The Blood of Rome

by Simon Scarrow

  He turned and rapped sharply on the door. He waited, but there was no response and he pounded with the flat of his fist.

  ‘All right!’ Petronella yelled from within. ‘Coming!’

  The bolt slid back and then the latch and the door opened a fraction as her face appeared. Then her tired expression vanished and she beamed as she threw the door open. Then she froze.

  ‘What in Hades is that thing?’

  ‘This thing is called Cassius. He’s kind of a pet,’ Cato explained, and then continued in a more ingratiating tone. ‘For Lucius to play with.’

  ‘Play with?’ Petronella cocked her head to one side as she examined the beast. ‘Ride on, more like. Is he tame?’

  ‘Define tame.’ Cato stepped over the threshold and Cassius followed, looking up at Petronella warily as Cato spoke reassuringly. ‘She’s also tame, boy. Doesn’t bite.’

  ‘Oh thanks.’ Petronella made a face, then anxiously looked past Cato into the street. ‘Where’s my man? Where’s Macro?’

  ‘He’s fine. Just seeing to the camp before he comes here.’

  ‘Seeing to the camp?’ Petronella frowned. ‘He’s been away for months and he’s not bothering to come and find me until he’s put up a few tents.’

  ‘Exigencies of army life, I’m afraid. He won’t be any longer than he has to.’

  ‘He’d better not be.’

  ‘So, where’s my son?’

  Petronella nodded towards the interior. ‘I only just got him down for a nap. Little bugger’s been a right nightmare last few days, begging your pardon. He’s been stroppy and difficult to feed. Up half the night and then bad-tempered the next day. I’ve been teaching him his letters. Or trying to.’

  Cato laughed. ‘Then you should be glad Macro and I are back to instil a little discipline.’

  ‘You?’ She sniffed. ‘You two wind him up worse than ever.’

  They turned at the patter of feet and then Lucius let out a squeal of delight and ran across the room. ‘Dada!’

  Cato swept him up and planted a big kiss on his cheek and Lucius pulled away at the touch of his bristles. Then let out a scream as Cassius jumped up and rested his big paws on Cato’s waist and licked Lucius’s feet.

  ‘Wolf!’ Lucius cried out. ‘Eating me!’

  ‘He just wants to be your friend,’ Cato explained. ‘Although if you don’t start behaving for Petronella he may just eat you.’

  Lucius looked at him earnestly. ‘I’ll be good. Promise. Please don’t let the wolf eat me.’

  ‘All right then.’ Cato gave him a hug and sat him on the edge of the table beside the entrance. Then he handed the leash to Petronella and shut the door. ‘Take Cassius to the yard for now. He can be fed a bit later, after I’ve had a chance to say hello to Lucius properly.’

  Petronella narrowed her eyes. ‘And do I look like a kennel slave? Oh, all bloody right.’

  She leaned down and wagged a finger at the dog. ‘Cassius, eh? Well you better behave yourself if you don’t want any trouble.’

  Before she could react he licked her face and wagged his tail.

  ‘I think you’ve made a good first impression,’ said Cato.

  ‘Well, he bloody hasn’t.’ Petronella yanked the leash and headed towards the rear of the house. ‘Come on, you.’

  Cato hunched down in front of his son. ‘So, Petronella says you’ve been a naughty boy. I hope that isn’t true.’

  Lucius kicked his feet loosely in mid-air and lowered his head, looking at Cato from under his brow as he smiled mischievously.

  By the time Macro reached the house dusk was falling and a few lamps had been lit to provide light inside. Cato let him in, and as Macro took off his cloak and hung it on a peg by the door, Lucius leaped up and rushed over to him. Macro crouched and gave him a hug and then ruffled his wavy hair.

  ‘That’s way beyond regulation length, lad. Needs a cut. And I know just the lady to see to that. But where is she? Where can Petronella be, eh?’

  ‘Right here . . .’ She stood on the threshold of the atrium, hands on hips. ‘And why have you kept me waiting so long?’

  ‘Waiting?’ Macro looked to Cato helplessly.

  ‘Oh! You fool. Come to me!’ She laughed.

  Macro gently eased Lucius aside and rose to his feet before Petronella rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard on the lips. Then she drew back and held his hands. ‘I need a word with you, alone.’

  ‘If that’s all right with you, sir?’ Macro turned to Cato.

  ‘Indeed.’ Cato grinned. ‘I’m sure there’s plenty for you two to, ah, talk about.’

  Macro winked and then led Petronella upstairs and a moment later the bed creaked and there were gasps and cries from Petronella and muttered affectionate blandishments from Macro.

  Cato and Lucius were sitting in the corner playing with some wooden gladiators and the boy stopped for a moment and looked up at the ceiling as they listened to the noises from above.

  ‘Uncle Macro and Petronella are wrestling again, aren’t they, Dada?’

  ‘Yes, they are. I am afraid it might be quite a long bout.’ Cato smiled and decided it might be a good time to change the subject. ‘So, tell me what you’ve been doing since we’ve been away.’

  To the accompaniment of Macro and Petronella’s amorous reunion, which lasted longer than Cato would have thought possible before all went quiet, he listened with growing pleasure and affection as Lucius told him of their daily lessons, which he liked sometimes, and their walks through the town to the market, where he counted out the money for the food they bought, which he always liked. He also spoke of their attempts at fishing and how he was better than Petronella. How he did not like the girl in the house next door, who always seemed to be sitting on her step when Lucius went out and smiling at him. All of it was a kind of soothing poetry to Cato’s ears, as he became immersed in a world without soldiers, without war, without death or mutilation, without politics and treason, without fear. For a moment he felt the poignant longing for the simple pleasures and innocent curiosity of childhood that all adults felt at times.

  A fist pounding on the door broke into Cato’s reverie. He patted Lucius on the head and pointed to his toy basket. ‘I think you should put those away now. It’s time for bed.’

  Lucius pouted. ‘Must I?’

  ‘I’m not Petronella. You’ll do as I say.’

  Cato stood and went to the door. There was a soldier standing outside with a torch. Behind him stood another man with the hood of his cloak raised. The soldier stepped aside respectfully as the man entered and closed the door behind him. He slipped his hood back and Cato stiffened as he saw General Corbulo looking around.

  ‘Are we alone?’ Then he spied Lucius quietly putting away his wooden gladiators. ‘Who else is in the house?’

  ‘Centurion Macro and his woman are upstairs, sir. The silversmith keeps to the far end of the house.’

  ‘Good.’ Corbulo went and stood over Lucius. ‘Your boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘A fine lad. You must be proud.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And I’m sure he will make a fine soldier one day.’

  Cato did not respond and then he leaned down and set Lucius on his feet. ‘Off to bed with you, now. Dada needs to talk with his guest.’

  Lucius looked up. ‘Are you a friend of Dada?’

  Corbulo smiled thinly. ‘Something like that, young man. Now do as your father says, eh?’

  After Lucius had padded out of the room Corbulo sat at the table and his expression hardened. ‘I went over your report when I got back from hunting. It did not make for good reading.’

  Cato had prepared himself for such a moment, and met his superior’s gaze steadfastly as Corbulo continued: ‘I don’t imagine our masters in Rome will be very pleased with the outcome of your mission. Not that it was carried out on their orders, admittedly. The mission was my initiative. When word reaches Rome that we have lost a valuable a
sset in Rhadamistus, there will be a demand that someone is held accountable for his death. However, I will be able to defend myself – as will you – on the basis that Armenia had already fallen under the sway of Tiridates and the Parthians and that it was essential to at least attempt to strike before the enemy consolidated their hold over it. We might even argue that a neutral Armenia should be considered something of a success, even if we lost a client king in the process. But you know how these things tend to be twisted for political ends.’

  ‘Indeed I do, sir. The death of Rhadamistus will be presented as an affront to Roman prestige and power and one of the senatorial factions will demand your recall so that a new man can be sent out to teach the Armenians a lesson, as well as the Parthians.’

  ‘Quite.’ Corbulo nodded. ‘And it is bound to be some half-witted favourite of Nero with limited experience who wants to make a reputation for himself. The situation is dangerous enough without making it worse by having some idiot blundering about in the desert just like Crassus. I will not permit that to happen. Therefore we must recover Armenia, and then strike at Parthia, and we must do it soon, before my enemies back in Rome have a chance to work their mischief.’ He leaned forward. ‘You haven’t spoken to anyone at my headquarters about the contents of your report, I hope?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. Then I suggest you keep your distance from the headquarters staff, and I will file your report away amongst my personal papers and neither of us will speak about the mission, at least until I lead my army into Armenia in the spring.’

  ‘But, sir, how can we keep this a secret? My men will talk the moment they visit the city’s taverns and crack open the first jar of wine. And I can hardly forbid them to say anything. That’s the surest way of starting gossip.’

  ‘I agree. So we say nothing. If your men talk, then word will inevitably reach the ears of an officer, or a spy working for a rival senatorial faction. Then they will write a report and send it to Rome, where it will be discussed and a message will be sent back demanding a detailed report from me. I will of course send a message back saying the matter of Rhadamistus’s death will be investigated. With any luck I can drag it out for long enough to make it irrelevant. But you must play your part too.’

  ‘My part, sir?’

  ‘. . . is to keep your mouth shut. If pressed you say you got your man to Artaxata and got him on the throne and then returned to Syria, as ordered. If it means leaving a few details out, it’s going to take a long time before the full story is known. By then, we have to hope that we’ll be well into the campaign and have a victory or two to celebrate. And we both know how easily good news flushes out the stench of bad news.’

  Corbulo paused to let Cato take stock and then stood up. ‘You’re a fine officer, Cato. From what you say in your report, you were a victim of circumstance and Rhadamistus’s mistakes. But that won’t save you being censured by the Senate, and howled down by the mob. You owe it to yourself and Rome to have a chance at redemption. And that chance will come when the army marches in the spring.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Corbulo raised his hood again and made for the door and pulled it open. The soldier was still waiting outside and the light of his torch lit up the general’s face, blood red. He paused on the threshold and tapped Cato on the chest.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable here in Tarsus. I need to toughen the men up. I’ll be taking the army up into the mountains for training during the winter. It’ll be hard, and they’ll hate me for it, but when we strike at Parthia I want men at my back who I can count on. Are you such a man, Tribune Cato?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Corbulo gave him a hard stare. ‘Good. Now enjoy your time with your son as much as you can. War is coming. War with Parthia. And when it comes, you and the rest of the men in my army will be tested as never before. Count on it.’

  Author’s Note

  It is difficult for someone living now fully to appreciate the challenges facing the Romans in what is blithely refered to as the ‘Middle East’. What is it the middle of, exactly? And east of where? Like so many terms casually used it tends to hide its assumptions and thereby lure policy-makers into actions based on false premises, or just plain ignorance. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of that in recent decades and it is rather tempting to make easy judgements about history repeating itself with respect to western intervention and Rome’s incursions two thousand years earlier. However, history does not simply repeat itself. Although, as we shall see below, there are certain homologies between then and now which speak more to policy models than to specific characters and events.

  The Blood of Rome deals with Rome’s rivalry with Parthia over the kingdom of Armenia. The struggle between the two empires endured for hundreds of years with no decisive outcome. The first official encounter between the two powers came early in the first century BC when the Roman general Sulla met a Parthian embassy close to the River Euphrates. From the outset relations between the two sides were characterised by suspicion and ignorance. This was primarily because of the huge cultural differences between Rome and Parthia. The latter had no standing army, and was ruled by a despot. By contrast, the Romans at that time had largely professionalised their army, and the state was governed by vying political factions. While the Parthians viewed the Romans as aggressive land-grabbers, the Romans regarded their opponents as effeminate, untrustworthy and barbaric. These mutual stereotypes were to shape relations between the two powers ever after, at huge cost in treasure and manpower for both sides.

  Not only were Rome and Parthia different culturally, they were – more significantly – different militarily. It has often been pointed out that the Roman military was ponderous and therefore generally tied to their lines of communication, which necessarily limited the range and speed of operations. The Parthian military was mainly based on horsemen – archers and cataphracts – with nobles being responsible for supplying a body of men to serve the ruler of Parthia when the need arose. This meant that the Parthians could advance swiftly and were very effective at fighting in a hit-and-run style. The result was that when the Romans met the Parthians on open ground, the Romans were at a disadvantage. It is worth recalling that Crassus and his legions came to grief at the hands of a far smaller Parthian force primarily composed of horse-archers, who were able to stand off and whittle down the helpless legionaries. What this meant was that later Roman commanders decided to forsake an advance across the open landscape of Mesopotamia and chose to advance over the mountainous ground of Armenia to the north, which was much more favourable to their infantry.

  Unluckily for the people of Armenia, they found themselves astride the main campaign route between the two powers. Rome needed control of Armenia to provide a route into Parthia, and to secure their northern flank. This is why Armenia came to assume such vital importance in the Roman mind. From the Parthian perspective, the significance of Armenia was based on a long history of loose control over the kingdom, and far closer cultural ties than Rome ever had with the people of Armenia. As is often the case, the perceived significance of the prize grew out of all proportion to its actual strategic significance.

  Once Rome had been worsted by Parthia, the enemy assumed an almost mythic status as the supreme rival to Rome. Roman generals saw war against Parthia, and control of Armenia, as an opportunity for personal aggrandisement and vied with each other, and their antecedents, to win glory by humbling Parthia. In doing so, they needed to present Parthia as a threat that was out of all proportion to the actual dangers posed by the enemy empire. As noted above, the Parthian military was geared towards short-term mobile warfare, and there was never any serious intent to invade and conquer the eastern Roman empire. However, for the Romans to recognise and accept that would have robbed them of the justification to partake of glory-seeking that was a key aspect of their character. A dangerous enemy was needed, and so a dangerous enemy Parthia became, and remained.

  If we indulge a taste for making h
istorical parallels, this tendency is a feature of much policy-making in recent decades, as was the case with the infamous ‘Domino Theory’ that led to the disastrous war and the defeat of the US in Vietnam. Certainly, a realistic appraisal of any threat posed by Vietnam and Parthia might have ensured that the vast costs expended by both the Romans and Americans were avoided. A diplomatic solution in both cases would have saved very many lives and would have been more effective in the long term. But populist leaders have never shied away from sabre-rattling to excite the nationalist fervour of the masses. It is a much easier sell than the protracted diplomatic negotiations and compromise that peace entails. Indeed, Emperor Augustus was frequently criticised for coming to a diplomatic arrangement with Parthia rather than waging war.

  Which brings us on to the matter of the challenges faced by Roman commanders that were so different to those faced by modern armies conducting operations in the region. In the first place there was the slow dissemination of news. Today, any event can be reported to a global audience in a matter of minutes. Two thousand years ago, it could take years for Rome to become aware of the succession of one ruler by another in the lands to the east of the frontier. Then there was the nature of the terrain itself. In the absence of Google Earth or even maps, Roman commanders literally had no idea what lay ahead of them. Where a route might lead, what water supplies were nearby, what towns lay ahead was all a mystery until the legionaries actually marched over the ground in question. Marching blindly into terra incognita was made more perilous still by the unreliability and treachery of local guides, who often led Roman armies into traps or inhospitable terrain that whittled down their numbers. The sheer scale of the Parthian empire meant that any plans for long-term conquest would have required far more troops than the Romans could have concentrated for the task. Like the coalition forces in a much later Mesopotamian incursion, they were spread too thinly to maintain any more than nominal control over the ground. This then led to the usual intractable political problem of not being willing to invest in sufficient manpower to achieve a decisive result, while at the same time not being able to afford the political costs of withdrawal. The inevitable result of this, as we have seen all too often throughout history, is a protracted and costly occupation that ultimately ends in retreat and damage to reputation.