Vespasian: Tribune of Rome

by Robert Fabbri

  Vespasian let out a long laugh as they left the room. ‘I’d nearly forgotten how much fun it is living here, Tute. It is so good to see you.’

  ‘He keeps my wits about me; a priceless commodity, wouldn’t you say?’ she said, laughing with him. She picked up the wine jug and poured a good measure of wine into her cup. Vespasian gazed at her lovingly as she caressed the plain silver cup with both hands.

  ‘When I think of you, I always picture you holding that cup; you never drink from anything else, do you?’

  ‘Your grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, gave me this on our wedding day. I was thirteen years old and it was the first thing that I could ever call mine; up until then all my possessions had technically belonged to my father. I cherish this as I cherished that dear man, thirty years my senior, who gave me it all those years ago.’ She smiled sadly to herself, remembering the man she’d loved, and then raised her precious cup. ‘To absent friends.’

  ‘Absent friends.’

  They drank and sat in companionable silence for a while. The throbbing in his leg returned and reminded Vespasian of his wound.

  ‘How long will it take to heal, Tute?’

  ‘Ten to fifteen days if you rest it. Come on, you must eat,’ Tertulla replied, offering him the plate of ham.

  ‘I need to leave in seven at the most, I have to be in Genua in twelve days’ time and we won’t be able to take the road.’

  ‘Why?’

  Vespasian briefly related the events of the past few days. He tried to keep the details vague in order to disguise the extent of his involvement in the conspiracy against Sejanus, but it wasn’t easy to pull the wool over Tertulla’s eyes.

  ‘So, you’re involved with rich, powerful people and you are already choosing sides.’

  ‘I chose the honourable side, the side that serves Rome.’

  ‘You must be careful, Vespasian; the side that seems to serve Rome may not always be the most honourable, and even if it is it may not win.’

  ‘So you would advise that I just choose the side that I think will win, regardless of whether it seeks to serve Rome?’

  ‘I advise you to keep out of politics that you don’t understand, and to keep away from the powerful, because in general they only have one goal and that is more power. They tend to use people of our class as dispensable tools. We’re very handy for doing the dirty work but a liability once it is done because we may know too much.’

  ‘Tute, I owe Asinius and Antonia for my commission in the Fourth Scythica; I am duty bound to do what they have asked me and that’s all there is to it.’

  Tertulla looked at her grandson and smiled. He was so like her husband when they had married almost seventy-five years before: the same earnestness and desire to do what he felt was right.

  ‘Just remember what happened to your grandfather Petro; he was duty bound to Pompey Magnus, having served with him during his eastern campaigns, so he re-enlisted in his legions as a senior centurion when the civil war against Caesar flared up. He’d already served his twenty-five years with the legions, but at the age of forty-four, a year after our marriage, he found himself at Pharsalus fighting fellow citizens, whose sense of duty was as strong as his, but directed towards a different Roman cause. Pompey lost everything to Caesar at Pharsalus, but Petro managed to survive the battle and made it home to me. He appealed to Caesar in Rome and won a full pardon; he was allowed to live and became a tax-collector, though he knew he could never again expect advancement.

  ‘Then, when Augustus came to power with the second Triumvirate after Caesar’s assassination, he re-enlisted again and fought for Cassius and Brutus, Caesar’s killers, against the Triumvirate at Philippi where the last hopes of the Republicans died. Augustus proscribed over two thousand equites who had stood against him or his adoptive father Caesar; your grandfather was one of them. Rather than be executed and forfeit his property he committed suicide here, in this very room, as the soldiers were banging on the gate.’

  Vespasian gazed around the room and imagined his grandfather falling on his sword in a desperate attempt to save his family and property by taking the honourable way out. He looked at his grandmother; she was obviously picturing it too. ‘Whenever I asked you how my grandfather died you said only that he had died for Rome.’

  ‘And so he did. But he died for his idea of Rome, the old Rome, the Republic, not the Rome that emerged after the years of civil war, the new Rome, the Empire.’

  ‘Do you look back at the Republic and wish that it still survived, Tute?’

  ‘Yes, but only for my husband’s sake. If it had survived I would have kept him longer. As to how Rome is governed now, I don’t care, as long as I’m left alone; but I think that later tonight Rome will come knocking on my door again, so we had better get all of you hidden.’

  ‘You think they’ll come out here?’ Vespasian asked. He had been lulled into a false sense of security by the familiar surroundings.

  ‘Of course; once they find nothing in Cosa they’re bound to search the surrounding countryside on their way north. But it’s all right, I’ve given orders to Attalus to mix your horses in with mine, and you, I’m afraid, will all have to spend the night in the loft above the slaves’ quarters.’

  ‘I didn’t know there was a loft there.’

  ‘That’s because it is very well hidden; your grandfather used it to shelter Pompey sympathisers who didn’t want to live in Rome under Caesar as they made their way north, out of Italia.’

  ‘I’m learning a lot of things tonight about my grandfather that I never knew.’

  ‘Why should you have known? You were only a child when you lived here, why should you have cared about politics? Now that you are a man, and becoming involved in politics, it’s important that you understand the danger that goes with making a political choice. Your grandfather understood it but in his case the side that seemed to serve Rome most honourably lost, so choose well because to fulfil your destiny you mustn’t lose.’

  Vespasian looked at Tertulla eagerly. ‘What do you mean: my “destiny”? I overheard my parents talk about omens at my birth that prophesied that I should go far but no one will tell me what that means. My mother swore everyone to silence.’

  Tertulla smiled again. ‘Then you should know that I cannot tell you either, because I too took that oath. What I can say is that the omens for you were very good, so good indeed that in these days of imperial power it was best not to make them public. However, omens from the gods will only come true if man plays his part and makes the right choices.’

  Vespasian had expected a cagey answer but drew some comfort out from this. ‘Thank you. You’ve helped me to understand something that I have never been able to put into words before; when I know that something is right I should have the strength of character to pursue it.’

  Tertulla leant forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You have grown in so many ways since I saw you last, my darling boy. But now we should find your friends and get you up into the loft; the Praetorians will soon be tiring of finding nothing in Cosa.’

  ‘Even if they don’t find us here we’ve still got to get past them somehow between here and Genua,’ Vespasian said struggling to his feet.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Tertulla replied supporting him underneath the arm as they left the room. ‘The best way to get to Genua, avoiding roadblocks and patrols and, at the same time, enabling you to spend more time here with me whilst resting your leg, is to go by sea.’

  CHAPTER XVIII

  ‘SO IT ALL comes down to who has the loyalty of the army, does it, Tute?’ Vespasian asked, resisting the urge to scratch the scab that had formed over his wound. ‘All these high ideals that men gave their lives for are now nothing more than a cover for the fact that power is no longer secured by constitutional right but by military might.’

  They were reclining in the triclinium on the night before Vespasian was due to leave. The last eleven days had passed too quickly for Vespasian. He had spent most of the time r
esting his leg whilst talking with Tertulla. During the day he would lie on a couch in the courtyard garden and then in the evenings they would dine alone in the triclinium. She told him stories of his grandfather’s exploits in the Republican cause. She told him of his hatred for Caesar and then for Augustus, and everything that they stood for; then of his disillusionment with the Senate and the Republican side, whose infighting and lack of decision caused their eventual defeat and the rise of autocratic power supported by Praetorian military muscle, the full extent of which, thankfully perhaps, Petro didn’t live to see.

  The Praetorians had come as Tertulla had expected. She had been kind and courteous to them and they had left an hour later satisfied that all that the house contained was an eccentric old woman, who could be of no harm to anyone but herself and her long-suffering slaves.

  Vespasian looked at his 87-year-old grandmother, whom the Praetorians had dismissed as innocuous; she was one of the last survivors of the most turbulent period in recent history. Her memory of the time was still clear and she had been able to answer Vespasian’s many questions. She had met Pompey, she had heard Caesar speak and she had seen Cleopatra when she came to Rome as Caesar’s guest and lover. After Caesar’s death she had hidden Marcus Brutus in this house, whilst Anthony’s legions marched north along the Via Aurelia to fight his co-conspirator, Decimus Brutus. The following day she had kissed her husband goodbye as he left for Greece with Marcus Brutus to join Cassius and the Republican army. Ten years later, as a widow, she and her only child, Vespasian’s father, had watched from the cliffs as the northern fleet sailed past, bound for Brundisium on the east coast, to join with Octavian before the fateful battle of Actium that finished Anthony and his lover Cleopatra and brought the Empire under the control of one man: Octavian, the Emperor Augustus.

  The table had been cleared, apart from a jug of wine and some water. The oil lamps flickered in the draughts that made their way around the house, extensions, like long creeping fingers, of the howling wind outside. The sound of Magnus and his friends’ carousing could just be heard above the gale blowing in rain from the sea. The crossroads brothers had spent their time riding around the estate, ostensibly looking out for patrols but in reality hunting. In the evening they would roast and eat the day’s kill, get uproariously drunk on Tertulla’s wine and then retire to bed with whichever of her slave girls they fancied.

  ‘It’s more that constitutional right is secured by military might,’ Tertulla replied, taking a sip from her cherished cup. ‘Tiberius was Augustus’ adoptive son so had the right to be Emperor although many would have preferred Germanicus. The loyalty of the army helps him maintain that right. We must hope that whoever he names as his successor can command the same loyalty.’

  A knock on the door interrupted them and they looked up to see Attalus, wet and bedraggled, holding a leather scroll-case.

  ‘You’ve not fallen into the impluvium again?’ Tertulla asked him in mock-surprise.

  ‘If you hadn’t spent all evening exercising the well-formed muscles in your drinking arm,’ Attalus replied, removing his wet cloak and throwing it at an underling, ‘you would perhaps remember that you sent me down to the port to see if the ship had arrived.’

  The day after the Praetorians’ visit Attalus had been despatched into Cosa to find a trading ship that was prepared, with no questions asked, to take passengers to Genua. He had returned the same evening with the news that he had found one for the extortionate price of 250 denarii; they were sailing to Ostia but would be back in Cosa by today.

  ‘And?’ Vespasian asked, hoping that the weather would keep him there for another couple of days.

  ‘It arrived mid-afternoon, before the wind got up; if it dies down by morning the captain promised to be on the beach below us by the third hour.’

  Vespasian couldn’t hide his disappointment.

  ‘I know that you would have preferred earlier, master,’ Attalus said, deliberately misreading him, ‘but I’m afraid that you’ll just have to endure an extra hour or two of her excruciatingly inaccurate memories.’

  ‘How would you know they’re inaccurate, you old satyr?’ Tertulla said, grinning. ‘You’ve never listened to a word I’ve said since the sorry day that I bought you.’

  ‘What? Oh, this was at the port aedile’s office,’ Attalus said, handing her the leather tube. ‘It’s quite a modern device; if you remove the lid you’ll—’

  ‘Get out and go and join your playmates,’ Tertulla laughed, swiping at her steward with the case.

  Attalus departed with a conspiratorial smile to Vespasian.

  ‘What is it, Tute?’ Vespasian asked as she pulled the scroll from its container.

  ‘A letter from your father,’ she replied, unrolling it.

  As his grandmother read Vespasian sipped his wine and recalled the conversations they’d had over the past few days. She had helped him to flesh out half-formed opinions and corrected many of his assumptions about the difference between the two political systems: the Republic and the Empire. She had shown him how the freedoms enjoyed by individual citizens during the Republic were slowly eradicated by the rise of Rome as a colonial power. The army could no longer be just a few legions made up of citizen farmers brought together for a season’s campaigning close to home. The conquests of Greece, Asia, Hispania and Africa had meant that the men were away for years at a time whilst their crops withered and died in the fields. They returned home to find their farms overgrown and their families destitute. They were bought out at rock-bottom prices by wealthy landowners or, if they were tenants, kicked out by their landlords. This gave rise to the great estates that he could see today, farmed by the multitudes of slaves that were the by-product of Rome’s Empire. The dispossessed citizen soldiers had nowhere to go other than Rome. There they became the new underclass of urban poor, scraping by in the days before the grain dole, passing their time at the free games; a degrading end to a once proud class of farmer-soldiers who had fought for the Republic because they had a stake in it.

  But the legions still needed soldiers to secure the new provinces and to add to them. The tax revenue from these newly conquered lands was huge and Rome grew rich, so the idea of a professional standing army, made up of the urban poor who had no other chance of earning a living, was born. And so the grandsons of the very men who had once fought willingly for their Republic now served for twenty-five years in the legions for pay and the promise of land on discharge. Their loyalty was now not to a republic, in which they no longer had a stake, but to the generals whom they followed and to whom they looked for their promised farm and the chance to raise a family in dignity upon their discharge.

  The new system had given rise to a war of wills between the Senate, who hated the idea of giving away land, and the generals, who were anxious to get their veterans settled. Once settled they kept their loyalty to their general to whom they owed everything. The balance of power shifted away from the Senate as the generals amassed huge client bases on which they could call at any time they felt their dignitas threatened or ambitions thwarted by an increasingly jealous Senate.

  The civil wars soon started as the generals battled for supremacy over each other, leading to half a century of chaos. The Senate was divided and powerless to exert its authority. Order was eventually restored by the only logical means: rule by one man. The Republic had been a victim of its own success; it had created an empire but had been unable to control it. Vespasian now understood: it took an emperor to rule an empire.

  ‘It seems that Asinius managed to get your parents out of Rome safely,’ Tertulla said, putting down the letter and bringing him out of his reverie.

  He felt a jab of guilt as he realised that he’d hardly thought of them in the time that he’d spent in Tertulla’s company. ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ he said.

  ‘Asinius asked your father to write to you here in the hope that his warning would reach you in time: don’t go to the military camp at Genua.’

  ‘Why
not? I have to get to Thracia.’

  ‘He’s heard from his source in the Guard that they’re looking for a military tribune passing through Genua on his way to the Ninth Hispana in Pannonia. A Praetorian tribune by the name of Macro and a legionary from the Urban Cohort are waiting there to identify him.’

  ‘So what should I do? Make the journey to Thracia on my own?’

  ‘My darling boy, if you’re going to command men then you’re going to have to do better than that. You’ve just asked my advice and in the same breath made a ridiculous suggestion. The key to being a successful commander is to know immediately what to do when things go awry. A swift and correct decision will always endear you to your men; they will respect you, learn to love you even; but above all they will follow and support you. So you tell me what you should do.’

  Vespasian thought for a moment. ‘Wait for the relief column to leave the camp, track it for a couple of days to check that there are no Praetorians amongst it and then join it late.’

  ‘Good. Next time something goes wrong think like a leader, not a follower.’ Tertulla took a sip from her cup, placed it down on the table and looked at him intently. ‘I believe that as the imperial family spends more time in its palaces and less on campaign where the soldiers can see its ability to lead it will start to lose the support of the legions. At that point the Praetorian Guard and the legions of Germania, Hispania, Syria and elsewhere would all declare for different emperors; civil war would erupt again. The Empire will eventually fall into the lap of the general with the most loyal army; let us hope that he has Rome’s best interests at heart. Treat your soldiers well, Vespasian, lead them to victories, because there’s no reason why you should not be that general.’

  Vespasian laughed. ‘Tute, you really are losing your wits; whatever the gods have decreed as my destiny it certainly is not to be Emperor. Imagine it, me?’

  ‘Perhaps one day you will imagine it,’ Tertulla said quietly, rising to her feet. ‘But not today. Come, my darling, we should sleep.’