Rome's Lost Son

by Robert Fabbri

  ‘But now you do know, what do you think the objective of the embassy was?’

  ‘Instability along the Danuvius to keep our eye off Armenia.’

  ‘Has there been any?’

  ‘No more than usual.’

  Vespasian thought for a few moments, savouring his wine; somewhere in the gardens below a dove started cooing. ‘What does Agrippina have to gain by deposing our client in Armenia and replacing him with someone loyal to Parthia?’

  ‘I don’t believe that he is completely loyal to Parthia; these slimy eastern Kings don’t have any loyalty other than to themselves and their family – those family members that they allow to live, of course. Radamistus is Tryphaena’s nephew, she was the—’

  ‘Queen of Thracia, I know, I met her when I was with the Fourth Scythica there.’

  ‘Of course; so then you’re aware that she has always been a friend of Rome’s.’

  ‘So why would the Parthians help Radamistus to seize the throne if his family is pro-Roman?’

  ‘Assuming, again, that Narcissus is right and they did, with Agrippina somehow involved, that is what you have to find out while you help Mithridates back to his rightful place where we originally put him.’

  ‘Me? Depose the usurper? I’ll need an army for that.’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to avoid; if we send an army in we’ll be at war with Parthia. It may come to that but where would we take the legions from?’

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have invaded an irrelevant island like Britannia and then tied up four legions trying to keep hold of it.’

  ‘What’s done is done and it achieved the political aim at the time of giving Claudius a victory and securing his position.’ Pallas paused and regarded Vespasian for a moment. ‘But I will admit that the repercussions of that venture have gravely reduced our aggressive power. We can’t strip any more legions from the Rhenus; we can’t risk moving them from the Danuvius as, although nothing has happened as yet, we must assume that the embassy was to encourage the northern tribes to push south into Moesia. The two Egyptian legions and the single African one protect the grain supply from those provinces and so cannot be moved and the Hispanic ones are busy most of the time cowing the locals. And if we send the Syrian legions in, Parthia could sweep through the province to Our Sea, no doubt aided by those treacherous Jews, if they can manage to unite themselves; although my brother Felix, whom I persuaded the Emperor to make procurator of Judaea, tells me that they are still as argumentative as ever.’

  ‘So we can’t afford to go to war.’

  ‘Not at the moment; we need a few years to prepare.’

  ‘So you want me to achieve by intrigue what we’re unable to do with force in order to remedy a situation that threatens the stability of the Empire that may have been instigated by the Empress herself for reasons that seem to escape everybody?’

  Pallas’ face remained unmoved. ‘Yes.’

  Vespasian laughed, loud and hollow. ‘It’ll cost you.’

  ‘You could come back from this very well.’

  ‘I’m not asking to be paid to come back, I’m asking to be paid to go.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Protection from Agrippina, a guarantee of a province when I return, my brother to be exonerated of all responsibility for losing this Parthian embassy and, just so I can get some financial gain from this situation, reinstatement into the equestrian class for a client of mine.’

  ‘I could guarantee all but the first; the Empress’s grudges are not easily forgotten.’

  Vespasian thought for a moment. ‘But my wife’s are; in which case I also want the finest Gallic wet nurse available in the city. Make sure that Flavia knows just how much she costs.’

  If Pallas felt surprise at that request he did not show it. ‘Very well. You’ll leave as soon as you step down from the consulship in a couple of days.’

  ‘But it’s still winter; the shipping lanes won’t be open yet.’

  ‘I’ll give you enough gold to tempt a crew out of their hibernation. You can cross to Epirus and then take the Via Egnatia to Macedonia; there you can question your brother and find out what it is that Narcissus suspects he knows that proves Agrippina’s treachery. As Caenis suggested, I’ve dismissed her from my service, ostensibly for disloyalty; Narcissus will assume that she refused to tell me what you talked about last night and think that he’s safe in trusting you.’

  ‘Caenis believes that Narcissus thinks my uncle is somehow important in that respect.’

  ‘I can’t see why but nevertheless you’ll take him with you: he can come back to Rome and give me the information once you’ve seen Sabinus.’

  Vespasian knew that he would not be sending Gaius back with any information until he knew which freedman to give it to.

  ‘You, meantime, will carry on east in one of Sabinus’ ships and then travel overland from the coast and be in Armenia by the spring.’

  ‘Does Agrippina suspect that I have a dual mission?’

  ‘No, she suspects nothing. She’s just pleased that you’re going. Whether she is behind Radamistus or not, she isn’t concerned because she thinks that you will fail.’

  ‘Then she does suspect one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She suspects that I’ll never come back.’

  Pallas regarded Vespasian with a shrewd eye. ‘That’s in the hands of the gods.’

  PART II

  MACEDONIA AND THE ROMAN EAST, FEBRUARY AD 52

  CHAPTER V

  SNOW, DRIVEN BY a harsh easterly wind, lashed into Vespasian’s face. He pulled his hood lower and hunched his shoulders against the worsening conditions; his mount plodded next to a wagon creaking along the Via Egnatia pulled by a pair of rough-haired horses, their obvious reluctance to move forward into the wind punished by regular licks of Magnus’ whip. Hormus sat on the bench next to Magnus rubbing his hands and looking miserable with chattering teeth. Despite the knitted woollen mittens and socks, Vespasian’s fingers and toes were almost numb and he thought with envy of the relative comfort that Gaius must be enjoying in the covered rear of the vehicle and contemplated joining him.

  ‘I would if I were you, sir,’ Magnus said, giving his team another sharp reminder of their duty.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get under cover. You’ve glanced over your shoulder three times since the last milestone.’

  Vespasian looked up at the eleven lictors – the due of a man of proconsular rank on official business – marching in step in front of the wagon with their fasces on their shoulders and shook his head. ‘They’re having it far worse than I am; seeing as they’re the only protection we’ve got I want them well disposed towards me should I require them to risk their lives. Besides, it can’t be more than another four or five miles to Philippi.’

  ‘If that’s the case then we should be able to see a huge area of marshland to the south,’ Gaius called from inside.

  ‘We’re having trouble seeing the horses’ arseholes at the moment, sir,’ Magnus informed him, not quite truthfully. Gaius pushed his head through the flap in the leather wagon cover.

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ Although the snow had only just started to fall thickly and was yet to settle in depth on the ploughed fields on either side of the dead-straight road, visibility was very limited. ‘Well, take it from me, Vespasian, that your grandfather on your father’s side and great-grandfather on your mother’s and my side were both here just over eighty-four years ago.’

  Vespasian thought for a few moments and then remembered his history. ‘Of course they were, but on opposite sides of the field.’

  ‘Indeed, dear boy. My grandfather served with Augustus and Marcus Antonius in the Eighth Legion.’

  ‘And my grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, was, if I remember rightly what my grandmother told me, a centurion of the Thirty-sixth Legion under Marcus Brutus’ command. She said that it was mainly made up of his old Pompeian comrades who had surrendered to Caesar after th
e Battle of Pharsalus.’

  ‘It’s a shame that we can’t see that far; between the two armies they fielded almost a quarter of a million men, which must have been quite a sight.’

  ‘On both occasions,’ Vespasian reminded Gaius. ‘Petro made it through the first battle and then his legion got badly mauled in the second, twenty days later when Brutus was crushed. He managed to escape and made it home to Cosa but he was amongst the couple of thousand equestrians that Augustus forced to commit suicide.’

  ‘Whereas mine was rewarded with the land of one of those men.’ Gaius chuckled. ‘And now here we are, all those years later, the products of either side of the argument in the breakup of the Republic, trundling across the site of the greatest battle between Roman citizens that’s ever been known, on our way to do the dirty work for two Greek freedmen who are the ultimate beneficiaries of that battle. It would seem that for all the cries of freedom issued by either side the end result has been domination of us all by a couple of ex-slaves. I wonder if Augustus, Marcus Antonius, Brutus or Cassius could have foreseen that and, if they could, would any of them have done things differently?’ He rubbed flakes of snow off his ruddy face, looked around quickly, his mouth pursed ruefully, and then disappeared back inside.

  ‘Course, it don’t make any difference for most of us, though, does it?’ Magnus stated with certainty. ‘If you was just a common legionary, whether you was on the winning side or losing side in that battle didn’t make a scrap of difference – if you survived, that is. Only a few legions were disbanded; the rest went back to business as usual. Whatever the political changes back in Rome, most of the legions just returned to their camps on the frontiers and guarded the Empire. The only change they noticed was that the oath was worded differently but everything else was the same: their centurions, their food, the discipline, everything was exactly as it was. So the whole exercise was purely for the benefit of a few vain men whose sense of honour meant that they had to be seen to have a say in how the Empire was run. If only they’d realised that most people couldn’t give a fuck. They could have dispensed with the armies and just had a nice scrap amongst themselves; a couple of hundred dead and the whole affair would’ve been sorted out and everyone would’ve been happy.’

  Vespasian laughed, despite his freezing lips. ‘Much easier. But it didn’t happen that way and the result of that struggle and all those deaths has been hijacked by two self-serving freedmen.’

  ‘Ah! But at least they didn’t force a quarter of a million men to fight each other so that they could grab power. In a way Pallas and Narcissus have got less blood on their hands than Augustus. You senators almost resent the fact that they’ve come to power without a good civil war in which thousands of common citizens die; that would legitimize them in your eyes. Their greatest crime is sneaking their way to power rather than bludgeoning their way there like all those upstanding families in the Republic used to.’

  Vespasian found himself unable to rebut that statement and instead wondered at the truth of it. To follow that line of logic, Augustus was the only ruler for the last eighty years to be legitimate because he had fought his way to power.

  He had thought that his resentment of Narcissus and Pallas was mainly based on the way that they had come to power and then held on to it; but was their way any more unjustified than Caligula’s? He too had come to power by trickery and subterfuge if the rumours were to be believed. But then neither of the freedmen’s great-grandfathers had killed more of his enemies’ soldiers than they had his on this plain so far from Rome.

  So, therefore, it was to do with who the freedmen were, not how they got to where they were, that was the real cause of the growing resentment. The resentment that he had felt when Narcissus had – as Pallas had predicted – ordered him to a private room as he left Pallas’ apartments had been bitter. The resentment had grown when the freedman had suggested that Vespasian’s appointment as ambassador to Armenia was a very convenient cover for him to use to stop off in Macedonia and speak to his brother so that he could furnish Narcissus with the information he needed to defeat Pallas. When he thought of Pallas he remembered him as Antonia’s steward. Then, he knew his place; now, he was forming imperial policy. He was a man who had risen way beyond his station and Vespasian realised, for the first time, that the real cause of his resentment for the pair of them was envy. Envy that people born so low should have risen so high. Ex-slaves had no right to such power. He came from a family far above them and yet they could order him to do things that he would rather not do. It began to seep into his mind that he was jealous of their power because he wanted it for himself, and if he were to have it he would have to take it in the old-fashioned manner: he would bludgeon – as Magnus had put it – his way there. Then the image of the ‘V’ on the sacrificial liver played in his mind and, much to his surprise, it seemed to calm him.

  As the wind lessened and the snow thinned the wagon passed over the plain of Philippi and the walls of the city came into sight. Vespasian left his thoughts of power at the site of the battle that had decided so much and wondered, instead, how his brother would greet him after a three-year separation.

  Before they reached the gates that granted access to the city of the living they passed through the city of the dead. Tombs lined the Via Egnatia for the last quarter of a mile or so; large and small and inscribed in both Latin and Greek attesting to the relative wealth and origin of the interred. But it was not just the dead in their cold and sombre dwellings that they passed; there were also the dying. Suspended between life and death, as they hung from crosses, a score or more of pain-wracked, newly crucified, naked men writhed above Vespasian and Magnus as they made their way. Groaning with agony, struggling for every breath, their flesh bluing in the bitter cold, some sobbed and some muttered what sounded to be prayers as their lives trickled away at a painfully sluggish pace.

  ‘Looks like Sabinus has been very busy,’ Magnus remarked as he cast a glance up at a youth who was staring in horror at the blood-crusted nail impaling his right wrist. Snow flurried around him.

  Hormus flinched at the sight and lowered his head, keeping his eyes on the paved surface of the road as a wail of sheer agony rose from a man splayed out on a cross lying on the ground. The volume increased with every blow of the hammer, driving a nail through the base of his thumb, wielded by an auxiliary optio with the dexterity of one old in the way of crucifying men. The auxiliaries holding the victim down laughed at his torment and made jokes aimed at the last two shackled prisoners, eyes brimful of fear and tears, waiting their turn to be nailed to a cross, their breath misting from their mouths.

  ‘It must have been a serious incident if he’s been obliged to nail this many up,’ Vespasian observed, counting the crosses. ‘Twenty-two plus those last three.’ The executions did not surprise Vespasian: they had been told by the prefect of Thessalonike, on arrival in the capital of Macedonia, that the Governor had been called away the previous day to quell a disturbance in Philippi. This had not been an inconvenience as Philippi lay on their route, straddling, as it did, the main road to the East. ‘I’d guess that my brother has got the disorder in hand now; I can’t imagine that there are too many more who would wish to join them.’ He cast an eye over a bedraggled group of women, watching their menfolk’s execution in miserable impotence, flinching with every hammer-fall as the last nail was driven home and the screams intensified.

  ‘Well, whatever they’ve done they’re learning their lesson,’ Magnus said as he brought the wagon to a halt outside the city’s western gate.

  The sight of eleven lictors and the flash of the seal on Vespasian’s imperial mandate were enough for the duty auxiliary centurion to allow the wagon through without searching it and to send a message on to Sabinus. Vespasian got down from his horse and, helped by Hormus, donned his senatorial toga before proceeding at a stately pace through the town, disdaining to notice its populace, to the Forum at the far end of which stood the residence used by the Governor. A crow
d had gathered there, despite the snow, curious to see the high-status new arrival. With auxiliary soldiers smartly at attention lining the steps, Vespasian ascended with the dignity of a proconsul who would never for one moment question his authority or right to respect. Sabinus awaited him in front of the tall, bronze-plated double doors and took him into a formal embrace, to the cheers of the onlookers, before leading him into the building.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Sabinus asked without much trace of fraternal affection.

  ‘And it’s lovely to see you too, Sabinus. Apart from finding out how you are and to bring news of our mother and your daughter and grandchildren, I’m here with Gaius to talk to you.’

  Sabinus’ eyes flicked nervously sideways at his brother. ‘Are you here because of the Parthian embassy thing?’

  ‘The Parthian embassy fiasco, you mean?’ Vespasian enjoyed the pained look that shadowed Sabinus’ face. ‘Yes, but not to bring you any official reprimand. Despite the damage your failure did to our family, I’ve managed to strike a deal with Pallas to have you exonerated of all responsibility.’

  ‘How did you manage to do that?’

  ‘Say thank you and I’ll tell you.’

  Sabinus pursed his lips. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘But I think that the explanation will have to wait for dinner. I suspended a trial when I got the message that you’d arrived; I really should complete it.’

  ‘It’ll keep until dinner.’ Vespasian broke from his Sabine country burr and assumed the clipped accent of the old aristocracy. ‘I assume that you have dinner at the normal hour, even this far from Rome.’