The Pillars of Rome

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘Cholon!’

  The sharp command cut through her thoughts, as well as the child’s cries, like a whiplash. The man stood in the doorway, a black look on his face. Even after the strain of child-bearing the mother’s youth and beauty shone out in stark contrast to the countenance of her older husband. Marcia tried to guess how greatly the couple differed in age, which led her to further speculation, since such unions often ended in tears. The slave, responding to his master, bent down and took the child, slipping through the space left in the doorway. That was when the angry face softened: the man’s straight prominent nose and thick black eyebrows lost their menace, the full lips parted and he smiled at his young wife. Not a joyous smile, more one of relief that her ordeal was ended, but this changed his face completely, and when he spoke to Marcia his voice, soft and gentle, matched his changed mood.

  ‘Your work is done, child, yet I would ask you one more thing. Stay with the lady until I return, then my servant will see you safely home.’ Marcia just nodded, too awed by his presence to speak. She could see, as he could not, that the mother was fighting hard to hold back her tears. ‘But do not pry into matters which don’t concern you.’

  His face still had the same smile but his black eyes bored into her, warning her of a fate that was certain should she disobey him. Then he spun on his heel and left. She busied herself, making her exhausted charge comfortable and the lady, who gave free rein to her sobs as soon as the husband departed, actually cried herself to sleep. The young midwife sat silently by her makeshift bed, her mind whirling with thoughts of what she had witnessed, and what the future might hold for her after the events of the night.

  Cholon was already mounted, the sleeping child slung in a saddlebag by his side, when his master came out of the villa, leaping on to his horse with the agility of a long-serving soldier.

  ‘Where to?’ asked Cholon.

  There was a half-mocking tone in the reply, for now that the child was born some of his master’s natural humour had resurfaced. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve no suggestions to make, Cholon? You usually do.’

  ‘There are several likely spots nearby, General, reasonably close to villages. If we lay him on a hillside they will find him as they go out to gather wood.’

  The voice became hard. ‘We go south, Cholon. And I want a spot that’s miles from anywhere. I don’t want him found, ever!’

  With that he kicked his horse and set off, leaving his servant behind. Cholon nudged his own mount and leant over its withers to follow. As soon as the horse moved the child awoke and the Greek found himself staring down into the steady gaze of a pair of bright blue eyes. He looked up quickly lest he be tempted to pity, and not for the first time uttered a soft curse aimed at his master, now some distance ahead.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Aulus rode hard, trying to block out the memories of the last two and a half years, a vain hope given the picture of that period never left him. A widower, he had decided to remarry, taking as a bride the daughter of an old army comrade, a girl twenty years younger than himself. As a frequent visitor to her father’s house, he had known Claudia as a pretty and precocious child; meeting her again aged sixteen it was very evident that she had blossomed into a beauty, surrounded by ardent admirers. Was it foolish for a man of his age and standing to fall in love with such a girl, even more imprudent to ask for her hand? His eldest son was older than she, the other not so very much younger, but he had consulted the augurs, made sacrifices aimed to ensure good fortune, and all, according to the priests, had been encouraging. The irreligious in the slums of Rome thought him a fool, a great warrior bewitched by a slip of a girl, which gave rise to much ribaldry and obscene graffiti between the day when the betrothal was announced and the ceremony by which Claudia became his wife.

  What followed was as close to bliss as Aulus had ever experienced. At first in awe of him, his young wife melded within weeks into a companion of the kind he had only ever heard of but never experienced, even though he could claim his previous marriage to be a good one. Besides her beauty, Claudia had wit and charm and at no time did the difference in age seem to intrude in their relationship, especially in the bedchamber. She was passionate, willing as well as obliging as a wife, and a surprise delight when it came to dealing with the majority of his friends, who were naturally of his age. Aulus had never been so happy, and swore to anyone who would listen that he would trade his Macedonian victories rather than lose her.

  The nuptials were less than six months past when news arrived of serious trouble in Spain. The Celtic tribes of the Iberian interior, hitherto kept at bay by the Roman ability, mixing bribery and flattery to keep them divided, had come together under a new and enterprising chieftain called Brennos. That was a name to strike fear into Roman hearts; they had faced a Celtic Brennos nearly three hundred years before, a barbarian leader who had sacked most of Greece and all of northern Italy before appearing before the very gates of Rome. One legend had it that a stoic Roman defence had forced him to withdraw; a less heroic tale maintained that he had been bribed with sacks of gold to depart after he had burnt most of the city. Now his namesake was terrorising Roman Spain and this time the fractious mountain tribes were not merely raiding the rich coastal plains in search of booty. Reports suggested that they were being organised into an army that threatened to conquer the whole country, which could not be allowed to pass. Too many senators, Aulus included, had possessions in Spain; farms, mining concessions and profitable monopolies, as well as the valuable slave labour that worked them.

  No Roman nobleman worth his salt shirks his responsibilities, regardless of how rich and respected past campaigns have made him, nor was his recent marriage allowed to interfere. With the full backing of his new wife, who was inordinately proud of his military achievements, Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus immediately made it known that, as Rome’s foremost soldier, he was available if required. It was an offer that pleased a number of his contemporaries, yet troubled many others in a society that was far from stable – when the norms that had governed Roman life for centuries seemed under threat from some of the very people entrusted with upholding the state.

  Factionalism was rife, so even some of those senators who stood to lose from the depredations of this new Brennos demurred when offered the services of such a man, frightened to entrust a campaign to one who had already garnered such glory. Would another success make Aulus too powerful, a man to be feared rather than admired? Certainly he was known for his personal probity, but men not themselves free from temptation found it hard to believe that there existed anyone untainted from the vice of ambition.

  In the past, when the state faced a threat too difficult for the normal consular system to control, one man had been given supreme, temporary power, a crisis measure that lasted only as long as the emergency it was created to face. Such a thing had been brought about by the need to confront an external enemy but now it seemed to many that the enemy was within. A temporary Dictator would divide the factions even more, if that were possible. Senators like Tiberius Livonius were agitating for change; apart from tribal voting rights they wanted to extend Roman citizenship to the supplicant states of Italy, once Rome’s enemies, now her allies, a source of manpower in war and tax revenue in peace. To others the notion that such people should be given equal status with those who had defeated them was anathema. Roman citizenship was a prize worthy only of those born to it; to dilute such a privilege was nothing but a prelude to state disintegration.

  If that had been all, it was enough, but Livonius and his supporters had other plans that struck at the very heart of the city-state. Rome had grown fat on the spoils of empire and in the process it had become the magnet for everyone seeking a fortune and in many cases those in search of no more than the food necessary to survive. The city was crowded, with huge wealth living cheek by jowl with acute poverty. In fear of riot it had been agreed that a dole of corn, enough to sustain life, should be issued to the poorest members of the population, but that w
as not enough for the reformers; they now wanted to give farms to the landless peasants who filled the slums as a way of clearing them out of the city, land that would have to come from those who owned it, the wealthy elite that governed the city and had made vast fortunes from Rome’s conquests. Egging on the mob, who had most to gain from his proposed reforms, Tiberius Livonius threatened to make Rome ungovernable.

  Such ideas must be fought and defeated, but politically, not by some successful soldier at the head of fighting legions, who were barred from entry to the city. It was over four hundred years since the leading families had founded the Republic, expelling the Tarquin kings, yet the memory of their despotism still lived on, making men suspicious of success, lest too much fortune tempt anyone to seek supreme power; to overthrow the Senate, suborn the Republic and reinstate a royal tyranny. Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus, attached as he was to the patrician cause, with one great campaign to his name, given another, might see personal rule as the best method of restoring order, and having done so, the best method of keeping it so by a continuation of that rule. Lucius Falerius, who knew the man in question better than anyone, had used his considerable oratory to ridicule such fears.

  ‘I fear I must remind you, my fellow senators, of how much this august body and the people of Rome owe to Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus. Is this some upstart seeking advantage? No. He is a man who has no need of further military success. Is he so poor that he needs to go on campaign to load the state with his living expenses? Hardly, given the treasure and slaves he brought back from Greece, he is one of the wealthiest men in Rome and I suspect many present have had occasions when they have needed to borrow from him. I fear that some of our members have transferred their own level of base thinking to a fellow senator whose principles are so elevated over theirs as to be incomprehensible.’

  Aulus was cheered inwardly at the memory of the protest that accusation had set off, with the very people both he and Lucius knew to be the most venal, the loudest in their denials. He recalled the magisterial look on his friend’s face then, one that made him proud of their close association. Lucius appeared his best at moments like these, his eyes alight, face mobile enough to match his rich and varied voice, driving home his point, his tone just the right side of mocking. Privately, he might have become a touch tiresome of late, irritable and impatient even with his close friends and adherents, hardly surprising given the workload he undertook, but when it came to the collective pulse of the Senate, Lucius was the man who could feel and respond to it. Aulus gave special attention to examining the faces of those men he and Lucius rated as allies, those senators who shared their political views, yet had expressed themselves troubled at his friend’s recent imperious behaviour. He wanted to say to those who carped, ‘Observe this, and ask yourself, given this body, the Roman Senate, disparate, fractious with more scoundrels on its benches than upright individuals, could you command it with half the ability of this man?’

  ‘The task outlined by the Senate,’ Lucius continued, ‘demands no conquest, only that the Celtic-Iberian tribes should be defeated, dispersed and sent back into the mountains from which they came. There is therefore little glory to be garnered on this campaign, only hard fighting and the risk of death. Given that, I demand to know who else would volunteer?’

  He was answered only by silence; that he expected from those who supported him. It was his enemies and the uncommitted he was challenging, the latter the key to a majority. Lucius stopped short of calling them cowards, though not very far short. He clinched their support by reminding them that he, in his second term as a reigning consul, had the right to command the army, but, just as he had for the war in Macedonia, he was willing to put aside his claim, as was his junior colleague, to secure a quick victory as well as a return to normality by sending to Spain, as proconsul, the man he trusted most with a military command. Lucius took Aulus’s hand and raised him so that he could consent to the agreement of his peers, knowing his friend would, in humility, stammer his acceptance. The Senate was not the natural arena for Aulus: he liked simple chains of command, orders given and obeyed. Not for him, thought Lucius, the balancing of political weight, or the need to persuade or terrorise a reluctant senator so that he could see where his best interests lay.

  Aulus did surprise Lucius by adding one stipulation; that, as he was going to a Roman province with proconsular powers to contain a rebellion, his family, including his young wife, should accompany him. Everyone now looked to the man who had moved the motion to give him the command to see if he would demur. Privately, Lucius had made quite a few salacious jokes about the way that his old friend was smitten, had even secretly admired the pornographic graffiti with which the slum dwellers of Rome were wont to tell their betters what they thought of their actions. Personally he found Claudia gauche and the sight of Aulus drooling over her embarrassing, but he saw no harm in the notion and nodded his assent. After the drubbing the doubters had just received none in the Senate had dared protest at a general taking his family on campaign. In reality forbidden, it seemed a small price to pay to secure his services.

  Besides, matters were serious and time was short; these barbarians must be both punished and pushed back, forced to make peace or die. Aulus, once the Senate had approved his appointment, took ship for the southern coast of Gaul to join the four legions, two Roman, the others auxiliaries made up of Italian allies, already marching towards Iberia. Within two weeks he crossed into the province of Hither Spain, accompanied by his sons, the youngest, Titus, riding alongside him, mounted on a small white cob; Claudia was with the baggage train between the two auxiliary legions, comfortable in a litter, surrounded by her husband’s personal bodyguard. Quintus, his eldest son, a year older than Claudia, rode ahead with Nepos, the cavalry legate in command of the advance guard. Within a week they would be in the provincial capital of Saguntum, ready to begin the task of defeating Brennos. At that moment, everything in his life seemed perfect, his happiness unassailable.

  Aulus, trusting his horse not to stumble or leave the roadway, closed his eyes tightly as less pleasant memories surfaced, recollections of a truth he had ignored. A slave had stood behind him in his war chariot as, face painted red, dressed in the deep purple toga of a victorious general, he rode down the Via Triumphalis responding to the cheers of the crowd gathered to celebrate his Macedonian victories. The man was there to remind him, by whispering in his ear, that all glory was fleeting: that he needed to beware of the sin of hubris; that the gods would bring low any man who dared to forget he was a mere mortal, that they would not be mocked.

  Doing battle with barbarians was very different from engaging the disciplined army of a state like Macedonia. Formal combat, in which he would confront the entire enemy host was not something Aulus expected, despite their numerical superiority. His informants confirmed that the Celt-Iberians, at his approach, had withdrawn from the coastal plain and taken to the hills. This underlined his belief that it would be a war of ambush and raid. He had set himself for a difficult task, with his legions broken up, operating in centuries and cohorts, trying to destroy the means by which the rebels sustained themselves. They would need to be ruthless and cruel, burning villages and destroying pasture and crops, taking hostages and enslaving women and children if the insurrection was to be brought under control. He in turn would need to be tough, to prevent his troops from descending into a rabble, if required, killing some to maintain discipline. Necessary in Macedonia, such measures, in Spain, would be even more indispensable.

  That whispering slave who had stood behind him had been right! It was foolish to assume anything in war, to be so sure that his enemies would wait in the hills for him to attack, just as it was unwise to rely upon his reputation to fight his battles for him. His name meant little to the Celt-Iberians and nothing to this Brennos, who was clever, and more powerful than the Romans had imagined. Somehow he had achieved what they thought impossible, the welding together of the notoriously cantankerous Celts into a single figh
ting unit. He had no intention of leaving Aulus to march peacefully to his base camp, appearing suddenly at the head of a multitude of braying tribesmen to attack an army that had not even begun to pursue him, an army strung out on the march.

  By their disordered tactics, really just a melee in which those who could engage did so, the Celt-Iberians had managed to split his forces, separating the auxiliary legions from the Roman troops. With his command structure shattered, disaster threatened, so putting himself at the head of his heavy infantry Aulus had ridden to the rear, cutting his way through, and rallied the Italian allies under his personal command. Now his experience and legionary drill told. Facing them about in copybook fashion, he fought his way back to join the remainder of his Romans so that they could present a united front to their adversaries. Nepos, well to the fore and out of touch with Aulus, had shown both courage and good sense when he declined to force-march his advance guard, which included the legion’s Numidian cavalry, back towards the main body. That would have brought him into contact with a massive screen of tribal warriors waiting to engage him.

  Instead he took his cavalry in a great arc, into the very foothills from which this Brennos had attacked, catching the Celt-Iberians unawares. An irresistible charge on their rear, with his son Quintus well to the fore, had broken the order of the attackers. Aulus now formed his whole army into a cohesive whole, ready to advance in any direction and engage, but a loud horn blew twice and the enemy evaporated, with a discipline no Roman fighting a Celtic army had ever encountered, leaving him no one to fight. Worse still, his baggage train had been plundered and in the process he had lost his wife. He had to march past the site of that as he sought to pursue the enemy, forced to gaze on the broken wagons, scattered possessions and the dead from the engagement. His position, the on-going battle and the need to appear in control debarred any notion that he could stop and examine the wreckage to see if the body of Claudia was amongst the dead. Only later, as the sun sank low in the west, was he able to establish that she was gone and that every man in his Praetorian Guard had died trying to defend her. That evening he received private word that she was alive, the personal prisoner of Brennos, who demanded no less than the withdrawal of the Roman legions as the price for her freedom.