by James Mace
Soldier of Rome:
Rise of the Flavians
The Year of the Four Emperors
Part II
James Mace
Electronic Edition Copyright © 2015 by James Mace
All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Characters and events portrayed in this book are based on actual persons and events, but are used fictitiously.
Legionary Books
Meridian, Idaho 83642, USA
http://www.legionarybooks.net
First eBook Edition: 2015
Published in the United States of America
Legionary Books
Cover Images by Radoslav Javor, copyright © 2015 by Radoslav Javor and Legionary Books
All other images are licensed through applicable copyright holders, or public domain
Dedicated in Memory of
Michael Craig Lower, Jr.
1976 – 2015
Reliqua in Pacem, Frater Meus
Donec nos surgere iterum
Rest in Peace, My brother
Until we rise again
After the darkest treason, rise again
Table of Contents
Chapter I: The Third Emperor
Chapter II: Suffer No Rivals
Chapter III: A Desolate Peace
Chapter IV: Feasts of Victory and Bloodshed
Chapter V: Rise of the Strong
Chapter VI: Defenders of the Crown
Chapter VII: Generations of Valor
Chapter VIII: Into the Unknown
Chapter IX: The Gathering Storm
Chapter X: Reckless Initiative
Chapter XI: First Clash
Chapter XII: The Race to Cremona
Chapter XIII: Second Battle of Bedriacum
Chapter XIV: Night of the Kin Slayers
Chapter XV: Engines of Hades’ Fury
Chapter XVI: An Inexplicable Truce
Chapter XVII: God of the Rising Sun
Chapter XVIII: Fortunes of War
Chapter XIX: Revenge is My Name
Chapter XX: Brothers in Death
Chapter XXI: Thunder in the Silence
Chapter XXII: Loyalties Betrayed
Chapter XXIII: Ashes of Victory
Chapter XXIV: Poison Tears
Chapter XXV: Futile Defiance
Chapter XXVI: The People’s Army
Chapter XXVII: All Roads to Rome
Chapter XXVIII: Abdication and the Final Betrayal
Chapter XXIX: In the Shadow of the Gods
Chapter XXX: The Burning of Rome
Chapter XXXI: Fate is Calling
Chapter XXXII: Saturnalia Bloodbath
Chapter XXXIII: You Win or You Die
Chapter XXXIV: Last of the Vitellians
Chapter XXXV: Regent of the Empire
Chapter XXXVI: Innocence Slain
Chapter XXXVII: Rise of the Artorians
Appendix A: Historical Afterward
Appendix B: List of Roman Military Ranks
Chapter I: The Third Emperor
Rome
20 April 69 A.D.
Emperor Aulus Vitellius
“The emperor is dead,” Sabinus said, reading the dispatch. He looked up as he threw the scroll onto the table. “One grievous error, and now all is lost.”
“That’s putting it politely,” Nerva replied with a scowl. “He had two of Rome’s greatest generals leading his forces, yet instead he appears to have listened to his idiot brother. A lot of good that did him.”
It was a brutal yet accurate assessment, for a single terrible mistake that cost Marcus Salvius Otho the empire as well as his life. In Northern Italia, his leading generals, Marius Celsus and Suetonius Paulinus, had won a pair of decisive victories against the armies of the pretender, Aulus Vitellius. Furthermore, the Vitellians had also assailed the walls of the strategically vital city of Placentia, only to be driven off with terrible losses. With momentum clearly in their favor, the emperor did the inexplicable and replaced his two most experienced generals and named his own brother, Otho Titianus, as commander-in-chief. Paulinus and Celsus urged caution, arguing they should wait for the reinforcing legions from the Balkans to arrive before engaging the enemy once more. The inexperienced and grossly incompetent Titianus ignored them. Their subsequent defeat at the hands of the combined Vitellian armies of Fabius Valens and Caecina Alienus became a foregone conclusion, with Paulinus and Celsus helpless to do little except watch as the entire campaign collapsed. In his last and perhaps noblest act as emperor, Otho committed suicide the following day in the hope of avoiding more needless loss of life.
Word reached Rome within just four days of Otho’s death, yet it was met with complete indifference by the populace at large. His reign lasted just three months, and the people simply did not know him well enough to care about his demise one way or the other. In a far cry from the ages of Caesar and Pompey, or Octavian and Antony, neither Otho nor Vitellius inspired anything remotely resembling loyalty or praise. No citizens, be they plebeians, equites, or patricians, gave a damn about either claimant to the throne. Nor had anyone felt the slightest compulsion to make a sacrifice at one of the temples for the health and preservation of either claimant to the throne, while the war progressed.
As Prefect of the City of Rome, Flavius Sabinus would be compelled to administer the oath of allegiance to the urban cohorts and what few military forces remained in and around Rome. This would likely be met with only polite acclamation from both the soldiery and the senate. He and Nerva had been members of Otho’s imperial council. However, the triumphant Vitellius would appoint his own councilors, so this was simply a private meeting between friends and political allies. Nerva looked to the much older Sabinus as both a friend and mentor, and on this particular day he needed his advice.
“For the time being, we have no emperor,” Nerva then observed. A contingency neither Vitellius nor his senior generals had planned for, that Sabinus and Nerva would soon watch unfold, was the gaping power vacuum left by their victory. The two suffect consuls, Lucius Verginius and Lucius Pompeius, had both been among Otho’s entourage. Flavius Sabinus was not slated to assume the consul’s chair for another two weeks. Yet it was because he was the next designated suffect consul that the messenger from the north had come to him.
“Vitellius has shown no inclination to return to Rome in the near future,” the younger senator continued. “Nor has he named a regent to act in his stead. And while the plebs are largely indifferent, it will be anarchy in the senate once word gets out about Otho’s death.”
“Normally, the consuls act on the emperor’s behalf,” Sabinus observed. “And yet, with no elected appointments for the full year term, we are only able to grant suffect consulships which change every two to three months. If Vitellius had any foresight, he would have dispatched a personal representative with the messenger, to both inform us of his intentions and to act as regent until he arrives.”
“And that could take months. Instead, both men who would most likely fit the position have traveled to Lugdunum, to celebrate their conquest in a drunken orgy. Caecina and Valens won Vitellius the empire, and yet they are now remiss in their duties to the state. The senate will fracture once more into its ageless factions. The old families and new will vie for power and influence. No doubt there are many who will claim they were Vitellius’ most ardent supporters since he first led his legions in rebellion on New Year’s Day.”
“Of course they will,” Sabin
us concurred. “And if Vitellius had any sense, he would see right through the façade of false flattery.”
“Unfortunately,” Nerva sighed, “I think we both know Vitellius lacks this kind of sagacity. It was the false flattery of Caecina and Valens that led him to think he was somehow worthy of becoming ruler of the Roman Empire in the first place.”
“And unlike many of our colleagues, I happen to know Vitellius personally,” Sabinus said. “He was a few years behind me in the Cursus Honorum, and I always found him to be an affable fellow who certainly knew how to host a banquet. He was also not lacking in potential. Sadly, he seems to have wasted whatever talents he inherited from his noble father. His greatest weakness is he tries to please everyone, and is more concerned with his personal popularity than actually governing. Never did Rome find herself with an emperor so easy to manipulate. Those who manage to ingratiate their way into his inner circle will be the ones with real power. Our more astute colleagues are very much aware of this, and have doubtless been planning for this contingency.”
“In other words, we could find ourselves with another Nero whom the people love, yet whose incompetence leads the empire to ruin,” Nerva remarked. He gave a mirthless chuckle. “And you, my friend, will be trapped in the middle of the political fray over the next two months.”
Sabinus took a long drink of his wine. He had always viewed the consulship, even a short suffect term, as the greatest honor and service a Roman patrician could perform. Twenty-two years had passed since he last sat in the coveted chair. And yet, he was facing this next term with a measure of great uncertainty.
Just as Sabinus predicted, news of Otho’s death and the triumph of Vitellius were treated as almost a triviality by the plebeians. And while the masses went about their daily lives as if nothing had happened, within the senate there was confusion and the predictable political struggle. Vitellius’ loyalist nobles had been with him in Germania and Gaul, leaving the majority of the senate in Rome to fight with each other for positions of prominence within the regime of a new emperor who few of them even knew. That such a nonentity was now emperor, who despite decades in the senate elicited neither admiration nor loathing from his peers, and was still very much an unknown should have been unnerving. Instead, the only issue any of them could agree upon was the hope that the civil wars were now over, and that Vitellius would at last bring some sense of stability to the empire. However, within days of the notification of Otho’s death, still with no official word from the victor himself, it became apparent that Vitellius and his closest advisors lacked both foresight and attention to detail. And while there would soon follow many private conversations regarding his competence, did the senate really have any choice but to ratify Vitellius’ claim to the imperial throne?
Couriers had ridden with all speed to Lugdunum to inform Vitellius that Otho was dead, and the empire was now his. The senate had yet to confirm him as emperor, but all knew this was a foregone conclusion. With no other living claimants to the imperial throne, who could they possibly attempt to name in his place? Even if the senate did balk at the thought of an Emperor Vitellius , he still had the most powerful army in the world backing his claim. The legions of Otho had been placated into docile submission, and the Balkan Legions dispatched back to their barracks.
For Rome’s new master, it was a time for celebration. Vitellius, never one to miss the opportunity to throw a lavish festival complete with banquets and now a triumphal parade, had demanded Caecina and Valens return at once. He further decreed that the defeated Othonian generals were to take part in the victory parade. The celebrations, complete with gladiatorial matches and chariot races, were expected to last a week. This, coupled with Vitellius’ insistence on traveling afterwards to the battlefield so he could see the remnants of his defeated foes for himself, would significantly delay his return to Rome. Many of the senators, recently arrived from Northern Italia to congratulate their new ruler, feared this would create a power struggle in Rome much like after the death of Nero, before Galba’s arrival in the capital. Vitellius was unmoved by their trepidations and was only too anxious for his triumph to be celebrated. Caecina and Valens were also in no hurry to return to Rome, lest other members of the presumptive emperor’s entourage wrest control of Vitellius from them. The emperor was their puppet to control, and none of those decrepit fools in the senate would take that from them.
With most of their armies still in Northern Italia, the two commanding generals had suggested they use the forces that accompanied Vitellius for the victory parade, rather than waiting two or three weeks for their own soldiers to arrive from Cremona. Titianus and Celsus had accompanied Caecina and Valens from Bedriacum while, seemingly out of nowhere, Licinius Proculus and Suetonius Paulinus arrived in Lugdunum. The two disappeared soon after the Battle of Bedriacum and had not been heard from until their arrival in the Gallic capital. But, instead of being taken to Vitellius, they were escorted to a magistrate’s villa recently commandeered by Valens as his military headquarters.
“General Paulinus, so good of you to join us,” Valens said, scarcely hiding his sneer of gloating contempt. The Vitellian general took immense pleasure in reveling before the man previously lauded as Rome’s greatest military leader of their generation. That Paulinus had been replaced, with all authority stripped by Otho before the battle, did little to hamper Valens’ smug satisfaction at supposedly defeating Boudicca’s conqueror.
“The war is over, and I await orders from our new emperor,” Paulinus replied stoically. Though he did not say where he had been, he had taken the time to bathe, shave, and see to his armor and kit. And while it pained him to have fought on the losing side of the civil war, the venerable general kept reminding himself that Otho’s defeat was not his doing.
“And your orders are to ride in the victory parade, two days from now,” Valens stated.
He and Paulinus kept their gazes fixed on each other.
Licinius Proculus stood and fidgeted nervously, unsure if he should say anything. His only military experience before the war had involved parading troops of the Praetorian Guard, and Valens regarded him as an insignificance. He felt a similar level of disdain towards Titianus, who had proven utterly inept and weak-willed and was only summoned to Lugdunum because he was Otho’s brother. He promptly dismissed the two, grinning knowingly as Paulinus practically shoved his way past Licinius. And while Valens would never openly admit it, he was relieved Otho had made such a careless blunder in replacing his two best generals with popular, yet incompetent, sycophants.
Neither Paulinus nor any of the Othonian generals were heard from for two days, though all obediently turned out resplendently dressed on the day of the parade. Titianus and Licinius donned their legates’ armor with brightly polished breastplates and plumed helmets. Celsus and Paulinus were more subdued, electing to wear their civilian togas. While they had yet to formally meet with Vitellius, all were ordered to ride at the head of the procession next to their Vitellian counterparts. Whether this was to humiliate them or, perhaps, show unity between the previously warring factions, no one was certain.
None of the legionaries or auxilia troopers in Lugdunum had taken part in the war. Yet here they were, marching in the emperor’s first triumphal parade. For them, the march to war accompanying Vitellius had been more of a roaming carnival, and they were being given the laurels of victory without having struck a single blow for their emperor. The forces that had made up Vitellius’ escort consisted of the entire Legio XXII, Fortuna Primigenia, otherwise known as ‘Fortuna’s Legion’ . There were also an additional eight thousand legionaries recently arrived from Britannia. These men had come from three of the legions that had spearheaded the conquest of the isle during the reign of Claudius; Legio II, Augusta, Legio IX, Hispania, and Legio XX, Valeria Victrix. This last legion had fought with Suetonius Paulinus against Boudicca and been given the moniker, ‘Victrix’ , after their decisive victory over the Iceni.
Legio XIV, Gemina Martia Victri
x, who fought beside the Valeria Legion against the Iceni, had fought for Otho during the civil war and was subsequently sent back to Britannia by Vitellius as a form of punishment. None of Vitellius’ Britannic soldiers had taken part in the fighting, and there had been much speculation as to whether or not they would have willingly made war against their former mates. It was rather fortunate for the Vitellians that the arrival of these particular legionaries had been greatly delayed, due to a rather heated conflict between the commanding legates and the Governor of Britannia, Trebellius Maximus. At Valens’ urging, Vitellius immediately sacked Trebellius and replaced him with one of his own confidants, Marcus Vettius Bolanus. Bolanus was a capable administrator, soldier, and diplomat, as well as a personal friend of the emperor. Sending him to Britannia had the two-fold effect of maintaining stability in the still-volatile province, while removing his direct influence from Vitellius’ inner circle.
Though the column of soldiers numbered in the thousands, the parade was still a much smaller affair than the triumphs witnessed in Rome, for there were no spoils or enemy prisoners to drag through the streets. It really became little more than a military procession of soldiers marching through the streets of Lugdunum, while being cheered by the mobs of curious citizens anxious to see the armies of this latest conquering Caesar. The people had no idea who the Othonian and Vitellian generals were and gave ovations of equal measure to all the legates and other senior officers.
Vitellius sat upon a large dais which acted as the reviewing stand. For the first time, he wore the purple and gold robes of an emperor, with a golden laurel crown atop his head. Various senators, as well as the governor of Lugdunum, sat on either side. It took almost an hour for the soldiers to march past the stand, with all drawing their weapons in salute. Vitellius was hoping to distance himself from the name ‘Caesar’, as it implied lineage to the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. Because of this, the soldiers were instructed to shout ‘Ave Imperator’ , instead of the traditional ‘Ave Caesar’. By the time the last cohort saluted their new emperor, Vitellius was anxious to attend some of the games which would begin later the following afternoon. But before then he had some rather unpleasant formalities to attend to.
