Master and God

by Lindsey Davis

  The ancient Dacian language was spoken all over central Europe, used commercially and politically by many other tribes. Dacians were masters of ethics, philosophy and science, including physics and astronomy; they toyed with Egyptian divination; they had contact with Greeks. With their spirits lifted by their beautiful country — and boosted by their enormous wealth — the Dacians were famously religious. At Sarmizegetusa they had created a sanctuary where a great sun disc showed their mastery of their own solar calendar while a combined stone- and wood-henge allowed them to honour the winter solstice, winters there being bone-hard. Long, dark nights of yearning for the sun’s renewal gave them, like all northern people, morose tendencies.

  They lived at the crossroads of central Europe. Their choice, therefore, was either to be downtrodden by everyone who passed through, or fight them. They took the latter course. Dacians had no reputation for diffidence.

  From the Roman point of view, Dacia had been quiescent for a hundred years after a king called Burebista was quashed by the Emperor Augustus. For the Dacians, Burebista was never quashed and would remain a mythical ideal. He was killed off by jealous aristocrats of his own nation, a local difficulty which was a mere kink in history. For them, it had no bearing on Dacia’s potential as a world power.

  One of King Burebista’s measures, it was said, was to uproot Dacian vineyards and persuade his warriors to stop drinking the robust red wines of their homeland. These wines may provide a clue to why Dacian pre-eminence had been slow in coming. And why, after the vines were replanted, Dacian fortunes slumped again for a long time.

  Under King Burebista, Dacian territorial influence had extended to its widest, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and from the Balkans to Bohemia, always with Transylvania as its political core. Burebista had consolidated the Dacian tribes including the influential Getae, or Goths, who had made their mark in the past and would do so again. However, he made the mistake of siding with Pompey against Julius Caesar. This alienated not just Caesar but his gut-wrenchingly ambitious young successor, Augustus, who invaded Dacia intent on diminishing its status. Before he arrived, however, Burebista was killed. The coalition disintegrated into ineffective warring factions. For a century afterwards, Dacians held a truce with Rome, which meant they took any money Rome offered and in return were thoroughly unreliable allies.

  Assassinating their leader was an error, yet one from which it was possible to learn. In the opinion of the Dacian who would become known as Decebalus, quiescence to Rome had endured long enough. This man began establishing himself around the time of the Roman Flavians. There was absolutely no question that he was persuasive and intelligent. Like many heroes he must have been aware of his own potential from an early age, taking up the burden of becoming great, always a lonely destiny but much better than no destiny at all.

  He was a commanding figure. Thickset and jowly, he wore traditional Dacian costume which, unlike Mediterranean dress, was designed for warmth: full-length woollen trousers gathered in at the ankle, a long, long-sleeved tunic, a short cloak with fringed or furred edges, caught on one shoulder with a massive brooch. His romping curls were topped with a cap, its long peak turned over to provide an extra insulating air pocket. Unlike the Emperor Domitian, Decebalus had no problem with middle-aged baldness and also boasted a rampant curly beard. Totemic carvings of him, hewn from bedrock on Dacian approach roads, showed a heavily pugnacious face.

  The Romans were so indifferent to anyone they called a barbarian, they were unclear whether this man’s name was Duras, or Diurpaneus, or whether the original Diurpaneus was the same person as the later Decebalus, or was a king who abdicated his leadership to Decebalus because he was the better warrior. Diurpaneus/Decebalus did not care what the Romans called him; he knew who he was.

  He knew a lot about Rome too. He listened; he talked to those passing through; he observed. He knew as much about what the Romans were doing on the Rhine and the Danube as they did, more than most citizens of their empire, whose ill-informed commentators saw him as a shadowy forest-dweller, whose nation existed solely to be overrun by Rome.

  He nursed another dream. Other than the fact ‘Roman Empire’ was easier to enunciate, there was no reason why Europe should be rich pickings for fish-eating, olive-oily, beardless, bare-legged southerners, most of whom could not ride a horse. As he planned to combine the Dacians into one force (no easy task) it seemed feasible that under decent leadership (his, for instance), a ‘Sarmizegetusan Empire’ should arise instead, of equal significance to anything Roman, though admittedly a tad trickier to say.

  For over ten years, Diurpaneus had watched the strategic adjustments on what the Romans thought was their frontier. They held the west, temporarily perhaps, but in central Europe the geography was dominated by two enormous rivers. The Rhine ran north-south through Germany. Its eastern forests were sparsely populated and comparatively peaceful. The Danube, an even longer watercourse, started north of the Alps, not twenty miles from the Rhine in Raetia, which left a narrow corridor through which migrating peoples could emerge on a millennial east-to-west cycle without getting their feet wet. The Danube ran east across Raetia and Noricum, before it plunged almost directly south into the heart of Pannonia, increasing in power, then heading east again across the top of Moesia until its many branches poured their waters through a mesh of channels into the Black Sea. For Rome, that was the end of the world. A place to exile poets. A fate far worse than death.

  It was generally accepted that the Romans must accept these rivers as natural limits. Beyond, lay enormous tracts of territory with no other patrollable boundaries, lands which would be impossible to conquer, or if conquered impossible to hold, with no viable reason to do so. The Danube was for much of its length difficult to cross, so except when it froze — which was regular and historically known to be dangerous — this frontier could be controlled.

  Along the Rhine and Danube the Romans had established themselves, abutting nose to nose the fractious tribes who lived beyond. Diurpaneus was aware that first Vespasian and now his son Domitian saw the position as dangerous. Whether the barbarian tribes were in search of new territory themselves, whether they were being pushed in the rear by other land-hungry peoples from deeper in Europe, or whether they just came for a fight because that was what they liked, the Romans needed to strengthen their frontier. Vespasian, Domitian and their eventual successors followed a consistent policy of tightening their grip. Domitian’s crushing of the Chatti, therefore, was much more significant than it seemed to his critics in Rome, who accused him of over-ambition and wanting a fake triumph. Dacia took it seriously.

  First, the Chatti were a major military power. As warriors, they claimed respect. They were powerful and daunting. Males were trained to kill, and were expected to do so before they counted as full members of their tribe. Their strongholds were stone-built and almost impossible to access. Even the Romans said that where other tribes merely fought battles, the Chatti waged war. They elected officers and even obeyed them. On campaign, they carried tools as well as weapons and made proper camps at night, just like the Romans. Every day they planned their strategy and worked out a timetable, a system which to other tribes seemed unnecessarily organised. It worked. Domitian’s campaign against them had been hard-fought and bitter; the tussle was still ongoing in the forests of unconquered Germany even two years after his official triumph.

  The fact that Domitian had named himself ‘Germanicus’ after he dealt with the Chatti showed he understood the crucial importance of his victory. By annexing their territory, he had cut off an awkward acute angle in the enormous Roman frontier, reducing by many miles the length that needed guarding. He had penned the belligerent Chatti into their strongholds, safeguarding trade routes — including the Baltic amber route — with his new frontier. There, he was constructing a regular series of wooden watchtowers that guarded a military road. Rumours rippled around that an earthwork or at least a palisade was being planned for the whole length. The ne
w frontier would be Domitian’s enduring legacy, enabling Roman oversight of the German tribes for the next two centuries.

  Logically, as Diurpaneus recognised, Domitian must be coming for Dacia. Although he had not yet changed the number of legions, which remained as they had been since Nero’s day, those in Moesia which lay immediately opposite Dacia were being beefed up by units drawn from his British and German auxiliaries. So far, there were two legions in Pannonia, one in Dalmatia and three in Moesia, which was not much for such an extended frontier, but both Vespasian and Domitian had steadily reinforced the river defences. They had quietly built new forts. They had established extra bases for the Pannonian and Moesian fleets which patrolled the Lower Danube.

  As Diurpaneus of the Dacians weighed up the fine tuning opposite, he knew that Domitian’s arrival on the Danube must be only a matter of time. He was a comparatively young emperor, son and brother of famous generals, who wanted to make his own name. Diurpaneus could sit and wait for it to happen — or he could strike first.

  He struck — and he struck hard.

  There had been a long history of hit-and-run raids across the river, but this was different. Newly bonded under Diurpaneus, the Dacians came snarling across near Novae. It was an ancient Thracian settlement at an important strategic position in Moesia, dominating a road junction on the south bank and controlling one of the easier Danube crossings. Although the soldiers in the line of Roman forts had been staring north for years in anticipation of exactly this, they were taken completely by surprise. Scads of Dacians attacked and overran the province. They laid waste the riverbank. Penetrating far to the south, they destroyed towns and fortifications. There was great loss of life. A wide area collapsed in chaos. Then the Dacians did not simply plunder and retreat; despite the inevitability of Roman reprisals, they dug in and stayed.

  The Dacian weapon of choice was a long sword with its end curved like a harvest sickle, which the Romans called a falx. Opposing strategists claimed it was cumbersome, and useless against shields, but Dacian warriors knew how to handle it. At close quarters it served efficiently for disembowelling. It was very sharp and could be used in other ways. When Diurpaneus and his rampaging Dacians captured the Roman governor, Oppius Sabinus, he was killed by decapitation.

  It took a month for the news to reach Rome.

  14

  Lara’s death inevitably marked a shift in Lucilla’s life. For the first three years of Domitian’s reign she and her sister — or was she really her mother? — had been extremely close. Their difference in ages always made Lara the leader; Lucilla could now see that it was more than simple seniority. Lara had skills to teach and at first she provided their customer base. In retrospect, Lara always made their choices — who to work for, how to organise appointments, even what colour a client’s hair would be or the right moment to refresh a woman’s style. Lucilla, using her nimble skill with hairpieces, had had her own expertise so there had never been struggles for supremacy. It had always seemed natural that Lara took the lead.

  Now, Lucilla had to make all the choices.

  Although forlorn and insecure, she never neglected her business. Work offered itself as a natural solace. She was good at what she did; she could work even when her mind was wandering into thoughts of Lara and Lachne. Covering every task that she and Lara had once shared kept her intensely busy. One or two clients who had been particularly attached to Lara slipped away, but most stayed loyal. It became necessary to consider training an assistant.

  She bought a slave. It was troubling for Lucilla, herself a freedwoman’s child, but she was at least able to purchase the girl from Flavia Domitilla. Lucilla did not have to venture into a slave market where the overseers treated their wares worse than animals, pulling open mouths to show how many teeth slaves had, letting lewd male customers fondle young girls’ breasts, loudly making coarse assertions about their sexual pasts and future possibilities. Instead, Domitilla’s girl, whose name was Glyke, could be quietly looked over at the house, then without embarrassment obtained from the steward; Stephanus only demanded a modest bribe for fixing the transaction.

  A freedwoman’s slave could face a life of particular cruelty. Those who had endured beatings and other abuse in their early life sometimes imposed worse on their own slaves. Lucilla presumed Glyke would appreciate that this never happened to her. But after a year, the ungrateful Glyke ran away with a baker’s delivery boy. Lucilla could have reported this to the vigiles and had her runaway slave hunted, but she forbore. Glyke was in love. The baker’s boy might have pretended affection but he would dump her eventually. He had that look in his eye. For a girl so young, being abandoned would be enough punishment.

  Glyke may never have realised she was only a few years younger than her new mistress. There was a world of difference between them in judgement and poise.

  Nevertheless, Lucilla was hiding deep uncertainties. In some ways she was fortunate. She would survive financially. Her client base was sufficient. She might build a much bigger business; that would be hard work, though work she found a pleasure. Yet it would take all her time. Acquiring Glyke showed her the problems of management. Yes, the girl shared her labour, but Lucilla spent too much time training and supervising; with her own reputation at stake she could not trust the young slave to work on her own initiative. She had to house and feed her too. At the apartment Glyke slept in the workroom, but constantly nagged to be allowed into the Praetorian’s accommodation. She seemed unable to grasp that his rooms were outside Lucilla’s control and that Lucilla had no wish to put herself under any obligation to Vinius.

  When Glyke ran away, Lucilla’s strongest feeling was relief. She bore the financial loss, which was compensated by being once more alone at home and unpressured. Having the apartment to herself again was wonderful. Vinius had said she could use the room with the couch as her private area; without Glyke, Lucilla did so.

  Her ease with her own company did not mean she hankered for a reclusive life. At twenty-one, her unmarried state was becoming a source of unhappiness. She shrank from being trapped with the wrong partner but if she ever dreamed of her future, she imagined someone in her bed and at her table. Like Lachne, and Lara too, presumably, she was drawn to men. Despite her grim knowledge of life, as much as she yearned for physical love she harboured idealistic hopes. She wanted true male companionship; also, she believed she could be a good mother, if she ever had children.

  She had few affairs. Nevertheless, she knew about men’s behaviour. At work she spent most of her days listening to women on this subject, usually complaining. A woman and her hairdresser might never spend time together socially, yet they were intimately acquainted with the fabric of each other’s lives. Husbands and sons, fathers and brothers, were routinely discussed. Their characters and careers were catalogued, their habits and adventures followed over time. Lucilla, who was a good listener, absorbed this and acquired more wisdom than she realised.

  It would be wasted if she never found a man.

  The place to look was obviously Alba. Lucilla had always loved Alba, and now without Lara dragging on her to stay in Rome near her children, Lucilla could go whenever she wanted. If the court was at Alba she could spend the whole summer there.

  It was truly beautiful. On one side was a breathtaking view down a precipitous wooded hillside to the perfection of the lake bowl, its surface often turquoise in reflection of the sky, a scatter of water birds bobbing midway. A nymphaeum, or water-feature, had been cut into the shoreline rock, its entrance dramatically framing the view to Mount Albanus, which was topped by the glittering white Temple of Jupiter Latiarius. In the other direction enormous garden terraces faced towards Rome and the Tyrrhenian Sea, which could be glimpsed in the far distance.

  Alba was called Domitian’s villa but was like a small city. There were women present though, apart from a few noblewomen, they tended to be employed either in menial tasks or predatory occupations. Of the men, Lucilla knew her first serious choice ought to have
been easy: the freed slaves of the imperial family. But they seemed like strangers. After Lachne was freed and left the household, Lucilla had lost the advantages of knowing and being known well by any potential candidates.

  It would appear she had plenty of alternatives: the Emperor’s advisers and personal attendants; artists, musicians, poets and learned men; architects, engineers; finance experts, secretaries, soldiers; athletes and professional gladiators. Some were married, though many left their wives elsewhere. Of those, some noble sorts were restrained and faithful: not many. Occasionally one of the better men would develop a soft spot for Lucilla and engage in cheery, acceptably flirtatious banter.

  Most were to be avoided. They were, openly, just looking for a good time. In her early naive search for friendship, Lucilla struggled. As a hairdresser she was viewed as a cheaper, cleaner, patriotically home-grown version of the sordid Syrian flute girls or notorious Spanish dancers, just an easy lay for whom men would not even pay. Nobody admired a hairdresser for chastity. That she resisted encounters only raised a greater challenge to those men who believed they were special, where in their view ‘special’ meant sexually irresistible.

  Others were available to Lucilla because they were so gauche that no woman with any sense would touch them. The fact that she appeared unconnected seemed to draw these hopeless characters to her; they were then outraged if she said no to them.

  Some adventurers took an interest because they had assessed her success and were after her money. One even told her so; his honesty had a passing allure but she still refused him.

  To find a loyal companion from among these potential disasters began to appear impossible. Lucilla could certainly have a string of sexual partners, if she could endure brief conjunctions, one-sided action, men who nervously checked the time of day to find excuses to leave, raw panic on their part if she ever seemed to grow needy. Occasionally she went to bed with someone, but she failed to find permanence or real pleasure.