Emperor's Spear

by Alex Gough

  But the thought of seeing Avitus kindled a small spark inside him. It wasn’t much amongst all this darkness, but it gave him hope that maybe there was light to come. He gritted his teeth, set his eyes straight ahead, and rode on.

  * * *

  Oclatinius and Festus surveyed the battlefield from a distance. They had not been present for the battle itself. They were both old, and would have been more hindrance than help in the sort of struggle that had taken place today. Only now, with the job of the carrion feeders – human and animal – well under way, did they arrive.

  It was a familiar sight to them both, and though it took a strange type of person to be completely inured to the grisly vista, it did not affect them overly.

  ‘It all worked out, then,’ said Festus.

  ‘So it seems,’ said Oclatinius. They sat astride comfortable, placid mounts. Old warhorses, whose job now lay away from the battle, in more sedentary occupations. But no less responsible, for that.

  ‘I owe your man Silus,’ said Festus. ‘I don’t know if Atius or Eustachys would have broken eventually, but if they had, we would be looking at a very different outcome today. At the best, the Alamanni would have never come to the peace conference, and we would have had to fight their whole forces. In the worst case, they would have come to the peace conference secretly armed, and turned the ambush on us.’

  ‘Or we could have honoured our alliance,’ interjected Oclatinius.

  ‘You think they would have remained our allies after learning of our plans?’

  Oclatinius looked out at the corpses. The majority were Alamanni. Although the Romans had taken heavy losses in the first part of the battle, once the reinforcements arrived, it had rapidly become a rout. Caracalla’s plan to defeat the Alamanni confederation before turning on the Chatti and the more northerly tribes had succeeded beyond his expectations. But Oclatinius feared what price Rome would pay for the treachery in years to come.

  ‘If only Eustachys had made it through to Erhard,’ said Festus. ‘With the information that Rome would soon annihilate the Alamanni, he could have fomented a rebellion among the Chatti and split their forces. Now, we have another formidable barbarian enemy to deal with.’ He sighed and picked up his reins. ‘We should find Caracalla.’

  ‘Festus,’ said Oclatinius, and his tone carried a warning. Festus looked at him sharply.

  ‘I’m not blind,’ said Oclatinius. ‘And I know that you do not underestimate my intelligence, nor my network of informers.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Macrinus.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I know his ambition. And I know yours.’

  Festus said nothing, simply pursed his lips.

  ‘I’m not going to Caracalla with what I know. But just be aware. My powers are not without limit. Despite our past, what you did for me, there are some things from which I just cannot protect you.’

  ‘I don’t need your protection,’ snapped Festus.

  ‘You needed my help very recently,’ said Oclatinius, his voice even. ‘Don’t believe you are invincible. Even Achilles had his heel.’

  Festus flicked the reins and cantered away.

  Oclatinius shook his head and sighed. Then, more slowly, he followed.

  Author’s note

  As with most of this period of history, the historical sources are scarce. As with all the books in this series, much of my material comes from the only full-length text about Caracalla, by Ilkka Syvänne (see bibliography). I have included the relevant texts from Herodian and Cassius Dio that comprise much of what we know about Caracalla’s German campaign, but as discussed in my previous author’s notes (and in the novels themselves, since Cassius Dio was Caracalla’s contemporary), these historians were considerably biased against Caracalla. Many Roman emperors have been demonised despite doing no worse than others who are regarded as ‘Great’.

  Caracalla’s betrayal of the Alamanni is a case in point. Cassius Dio clearly disapproves. Syvänne, in an effort to give the other side of the story, portrays it as a brilliant tactic to eliminate a serious threat to the Empire. The rights and wrongs of this are very much in the eye of the beholder, and it likely divided even contemporary Roman opinion.

  There is little contemporary detail on Caracalla’s campaign against the Germans, but Syvänne has speculated on the most likely possibilities. I have used these, while accepting that they are only speculation, and so have felt at liberty to speculate myself, and change some details from Dr Syvänne’s narrative.

  Caracalla’s encounter with the Alamanni is the first mention in the contemporary historical literature of this important tribe, who gave their name to Allemagne, the French name for Germany. The origin of the word Alamanni (or Alemanni) was probably from an old German word meaning ‘all mankind’, and the tribe probably grew out of the Suebi, who lived along the river Main. The Iuthungi and Lentienses also contributed to the Alamanni confederacy, and there may have even been Roman settlers who joined their ranks. Other tribes in the area at the time included the Chatti, who are probably the Cenni that Cassius Dio mentions, as well as the Chauci and Marcomanni. The Marcomanni were a much diminished force, however, after their defeat by Marcus Aurelius one hundred and fifty years earlier.

  The Alamanni appeared to be a peaceful and romanised nation prior to Caracalla’s surprise attack. It may be that they would have been good allies to Rome, and could even have changed history if they had remained on the Roman side as the Empire endured wave after wave of invasions from the east in subsequent centuries. But either Caracalla didn’t trust them, or he saw their defeat as an easy way of obtaining victories to the benefit of his own reputation. Whatever his thinking, Caracalla removed the Alamanni as a threat to Rome for a generation, achieving his own objectives while storing up trouble in the shape of the bitter enmity of the tribe in the future.

  The whirlwind was reaped in 256 AD when the Alamanni king, Chrocus, whose mother possibly lost family to Caracalla’s campaign, descended on Gaul, burning, pillaging and slaughtering. They made it into Italy, and it was several years later that they were finally stopped by Lake Garda. And they continued to invade the Roman Empire periodically until finally they were defeated as allies of Attila the Hun. However, they only really stopped their centuries-long war with Rome when the Roman Empire had retreated far from their territory in the late fifth century, and they had to contend instead with the Franks, their eventual conquerors.

  A note here on the use of historical language. Whether to use modern terms in historical fiction is a regular topic on writing fora, and as with just about any subject, opinion is divided. Some purists believe that you should avoid words that don’t have their origins in the time period you are writing about. For example, I have seen it argued that you shouldn’t use the title ‘sir’ for stories set in the classical world, since this word was first used in the middle ages as an honorific for a knight. Leaving aside that it derives from the vulgar Latin ‘senior’, if writers were confined to using words of Latin origin, that would limit us to just a portion of the richness of the English language.

  There may be a better argument for being more cautious about the choice of words in dialogue. But this ignores the fact that we are writing in English, effectively translating the Latin into words understandable to a modern audience (albeit, in the case of fiction, words that were mostly never actually spoken in the first place). The author then has to juggle between giving his characters a voice that is authentic both to them as fictional individuals, and to the time period. Avoiding obviously modern colloquialisms is important. For example, the urban thesaurus gives us a rich lexicon to describe drunkenness (https://urbanthesaurus.org/synonyms/drunk) and synonyms such as gazebo’d, ham-sandwiched and routed by the liquid viking would sound jarringly uncontemporary. Conversely, I would contend that phrases such as shit-faced, pissed, hammered and arseholed can give the impression of earthy conversation without using non-contemporaneous imagery. Though I do
n’t have any evidence that these words were used, even in their Latin forms, we have little information on how Latin was spoken among the masses, since most texts that survived were written in classical rather than vulgar Latin.

  Of course some choice language has survived, which brings me to the use of profanity. Unfortunately, my book does contain some naughty words. There would be something ridiculously comical in sanitising the language of hardened soldiers and assassins who have lived through multiple traumas, reminiscent of the ‘Far Side’ cartoon in which a nerdy man in hell curses someone: ‘Dash you to heck.’ For those who think the Romans didn’t swear and curse, I refer you to the graffiti of Pompeii (‘Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you. Salvius wrote this’, ‘Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog’), Petronius’ Satyricon (‘You whore of female passivity. Not even your breath is pure’), and the curse tablets of Bath (‘may the worms, cancer, and maggots penetrate his hands, head, feet, as well as his limbs and marrows’). And I will leave you with Catullus, the love poet studied in schools, raging at his friends: ‘pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo’.

  Herodian on Caracalla

  Adapted from Herodian’s history of his own times, original transl. J. Hart 1749, book IV, chapter vii

  After committing such crimes as these, hounded by his conscience and finding life in Rome intolerable, the emperor decided to leave the city to see to matters in the garrison camps and visit the provinces. Leaving Italy, he journeyed to the banks of the Danube, where he concerned himself with the northern part of his empire. At the same time he exercised by driving in chariot races and by fighting at close quarters with wild animals of every kind. Only occasionally did he sit as judge, although he was quick to grasp the essentials of a case in court and quick to pass judgment on the basis of the arguments presented.

  He grew especially fond of the Germans in those regions. After gaining their friendship, he entered into alliances with them, and selected for his personal bodyguard the strongest and most handsome young men. He frequently put off the Roman cloak and donned German dress, appearing in the short, silver-embroidered cloaks which they customarily wear, augmented by a yellow wig with the locks arranged in the German style.

  Delighted with the emperor’s antics, the barbarians became very fond of him, as did the Roman soldiers also, particularly because of his lavish gifts of money but also because he always played the soldier’s part. If a ditch had to be dug anywhere, the emperor was the first man to dig; if it were necessary to bridge a stream or pile up a high rampart, it was the same; in every task involving labor of hand or body, the emperor was first man to the job.

  He set a frugal table and even went so far as to use wooden dishes at his meals. He ate the bread that was available; grinding with his own hands his personal ration of grain, he made a loaf, baked it in the ashes, and ate it. Scorning luxuries, he used whatever was cheapest and issued to the poorest soldier. He pretended to be delighted when they called him fellow soldier instead of emperor. For the most part he marched with the troops, carrying his own arms and rarely using a chariot or a horse.

  Occasionally he even placed the standards of the legions on his shoulders and bore them along; these standards, tall and decorated with many gold ornaments, were a heavy burden for even the strongest soldiers. For these actions Caracalla won the affection of the soldiers by his military prowess and gained their admiration by his feats of strength. And it is certainly true that the performance of such strenuous tasks by a man of small stature was worthy of admiration.

  Dio Cassius on Caracalla

  Adapted from an English translation of Dio’s Roman History, Book 77, by Earnest Cary PhD, 1914, taken from the Lacus Curtius website.

  https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/78*.html

  Epitome of Book LXXVIII xii–xv

  Such was his character in general; I will now state what sort of person he was in war. Abgarus, king of the Osroëni, when he had once got control of the kindred tribes, visited upon their leaders all the worst forms of cruelty. Nominally he was compelling them to change to Roman customs, but in fact he was indulging his authority over them to the full. Antoninus tricked the king of the Osroëni, Abgarus, inducing him to visit him as a friend, and then arresting and imprisoning him; and so, Osroëne being thus left without a king, he subdued it.

  When the king of the Armenians was quarrelling with his own sons, Antoninus summoned him in a friendly letter, pretending that he would make peace between them; but he treated them as he had treated Abgarus. The Armenians, however, instead of yielding to him, had recourse to arms, and no one thereafter would trust him in anything whatever. Thus he learned by experience how great the penalty is for an emperor when he practises deceit upon friends.

  He likewise took the greatest credit to himself because, after the death of Vologaesus, king of the Parthians, the king’s sons began to fight for the throne, thus pretending that a situation was due to chance had been brought about through his own contriving. So keen, it seems, was the delight he always took in the fact and in the dissensions of the brothers and in the mutual slaughter of persons in no way connected with himself.

  But he did not hesitate to write to the senate regarding the Parthian rulers, who were brothers and at variance, that the brothers’ quarrel would work great harm to the Parthian State, as if this sort of thing could destroy the barbarians and yet had saved Rome – whereas in fact Rome had been, one might say, utterly overthrown thereby! It was not that, to seal a crime that brought a great curse upon mankind, but that vast numbers of citizens had been falsely accused, not merely those who had sent letters to his brother or brought him gifts, either when he was still Caesar or when he had become emperor, but even the others who had never any dealings with him. Indeed, if anyone so much as wrote the name Geta or even uttered it, he was immediately put to death. Hence the poets no longer used it even in comedies; and in fact the possessions of all those in whose wills the name appeared were confiscated. Much that he did was done for the purpose of raising money.

  He exhibited his hatred for his dead brother by abolishing the observance of his birthday, and he vented his anger upon the stones that had supported his statues, and melted down the coinage that displayed his features. And not content with even this, he now more than ever practised unholy rites, and would force others to share his pollution, by making a kind of annual offering to his brother’s Manes.

  Though feeling and acting thus with regard to his brother’s murder, he took delight in the dissension of the barbarian brothers, on the ground that the Parthians would suffer some great harm because of it.

  The Germanic nations, however, afforded him neither pleasure nor any specious claim to wisdom or courage, but proved him to be a downright cheat, a simpleton, and an arrant coward. Antoninus made a campaign against the Alamanni and whenever he saw a spot suitable for habitation, he would order, ‘There let a fort be erected. There let a city be built.’ And he gave these places names relating to himself, though the local designations were not changed; for some of the people were unaware of the new names and others supposed he was jesting. Consequently he came to feel contempt for these people and would not spare even them, but accorded treatment befitting the bitterest foes to the very people whom he claimed to have come to help. For he summoned their men of military age, pretending that they were to serve as mercenaries, and then at a given signal – by raising aloft his own shield – he caused them all to be surrounded and cut down, and he sent horsemen round about and arrested all the others.

  Antoninus sent a letter to the senate commending Pandion, a man who had formerly been an assistant of charioteers, but in the war against the Alamanni drove the emperor’s chariot and thereby became both his comrade and fellow-soldier. In this letter he asserted that he had been saved by this man from an exceptional peril; and he was not ashamed at feeling more gratitude toward him than toward the soldiers, whom in their turn he always regarded
as superior to us senators.

  Some of the most distinguished men whom Antoninus slew he ordered to be cast out unburied. He made search for the tomb of Sulla and repaired it, and also reared a cenotaph to Mesomedes, who had made a compilation of citharoedic modes; he showed honour to the latter because he was himself learning to play the lyre, and to the former because he was emulating his cruelty.

  On necessary and urgent campaigns, however, he was simple and frugal, taking his part scrupulously in the menial duties on terms of equality with the rest. Thus, he would march with the soldiers and run with them, neither bathing nor changing his clothing, but helping them in every task and choosing exactly the same food as they had; and he would often send to the enemy’s leaders and challenge them to single combat. The duties of a commander, however, in which he ought to have been particularly well versed, he performed in a very unsatisfactory manner, as if he thought that victory lay in the performance of the humble duties mentioned rather than in good generalship.

  He waged war also against the Cenni, a Germanic tribe. These warriors are said to have assailed the Romans with the utmost fierceness, even using their teeth to pull from their flesh the missiles with which the Osroëni wounded them, so that they might have their hands free for slaying their foes without interruption. Nevertheless, even they accepted a defeat in name in return for a large sum of money and allowed him to make his escape back into the province of Germany. Some of their women who were captured by the Romans, upon being asked by Antoninus whether they wished to be sold or slain, chose the latter fate; then, upon being sold, they all killed themselves and some slew their children as well.