, small and lithe, deliberately chosen to look diminutive against the giants. I smiled oddly, reminded of myself garbed as a gladiatrix for that festival three years earlier.
Jupiter came first, a purple robe draped around him as befitted the king of the gods. He brandished a long bronze javelin with a zigzag, lightning-bolt-shaped head. Juno wore a white robe and a gleaming bronze helm, a narrow-bladed spear in hand. Neptune was naked but for a gold crown, and carried a trident. Apollo, likewise stripped and oiled, carried a bow in one hand and but two arrows in the other. Ceres, the goddess of the harvest among other things, wore a white robe and carried a sickle. Minerva, armed for war, had a spear, while similarly attired Mars bore a short sword and shield. Diana, like her brother Apollo, carried a bow and twin arrows. Half-naked Vulcan with his leather skirt bore a dreadful-looking hammer, and Mercury a staff, fashioned like the caduceus, of bronze. Finally came Venus, naked but for a myrtle crown. She carried nothing.
I could see how the matching had been made. The difference in physical terms of the giants to their opponents had been cancelled out by partially hobbling them. They had heavy clubs with long reaches, but the gods bore a variety of weapons. In individual pairings some would clearly be doomed, but if the gods were to work together to bring down the giants, they could do so.
The crowd rumbled in anticipation, their woes of plague and hunger forgotten in the glamour of the vicious action about to unfold. Bread and circuses, eh, Juvenal?
The emperor rose and, as always, I thrilled to be seated next to him, where only a few years ago Bruttia would have been. The announcer down on the sands explained the tale of the gods and the giants and that this would be a rare contest, to the annihilation of one team or the other. I was hardly listening. I was having ideas. The crowd had been restive in their seats, as they had been all across the city since Cleander’s deprivations. The giants had entered and a hush had fallen. But it had been when the gods appeared that the crowd truly fell into reverent awe. It was only now as I watched the preparation for an epic battle that I realised that to the bulk of the Roman populace their many gods were as much a cause for piety and awe as God was for me. Possibly more so, given my tendency to stray. I think the average Roman is far more pious, and certainly more credulous, than I.
Commodus needed to capture that. If his very presence could instil that same awe and reverence in the crowd, then wherever he went he would bring about that very golden empire of which he dreamed.
I thought on the matter at length as the fight began. The giants, aware that they were facing missiles, immediately broke from their centre and burst outwards like a dropped pomegranate’s seeds, each making for an opponent. They moved in lurches, painfully, hampered by whatever lay beneath those wrappings.
Apollo and Diana both nocked arrows and released, then nocked and released once more, using early their only two missiles. To their credit, they were both clearly excellent archers and both struck with each shot, yet their arrows were enough only to wound and not to kill.
The first true combat occurred when Jupiter hurled his thunderbolt javelin, striking his giant in the torso, where the weapon penetrated deep. The hobbled victim howled and yet came on, struggling and yelping, aware that to pause here was to die, trying to swing his club even with a five-foot weapon hanging from his belly and dragging on the ground. The fathe
r of the gods nimbly ducked the pained clumsy swing of the club and grabbed his thunderbolt, tearing a huge hole in his opponent’s belly as he dragged it back out.
Even as he dispatched his giant with a cry of glory, my attention was caught by Apollo, whose giant had reached him, despite the twin arrows jutting from his torso. The archer god tried to duck left or right, but other fights were going on there and no safe haven was to be found. He retreated towards the arena wall, panicking, aware he was becoming trapped. Finally, as he bumped into the stone periphery, the giant lifted back his great iron-bound club with a grunt of pain from his wounds and swung.
Apollo ducked, but the giant had anticipated the move and adjusted downwards as he swung. I winced as the great weapon smashed straight into the god’s face, rupturing his head like an overripe melon and mashing it against the stone. Headless Apollo’s twitching corpse collapsed to the sand, but he was avenged a moment later as his sister Diana appeared from somewhere with an arrow in her hand, which she slammed into the giant’s neck, ripping open his artery.
The crowd roared with each horror.
I was impressed to see poor unarmed Venus, who I had thought doomed, riding the back of a giant, her arms around his neck, rapidly squeezing the life from her mount’s throat.
It was over in perhaps a quarter of an hour, and five gods remained standing, all dozen giants gone.
It had won over the crowds with its innovation and glamour, but my mind was still whirring. Commodus the god. Had not he said that he would be a god? Even all those years ago as children, while Fulvus suffered his last, Commodus had said he would be Hercules. He had been the glorious demigod, in fact, that day he had fought off Maternus’ killers in Praetorian white.
It was almost meant to be . . .
