‘Not particularly. My wife has a cousin in the police. Our talk was harmless enough, and I shall explain that I assaulted the agent not because I had anything to hide but because he was so damned clumsy. Standing there with his ears flapping! It was an insult to intelligent men, an insult to our discretion.’
‘Well, now that we have cleared the air perhaps you can tell us, Duratius, whether the army is really loyal to Macrinus? He seems such a curious choice. A lawyer, and of very low birth. He isn’t even a Senator. In Rome the Senate may take that as an insult.’
‘Not a Senator? I never noticed. Soldiers are vague about civilian honours. All the same Praetorian Praefect is quite a high rank, or so we think in the army,’ I answered casually, trying to make up my mind whether it was safe to be indiscreet.
‘Don’t badger an honest soldier,’ said Demetrius. ‘It’s all very well for you, with a camel waiting to take you over the frontier. Macrinus is the best Emperor we have, and we all love him.… A curious choice all the same, as Hippias says.’
‘He won because he had no one to beat,’ I answered, taking the plunge. ‘If there’s nothing in his favour there’s nothing against him. We were looking for an Emperor, and we look first to our commanding officers. Adventus could have had the Purple, but he would rather retire. The next in line was his legal colleague, who got it.’
‘Well, we need an Emperor,’ Hippias answered. ‘Heaven preserve us from two rival Emperors, at least in Syria. Anyone is better than a civil war. I gather he’s not too old, good for another twenty years. That will give the treasury time to recover from his donative.’
‘If he increases the taxes there will be trouble,’ said Demetrius moodily. ‘I suppose the soldiers would be delighted if they were ordered to punish Antioch for rebellion?’
‘I’m afraid so. I have just arrived from Germany, but they still talk of the fun they had in Alexandria. All the same, do these taxes affect you? Surely your imperial domain is not taxed?’
‘I pay no tax, naturally. The property I manage already belongs to the Emperor. I don’t suppose Hippias pays very much. The law allows him to keep an office in Parthia. Soldiers never pay tax, of course. Let’s look round this expensive eating-house and see if we can spot a tax-payer. No, everyone here lives off the government in one way or another. No tax-payer could afford to dine here.’
‘Then why do you dread an increase in the taxes?’ I asked.
‘Because whenever money is taken from Syria every Syrian is impoverished, and I am a Syrian. I sell to tax-payers, Hippias buys from tax-payers. This donative means that there will be no money about this year. But if we have a long reign the country will slowly recover.’
‘You are quite sure there is no other candidate?’ asked Hippias. ‘No threat of civil war? It’s odd that no one spoke up for the house of Severus. Caracalla was a disappointment, but I should have thought the family was still popular with the army.’
‘Of course the whole army reveres the Divine Severus, and the soldiers had no reason to dislike Caracalla. Do you mean the family still survives? Macrinus wouldn’t stand a chance against a Severus. Perhaps that’s why we never heard of this man. He’ll be dead as soon as the Emperor can lay hands on him; unless indeed he has already begun a civil war.’
‘There’s no man that I know of,’ answered Hippias. ‘But the Empress Julia Domna is here in Antioch: the widow of Severus and mother of Caracalla. Is there a chance that the troops would follow her?’
‘No. Soldiers can’t follow a woman. They would think it unmanly. But any male kin of hers might make trouble.’
‘She has no male kin,’ said Demetrius firmly. ‘I thought of her as soon as I heard Caracalla was dead, and I made inquiries. She bore only the two sons. Caracalla took care of Geta, and persons unknown have taken care of Caracalla. Neither of them left legitimate sons. There may be bastards knocking about, but there are no acknowledged descendants of the Divine Severus.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Hippias put in, speaking with some excitement. ‘At Emesa the line of the high priests still continues. I was there not long ago. The whole establishment carries on, in the name of some infant. Now, if the Empress was the daughter of the old high priest, this infant must be kin to her.’
‘Yes, but the kinship is very remote. I can tell you about the child,’ said Demetrius. ‘ The Empress has a sister. The sister married, but bore daughters only. Her two daughters married, and each had produced a son. That’s good enough for the priests at Emesa, who will stretch a point to continue the line of their sacred rules. But this infant high priest is no kin to the Divine Severus – he is the great-nephew of the Empress. Would such a claim mean anything to the army?’
‘No, it’s too remote, especially as the boy is unknown. If he had been old enough to hold a command in the army he might have stood a chance. But a child, and one of those oriental high priests whom most Germans see as comic figures by the way, is he a eunuch?’
‘The office is hereditary,’ said Hippias dryly. I blushed for my foolishness.
‘So really there is very little to worry about,’ Demetrius summed up. ‘The donative given by the new Emperor will make us poor for a year or two, but perhaps it was worth it to get rid of Caracalla. There is no danger of civil war. We may look forward to peace and quiet.’
‘Yes, peace and quiet, and that includes sleep,’ said Hippias. ‘ It’s getting late, and drunken soldiers will be on the prowl. Good night, Duratius. I didn’t know there were educated citizens in the army. You ought to see that temple at Emesa. If you go to those parts look me up. I have an office there, where I spend most of my time.’
The bill was smaller than I had expected. This was the kind of place where they wanted their customers to come back. I returned alone to the camp, very proud of myself for having passed such a civilized evening.
A few days later my century formed part of the guard of honour as the Empress Julia Domna left Antioch; the widow of an Emperor and mother of another received all the honour due to her exalted rank. She was travelling to Emesa, the home of her ancestors, where she would live in royal state; for her great-nephew ‘ the high priest’ held the rank of client-king, ruler of his city. It was generally known that she left Antioch at the request of the Emperor, but that seemed fair enough. An Empress unrelated to the reigning monarch, living in the same city, would cause endless problems of precedence and etiquette; and there was always the chance that malcontents might use her as a figurehead. In Emesa she would be regent for the infant high priest, taking precedence of everyone; which would save conscientious chamberlains a great many worries. Although the Emperor had asked her to move, she went to Emesa of her own free will. Soldiers cannot follow a woman, but the Praetorians would never have permitted any oppression of the widow of the Divine Severus.
I stood at attention, just by the city gate; and a man who stands steady on parade sees very little of what passes before him. I caught a glimpse of the Empress, carried high in a camel-litter; she had a fierce aquiline face under a mass of white hair, and her gown of purple silk was nearly hidden by jewels. She had been worthy of her husband, more than worthy of her son. But she was a figure from the past, a historical relic, who would never again influence events. While I held my head thrown back and my eyes up I could not see the attendants who walked on foot. There were other camel-litters, but with their curtains drawn; the horsemen were mostly upper servants, of no interest to a soldier. In my old age I might bore recruits with the tale that I had seen the widow of the Divine Severus; but except for the Empress I had seen no one properly.
4. Macrinus Augustus
Some soldiers enjoy serving in a sloppy unit; but in the long run it doesn’t pay. Sooner or later you are smartened up, and the zeal of the reformers makes life unpleasant even for those who have been conscientious. The standard of discipline among Caracalla’s Praetorians was really too bad to be true, and I expected a shake-up as soon as the new Emperor felt himself to be established. When it
came, it was most unpleasant.
Macrinus took trouble. Adventus had retired, which gave him a free hand; our new Praefect, Ulpius Julianus, was a sound drill-master who knew the ropes. My centurion was transferred to the frontier, though he kept his rank, and the optio was reduced to common Praetorian. Under our new officers we exercised smartly and behaved ourselves off parade.
Then the Emperor decreed a reduction in military pay. He was careful to explain that the government would keep its contract with every serving soldier; the new rate-would apply only to new recruits. No one is eligible for the Praetorians until he has done fifteen years with the legions, so of course none of us was affected. All the same, the change made us unhappy; it showed that the new government did not appreciate the army. There was the obvious danger that after a few years the administrative anomaly would be tidied away by enforcing one rate of pay for the whole army.
There was the usual drive against corruption in the quartermaster’s staff. Those wretched pen-pushers can never guess right. One month they are encouraged to keep the army well-found, and no questions asked; next month they are flogged for requisitioning an egg without a warrant.
It was given out in orders that cuirasses would no longer be worn on active service, at least in the climate of Syria. But they would remain as part of our full dress, so we still had the bother of keeping them burnished. Looking at it calmly, I think the change was sensible. It is possible to design a cuirass that will be proof against a spear-thrust, but then it is too heavy to be worn by infantry; the standard government issue gives very little protection. A trained soldier defends himself with his shield, and should need no further help.
On the other hand, the cuirass had been traditional legionary equipment since Rome began. We may have been better off without it, but in our own eyes we looked wrong. Legionaries are heavy infantry of the line, perhaps slow in manoeuvre but impossible to break; they take pride in the weight of their equipment, which distinguishes them from light-armed skirmishers. Besides, the Emperor was making the worst of both worlds. If we had to look after the cumbersome things we might as well wear them. The new order caused a great deal of grumbling.
The Emperor was short-tempered, attempting a difficult task for which he had not been trained. He expected his every command to be obeyed without question, and could not distinguish between negligence and open defiance. As a lawyer he had been noted for justice rather than mercy, and in particular he was hard on the slaves who looked after his office. When I did my first turn as sentry at imperial headquarters I found the atmosphere most unpleasant. In the main ante-room a clerk who had lost an important paper (on purpose, to help one of the parties in a lawsuit) was tied up to be flogged to death. It was the middle of the morning, and the hall was of course crowded with petitioners; my post as sentry was within a few feet of the pillar to which the victim was bound.
I suppose the executioner had been bribed to give him a quick death; for the humblest office-clerk may have friends in high places. One of the first blows went too high, ostensibly by mistake; the heavy thong, curling round the culprit’s neck, severed his jugular vein. In a few seconds the clerk was dead, but blood spurted everywhere. My armour was splashed; in the heat the mess on the floor stank abominably, while flies gathered in clouds. The Emperor decreed that the corpse should remain hanging as a warning until the law-court rose in the evening.
After I had been relieved the optio saw me cleaning my armour in the guard-room, and naturally inquired how a sentry dared to come off guard in such a filthy condition. I answered that it was unfair to expect good turn-out from a sentry who must stand in a shambles.
I spoke without thinking, because I was in a bad temper. The casual phrase stuck. By next morning the whole army was calling imperial headquarters The Shambles. Macrinus Augustus was never popular with his soldiers.
When he tried to enforce the letter of military law he became even less popular. At the end of April, just before the opening of the spring campaign, there was a notorious prosecution for rape; which proved that even a conscientious lawyer can make terrible mistakes in a field he does not understand.
The defenders of the Empire should never rape women whom they are pledged to protect. In military law rape is rightly a capital offence, and no good soldier should complain if a guilty comrade is executed for it. But I thank the gods that I have never judged an accusation of rape, for it is almost impossible to arrive at the truth.
I myself have never been in that kind of trouble. I am a Celt; and my blood is noble even though I have come down in the world. I hold that Duratius of the Pictones ought to be somebody, even if he isn’t; it would be shameful if I had kin scattered through the world, ignorant of their high descent and unable to call on their father for help. But some of my comrades, lacking the Celtic reverence for chastity, were decidedly rough in their wooing.
The usual thing happened. A barmaid was caught with a Praetorian, and to save her dignity gave the excuse that he had forced her. On a farm in the country the same thing happened on the same day. Even if these had been genuine rapes there was very little for the high command to worry about; in such a large army two offences a day is not a bad average. The worst element in the crime was admittedly absent; the girls were not spoiled for the marriage market, since they were already of bad reputation. But the Emperor chose to be inflexible.
In person he judged the accused, and both were convicted; though, as I have said, the evidence showed nothing worse than casual fornication. On the next day the Praeorians were paraded in a body to witness punishment.
Every Praetorian is a volunteer, who earns his bread by risking his life. Our two comrades had been unlucky; but tomorrow a Parthian arrow might find any one of us, and we knew that discipline cannot be preserved unless from time to time an offender is executed. We had all seen sudden death on the battlefield. As we took up our dressing we felt solemn, but we accepted the law we had freely sworn to obey.
Instead of an executioner with a sword we saw before us two great heaps of wood. The criminals, tied naked to stakes, were burned alive, slowly and horribly. The worst feature, from our point of view, was that the pain made these wretched men scream abjectly, going down to the lower world with cries of terror on their lips. The Judges of the Dead might mark them as cowards to all eternity. I have seen many military executions; a good soldier, when he has been caught out at last, should salute the headsman, kneel down smartly, and with hands unbound accept his fate. Then you can bury him with honour, and think kindly of him while you bid for his kit.
That was not how the Emperor Macrinus wished us to remember his justice. That evening I recalled with pleasure that I was not bound in honour to be faithful to him.
In May the imperial field army marched into the desert, to do battle with the Parthians. The dust we raised stretched on every side to the horizon, and a quartermaster’s clerk told me that the train was providing rations for 100,000 men, the greatest army that Rome had put into the field for many years. But by no means all of these men were warriors. Muleteers, camel-drivers and carters must have made up a full third of the total, and when we drew out in line of battle a great mass of local Arab levies guarded each flank. These Arabs of the desert come to the muster under their own chiefs, so that they are never subject to Roman discipline. Since they live by selling their swords the Emperor is compelled to hire them; for otherwise they would take service with the Parthians. But they are not to be trusted. The great desire of each leader is to preserve his own men from casualties, since his importance depends on the number of his followers; his second aim is never to find himself on the losing side.
By feeding 100,000 men the Emperor could bring into the field 40,000 genuine soldiers, Praetorians, legionaries, and auxiliaries under Roman officers; in practice that was the full strength of our army.
It was said that the Parthian host outnumbered us greatly, which frightened our muleteers; but we soldiers guessed that they also were hampered by greedy and use
less non-combatants, and that genuine Parthian horse would make up only a small proportion of their numbers. In any event marching through the desert was a horrible experience; heat, dust, flies and thirst made every mile a burden. We looked forward to a big battle, which would finish the campaign; and we hardly cared which side would win, so long as we could soon get back to Syria.
Near Nisibis we made contact with the main Parthian army, led by King Artabanes. Our Arab scouts skirmished with the Arabs in Parthian pay, and by all accounts got the worst of it; though we Praetorians were too far in the rear to see what happened. Both armies drew up for a great battle. On that hot June morning I remember feeling very frightened. The heat made me dizzy and I could not keep down my breakfast; though that was no loss, since the sticky dates and hard biscuit were guaranteed to close the bowels of the toughest veteran. When Praetorians are reduced to such rations the common rankers must be really hungry. But there was no way to dodge it; by midday I would be fighting Parthians. I hoped that the infantry of the line would do better than our Arab hirelings.
Then orders were proclaimed to the whole army. A truce had been arranged. No man might advance beyond our picket line, which had been withdrawn to leave an empty space before the pickets of the enemy.
In this neutral space envoys discussed peace; though since neither the Emperor nor the Parthian King went forward to negotiate we Praetorians were spared the hazards of escort duty, which can be very dangerous during an uneasy truce. On the third day peace was announced, and the army was ordered to return to Antioch.
The peace was officially hailed as victorious. A small donative was distributed, ostensibly from the tribute of Parthia; in the following winter I saw coins which showed the Emperor Macrinus granting mercy to suppliant Parthians. But the terms of peace were never officially published, and the friendly quartermaster’s clerk told me that though the Parthians did in fact hand over a few sacks of silver we Romans in return gave them heavier sacks of gold. Both countries paid compensation for past raids, but neither paid tribute. King Artabanes recognized our right to garrison Nisibis; but in return the Emperor recognized Tiridates, a pensioner of Parthia, as rightful King of Armenia. On balance Macrinus ceded more than he received. He negotiated as though Rome were the weaker party; Rome led by Macrinus was in fact weaker than Parthia.
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