Rome's Lost Son

by Robert Fabbri

  Vespasian watched as the first of the scaling ladders were raised against the walls and troops began to swarm up them. ‘No, they’ll be here in a couple of months; in fact we saw their scouts on that hill just three days ago. Tryphaena really did have King Polemon send a message to Ctesiphon telling the Great King exactly what we were going to do.’

  As the first auxiliaries made it onto the wall, the gates opened in a futile attempt to surrender; but peace did not come to the town, only death, and showing it the way was a crooked little man with an unbloodied sword.

  Paelignus was having his first taste of glory.

  Vespasian and Magnus coaxed their horses past the gates and onwards into a town veiled in smoke and steeped in misery and death. Throughout the narrow streets auxiliaries rampaged, hunting booty, both live and inanimate. Bodies were strewn left and right, broken, pierced, blood-drenched and almost exclusively male. Their womenfolk shrieked and pleaded for mercy as they were tracked down and subjected to the brutal fate that always awaited females in a captured town. Those considered too old to stir carnal passions within the troops were despatched summarily; only babes and infants were considered too young and were likewise doomed.

  Huddles of soldiery formed round screaming victims, ripping off their clothes, holding them down and cheering on their comrades as they mounted and rode the spoils of war. Each man hungrily awaited his turn to defile the thrashing wenches who cursed and spat at the persecutors pumping away at them, slapping their faces in vain attempts to quieten their hissing rage.

  Those auxiliaries whose lust had been sated guzzled wine and roamed through the town with drawn swords and burning torches, raising fires with heedless recklessness and slaughtering the elderly and the young in the same casual manner.

  ‘It’ll take a lot to calm the lads down after this,’ Magnus muttered as they passed a group of drunken soldiery urinating into the mouth of a barely conscious teenage girl whose hideous ordeal could be measured by the bruising and welts on her face and naked body, as well as by the pool of blood that had seeped from between her legs.

  Vespasian forced himself to watch the final act in the girl’s life as one of the auxiliaries shook the drops from his penis, adjusted his dress, then took his sword and thrust it into her mouth; blood sprayed, diluted by urine, and the soldiers laughed as they wandered off in search of similar sport. ‘Just as long as enough of the populace survive to be able to spread the news of what this little Roman army is capable of doing,’ he muttered, urging his horse on up the main street that bisected the town from the western gate to the eastern one. ‘Now I need to find Paelignus and impress upon him the need to push on with all due haste in this glorious campaign of liberation that he has embarked upon.’

  Magnus took one last look at the dead girl and then followed. ‘Now he’s got the taste for it, I imagine that it’ll be hard to hold him back.’

  ‘I’ll rest my soldiers for two days,’ Paelignus announced from behind a vulgarly large desk to his cohort prefects and their senior centurions as Vespasian and Magnus were shown into the grandiose chamber. The stooped general had commandeered the most impressive house in the town for himself. ‘After such a gruelling victory they deserve rest and recuperation. There’ll be no parades or drills, all fatigues are excused and all outstanding disciplinary charges dropped, double rations of both food and wine are to be issued for both days and sentry duty and patrols should be set at the bare minimum.’ If Paelignus had expected his senior officers to applaud his sensitivity towards his rampaging troops he was much mistaken: his declaration was met with barely concealed disgust both for his orders and his appearance. Paelignus, however, seemed unaware of his staff’s derision; he rose from his chair, placed his fists on the desk and thrust his face towards his subordinates. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ a balding prefect of auxiliary infantry barked, stepping forward and crashing to attention.

  Paelignus sighed with irritation. ‘What is it this time, Mammius?’

  ‘How can my centurions and optiones keep discipline if you excuse all fatigues and drop all outstanding charges just because we’ve taken a town?’

  ‘This was an outstanding victory, prefect.’

  Mammius was unable to contain himself. ‘No, procurator, it was not; my grandmother and four-score hags of equal age could have taken this place armed only with their distaffs. Where was the defending garrison? Where are their bodies now that we’ve scaled the walls and stormed through their gates? Surely we should be able to see dead men in some sort of uniform with armour and helmets?’

  ‘We were shot at by arrows; men threw javelins at us!’

  ‘Civic Militia!’ Mammius bawled. ‘A rabble incapable of doing anything more than hurling a few sticks before bravely running away only to be caught and butchered up alleyways. They even opened the gates for us; but you didn’t call the troops back. And now you want to threaten the cohesion of our cohorts by rewarding them for rape and slaughter when the most danger any of them have been in is from getting a spear up the arse from the man behind them tripping over drunk. I’ve had a report of one single death in my cohort and that was some stupid bugger getting his cock bitten off and bleeding out.’

  Paelignus’ mouth opened and shut for a few moments in speechless outrage at the force of the prefect’s diatribe. ‘How dare you shout at me, prefect! I’m a friend of the Emperor.’

  ‘No, Paelignus, you’re the butt of the Emperor’s jokes as you are the butt of ours.’

  ‘I think, Paelignus,’ Vespasian said in a conciliatory manner, walking further into the room, ‘that we should sit down and consider the situation in a calm and logical fashion.’

  Paelignus’ outrage persisted. ‘And what gives you the right to walk in here uninvited and tell me what to do?’

  ‘Military experience, Paelignus; something that you evidently lack, as Mammius was only trying gently and politely to make clear to you. Now sit back down.’ He glared at Paelignus until he sat with as much dignity as he could muster. ‘Good; now listen to me: Mammius is right. There is no conceivable way that today’s farce could be called a glorious victory, Paelignus; therefore the troops do not deserve two days’ rest nor do they deserve all the other rubbish that you were suggesting, much to the amusement of all listening, no doubt. I suggest that you rein in the men immediately, get them out of the town, build a camp and give them the night to sober up before marching on to Tigranocerta in the morning. In the meantime, Paelignus, why don’t you strip this house of all that’s valuable and have it loaded onto the baggage train so that you can start to pay off the debts that your friend the Emperor saddled you with as you tried to ingratiate yourself with him, playing dice.’

  Paelignus’ sharp-featured face drew back into an ugly leer. ‘That’s already being done, Vespasian, as well as all the other houses of value; that’s why I need two days.’

  ‘You haven’t got two days; I suggest you leave tomorrow.’

  ‘I give the orders here!’

  ‘No, Paelignus; you just take the credit and the plunder.’ He turned to the assembled staff who were having difficulty in hiding their shock that a man whose presence they had been only vaguely aware of on the expedition should exercise such control over their commander. ‘I believe that you gentlemen would also deem it wise to move first thing in the morning rather than let the men lose discipline over the next couple of days.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Mammius replied; his colleagues nodded dumbly.

  Vespasian walked to an open door and passed through it onto the terrace beyond, looking north towards the heart of Armenia. ‘Have patrols range out along the border keeping parallel with us as we move east. They’re to keep their wits about them and not infringe upon Parthian territory.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Mammius said, frowning. ‘But on whose authority do you take command?’

  ‘I’m not taking command, prefect, in fact I’m not even here – officially. I’m just making suggestions that Paelignus will no do
ubt want to take up. Isn’t that right, Paelignus?’

  The procurator did not deny it.

  ‘Good. See that the patrols go out and pull the men back into order; execute a few of them just to sober the others up. And we are going to need them sober, gentlemen; because when news of what happened here today gets to the Parthian army that is already marching towards us they are going to increase their pace. We need to be safely behind the walls of Tigranocerta when they arrive, otherwise we’ll find ourselves outnumbered on a battlefield and, soon after, quite probably dead.’ Vespasian smiled at the uncomprehending expressions that greeted that news. ‘Yes, gentlemen, I know; the walls of Tigranocerta have not been rebuilt since the last Parthian war as a condition in the peace treaty. But the peace treaty also specified that Rome would not take any troops into Armenia; something that Paelignus neglected to think about in his haste to gain favour with the Emperor and restore Rome’s influence here.’

  ‘You told me to!’ Paelignus shrieked, pointing an accusatory, shaking, chewed finger at Vespasian.

  ‘No, Paelignus, all I did was to suggest that while there was a period of instability in our client kingdom of Armenia it might be wise to keep an eye on its southern border with Parthia. I’m not the procurator of Cappadocia, I had no authority to order an invasion, because that’s what it is, isn’t it? You commanded it, you assembled the troops and you’ve led them. Now I suggest that having broken the treaty with Parthia you garrison Tigranocerta to prevent it falling to our old enemy. It’s either that or return to Cappadocia having prodded the Parthian beast and giving it a good reason to go into an undefended Armenia. Not even your close relationship with the Emperor would get you out of that mess.’ Vespasian turned to leave. ‘I suggest you get busy, Paelignus.’

  ‘Are you ever going to explain to me just what you’re trying to achieve?’ Magnus hissed as he followed Vespasian out of the room.

  ‘Yes,’ Vespasian replied without venturing any further information.

  ‘When?’

  They walked in silence down the corridor past gangs of slaves stripping the building of anything valuable under the supervision of the auxiliary quartermasters. Vespasian tutted with regret that Paelignus was enriching himself with such ease but he knew that was the price to be paid for the procurator’s folly that would advance Tryphaena’s ambitions in Armenia. Besides, he would not possess his new wealth for long. What mattered was that Paelignus’ greed and vanity had driven him to sack a peaceful town that was part of a kingdom allied to Rome in direct contravention of all treaties with both Armenia and Parthia. News of the outrage would spread and condemnation would come from all sides. With one rash act the procurator had given Parthia a just cause for war and also given Radamistus reason to appeal to the Emperor in protest at Rome’s unprovoked attack.

  ‘Tryphaena’s objective is to secure her nephew Radamistus on the Armenian throne,’ Vespasian informed Magnus.

  ‘Then she’s got a strange way of going about it, getting you to persuade the procurator of a Roman province to invade, even if it is with a piss-poor little army.’

  ‘I didn’t persuade Paelignus to do anything; I just suggested things. However, that piss-poor little army, as you term it, has just done more for Tryphaena’s cause than if she had ten legions of her own. When Parthia invades and overruns Tigranocerta and then moves north to take Artaxata, Rome will be obliged to send in the legions, no doubt under Corbulo’s command.’

  ‘Great, so what?’

  ‘So who will be leading the Armenian resistance and allied with our legions?’

  Understanding began to spread over Magnus’ face. ‘Radamistus,’ he said slowly. ‘And then when it’s all over in three or four years’ time and Parthia has withdrawn, Radamistus stays as king because he was our ally and the fact that he murdered Mithridates will be conveniently forgotten.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And Nero, her other kinsman, will be emperor by that time and earn the glory of a Parthian defeat.’

  ‘And will no doubt be voted the name Parthaticus by the Senate, myself amongst them, after celebrating his Triumph.’

  ‘And meanwhile a whole lot more people like that girl we saw earlier are going to suffer.’

  Vespasian shrugged as they clattered down a staircase of ancient oak. ‘I don’t like it any more than you, but what can I do? I’m trapped. I’m meant to be working for Pallas in order to help him protect himself from Agrippina and then I’m also meant to be working for Narcissus in order to help him bring down Agrippina; but I end up working for Tryphaena who’s trying to secure Agrippina as the mother of the next emperor because she has persuaded me that whatever Agrippina might think of me, Nero is my best chance of advancement.’

  ‘Nero?’

  ‘Yes; and having listened to her arguments, I agreed with her, but not for all the reasons that she put forward, although some of them were very persuasive.’

  ‘How would Nero becoming emperor possibly help you?’

  Vespasian pushed open the main door that led out to the town’s agora; smoke stung his eyes and caught in his throat. The carnage still continued, although with less vigour than before as most of the population had by now either fled or been despatched. ‘That’s hard to say in logical terms because it’s really just a hunch – but a very strong one based upon the auspices of a sacrifice that I made. Let me put it into your vernacular: judging by the way that he makes free with his own mother, I think that Nero’s got more chance than Britannicus of fucking up on a fucking large scale.’

  CHAPTER VIII

  EVEN THOUGH ITS walls were not intact, Tigranocerta was impressive, cascading down a high foothill of the Masius range. Framed by snow-capped peaks soaring up behind it, the city was built in concentric squares, each one higher than the last until the hill’s summit was crowned with a royal palace of Caligulan proportions. It had been founded by King Tigranes the Great, over a hundred years before when Armenia was at the height of its power. It lay on the western bank of the Tigris, opposite the river’s confluence with one of its tributaries, the Kentrites. It had been built to guard the Royal Road as it followed the eastern bank of the Tigris through the narrow Sapphe Bezabde pass in the Masius range; the road then bridged the Kentrites and then swung west, carrying on its journey to the Aegean Sea. However, an army could leave the road before the bridge and follow the Kentrites north into the heartland of Armenia. To guard against incursions from his larger but more fractured neighbour, the Seleucid Kingdom, Tigranes had built two further bridges connecting Tigranocerta with the road, both across the Tigris: one to the east bank before the river reached its confluence with the Kentrites and making its ninety-degree turn to the west, and one after the bend to the north bank. Strategically this forced any invading Seleucid force to take both bridges and then the city itself if it wished to proceed without a constant threat to its one supply line through the Sapphe Bezabde pass. The inevitable lengthy process of the siege gave Tigranes time to assemble his army and march south to repel the Seleucid invaders. But that vestige of Alexander’s empire had been ripped apart by Rome and Parthia, and since the rise of those two superpowers Tigranocerta had changed hands many times, occupied both by Rome and Parthia until the most recent settlement, which had handed it back to Armenia on condition that its defences remained in ruins. That condition was now being broken, much to the relief of its reduced population.

  ‘Paelignus complained to me this morning about his precious troops being used for what he terms “slaves’ work”,’ Vespasian said as he and Magnus made a tour of the works on the fifth day after their arrival. Auxiliaries worked shoulder to shoulder with all able-bodied male citizens while the women and children kept their menfolk supplied with food and water.

  ‘Just goes to show how little he knows about soldiering,’ Magnus said through a half-chewed mouthful of onion. ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I suggested to him that he should address his complaint to the commanding officer and poin
ted out that of all people he was the person most likely to get a fair hearing.’

  Magnus laughed, spraying onion over the calves of a kneeling auxiliary shaping stone with a hand-pick. The man turned round, invective ready on his lips, but it stayed there and died when he saw who was responsible. Since the sack of Amida, ten days previously, Vespasian and Magnus had become objects of curiosity to the auxiliaries. It was known that Vespasian had prevented Paelignus from giving the men two days’ rest – one of the centurions gossiping, he assumed – and it was also known that he had recommended some executions to help bring the men back into line; over twenty had lost their lives. This had made Vespasian someone to fear: a man who ostensibly held no command and yet could order death and countermand their commander. Being auxiliaries raised in Cappadocia, none of them recognised Vespasian from Rome where his time as consul, admittedly for only two months, had made him a familiar face in the Forum Romanum, but not here in the southern foothills of the Masius mountains between the Tigris and the Euphrates. So the rank and file did not know Vespasian’s identity and the officers, if they did, kept it to themselves, having been warned to do so.

  However, the auxiliaries had more pressing concerns than the identity of the man in their midst with the power of life and death: why were they fortifying a city in order to wait behind its reconstructed walls for a Parthian army that was rumoured to be heading their way and would surely outnumber the small Roman force by tens of thousands? But that question was not answered as their centurions and optiones bullied them and their civilian co-workers into working harder, faster and longer, hauling stones, shaping stones, lifting stones, placing stones and doing just about anything with stones that could be conceived even by the most imaginative of centurions.

  In five days the four thousand men of the five cohorts and roughly the equivalent number of citizens had repaired most of the large gaps in the two-mile wall to a tolerable standard and it once again stood twenty feet high continuously around the entire city. Now the men were working on the lesser damage in the hope that they could bring the defences up to a state of near-perfection so that the host coming up from the south would break upon the walls when it arrived.