Fire and Sword

by Harry Sidebottom

  The barbarians had come to Honoratus. It was a sign of weakness to initiate diplomacy. The status and numbers of the envoys showed respect. So far, all was fitting. But barbarians only came when they wanted something. Honoratus hoped it was not permission for any of their number to cross the river and settle within the empire. Barbarians were irrational, and there was no foretelling their reactions to an unequivocal refusal.

  Tharuaro walked up to the base of the tribunal with confidence. Ideally, barbarian envoys confronted by the might of Rome would be more abashed. Sometimes, it was said, they were struck dumb, abased themselves and burst into tears. This chieftain, of course, had been here before.

  With dignity, Tharuaro bowed, put his fingers to his lips, and blew a kiss to the standards bearing the imperial portraits. His entourage likewise performed the adoration. Honoratus saw the evident reluctance of the young warrior.

  ‘Hail, Honoratus, the general of Maximinus Augustus and Maximus Caesar.’ The greeting was not fulsome. Tharuaro spoke the roughly accented Latin of the army. The interpreter would not be needed, unless the other barbarians contributed, and they lacked the language of civilization.

  ‘Hail, Tharuaro, ally and friend of the Roman people, King of the Goths.’

  Some of the other barbarians looked askance. Rex was the natural translation of Reiks, but there were many Kings among the Goths, and no doubt the three behind Tharuaro also held that title. Tharuaro preferred to be styled Drauhtins, or Leader of the Tribe, but it was beneath the majesty of Rome for her representative to use such an uncouth word. At the cost of a certain offence, Honoratus had learnt which of Tharuaro’s followers understood Latin.

  Honoratus waited. It was not for him to speak first.

  ‘You Romans know the Tervingi Goths well. You know our fidelity in peace, and our valour in war. The wide lands of the Goths hold the bones of many of your soldiers.’

  Honoratus’ thoughts drifted. It was the usual verbose and bombastic speech to be expected of a hairy, illiterate barbarian. Quite likely Tharuaro would spend an eternity singing the praises of his own ancestors, before he announced what he wanted.

  ‘Giving us gold and silver as surety of your friendship, you avail yourself of the blessings of peace and harmony, and leave the business of war to us. The gods have decreed that war again has come to the lands of the Goths, and descends upon your frontier.’

  Now he had Honoratus’ attention.

  ‘Cniva has returned.’

  ‘He is a hostage in Rome,’ Honoratus said.

  ‘The hostage has returned.’

  ‘How?’

  Tharuaro smiled. ‘Some believe he has been summoned by a Haliurunna, one of our Gothic witches.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Cniva appeared among the Carpi in the mountains, now he is with the Roxolani Sarmatians on the Steppe. He has much gold. His followers move among the Goths, buying support, seducing men from their true allegiance.’

  Honoratus remained silent.

  ‘A war-leader needs much gold to reward the courage of his warriors, to bring noble fighters to his hearth-troop Rome is wealthy. To defeat Cniva calls for much gold, minted and bullion.’

  Honoratus had no idea if the story was true. The provincial fiscus had been plundered almost empty to pay for Maximinus’ endless northern campaigns. He marshalled his thoughts before speaking.

  ‘The Emperor is master of uncountable wealth, and he shows favour to those who serve him well. I need to consult Maximinus Augustus about these matters. After three months, come here to this spot, and discover and receive an answer. Stand against Cniva, crush subversion in your territories, keep the peace with Rome; demonstrate by your actions that you deserve it, and you can be assured that you will bask in the limitless generosity of imperial benefice.’

  Tharuaro did not look overjoyed. The young warrior at his side positively glowered.

  ‘Now you will be my guests at a feast, and there you will find me open-handed.’

  Honoratus stood, to indicate that the audience was at an end.

  It was nothing but prevarication. Yet, at the cost of those slippery words, a few precious trinkets, and the deployment of his own charm, he thought he could purchase three months of peace. And when that time had passed, his forces would be ready, forewarned, the whole province on a war footing.

  Honoratus walked down the steps, and was helped into the saddle of his waiting warhorse. A few moments later mounts – somewhat less splendid – were produced for the barbarians. The cavalry formed up around them, and they proceeded to the town.

  As the cavalcade rode under the arch of the main gate, Honoratus noted with satisfaction the Goths’ heads turning as they peered at the defences. The counter-weighted portcullis, the machicolations, the torsion-powered artillery; the barbarians could neither copy them, nor force a passage through them. Even their limited intellect must comprehend their inferiority.

  The feast was in the Basilica opening off the Forum. The Goths appeared reluctant to leave their weapons at the door – so much for their vaunted fidelity in peace, Honoratus thought – until told to by Tharuaro. Inside, they were further perturbed by the Roman arrangement of three-man dining couches. Well schooled, none of the Romans laughed as the barbarians clambered up, and uncomfortably reclined.

  Honoratus took the place of the host in the middle of the top couch. On his right was Tharuaro, to his left the Gudja. The truculent young warrior, apparently a son of Tharuaro named Gunteric, looked both contemptuous and unhappy on a couch with two Roman cavalry officers some way down the hall. Honoratus had encountered few things stranger than eating with barbarians, especially with a native priest who had bones woven in his hair, so that they clacked when he moved. Some of the bones looked disconcerting; apparently it was not uncommon for a Gudja to perform human sacrifice.

  To prevent the meal descending into farce or tragedy, Honoratus had told the kitchens to produce simple food – mainly roast meats – and ordered the cupbearers to dilute the wine with eight parts of water.

  The Gudja did not speak, but crammed everything that came to hand into his mouth. Tharuaro put himself out to be companionable and expansive. He launched into an interminable account of the origins of the different groupings of the Goths. It involved elaborate genealogies, a great deal of wandering, and a bridge collapsing. Of course, Honoratus thought, if they had not been barbarians, they could have just rebuilt the thing.

  Why was he still languishing here in Moesia, almost as if in exile? The poet Ovid had been right about this place.

  Your open fields have few trees, and those sterile,

  Your coast a no man’s land, more sea than soil,

  There is no birdsong, save for odd stragglers from the distant

  Forest, raucously calling, throats made harsh from brine;

  Across the vacant plains grim wormwood bristles –

  A bitter crop, well suited to its site …

  … no diet suited

  To an invalid, no physician’s healing skills …

  … I am haunted

  … by all that is not here.

  Honoratus had done more than enough for Maximinus to earn a recall from this dangerous, unhealthy backwater. The Thracian owed him no less than the throne itself. It had been Honoratus who had first taken the terrible risk of talking treason with Flavius Vopiscus and Catius Clemens. Together the three of them had seen it through. Sometimes Honoratus wished that he had never been party to the awful scene in the imperial pavilion; the naked, fingerless corpse of the old Empress, Alexander’s mother, the dog gnawing human remains in a corner.

  Before the blood was cold, Honoratus had ridden to Rome. He had won the city over to Maximinus, secured the vote in the Senate which had given him legitimacy. He had campaigned with him in Germania, fought with distinction in the battles in the marsh and at the Harzhorn. The marriage of Maximinus’ son to Iunia Fadilla had been his idea. If Maximus had been more presentable, the link to the Antonine dynasty wou
ld have reconciled the senatorial nobility to the new regime.

  Back then, two years ago, Honoratus had accepted the need to come to Moesia. The province was overrun with barbarians. Honoratus had chased out their raiding parties, closed the frontier. When the imperial field army had arrived, he had marched with Maximinus out onto the Steppe. He had commanded the right wing in the victory at the Hierasos river. When the Emperor departed for the West, Honoratus had thought that a new governor would be appointed, and he would travel with the court. But no, here he remained in this wilderness.

  Tharuaro was laughing immoderately, slapping his thigh, as he recounted the way some northern tribes liked to bugger their young warriors. Honoratus smiled and nodded, as if listening to the wittiest conversation at a symposium.

  Perhaps this semi-exile was not the fault of Maximinus, but of Flavius Vopiscus. Honoratus had been relegated to the Danube, Catius Clemens to distant Cappadocia. Of the triumvirate who had clad Maximinus in the purple, only Vopiscus remained with the Emperor. Vopiscus was twenty years younger than Maximinus. If the latter’s son inherited the throne, his vices would soon see him cast down. The thing was obvious. Yet the superstitions of Vopiscus would make him a dreadful Emperor. The consilium would be filled with astrologers and magicians; high decisions of state would turn on an alignment of the stars, or a random line of Virgil.

  Better Honoratus himself made a bid for the throne. He had two legions. Anullinus, the Praetorian Prefect, had been one of those recruited to kill Alexander. Ammonius, the governor of Noricum, was another. There was more support to be gathered along the Danube. Faltonius Nicomachus and Tacitus, the governors of Pannonia Inferior and Moesia Superior, owed their posts to that revolution. If he could raise the money, rather than buying off Tharuaro or Cniva, he could add their savages to his cause. Maximinus had squeezed the provinces hard, but more could always be raised. At the very least, the cities of Moesia Inferior would have to offer him crown gold if Honoratus were proclaimed Emperor, and imperial estates in the region could be sold. And, if he could gain the backing of his friend Catius Clemens, add the eastern armies to the Danubian, then victory would almost be assured. Of course, Catius Clemens might have aspirations to sit on the throne himself.

  Tharuaro had moved on to telling a sad story of how some barbarian Prince had ransomed his friend at the cost of his own eyes. No more food was being brought out, and even the Gudja was eating more slowly. Soon it would be time to hand out some golden torques and arm-bands, and this pretence of conviviality could be drawn to a close.

  Remember the Apollonian injunction; Know yourself. Honoratus accepted it was neither love of Rome, nor personal ambition, that prompted his thoughts. Instead, it was his overpowering desire to leave this loathsome place, leave it at any cost. When appointed governor, he had sent for his family. He should have known better. When he had served here before, as legate of a legion, he had left them safe in Italy. The poetry of Ovid was warning enough. Within two months of arriving, Marcus had taken a fever and died. Marcus was his only son. The boy had been seven.

  A servant appeared at the foot of the couch, bearing an armful of golden trinkets.

  Honoratus put on a brave face, smiled his beautiful smile, and prepared himself to give gifts to the assembled barbarians.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mesopotamia

  North of Edessa, towards the Euphrates, Three Days before the Ides of April, AD238

  Gaius Julius Priscus, the governor of the province, lay on the hillside, face muddied, and wrapped in a faded, grey-green cloak, which was pulled over his head. The rolling, high country above Edessa was bare, almost treeless, but at this time of year it was green. The grass, in which Priscus was stretched, was studded with white flowers. Down the slope was a bank of yellow flowers. Priscus did not know their names, but he appreciated beauty – in nature, a poem, or a lover – even in this ghastly place.

  Dust drifted up on the breeze. The forerunners of the army which Priscus had come to watch were straggling towards the head of the valley. It was time to put away other thoughts. Priscus had always prided himself on a fierce pragmatism.

  With the hundred or so of his men he had saved from the fall of Carrhae, he had ridden west. The Persians, intent on pillage, rape, and killing, had offered no pursuit. Priscus had found his field army at Batnae; less than four thousand on foot, and a thousand mounted. It was an inadequate force. Two thousand of the infantry were recent recruits. Waiting, he drilled them in the mornings, and inspected their equipment in the heat of the afternoons. In the evenings he dined with his consilium, and discussed strategy. Some of his officers – including one or two of the more experienced, who should have known better – had expressed the hope that the Persians would retire to the east, sated with plunder. Priscus had been unsurprised when the scouts brought word of the approach of the barbarians.

  The enemy were no longer led by Ardashir, the Sassanid King of Kings, but there were still more than ten thousand of them; too many to fight in an open battle. Priscus had left Batnae garrisoned by just one auxiliary Cohort and the local militia. Not wanting to abandon his province, he had not continued west to the bridge over the Euphrates at Zeugma. Instead, he had led his men north-east to Edessa. As he expected, the Persians had followed.

  Edessa was placed in the hands of Manu, the heir to the abolished client-kingdom of Osrhoene. To defend what had been his late father’s capital, the man they called Bear-blinder had the thousand regulars stationed there, and whatever inhabitants could wield weapons. When the Persians appeared before the walls, Priscus and the field army drew the majority of them off into the hills to the north.

  They had gone by circuitous routes, the Sassanids dogging their steps, snapping at their heels. Every day there were skirmishes. Sometimes Priscus halted, formed up the army as if to fight, before slipping away again. He had long experience of fighting against the odds, and had the advantage of knowing the terrain. So the weary, dangerous days had dragged on, until they had come to this valley.

  From captured enemy outriders and deserters, Priscus had learnt that Ardashir, with the bulk of the barbarian horde, had gone to besiege Singara, far to the east, where an isolated garrison of legionaries held out. The Persians pursuing him were led by a young son of Ardashir, Hormizd of Adiabene. According to the reports – freely given, or extracted with the knife – Hormizd believed Priscus was intent on nothing but reaching the crossing of the Euphrates at Samosata, and retreating to the comparative safety of the neighbouring province of Cappadocia. That belief might yet be the undoing of Hormizd.

  There was a keen irony in Priscus expending all his ingenuity, risking his life in this unequal, probably doomed, defence of Rome’s eastern territories. He had been born out here, in a village called Shahba, a flyblown dump in the wastelands on the border between Syria and Arabia. He had grown up speaking Aramaic more often than Greek or Latin. Unlike his brother, Philip, he had no residual affection for the area. Priscus had worked hard to get away. As an equestrian officer, he had served all over the vast empire, in military and financial posts. Wherever he had been sent, Spain or on the Rhine, each place was better than here. He loathed the heat and the dust of the orient, the narrow, self-seeking parochialism of its contemptible natives. He had bought estates in Italy. His wife was in his house on the Caelian Hill, his son in the imperial school on the Palatine. With all his soul, he wished that he also was in Rome.

  The vanguard of his army had entered the valley below. Sutlers and camp servants mounted on mules and donkeys, they carried the standards of the cavalry, and from a distance might be mistaken for such.

  Priscus let his gaze roam over the folded crests on the far side of the valley. Fighting the Persians was like fighting the Hydra. You cut off one head, and two grew in its place. A victory meant little. Rout a Sassanid horde, and they sent another. Yet a single Roman defeat would be calamitous. Despite that, Priscus knew that he had to keep an army in the field. If not, the Persians could pick off
the defended towns at their leisure. He had to fight today, and he had to win.

  The main body of his infantry moved onto the floor of the valley. Porcius Aelianus, the Prefect of the 3rd Legion, had them strung out in a good simulacrum of disorder. In their wake, still out on the plain, what appeared to be the baggage train meandered along, screened by just a thin line of infantry. If the gods were kind, it would be an opportunity and a prize too tempting for the Sassanids to overlook.

  Priscus had manned the wagons with picked veterans from both his legions. They wore rough cloaks over their armour, their weapons and shields were hidden in the beds of the carts, and their standards had been sent ahead further up the column. They knew what was expected of them, and they were commanded by Julius Julianus, the Prefect of the 1st Legion, a man of proven abilities.

  The trap was set, and now Priscus could see the dust raised by the Persians coming up from the south.

  If he was victorious today, he would have bought his province no more than a measure of time. Herakles killed the Hydra by severing its head. To vanquish the Persians called for an army which could defeat the King of Kings. March the whole imperial field army east, bring all the might the empire could gather, kill Ardashir, and decapitate the Sassanid beast.

  Priscus had no doubt that Maximinus would crush the rebellion of the Gordiani. Africa was unarmed, Italy virtually as powerless. Equally, he was certain that Maximinus would never be diverted from his unwinnable northern wars. The Thracian was a fool. Priscus had served in Germania. The barbarians there could not be conquered. If a barbarian ruler there was contumacious, you used bribes and the threat of force to set the other chieftains on him, and bring him down. In the East, you could unite the Kings of Armenia and Hatra, the rulers of Palmyra and the Arabs, every native dynast, and Ardashir would defeat them all.