by Jack Ludlow
With a start, Lucius realised he had allowed his mind to wander, to think on things that were past and unalterable. Now mattered, not yesterday or the day before, so he turned to the other scrolls that made up the despatches. The road-building senator, Licinius Domitius, was engaged in the last sections of the road that would run all the way from Rome to Iberia, thus helping to keep that province under control. He was experiencing some difficulty in bridging, at a point near the delta, the great river that ran south from the Alps to the Greek city of Massila; more time, slaves and money would be required. There was a hint of trouble on the border with Numidia where the sons of a client king were competing for the succession and causing trouble, but the Ionian coast was quiet and prosperous, as was the whole of Greece. There was the usual nuisance of the Alpine tribes north of the River Po in Gallia Cisalpina, but the biggest problem was, and remained, Spain, and in particular the chieftain called Brennos.
It was telling how often, in these last ten years, that name had come up in the affairs of both the state and his own life, first when he had read Aulus’s early despatches from Spain, in which the man had come close, having caught the legions strung out on the march, to winning a major battle. The modesty with which his old friend had explained how he had mastered a desperate situation was still vivid in his mind – he had not, for instance, made any mention of the capture of Claudia. Despite Aulus’s warnings, following on from that campaign, Lucius had seen him as a defeated foe, albeit not a dead one, going so far as to describe the man as a flea. But he was beginning to realise that this chieftain had grown to become first a gnat with a painful sting, before a metamorphosis in his power had turned him into a fully grown and dangerous spider.
It was startling just how much Rome knew about Brennos; not where he came from precisely or why, but what he had achieved since he first appeared on the Roman border. He had, against all the odds and previous experience, united the tribes that lived cheek by jowl with Rome and so very nearly turned them into a successful army. Beaten by Aulus the man had retired into the west, first to the lands of Lusitani, which bordered the great outer sea, and, once obliged to move on from there, to other tribal areas, all the time using his status as a Druid. That gained him hospitality and trust at every hearth, a trust which he abused by seeking to seduce the younger warriors from allegiance to their tribal elders.
Finally he came upon the Duncani, a tribe in decline, and there he stayed, becoming a companion to the elderly chieftain, Vertogani, a man much given to three major faults: drinking, boasting and limitless procreation. Once a great warrior, the man was old and enfeebled by his passions. He had also bred too many sons who hankered to succeed him, each of whom had been given part of the tribal lands as their own fiefdoms. These sons had not only disputed amongst themselves but sought alliances with neighbouring chieftains, foolish because such neighbours sought only one thing: Duncani territory. Many a descendant, cheated by those who had professed to be their friends, had to be allowed back into the family fold, forgiven for their stupidity.
It only emerged later that the weaknesses which this created, especially the rivalry to succeed Vertogani, were the factors that attracted Brennos, that and the location of the tribes’ hill-fort. Numantia was a place of natural defence high on a bluff overlooking the confluence of two rivers. In order to gain control of that Brennos had cast off his Druid vows of celibacy, married Vertogani’s favourite daughter, then proceeded to murder as many of the man’s sons as were foolish enough to stay within reach. The wiser offspring, seeing that their father was in thrall to this interloper and wishing to stay alive, left before Vertogani died, to become a source of much of the information Rome had acquired.
First Brennos had taken back land that had been lost, before reducing the neighbouring tribes to clients rather than rivals. As his authority spread he became the dominant force in the interior, and at the same time the fortress of Numantia grew more and more formidable. Brennos, now the undisputed Duncani chieftain, had added ring after ring of outworks to his defences. Not that he, according to the reports, trusted to the landscape. Great trenches had been dug in front of the bluff walls to double the scaling height, the ramparts were faced with wood to make a frame filled with loose stones and great earth bastions stood behind these, so that Numantia was impervious to attack by fire.
The central area, sacred home to the original tribe, had been kept free to act as a place of worship and assembly. The small wooden temple, dedicated to the Earth God, Dagda, held the treasures of the tribe, much increased, it seemed, through the new chieftain’s efforts. The Greeks who traded with Brennos told of gold and silver objects set with precious stones, fetched out at all the festivals of the Celtic faith and placed around the altar. This, a circular stone, stood above the spring that gushed out of the earth, providing a source of water that could not be plugged from outside. Brennos anticipated a siege, since he paid as much attention to husbandry as he did to his defences. As recent nomads, the Celts were inclined to rear livestock to the exclusion of all other staples; he had them plough the earth to plant wheat, driving the men to work as well as the women. Great storehouses had been scooped out of the formidable rock, to hold the grain that would be necessary to withstand an attack.
His wife, Cara, was certainly fertile, giving birth annually, and for all that he had seen off the sons and heirs to the leadership of the tribe, his wife had a string of cousins and nephews, so that his personal household had grown to include the male members of that extended family, who acted as his bodyguards. Lucius stopped reading for a moment, his mind playing on an idea. Brennos was certainly dangerous; he encouraged other tribes to revolt, backed them with men, then broke off his support for the insurrection as soon as the Romans gathered in strength to oppose it. That left his clients exposed. Even the Lusitani, hitherto cautious of troubling Rome, had taken to carrying out pirate raids on both sides of the Pillars of Hercules with their small galleys. Given their strength and location, that was something to which Rome found it difficult to respond.
Perhaps the way to deal with Brennos was to emulate his own rise to prominence; to encourage another male member of the tribe to supplant him, either by subterfuge or force. Lucius expected little from other chieftains. Those tribes closest to him who were not actually under his heel treated him with respect, even if they failed to acknowledge his leadership. The same men who gave Rome information about the Duncani provided them with intelligence about their neighbours. If anything, the reports coming out of these encampments were even more specific. Brennos was given to predicting that one day they would succumb to him, not through fear but through respect.
Masugori, one tribal chieftain who had made and kept his peace with Rome, was quite open about his neighbour’s aims. The Duncani chieftain claimed that all he needed was a Roman army, with a general foolish enough and greedy enough to venture far beyond the limits of Latin power. Once they had been lured into the forbidding interior fastness of high plateaus and deep valleys, Brennos could inflict on them certain destruction. Let the fame and wealth of Numantia spread across the Iberian Peninsula; let it be known that there was another power as great as the Roman Republic.
He laid aside the scroll with a grim smile; everything that Brennos did to create a war fell flat. It must seem, to him, like lethargy, but it was quite the opposite. It was sound tactical sense for an empire which had time on its side. Yes, Rome would fight the tribes closest to them, in response to the raids he initiated, and reduce them till their only hope of survival was to sue for peace, but they would not come inland to attack him or any of the other hill-forts, like Pallentia, which they would be bound to consider a threat to their communications. The thought he had had earlier was fully formed now; in the absence of an enemy to fight, let the people of Numantia, with a little encouragement from Rome, indulge in intrigue, directed at the only source of power, Brennos himself!
That was the way to deal with him.
CHAPTER FOUR
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nbsp; Didius Flaccus hated to be kept waiting, even if a lifetime as a soldier had inured him to such a thing. He had no choice; as a retired centurion you were only as good as the weight of your purse and he was way short of the funds he needed to set up in the style to which he aspired. He had enough money, accumulated from plunder and the depredations he had visited on his legionary underlings, like charging them for leave, to take a small apartment at the top of a tenement, but it would be rough wine and poor food he had to eat if he wanted his money to last. He could not bear the thought of that, or even worse, going back to the provincial farm from which he had set out all those years ago to be a soldier. He could return to the province of Illyricum and set up in some kind of trade, but that did not appeal either, especially since questions might be asked about the sudden demise of that old soothsayer, with him the last caller.
Silently he damned the man, for his dying words had brought Flaccus no peace. He still had a prophecy couched as a riddle, one he had extracted from more than one seer. He badly wanted to believe them all, but after the near-fulfilment of the prophecy south of Thralaxas, he was prey to even more doubt than he had entertained previously. What he could do with some money! He had his eye fixed on a ground or first-floor dwelling, with enough income to live properly and dress well, a situation that might lend itself to the acquisition of a young Roman wife. Perhaps the person he had come to see could help; after all they had once soldiered together and been companions, albeit the man had been his titular superior. So he sat in the ante-room of the house of Cassius Barbinus, waiting for the owner to summon him.
All around he could see the evidence of great wealth; the space alone, in such a crowded city as Rome, was evidence of that, let alone the statuary and furniture. The floor of the atrium, right through to the colonnade that surrounded the garden, was laid with an intricate pattern of mosaics that must have set Barbinus back a fortune. Even the goblet in his hand, presented to him by a young, sleek and handsome slave, was the kind of article he had longed to pinch as a serving soldier. The whole place smacked of Hellenism, of Greek luxury and excess; the old centurion, who had known nothing but the army for twenty years, loved it, and gave up a silent wish to the God Porus, that the kind of plenty he was experiencing would one day be his.
The carefully manicured slave reappeared, requesting that he follow, and Flaccus stood up, goblet in hand, till the slave favoured him with a look of such condescension that, for all his years and seniority, he blushed, put the goblet down on the table, and followed to the door of the tablinum. Cassius Barbinus did not stand to receive him, nor did he look up, concentrating on the list of figures on his desk. Flaccus was content to look at the top of the senator’s bald head, which, since he never went out without a hat, was as white as his remaining hair. A ‘new man’ they called Cassius Barbinus; reasonably well-born into the upper reaches of the plebeian class in a Roman colony off the Via Appia, he had done his duty as a soldier but then set aside any desire to climb the cursus honorum, doing what very few men of his background had dared to undertake previously. He had openly gone into trade, working in his own name instead of through middlemen and not just farming and ranching; even the most elevated patrician noble saw that as a state duty.
Cassius Barbinus had bought ships and traded with the east; taken up tax farming on behalf of the Republic; bought mining concessions and vineyards that were operated for profit rather than personal consumption and he had got his seat in the Senate, despite the rules against members openly indulging in such activities. When his more rigid peers sneered at him for this, he was apt to throw a huge and expensive dinner, in defiance of the sumptuary laws, watching amused as his fellow-senators angled for invitations to eat delicacies they could not themselves afford.
‘So, Flaccus,’ he said, looking up. The face above the fat body was smooth and round, the man overweight, well fed and sleek. ‘You’re a lot greyer in the hair, but you haven’t changed much.’
‘Neither have you, sir.’
Barbinus stood up, rubbing his hands over his protruding belly. ‘Nonsense, man. I must be twice the weight I was when I was a soldier.’
He walked round from behind his desk and stood beside the retired centurion. Then he ran his hand over Flaccus’s flat stomach, a hand that lingered just a little longer than necessary. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a belly like yours.’
‘You don’t give! It’s what you do without that gives you a flat belly.’
Barbinus laughed and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Well said, Flaccus. I do eat too much and business has kept me from exercising as frequently as I should. Still we’re not here to discuss your figure or mine, are we?’
Flaccus’s eyes lost their hard look, to be replaced by one of supplication. ‘Have you thought on my request?’
‘I have that, but I’m not sure that I can oblige.’ Flaccus looked slightly crestfallen. Then, as if he remembered who he was with, his face took on the same blank look he had always reserved for conversations with senior officers. ‘After all, you’re no clerk, are you?’ It was not a question requiring an answer, so Flaccus did not provide one. ‘Nor are you sailor enough to captain one of my ships.’
‘I thought I might act as your agent, somewhere. Ephesus or the like.’
‘And rob me blind, no doubt.’ Flaccus was about to protest when Barbinus cut him short. ‘I would have thought if anyone would retire rich from the legions it would be you. You were such an avaricious bastard.’
‘I wasn’t lucky,’ said Flaccus bitterly.
The other man snorted. ‘Luck. What’s luck got to do with it? I daresay you’ve had enough money, you just haven’t managed to hang on to it. What was it? Too many visits to the brothel? Gambling?’
‘Don’t matter, but being a centurion must fit a man for something.’
‘It equips a man for many things, Didius Flaccus, but not occupations that pay any more than wages and that’s not what you’re after, is it?’ Flaccus shook his head sharply as Barbinus walked back behind the desk. He sat there for a moment in silence, before looking up again, a gleam in his eye. ‘I have one job which needs doing that might fit the bill, a job that a hard-nosed old centurion might do better than most.’
Barbinus picked up a piece of paper in his fat fingers and swore gently under his breath. When he looked at Flaccus again he saw that the man was practically at attention, his face bearing the look of a soldier seeking to avoid censure. ‘I’m not swearing at you, Flaccus. I’ve just bought the rights to some land in Sicily, a great deal of land in fact and I had to pay a lot of money for it, a good deal more than it’s worth.’
‘That don’t sound like you.’
‘Anything for a quiet life, Flaccus. One of our more elevated senators, a present censor, no less, hinted that my commercial activities, not to mention the way I spend my money, could be construed as unbecoming for a man in my position.’
‘Meaning?’
Barbinus looked thoughtful for a moment, but declined to explain why, if he could be expelled for indulging in trade or overspending, he was still a senator. Flaccus would know as well as anyone, having been in the army, the difference between the rules as they were written and how they were applied.
‘Censure on the floor of the Senate. Perhaps even removal from the senatorial roll, since the present consuls are in office only because the man threatening me has put them there.’
‘I don’t see…’
‘I bought two Latifunda off him, Flaccus, that is the most noble Lucius Falerius Nerva. Now there’s a man who wouldn’t soil his hands in trade, but he’s not beyond eliciting a bribe, as long as it can be dressed up as a normal transaction.’
‘Is the land worthless, then?’
‘No. I sent someone to look it over. It’s good wheat-growing soil, even if it has been allowed to go to the dogs. Old Lucius is too immersed in politics to supervise the place properly, so it’s more like a retirement home for slaves than a proper farm. The trouble is that it’s hard
to make money out of wheat, since the price is controlled. It’s profitable, but not profitable enough the way it is now. Lucius Falerius will use my money to buy some land closer to Rome, where he can do some ranching.’
‘Can’t you ranch on this Sicilian land?’
Barbinus shook his head. ‘It’s too hot for large-scale pasturage. No, the only thing to do is to increase the yield, which is where a tough old centurion might come in handy.’
Flaccus pulled himself up to attention again, as Barbinus, leaning on the table, fixed him with an intense look. ‘You know what I’d dearly like to do to that upright patrician bastard. He’s sold me this land for twice what it’s truly worth, but what if I could increase the yield so much that I’d be making a profit on the sale?’
‘You want to stick it to him!’
‘That’s right, Flaccus. I want to see the fixed smile on that stiff-necked bastard’s face when I tell him that I, Cassius Barbinus, have made a profit out of bribing him. He doesn’t look as though he eats much now, but when I’m finished, I want him to be truly sick at the sight of a loaf of bread. I want to stand up in the Forum and ask why we have to import so much wheat from Africa when I can get such a yield from my property, not forgetting to add, by the way, that the honourable Lucius Falerius had so cultivated the land, before I bought it, as to make my task a simple one. Do you see the beauty of it, old friend? That Falerii prick won’t be able to say or do anything.’
