Battle for Rome

by Ian Ross

  ‘The domina Valeria Domitia Sabina,’ he gravely intoned, eyes to the ceiling.

  For ten days Castus had rehearsed this meeting in his mind, tormenting himself with possibilities, rejecting them all. In his heart he had forgiven his wife, or at least tried to, but still he felt all too keenly, too painfully, the distance between them. Now he stood, straight-backed and silent, and watched her as she entered the room.

  Sabina still wore her travelling clothes, the hem of her long tunic spattered with the mud of the Flaminian Way. She looked drawn and tired. Castus had expected her to be remote and aloof, or to fling herself at his feet in some feigned display of repentance. But he was surprised to see the tears in her eyes.

  ‘This house,’ she said, gazing around at the walls as she wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘I always loved this house. It was my favourite. I never expected to see it again. How did you know?’

  Castus said nothing. He had not known. But had his wife really thought she would never return to Rome? A woman like her, raised in this city, could never have truly believed that a Gallic usurper and a half-barbarian army might be victorious. That, he thought, was how Lepidus had snared her. Castus could imagine it, and in a way he could not blame her. And with Lepidus dead, and Julius Nigrinus rumoured to be dead too, there was no one who could speak of what she had done. Except perhaps Fausta, and she had reasons of her own for remaining silent.

  Now Sabina crossed the room and stood before him. She laid her hands upon his shoulders, then lightly touched a palm to his cheek.

  ‘Husband,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  She leaned forward, and kissed him on the lips.

  ‘They told me you were dead.’

  Castus did not move, did not speak. The scar on his jaw burned with a cold fire. For so long he had been angry, but he felt nothing of that inside him now. Sabina’s eyes held a clear sad honesty, and she smiled as she looked at him.

  ‘A truce?’ she said.

  ‘A truce,’ he replied. Then he embraced her. Both of them knew that much time must pass before they could ask for more.

  Sabina left the room with her maids, but Ganna remained waiting by the door, the boy cradled in her arms.

  ‘How is he?’ Castus asked as she approached.

  ‘Growing heavier every day,’ Ganna said. ‘Soon he will be as big as you, I think.’

  The child stirred as Castus took him from her. Wide-eyed, he gazed at his father, then cried out a stream of incomprehensible words: ‘Babamah! Mumbada! Walala!’

  ‘He speaks your language now?’ Castus asked, and Ganna smiled.

  The weight of the boy in his arms was strangely comforting. Castus stared down at him, frowning, moved. Then the boy reached up with his small hands, clouted Castus on the chin, and chuckled.

  ‘He has the right idea,’ Ganna said.

  Supporting the boy in the crook of one arm, Castus pressed his hand to the woman’s cheek. The blue amulet she had given him caught the light. She closed her eyes, then turned her head, kissing his wrist.

  Sabina was standing in the doorway, and Castus noticed the quick play of conflicting emotion across her face. Pained realisation, a brief swell of anger, and then resignation. Her expression cleared and she glanced away, then crossed to the far doorway that led to the balcony. Castus handed the child back to Ganna and went to join his wife. The distant roar of the circus crowd was drifting up on the breeze.

  ‘They love him now. Constantine,’ Sabina said. ‘The hero of the Roman people. I heard an orator saying that he’s ascended to the summit of the world. His deeds and his fame will live for evermore. And so on. It must be strange, don’t you think, to become a godlike being?’

  Castus just grunted. The thought of eternal fame held no attractions for him. All his life he had wanted only to do his duty, support his emperor and his brother soldiers. He wondered if he could ever want anything so simple again.

  ‘And what of us?’ Sabina asked. ‘We must live in our less exalted realm, with all our failings, I suppose.’ She took his hand, a slight subtle pressure. Castus could hear the wry smile in her voice. ‘Once we are gone all our great deeds will be forgotten.’

  Far away across the city, a flight of birds circled over the temples of the Capitoline Hill, their wings catching the sunlight. Castus watched them for a moment. He felt a slow surge of exultation rising within him.

  ‘Then thank the gods we are mortal!’

  ~

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  The next gripping instalment in the Twilight of Empire series will be released in summer 2016

  For more information, click one of the links below:

  Author’s Note

  About Ian Ross

  About the Twilight of Empire Series

  From the Editor of this Book

  An invitation from the publisher

  www.twilight-of-empire.com

  Author’s Note

  The battle of Milvian Bridge, fought on 28 October AD 312, was one of the most significant clashes in Roman history. Constantine’s victory over Maxentius gave him control of the western empire, and of the city of Rome itself. And yet the battle is more famous for something that probably did not happen. The so-called ‘Vision of Constantine’, a heavenly apparition sent to the emperor by the Christian God on the eve of battle, supposedly convinced him to convert to the new religion and laid a path for the spiritual transformation of the empire over the following century. But this vision is not mentioned in the earliest accounts of the battle at all. Two imperial panegyrics given shortly after the event make no reference to celestial manifestations, the pagan historian Zosimus ignored the story, and the Christian writer Lactantius claimed instead that the emperor was visited by God in a dream, and instructed to mark the shields of his troops with ‘the heavenly sign’.

  It was the churchman Eusebius who first supplied the story of the emperor’s vision. Constantine, he claimed, had witnessed ‘with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription Conquer by This’. It is not entirely cynical, I think, to relate this anecdote to the solar apparition that Constantine reportedly saw in Gaul two or three years earlier. This vision (mentioned at the end of my previous book, Swords Around the Throne) was described at the time as a sign from the sun god. It does not seem unlikely that the Christian emperor of later years chose to reinterpret this older vision, and install Christ in the place of Apollo.

  To what extent Constantine was or was not a committed Christian at the time of his Italian campaign has long been a matter of academic speculation. He may have come to see the unity of the Christian religion as a way of drawing together the various faiths and sects of the multicultural later empire under one all-powerful divine order. He may simply have believed it was true; only two years later he was declaring to a synod of bishops that ‘I myself must be judged by Christ’.

  But the Roman world of the early fourth century was still resolutely traditional in its religious inclinations. The Christian population of the empire in AD 300 is estimated at between 5 and 10 per cent, concentrated in large urban centres like Carthage, Alexandria and Rome itself. This is around the same percentage as the Muslim population of Europe today. Whatever else might have motivated Constantine’s religious beliefs, they were clearly not a mere bid for popularity.

  As always, in putting together a plausible description of these events I have tried to draw on as many of the more reliable ancient sources as possible. Panegyrics XII and IV, of AD 313 and 321 respectively, offer detailed, if often highly florid, blow-by-blow accounts of the action; Lactantius and Eusebius, and the later writers Zosimus and Aurelius Victor, add further – albeit often contradictory – material. Beyond this, I have tried to find expeditious solutions to the cloudier aspects of strategy and tactics: the defeat of the Maxentian clibanarii at the battle near Turin, for example, could have happened in a number of ways. I have chosen what appears to me the most likel
y, and happily the most dramatic too.

  In the autumn of 2014 I was able to visit many of the locations of Constantine’s advance, from Susa in the Italian Alps through Turin, Milan and Verona to Rimini (ancient Ariminum) and then southwards. In the quiet little city museum of Spoleto I found the tombstone of Florius Baudio, a Protector who may well have fallen in battle while commanding Legion II Italica Divitensis; other tombstones of this same legion mark out the trail of Constantine’s advance on Rome.

  The Milvian Bridge (Ponte Milvio) still crosses the Tiber to the north of the city. The probable site of the battle itself, on the plain north-east of the bridge, is bisected by highways and largely covered by military training facilities, while modern apartment blocks loom from the red stone bluffs to the west. I visited the site on the anniversary of the battle, but between the hurtling traffic streams on the Via Flaminia Nuova and Tangenziale Est I was unable to discern any echoes of that distant clash of arms. Imagination, as usual, made up the deficit.

  The visitor to Rome today can admire the massive walls, repaired by Maxentius in preparation for siege, and the hulking ruins of the great Baths of Diocletian, which now house a church and a museum. Finds exhibited in the Museo Nazionale Romano, the Musei Capitolini and the Vatican attest to the opulence of aristocratic life in the fourth century. The ‘imperial regalia’ of Maxentius, presumably concealed in a cellar beneath the Palatine Hill following his defeat and only recently discovered, is now displayed in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme.

  The Arch of Constantine was erected at the heart of the city by a grateful Senate in AD 315; the vigorous frieze that runs around the main structure tells the story of the emperor’s advance, the final battle and his triumphant entry to Rome. Prominent in one of the scenes of marching troops is a baggage camel; those who doubt such animals were used by the Roman army are referred to finds of camel bones from military contexts dating to the third and fourth centuries. One even comes from the foothills of the Julian Alps.

  Much of the comprehensive literature on Constantine’s campaign and defeat of Maxentius tends to dwell on the religious implications of his victory. Alongside the works mentioned in my previous books, Iain Ferris’s The Arch of Constantine provides a concise survey of the famous monument, while Raymond Van Dam’s Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge is an engagingly oblique study of the various interpretations of the conflict. Neil Christie’s From Constantine to Charlemagne: An Archaeology of Italy AD 300–800 gives a detailed picture of the ancient landscape and its cities, with some invaluable maps and plans.

  Maxentius has long had a bad press. His reputation was blackened by his opponents, and Christian historiography casts him as a satanic figure and a persecutor of the faithful (which he almost certainly was not). A brief, but more balanced, appraisal is offered by Mats Cullhed in Conservator Urbis Suae: Studies in the Politics and Propaganda of the Emperor Maxentius. John Curran’s Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century, meanwhile, covers the social world of the eternal city in the later age.

  There are always certain books that, found by chance, prove unexpectedly useful. This time it was Garrett G. Fagan’s Bathing in Public in the Roman World, which contains a wealth of vivid detail about the society of the great imperial bathhouses. Kyle Harper’s Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425 is an engrossing study of that most notorious, and ubiquitous, of ancient institutions.

  My thanks go to Ross Cowan, for an enlightening discussion on the events of Constantine’s Italian campaign and the battles of Turin and Milvian Bridge. Once again, I offer my sincere gratitude to Rosie de Courcy for her insightful editorial support, to my agent Will Francis, and to Head of Zeus for their continued enthusiasm for my work.

  About The Battle for Rome

  The third novel in this brilliant series, set at the end of the Roman empire, sees Constantine battling for supremacy against the tyrant Maxentius.

  Centurion Aurelius Castus has been promoted to tribune, and seems settled in a life of comfort with his new wife and young son. But Rome is in the tyrannical grip of the usurper Maxentius, and the emperor Constantine plans to retake the city in a surprise attack from the west.

  Castus, who once saved the emperor’s life, is called upon to play a key role in the campaign, but is enmeshed in politics and stratagems beyond his control. Nothing is what it seems – not even his fragile marriage to Sabina.

  Reviews

  ‘Hugely enjoyable. The author winds up tension into an explosion of fast-paced events.’

  Conn Iggulden

  ‘Ian Ross blazes into the world of Empire and legions with the verve and panache of an old hand. This is up there with Harry Sidebottom and Ben Kane and is destined for the premier league.’

  M.C. Scott

  ‘An impressive debut… Set in a little-known era of the Roman Empire – the early 4th Century AD – it throws us head first into a chaotic world in which emperors rise and fall, fortunes change and a man does not know who to trust. This is a thumping good read, well-crafted, atmospheric and thoroughly enjoyable. A real page-turner. Where’s the next volume, please?’

  Ben Kane

  ‘Lifts the curtain on a neglected but fascinating period of Roman history, with a deft hand and a keen eye. Highly recommended.’

  Anthony Riches

  About Ian Ross

  IAN ROSS has been researching and writing about the later Roman world and its army for over a decade. He spent a year in Italy teaching English, but now lives in Bath.

  Visit his website: www.ianjamesross.com

  Find him on Facebook

  Follow him on Twitter @IanRossAuthor

  For more about the series: www.twilight-of-empire.com

  About the Twilight of Empire Series

  1 – War at the Edge of the World

  War at the Edge of the World is the epic first instalment in a sequence of novels set at the end of the Roman Empire, during the reign of the Emperor Constantine.

  Centurion Aurelius Castus – once a soldier in the elite legions of the Danube – believes that his glory days are over, as he finds himself in the cold, grey wastes of northern Britain, battling to protect an empire in decline.

  When the king of the Picts dies in mysterious circumstances, Castus is selected to lead the Roman envoy sent to negotiate with the barbarians beyond Hadrian’s Wall. Here he will face the supreme challenge of command, in a mission riven with bloodshed, treachery and tests of his honour. As he struggles to avert disaster and keep his promise to a woman he has sworn to help, Castus discovers that nothing about this doomed enterprise was ever what it seemed.

  War at the Edge of the World is available here.

  2 – Swords Around the Throne

  The second novel in this epic series, set at the end of the Roman Empire, sees a treasonous conspiracy threatening to bring down the Emperor Constantine. Only one man’s courage stands between the rebels and victory.

  Rewarded for saving the emperor’s life in battle, centurion Aurelius Castus is promoted to the Corps of Protectores, the elite imperial bodyguard, the swords around the throne.

  But he soon discovers the court to be just as hazardous as the battlefield; behind the gilded facade of empire, there are spiralling plots, murderous betrayals and dangerous seductions. And one relentless enemy.

  Swords Around the Throne is available here.

  3 – The Battle for Rome

  The third novel in this brilliant series, set at the end of the Roman empire, sees Constantine battling for supremacy against the tyrant Maxentius.

  Centurion Aurelius Castus has been promoted to tribune, and seems settled in a life of comfort with his new wife and young son. But Rome is in the tyrannical grip of the usurper Maxentius, and the emperor Constantine plans to retake the city in a surprise attack from the west.

  Castus, who once saved the emperor’s life, is called upon to play a key role in the campaign, but is enmeshed in politics and stratagems beyond his control. Nothing is wh
at it seems – not even his fragile marriage to Sabina.

  The Battle for Rome is available here.

  In book 4…

  It is six years after the battle for Rome and the empire is again at war.

  The truce between Constantine, emperor in Rome, and Licinius, emperor of the east, has failed and Aurelius Castus is in the frontline once more. He is ordered to take command of the military forces of one of the western provinces now forming the domain of Constantine’s teenage son, Caesar.

  But trouble looms on every side, both at home in his difficult marriage and on the battlefield, where he must decide once and for all whose side he is on. Will he back the pro-Christian emperors Constantine and Crispus? Or lead an insurrection against them, back to the old gods and the old ways?

  From the Editor of this Book

  If you enjoyed this book, you may also enjoy reading these novels recommended by the editor.

  David Gilman – MASTER OF WAR

  A LEGEND FORGED IN BATTLE: Amid the carnage of the 100 Years’ War - the bloodiest conflict in medieval warfare – a young English archer confronts his destiny.

  Mark Oldfield – THE SENTINEL

  An unforgettable journey into the dark heart of Spain. The events of a winter in Madrid fifty-seven years ago haunt the present day.

  Bruce Macbain – ROMAN GAMES

  Roman Senator Pliny the Younger investigates a locked-room murder in the first in a gripping series set in Ancient Rome’s most decadent age.