CHAPTER XXIII
THE EMPEROR
The liberations of public slaves from _ergastula_ in Turin, Milan,Placentia, Parma, Mutina, Bononia, Nuceria, Spolitum and Narnia resultedin the formation of eighteen tumultuary centuries, which, between Narniaand Ocriculum, during a long noon-halt, were formed into the semblance ofthree cohorts, thus we approached Rome as nine cohorts: three of thedeputies from Britain; three more of the recruits from Gaul, presumablylike the British legionaries, loyal patriots, bent on foiling Perennis,and saving their beloved Emperor; and three more composed of the contentsof a dozen or more _ergastula_, opened as the whim took the veteransergeants, and assumed to contain not pilferers, runaways or evil-doers,but innocent victims of the malignity of the understrappers of thatunspeakable Perennis.
As we drew near Rome Agathemer and I discussed our situation and prospectswith increasing alarm. After we left Narnia the watch on us was not soclose and we might have escaped. But we had seen a score of attempts atescape, by various rascals, foiled and ending in the butchery of thewould-be fugitives. While escape was possible the risk was very great.Also, Agathemer argued, we were too near to Rome to be safe if we gotclear away. Between dread of death if caught and fear of we knew not whatif we escaped, we stuck to our cookery. Mixed with our projects forbettering our prospects we talked much of our amazement at the treatmentwhich the deputation and its associates had met in Italy. Manifestly thetownsfolk and their officials were not only overawed, but helpless. Ifthere had been no Rome, no Republic, no Praetorians, no Prefect of thePalace, no central authority whatever we could not have been morecompletely free from hindrance, coercion or question, Yet Agathemer and Icould not but conjecture that the Senate, Perennis and Commodus had beenpromptly and minutely informed of all our doings, of our progress, of ourapproach; and had taken measures to deal with us and our instigators. Wefelt panicky.
Spouting long tirades about their loyalty to the Emperor, their hatred ofPerennis and their eagerness to foil one and save the other, ourirresponsible frontier centurions let their men and us loiter southwardthrough Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria as they had loitered on the other sideof the Alps, seldom marching more than ten miles a day. So that we leftOcriculum on the tenth day before the Kalends of August and stoppedovernight at each change-station.
We had had fair weather all the way from Placentia, except a heavy rain atAriminum and showers in the mountains between Forum Sempronii and Nuceria.When day dawned on us at Rostrata Villa, on the eighth day before theKalends of August, it dawned cloudy, but not threatening. After the usualcamp breakfast of porridge and wine, we fell in, by now fairly decentmarchers, and set off for Rubrae. But before we had marched a mile, thelow clouds soaked us with such a downpour as I had seldom seen of a Julymorning near Rome. So heavy and so unrelenting was the rain that we wereglad to halt at the change-house at the twentieth mile-stone, where theroad from Capena to Veii crosses the Flaminian Highway and where there isa prosperous village as large as many a small town. There we foundquarters and food ready for us and were well entertained. Ad Vicesimum, asthe place is called, is only four miles nearer Rome than Villa Rostrata.
It was about midway of that four-mile march in the pouring rain that I sawby the roadside three immobile horsemen, their forms swathed in horsemen'srain-cloaks, their faces hidden under broad-brimmed rain-hats, lined upwith their horses' noses barely a horse-length from the roadway, watchingfrom a little knoll our column as it passed. The middle horseman of thethree looked familiar. I glanced back at him and met his eyes, intenselywatching me from under his dripping hat brim, as I trudged on the edge ofthe trudging rabble. A hot qualm surged through me. It was, it certainlywas, the very same man I had seen in the very same guise on the roadbelow Villa Andivia as Tanno and I passed by on our way to our fatal brawlat Vediamnum; the very man who had peered in at me and Capito during hisfatal conference with me in Nemestronia's water-garden, the man whom Tannohad asserted that he knew for an Imperial spy. I felt recognition in hisgaze; felt that he knew me for my very self. And his nose was hooked.
At our halting place, when Agathemer and I were alone, I asked him inGreek if he had noticed the three stationary horsemen. He at once, withoutmy mentioning my suspicions, declared that he also had recognized themiddle horseman precisely as I had. What his presence there might forbode,what his apparent recognition of me might portend, we could notconjecture. We agreed that, although both of us had been on the lookoutfor Imperial emissaries all the way from Placentia, and alertly watchingfrom Ariminum southwards, this was the first time we had set eyes on anyman whom we could take for a secret-service man. That so much time hadelapsed since the authorities must have been warned of our approach, thatwe should have advanced so near Rome and yet that this should be the firstvisible indication of espionage upon us, amazed both me and Agathemer.
Next day, a cloudy but rainless day, we marched only to Rubrae, thechange-station nearest Rome. There, as at every previous halt, we foundthe authorities apprised of our approach and prepared to lodge and feedus. And, as always since we left Nuceria, we were comfortably sheltered ina camp all ready for our occupancy and lavishly provided with varied foodand passable wine.
Next day, the sixth day before the Kalends of August, dawned exquisitelyfair and bright, with a soft steady breeze; a perfect July day, mild butnot too warm. Our elected sergeants, now quite habituated to their dutiesand authority as centurions, routed us up early and, after a leisurelycamp-breakfast, we fell in and set off on the last stage of this amazingunopposed march of fifteen hundred insurgent mutineers for nineteenhundred miles, in making which they had so loitered that they had consumedon the road more than half a year and along which they had added to theircompany casual associates twice as numerous as themselves. We left Rubraean excited horde, for the veterans were keyed up to a tense pitch ofexpectancy by their anticipation of they knew not what culmination totheir insane adventure and their accidental recruits were aquiver withuneasiness and apprehension.
The Mulvian Bridge over the Tiber is not more than four miles from Rubraealong the winding Flaminian Highway and we were crossing it before thethird hour of the day was past. Marching with the first of the threecenturies formed at Placentia I had about five-sixths of our column aheadof me. So I did not see, did not even glimpse, did not, from far towardsthe rear, so much as guess what was happening. I knew only that, as I wasmore than half way across the Mulvian Bridge, a wave of cheers started farforward in our column and ran back to my century and all the way to therearmost men. What had occurred we did not know, but we broke ranks andflowed out of the road to left and right, as did the men ahead of us,becoming almost a mob, despite the remonstrances and orders of ourdisgusted sergeants. They restrained us to some extent, but we were keptback more by the fact that the foremost men blocked the highway, the menwho had been marching next them blocked the fields to right and left ofthe highway and the rest of us were checked behind them, like water abovea dam.
As we stood there, packed together, with hardly a semblance of ranks keptanywhere, craning to see over the heads of the men in front of us and totry to see past and between the many big and tall tombs and mausoleumswhich flanked the road on either side, a period of tense silence orblurred murmurings was ended by a second great surge of cheers from frontto rear. We all cheered till we were hoarse. Again we peered and listenedand questioned each other, again came a roar of cheering like a seabillow. Again and again alternated the half silence and the uproar. Beforewe learned what was happening or had happened word came from mouth tomouth that we were going on. The press in front of us gradually meltedaway, we were able to sidle into the roadway, reform ranks and tramp onRomewards.
After a very brief march we turned aside to our right into a meadow on thewest of the road and its flanking rows of tombs, between the Highway andthe Tiber, about half way from Mulvian Bridge to the Flaminian Gate ofRome; that is, about half a mile from each. There we found a meticulouslylaid-out and perfectly appointed camp, precisely suited to th
e forty-fivehundred of us and our requisitioned mules, wagons and what not. Itcontained some four hundred and fifty tents, set on clipped grass alongrolled and gravelled streets as straight as bricklayers' guide-boards; allabout a paved square of ample size, on the rear of which was set up agorgeous commander's tent of the whitest canvas, striped with red almostas deep, rich and glowing as the Imperial crimson, and manifestly meant toimitate it as closely as such a dyestuff could. On either side of thisPraetorium were a dozen tents, smaller indeed than the Praetorium, butmuch larger than tents set up for us, presumably for the commanders'aides. In front of the Praetorium, between it and the square, was a wide,broad and high platform of new brickwork, paved on top, railed with solid,low, carved railings set in short carved oak posts. The corner posts, andtwo others dividing the front and back of the platform equally, were talland supported an awning of striped canvas like that of the commander'stent.
Goggling with curiosity we, as we deployed to our quarters, stared hard atthe magnificent tent and sumptuous platform with its gorgeous awning. Onceat our quarters, I and Agathemer, of course, must cook and serve food toour century. Only after all were fed did we, in common with all the middleand rear of our road-column, learn what had occurred.
While we ate, our sergeants, while they also ate somehow, held acenturions' council, at which those of the fifty-four who had not been farenough forward on the Highway to see and hear were informed, by those whohad, of what had happened. When our sergeant returned from this council hetold us, in a jumbled and mumbled attempt at an address.
From what he told me and from what I heard later I gather that, as thecolumn debouched from the bridge, its head was met and checked by a bodyof mounted Praetorian Guards. Their tribune, in the name of the Emperor,ordered the column to halt and bade its centurions deploy their men rightand left and mass them in a largish space free of big tombs. As theydeployed the Praetorians also deployed to left and right of the Highwayand the foremost mutineers descried on the roadway the splendid horses andgorgeous trappings of the Emperor's personal staff, among whom, from thestatues, busts and painted panel-portraits of him which they had seendaily in their own quarters and countless times on their road to Rome, themore alert of them recognized their liege.
Then rose that unexpected wave of cheering which had first apprized us inthe rear that something unusual was toward. Commodus, as I heard fromPublius Cordatus himself, after our nap and before the Emperor's return,was mounted on a tall sorrel such as his father had always preferred onhis frontier campaigns. Also he was garbed not only as his father hadhabitually been when on frontier expeditions, but seemingly, in one of hisold outfits. For not only Cordatus, but a dozen more, declared that hishelmet, corselet and the plates of his kilt-straps, were of ungilded,unchased, plain steel, not even bright with polishing, but tarnished, allbut rusty, with exposure to rain, mist and sun; his plume and cloak rain-faded and sun-faded till their crimson showed almost brown; his scabbardplain, dingy leather; his saddle of similar cheap, durable leather, hissaddle-cloth of a crimson faded as brown as his cloak and plume. This wasprecisely the Spartan simplicity which Aurelius, as more than half aStoic, had always affected, partly from an innate tendency towards self-restraint and modesty, partly that his example might, at first, offset thesumptuosity of Verus and, after his death, might inculcate, by example,economy in his lavish and self-indulgent retinue.
Whatever the motive, by this semi-histrionic effort at self-effacement theEmperor made himself tenfold conspicuous among his staff-officers, whoseplumes, cloaks, kilts, and saddle-cloths blazed with crimson, green andgold, blue and silver and even crimson and gold.
Commodus, in any gear, was not only a tall, well-knit, impressive figureof a man, but, in his most negligent moods, he had something about himdominating, masterful, princely and Imperial. The sight of him cowed allwho could then see him. Steadily he eyed them as they finished theirtumultuary deployment and pressed forward to see and hear. When they werepacked as closely as possible till no more could get within earshot hespoke:
"Fellow soldiers, what does this mean?"
All were too awed at the sight of their venerated Caesar for any man tospeak up at once and the Emperor repeated:
"Fellow-soldiers, what does this mean? Tell me, I am your fellow-soldier."
Then Sextius Baculus himself replied, choking and hesitating, quailingbefore his lord:
"We are your loyal soldiers from Britain; a deputation come afoot andafloat almost two thousand miles to warn you of what no man in Rome, forfear of you more than of your treacherous Prefect, dares to warn you.Perennis is no fit guardian of your safety; in fact he is of all men mostunfit. For more than two years now he has been laying his plans to haveyou assassinated, and to make Emperor in your place his eldest son, thedarling of the Illyrian legionaries. We have come to save you, foil himand see him and his dead."
"Fellow-soldiers," the Emperor spoke at once, loudly and clearly, "Iacclaim your purpose and welcome your good intentions. But I mean to proveto you that I am in fact as well as in title Tribune and Prince of theRepublic, Emperor of its armies, Augustus and Caesar. Your solicitude Iapplaud, but I feel better able to take care of myself than can any otherman save myself. I fear no man and appoint no man I distrust. I distrustfew men after appointment. You lodge a grave charge against a man I havetrusted, appointed and then trusted. I condemn few men unheard. As yourImperator I command you to camp where my legates indicate, to eat a heartynoon meal, to sleep, or at least rest in your tents, two full hours. Aboutthe tenth hour of the day I shall return, my trusty guards about me andPerennis himself in my retinue. From the platform of your camp, as a chiefcommander should, I will harangue you, and from that platform, after hehas heard from me your accusation, my Prefect of the Praetorium shall maketo you his defense. After he has spoken you shall hear me deliver just andimpartial judgment, a judgment no man of you can but accept as fair andrighteous.
"And now farewell, until the tenth hour."
At which word he had reined up, wheeled and spurred his mettlesome mountand thereupon vanished with his staff in a cloud of dust, at full gallop.
According to the Emperor's behest we rested in our tents after thecenturions had each harangued his men. But if any slept, it was a marvel.All were too excited to sleep and every tent, as far as I could learn,talked without cessation. By the tenth hour, when the sun was visiblydeclining and the warmth of the midday abating, we were all assembled inthe camp-square, the men helmeted and with their swords at their sides,but without shields or spears.
It was perfectly in keeping with the inconsistency of the mutineers thatthe crowd of men in the camp-square, instead of being marshalled bycenturies under their sergeants, was allowed to assemble mob-fashion aseach man came and pushed. Thus Agathemer and I, who should have beenpreparing to cook our company's evening meal, were not only in the throng,but well forward among the men and, in fact, pressed legs and chestsagainst the legs and backs of two veterans not far from the rearmostcenturions of the gathering of sergeants, not sixty feet from theplatform, and nearly opposite its middle, though a little to the left. Fewveteran privates heard and saw better than we.
When the Imperial cortege arrived and the platform began to fill, we two,like the men around us and like, I feel sure, the entire gathering, wereamazed to see among the men four women, and Agathemer and I were doublyamazed to recognize one as Marcia. Agathemer, who knew the former slavesand present freedwomen of the Palace far better than I, whispered that theothers were the sister and wife of Perennis and the wife of Cleander, likehim a former slave and pampered freedman, and for long his rival.
The platform, of course, was lined and partly filled with aides, lictors,equerries, pages, and other Imperial satellites before the Emperor rodeup, dismounted and appeared among his retinue. He strode springily to thefront and seated himself on the crimson cushion of the ivory curule seatwhich a lictor placed for him. Marcia, to my tenfold amazement, thenseated herself on a not dissimilar maple folding-seat,
spread for her by apage. She was placed at the very front of the platform, next him on hisright. Next her was Cleander's wife, also, to my still greater amazement,similarly seated, as were the two almost as ornately clad ladies withPerennis, who sat on his left, he standing to the left of the Emperor, whowas set only a short yard in advance of the row of officials and intimateswho lined the front of the platform.
Until all who had a right to places on the platform had mounted it andeach had stationed himself in his proper position, the Emperor sat quietlyregarding the mob of men facing him, eyeing us keenly and steadily. Anequerry leaned over and whispered to him and he stood up. I could feel themen thrill, even more positively than they had thrilled when he appearedfrom among his retinue. I conjectured, instantly, that he had felt, if notan actual dread of the mutineers, at least a doubt as to his ability toquell them and a need for all possible adventitious aids. Thus I explainedto myself his having donned, that morning, trappings such as his fatherhad worn on frontier campaigns, apparently with the purpose of elicitingthe sympathies of the men.
He now wore a gilded helmet, elaborately chased, and its crest a carvedChimaera spouting golden flames, which golden spout of flames, with theChimaera's wings, formed the support from which waved his crimson plume,all of brilliantly dyed ostrich feathers. His corselet was similarlygilded or, perhaps, like the helmet, even of pure gold hammered andchased, adorned with depictions of the battles of the gods and giantsabove, and below with Trajan's victories over the Parthians. His kilt-straps were of crimson leather, plated with gilt or gold overlappingscales. His cloak was of the newest and most brilliant Imperial crimson.The platform was so high that I could clearly see his shapely calves andthe gold eagles embroidered on the sky-blue soft leather of his half-boots. In his hand, he held a short baton or truncheon, such as all field-commanders carry as an emblem of independent command, such as I had seenat Tegulata in the hand of Pescennius Niger. It was gilded or gold-platedand its ends were chased pine-cones. Manifestly every detail of hishabiting had been meticulously considered and the total effect carefullycalculated. Certainly he was not only handsome and winsome, but dignifiedand imposing, truly a princely and Imperial figure. Evidently he hadcalculatingly arrayed himself so as to appear at one and the same time asEmperor and as a field-commander. The effect on the men, if I could judge,was all he had wished, all he could have hoped for. He dominated the mobof men as he dominated the platform.
There was no need of his wave of the arm enjoining silence. The silence,from his first movement as he rose, was as complete as possible.
"Fellow-soldiers," he said, and he spoke as well as the most practicedorator, audibly to all, smoothly and charmingly, "you have come fromBritain across the sea, across Gaul, across the Alps, and half the lengthof Italy, with the best intentions, with the sincerest hearts, to apprizeme of danger to me in my own Palace, danger unsuspected by me, as youbelieve. Your loyalty, your good intentions, your sincerity I realize andrejoice over. But I find it hard to believe that any soldiers in distantfrontier garrisons can be better informed than the Prince himself of whatgoes on in Italy, in Rome, in the very Palace. You have lodged the gravestaccusations against one of my most important and most trusted officials. Ishall now state your charges, that the accused man may hear them now forthe first time from my own lips and may here and now make his defence toyou and to me."
He paused. My eyes had been on Commodus and now shifted to Perennis.Perennis was a handsome man, but in spite of, rather than because of, hisbuild and features. Even through the splendid trappings of Prefect of thePraetorium he appeared too tall and too thin, his neck was too long, hisface too long, his ears too big, his long nose overhung his upper lip. Hewas impressive and capable looking but appeared too crafty, too foxy. Ifelt sure that he had not the least suspicion of what was coming. Helooked all vanity, self-satisfaction and vainglorious self-sufficiency.
"Fellow-soldiers," the Emperor went on, "you charge that my Prefect of thePraetorium is not loyal, but is most treacherous; that he has been, formore than two years, plotting my death and the elevation to thePrincipiate of his eldest son, now Procurator of Illyricum. As he has nowheard the charge, so you shall now hear the defense of my Prefect of thePraetorium."
I must say that Perennis, though manifestly thunderstruck, kept hissenses, kept his self-command and, after a brief instant in which hepaled, swayed and seemed utterly dazed, rose to the occasion. For thatbrief instant he appeared as overcome as his horrified wife and sister,who all but fainted on their seats; as his horrified sons, who stood,agape, dead-pale, one by his white-faced mother, and the other by hisincredulous aunt.
Perennis, certainly, gathered himself together promptly, got himself underfull control, had all his wits about him and made a perfectly conceived,finely delivered, coherent, logical, telling speech in his own defence. Itwas long, but nowhere diffuse, and it held the attention manifestly, notonly of the mutineers, but of the Emperor himself, and of all his retinue,even the most vacuous of the mere courtiers. As he ended it, it was plainthat Perennis believed he had cleared himself completely and had not onlyvindicated himself before his master, but had convinced the mutineers ofhis guiltlessness and loyalty. His expression of face, as he wound up hiseloquent peroration, was that of a man who, unexpectedly to himself,transmounts insuperable difficulties and triumphs.
Confidently he turned to Commodus; smiling and at ease, he awaited hisdecision. The Emperor stood up, more dominating, if possible, than before.
"Fellow-soldiers," he said, "watch me closely and listen carefully. What Ido shall be as significant as what I say. I have pondered your chargessince you made them this morning. In my mind I have run over all that Iknew of this man's doings and sayings since I made him the guardian of mypersonal safety. I have let him hear your charges from my own lips and,like you, I have listened patiently to his brilliant and able speech inhis own defence. I am Prince of the Republic and Emperor of its armies, tofavor no man, to do and speak impartial justice to all men alike.
"You know what happens to the shirker who sleeps on his post when onsentry-duty about a camp at night in the face of the enemy. If guilty ofwhat you charge any Prefect of the Praetorium deserves not otherwise thansuch a traitor. I have heard all this man has to say. I did not believeyou this morning. I do not disbelieve you now. I do not believe this man,I believe he has been treacherous and that in his dexterous defence justnow he lied. Watch me! I turn him over to you."
And, with a really magnificent gesture, he stepped half a pace away fromPerennis, stretched out his left arm, the golden baton in his hand, and,with that fatal truncheon, touched him on the shoulder.
The roar that rose was the roar of wild beasts ravening for their prey.The men, packed as they were, somehow surged forward. On the shoulders oftheir fellow-centurions, a sort of billow of the foremost sergeants roselike surf against a rock; like surf breaking against a rock a sort of foamof them overflowed the front of the platform. For the twinkling of an eyeI beheld above this rising tide of executioners the imperious dignity ofthe Emperor, master of the scene, self-confident and certain that all menwould approve of his decision, magnificent in his military trappings; theincredulous amazement of Perennis, his pale, watery blue eyes bleared inhis lead-colored, bloodless face, as he stood dazed and numb; the horrorof his bedizened wife and sister, both fleshy women, dark-skinned andnormally red-cheeked, now gray with despair, like the two wretched ladsbeside them; the cruelly feminine relish, as upon the successful fruitionof long and tortuous intrigues, blazoned on the faces of Marcia and ofCleander's wife, a very showy woman with golden hair, violet eyes and adelicately pink and white complexion: a similar expression of relishedtriumph on the broad, fat, ruddy face of her big husband, who looked justwhat he had been; a man who had started life as a slave; whose master hadthought him likely to be most profitably employed as a street porter, inwhich capacity he had for years carried packs, crates, bales, chests,rafters and such like immensely heavy loads long distances and had thriveno
n his exertions; who, whatever brains he had since displayed, howevermuch character and merit had contributed to his dazzling rise in life, hadretained and still possessed a hearty appetite, a perfect digestion,mighty muscles, hard and solid, all over his hulking frame, and the vaststrength of his early prime; all these chief actors framed against abackground of gaudily caparisoned officers and courtiers.
In scarcely more than the twinkling of an eye Perennis. was seized by fourbrawny frontier sergeants and hurled down among the men, among whom hevanished like a lynx under a pack of dogs. I caught no afterglimpse of himnor of his frayed corpse; I descried only a sort of whirlpool of activemen about the spot where he had, as it were, sunk into their vortex.
When the flailing arms ceased flailing and the panting executioners stoodquiet, the Emperor stretched out his right hand for silence; the rumblingsnarls and growls of the mob abated till silence reigned. Into it hespoke:
"You know the custom of our fathers since Numa. The family of a traitor isabolished with him."
There came a second roar of the ravening, ferocious men, a second surge ofthe foremost up the face of the platform, and, instantly, the sons, wifeand sister of Perennis were pushed from it, cast down among the mob, andnever reappeared. After the mob quieted a second time Commodus againraised his hand for silence. Quicker than before the men were still. Hespoke loud and clear: "You have saved me from a treacherous Prefect ofthe Praetorium. I have meditated whom to appoint to his vacant post. Ihave considered well. I now present him to you; my faithful henchman,Cleander of Mazaca, who, by his own deserts, has won citizenship in theRepublic, equestrian rank and my favor and gratitude."
The mob cheered.
Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Page 24