A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the hellish scene.
The Sassanid had freed his sword arm. Overhand, he was sliding the tip of the steel over the rim of Ballista’s shield. Arms pinioned, the northerner struggled desperately. If only Maximus were here. The Sassanid set himself to thrust down into Ballista’s throat. He spat blood, broken fragments of teeth.
There was a surge of pressure from behind Ballista. Driven backwards, the Sassanid adjusted the angle of his sword. His mouth opened. More blood, pouring into his black beard. The sword fell from his hand. He looked down at the Roman blade driven into his armpit. His body went into spasm, became limp.
‘Gratius, Dominus.’ The legionary withdrew his sword. The corpse of the Sassanid fell underfoot.
‘I will remember,’ said Ballista.
A space had opened up. The Persians were giving ground. Another boom of thunder, and the rain began. It fell in heavy curtains. Ballista could feel it beating on his back. It was driving into the faces of the enemy.
‘One more step,’ yelled Ballista. He launched himself forward.
Ballista did not know if anyone was with him. His boots slipped in the water. No arrows came at him. The rain had soaked the bowstrings.
The Sassanid in front of Ballista looked around, hesitated, then turned and ran. Another flash of lightning lit the gloom. All the easterners were running through the rain.
Ballista laughed to be alive. If the gods wanted vengeance on the oath-breaker, they were biding their time.
Julia finished inspecting the house in the Epiphania district of Antioch. Everything was in order. She dismissed the maids. It was important that a house was in order when the dominus returned. It was especially important in one with senatorial connections. She went and sat in a wicker chair on the shady side of the atrium.
It was hot, but the regular afternoon breeze was blowing up the Orontes valley. The wind moved the material on the loom propped against the wall. Julia looked at its two vertical timbers, shed race, weights and cross bars with something close to loathing. Its presence was necessary in a well-run household. Yet she liked it about as well as an Armenian tigress liked a cage. For women, the loom had always been there. Penelope in the Odyssey, weaving by day and unravelling by night, holding off the suitors while she waited, in the hope that her philandering husband might return. The character displayed an unpleasant mixture of passivity and cunning in the story, Julia thought. Maybe it had been necessary for a wife to weave in the primitive and poor heroic age at the dawn of time, but wealth had rendered the loom redundant for many women. The Roman imperium had added a new level of hypocrisy to the image: Livia, the wife of the first emperor, in a houseful of servants, sitting at the loom playing the dutiful matron of old, in between procuring young virgins for her husband to deflower. Nothing annoyed Julia more than those male doctors who claimed that such work was good for the delicate health of a woman.
Julia mastered her impatience. Ballista would not care or notice if the wretched loom was there or not. She did not know why she bothered. In the two months since he had escaped from Persian captivity, he had sent just two notes, both brief and impersonal. She knew as well as anyone the danger of the frumentarii intercepting a letter, but he could have sent something more intimate with a trusted friend. That little pleb he put such faith in, Castricius, had been in Antioch.
Yesterday, the second formal note had come: standard enquiries after her health and that of the children, then much of the public duties of a Prefect of Cavalry and Vir Perfectissimus. The Sassanids had made no further attempt on the Syrian Gates. Nor had they commandeered ships. Neither Seleuceia nor Antioch presently was in danger. The Sassanids had marched to the north to plunder Cilicia. Ballista was ordered to raise ships and men to pursue them. He would return to the house today at noon.
Except he had not. Three hours after the lunch things had been cleared away, a grubby little legionary by the name of Gratius had arrived. With an impertinent air, he had said that the Prefect of Cavalry had been summoned to the palace down on the island; there was no way of telling how long the emperors’ consilium would last; war was a weighty matter.
Julia had dismissed him coldly. ‘War was a weighty matter.’ Indeed. Let war be the care of men, as Hector had told Andromache. Men – what fools they were. I would rather stand three times in the front of battle than endure childbirth, as a heroine in a tragedy had said. Both lines had been written by men, but the tragedian had been nearer the truth than Homer had. Julia thought of her childhood friend Metella, dead giving birth before she reached sixteen. If men bore children, it would put an end to their puerile glorification of war. How could the dangers of war compare with those of childbirth?
Now she was waiting. As always when he returned, Ballista would want sex – he was like an animal marking its territory. At least he was not a womanizer, did not bother the maids. Not like poor Cornelia’s husband. He was a complete ancillariolus. Their house was almost unendurable with its endless tears and recriminations. Julia had always found Ballista’s fidelity flattering, but strange. It was part of his barbarian upbringing, like his jealousy. There had been more than one terrible scene at dinner parties when he had thought that she was flirting. She did not want to be a Messalina, but his jealousy was stifling. It was un-Roman.
‘Domina,’ the porter announced, ‘Marcus Clodius Ballista, Vir Perfectissimus, has returned.’
Julia stood and walked around the pool to greet her husband. Ballista smiled. His front teeth were chipped. He looked tired and careworn.
‘Dominus.’ Julia’s senatorial family had not encouraged public displays of affection between wife and husband. Julia kept her eyes modestly down.
‘Domina.’ Ballista leant down. She raised her face and he kissed her on the lips.
Julia told the porter to summon the children. The silence stretched as they waited. She looked down again. The wind rippled the surface of the pool, making the fishes, dolphin and octopus in the mosaic at the bottom seem to swim.
A cry of pleasure, and Isangrim ran out. The eight-year-old hurled himself at his father. Julia felt a twinge of irritation. In a senatorial home, it was not just the wife who should behave with decorum. A son should greet his father solemnly, call him Dominus.
Ballista scooped up the boy, burying his face in his neck. They talked low together.
Julia noticed the new scars on Ballista’s wrists and forearms. She had always liked his forearms. There was something different, attractive, about a man’s forearms.
A high-pitched squeal. Dernhelm, not yet two, was being carried by old Calgacus. They were followed by Maximus and Demetrius. Setting his eldest son on his feet, Ballista took Dernhelm in his arms. Again he buried his face in his child’s neck, inhaling the smell of him.
Having handed Dernhelm to Julia, and with Isangrim still clinging to his waist, Ballista embraced each of his freedmen in turn.
‘Welcome home, Kyrios,’ said Demetrius. The other two were less formal.
‘Like a counterfeit coin, I knew you would return,’ said Calgacus.
‘So far,’ replied Ballista.
‘We must celebrate, have a drink,’ beamed Maximus.
Before Ballista could reply, Julia cut in. ‘It is time Isangrim was at his lessons, and Dernhelm must sleep.’
The three freedmen took the hint. Soon husband and wife were alone again.
Julia put her hand on Ballista’s forearm. She led him through to the private cubiculum towards the rear of the house. The shutters were half closed, the covers on the couch drawn back. Man and wife made love, urgently, briefly.
Afterwards, they lay drinking and talking. They were naked. Julia knew that, after the wedding night, a respectable wife never showed herself naked to her husband. That was the behaviour of a whore. But she knew it pleased Ballista, excited him.
Julia traced the fresh scars on his wrists and ankles. ‘You had a bad time with the Persians.’
‘The boys look well.�
�� He made no effort to hide the fact he was changing the subject.
‘Mmm.’ Julia kissed his chest, his stomach. She did something no respectable Roman wife should ever do. The very wickedness of her behaviour excited her. They made love again, more slowly this time.
‘How long will you be in Antioch?’
‘Two days. Then as long as it takes to find ships in Seleuceia. I can requisition a house there. You should come down, bring the boys. We will have a little time until I have to sail north after the Sassanids.’
Julia watched him fiddle with his wine cup, felt his desire to be gone. Men, from what her friends said, were all the same. The act of love would last longer if left to women: all night, if men were made that way.
‘Go on,’ she smiled. ‘Go and find your friends. It is a long time since they have had a chance to drink with you.’
There was a hollowness to Ballista’s grin. ‘Edessa, a couple of months ago. The festival of the Maiuma. At the end of the night, someone tried to kill me.’
After he had gone, Julia put on a robe. She called for a maid. Ignoring Anthia’s complicit smile, she asked for her bath to be made ready. He was trying to hide it, but there was something preying on her husband’s mind. She had a couple of days. She would discover what it was.
Demetrius stood on the prow of Ballista’s flagship. Since the fleet had left Seleucia in pursuit of the Persians, things had not gone well. Demetrius looked at the port of Aegeae.
All sacked cities are the same: in each, the kicked-in doors and smoke-blackened buildings; the ransacked houses and defiled temples; the muted sounds where there had been terrible noise; the splayed and huddled corpses; the smell of burning, excrement and corruption.
Yet each is different. There is always some specific thing that catches the observer’s eye, moves his heart to fresh pity: a treasured heirloom smashed in the street; an old woman sobbing noiselessly; a child wandering alone. Those who say compassion is blunted by repetition are wrong.
Demetrius stood on the ship looking at the city of Aegeae.
For in my heart and soul I also know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him …
That is nothing, nothing beside your agony
when some brazen Argive hales you off in tears,
wrenching away your day of light and freedom!
The lines of Homer – Hector’s all too prescient words to his wife – came unbidden into Demetrius’s thoughts. Human happiness is very fragile. One day, a prosperous, peaceful town; the next, a stinking ruin. One day, a happy, free youth; the next, a slave at the whim of a capricious and brutal master.
Demetrius had seen too much horror in the last few days. Ballista’s ships had followed the Persians around the bay of Issus. Alexandria ad Issum, Katabolos and now the port of Aegeae – all had been sacked.
There had been no way Demetrius could avoid the horror. At each town, his duties as accensus required him to accompany Ballista. Ashore, the kyrios’s dark mood had worsened. But Ballista was diligent. He interviewed survivors. He investigated which supplies, public and private, had been taken, attempting to estimate enemy numbers. Here at Aegeae, he had even studied the horse droppings on the road to the interior taken by the Sassanids as they rode out of the sacked city.
Demetrius did not think he would do well in the sack of a town. In the noise, confusion and fear, he doubted he would make the right decisions. Would he run or hide? In either case, where? Would he follow the crowd, hoping for some safety in numbers, or slink off alone, praying to be overlooked? Would his courage fail him altogether? Would he drop to his knees in the pose of a suppliant, trusting in his looks to spare his life? And if they did, at what cost? His first years of slavery had taught him all about degradation.
Demetrius returned his thoughts to the present. Ballista’s consilium was not going well; as expected, his plans were not being well received.
‘No, we will not pursue the Sassanids inland. We are outnumbered. They have at least fifteen thousand cavalry. We have five thousand infantry and the crews of twenty warships. The Sassanids have taken the road to Mopouestia. The open plains of Cilicia Pedias are ideal for horsemen. They would surround us and shoot us down at their pleasure.’
The assembled officers, some forty men, down to the rank of pilus prior and including the centurions commanding the warships, listened in unconvinced silence. They wanted revenge. However, Ballista’s second-in-command, Ragonius Clarus, the legate appointed by Macrianus the Elder, nodded sagely.
Ballista continued. ‘We will adopt the strategy used by Fabius Cunctator to defeat Hannibal. We will wait. The prefect Demosthenes will take a composite unit of five hundred spearmen and archers to hold the Cilician Gates. Apparently, they command the only road north over the Taurus mountains viable for a large force of cavalry. The warships can take Demosthenes’ men to Tarsus – there will just be space if the marines temporarily transfer to the transport ships. From Tarsus, Demosthenes will force-march north to the Gates.
‘The warships will rendezvous with the rest of us at Soli. There we will plan with Voconius Zeno, the governor of Cilicia, to guard the narrow coastal path west to Cilicia Tracheia.
‘If the Syrian Gates to the south-east are still held, and the emperors have taken my advice and blocked the Amanikai Gates to the north-east, the Persians will effectively be trapped in the lowlands of Cilicia Pedias. Then we watch and wait for opportunities. With our fleet, we can come and go as we please. Sooner or later, the Persian horde will split up to plunder or we will catch them at some other disadvantage.’
This was Ballista at his best, thought Demetrius. The kyrios was putting aside his personal troubles and fears to plan meticulously, to do what needed to be done. Yet the officers still seemed unhappy.
Ragonius Clarus interjected in patrician tones. ‘An admirable strategy – timehallowed and in keeping with the ways of our Roman ancestors. Thus Cunctator vanquished the Punic evil of Hannibal, Crassus destroyed the servile menace of Spartacus. Our noble young emperors will approve.’
Everyone knew that Clarus had been foisted on Ballista to report to Macrianus the Lame. His words elicited no enthusiasm from the military men.
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’
Ballista declared the consilium over and, with his familia, retired to his cabin at the stern of the trireme.
‘Sure, but it must be a joy to know our noble young emperors will approve of your thinking,’ said Maximus.
‘Joy unbounded,’ Ballista replied flatly. Obviously he was not in the mood for joking. Since his return from captivity, he seldom had been.
‘A drink?’ Calgacus suggested.
‘No, thank you. I think I will rest.’
As the freedmen filed out, Ballista called Demetrius back.
The young accensus watched as his kyrios looked at the lists and plans piled on the desk. Distractedly, Ballista picked one or two up, moved some others about. A few moments of this, and Ballista stopped. He went over to his bed, retrieved a papyrus roll that lay on the covers and sat down.
‘Demetrius, you are a Hellene. Are these Cilicians Hellenes?’
Over the years, Demetrius had got used to the abruptness of Ballista’s conversational openings when he had something on his mind. The point usually became clear after a time.
‘They like to think they are,’ Demetrius replied. ‘In terms of descent, most of the cities of Cilicia claim a founder from the ancient Hellenic past. The claims of some of the poleis are plausible. Hesiod and Herodotus tell of Amphilochus, the seer who fought at the siege of Troy, journeying here. He is said to have founded Mallos. The town of Mopouestia is named after another seer, Mopsus. But other claims are most unlikely. The citizens of Tarsus themselves are unsure who founded their town: one of the Hellenes – Perseus, Heracles or Triptolemus – or an oriental called Sandan. Zephyrion openly admits it was the cre
ation of the Assyrian king Sardanapallus.’
When Demetrius stopped, Ballista nodded for him to go on.
‘In terms of culture, it is true they pay almost exaggerated respect to Hellenic paideia. Chrysippus the Stoic was from Soli. The two men called Athenodorus, the one who lived with Cato and the one who was Julius Caesar’s teacher, were both from Tarsus. There are several schools of philosophy and rhetoric in Cilicia. But those who attain distinction tend to travel away, and few men of the highest attainments ever come here from abroad. I think there is something suspect about the Cilician nature which undermines their paideia. In quite recent times, the two sophists from Cilicia who became famous under the emperors, Antiochus and Philagrus, each had a violent temper. The latter would get so angry he could not declaim. Once, in a fit of anger, he went so far as to utter a barbarism.’
Ballista smiled ruefully, and used the papyrus roll with which he was fiddling to indicate to Demetrius to continue.
‘It is not just the pepaideumenoi – all the inhabitants have a reputation for being hot-tempered, unwilling to submit to anyone being placed over them. As a province, they often try to prosecute their governors before the emperor. Among themselves, the cities quarrel incessantly. Only the Pax Romana – the boots above their heads – stops them resorting to open violence, if not war.’
Ballista had stopped playing with the papyrus. He looked thoughtful. ‘If they are not truly Hellenic but part oriental, and they are unhappy with Roman rule, might some of them side with the Persians? Or might the hatred of one city for another induce it to go over to Shapur?’
Warrior of Rome III Page 13
