by Ross Laidlaw
Proximo walked slowly down the line of young men – many of them clearly nervous or unhappy – his practised eye looking for the slightest sign of sloppiness in the cleaning of tack or weapons.
‘Rust,’ he declared with grim satisfaction, pointing to a cluster of brownish speckles on the otherwise bright blade of one recruit’s spatha. He leant forward till his face was nearly touching the other’s. ‘There are three sins in the army, lad: asleep on sentry-go, drunk on duty, and a rusty spatha. And wipe those grins off your faces,’ he snapped at the youths on either side who, in their short stay at the fort, had already heard this litany several times. Proximo grabbed the lead identity-disc hung round the culprit’s neck. ‘I want that sword clean by Stables,’ he went on, tugging the disc sharply, while simultaneously giving a deliberate wink. ‘Understand?’
‘Y-yes, Ducenarius,’ stammered the other in mystified tones.
Inspection over, Proximo dismissed the recruits to the care of the campidoctores for a session of drill. He felt a stab of sympathy for the frightened boy he had reprimanded; with luck, the lad would pick up his veiled hint. (Lead rubbed over intractable rust-spots on steel, magically caused them to ‘disappear’.) The cash-strapped army was forced to keep on issuing ancient, worn-out gear, Proximo reflected sourly: That rust-pitted spatha could have seen service at the Milvian Bridge. Unlike his predecessor (nicknamed ‘Cedo Alteram’ – ‘Give me Another’ – from his habit of demanding a fresh vine-staff to replace the one broken over an offending soldier’s back), Proximo believed that you got more out of men (and horses) by treating them with patience tempered by firmness, than by using brutality.
‘Well done, lad,’ grinned Proximo at late parade, inspecting the sword-blade, now a uniform silvery-grey. ‘We’ll make a soldier of you yet.’
Later, on his rounds, he dropped into the new recruits’ barrackroom. An informal, off-duty chat with the men was time well spent. That way you got to know who were the weak and strong links in the chain, who the barrack-room know-alls, who the likely trouble-makers, or informers. Also, by listening to soldiers’ grievances (often incurred by something trivial, such as the reduction last week of the daily bread ration from three to two pounds, the loss being made up with biscuit), you could often take steps in time to defuse a potential crisis.
‘All right, lads?’ enquired Proximo, looking round the long room. Of the twenty recruits, most were seated on their bunks cleaning kit; the rest were crouched on the floor, engaged in a noisy game of duodecim scriptorum, a kind of backgammon.
‘Can’t complain,’ volunteered one, ‘now that we’re back on full bread rations – thanks to you Ducenarius.’
‘Good,’ said Proximo. ‘So, nothing bothering anyone?’
Collective head-shaking and muttered denials.
‘Liars,’ said Proximo cheerfully. ‘Touch your toes, soldier,’ he commanded the one who had spoken up. Looking puzzled, the man complied, whereupon Proximo delivered a smart tap on the buttocks with his vine-branch staff. The youth emitted a muffled yelp of pain.
‘Thought so: saddle sores,’ pronounced Proximo. Most recruits in the early stages of learning to ride acquired raw coin-shaped patches from chafing of the skin. He looked round the room. ‘Come on, admit it, you’ve all got ’em.’ No one disagreeing, he went on, ‘Axle-grease, that’s the thing. You’ll also need femenalia – drawers – to keep the stuff in place. Any of the Berber women who hang around the fort’ll run you up a pair. You won’t be needing them for long, just till your bums harden up.’
‘But . . . wearing drawers,’ one anxious recruit objected, ‘isn’t that against regulations?’
‘It is lad, it is,’ purred Proximo, adding with simulated fierceness, ‘And if I find any of you wearing them you’ll be on a charge so fast Mercury couldn’t catch you. But then,’ he continued in his normal voice, ‘unlike “Cedo Alteram”, whom you’ve no doubt heard of, I don’t carry a mirror on the end of a stick when I take parade, so I’m hardly going to know, am I?’
In the ambience of relaxed banter that followed, the ducenarius found himself fielding questions about conditions of service, donatives, the prospect of action, and their legendary supreme commander, the Count of Africa, famed as much for his strict impartial justice as for his feats of arms.
‘Is it true he killed Athaulf, Galla Placidia’s first husband?’
‘Half-killed, I’d say. He severely wounded Athaulf when the Goths attacked Massilia.7 But Athaulf recovered, much to Placidia’s relief – devoted to her man, was the Augusta.’
‘But he did kill a soldier accused of adultery with a civilian’s wife?’ pressed one trooper hopefully.’8
‘Now that one is true,’ Proximo confirmed. ‘But you don’t want to hear about it. Oh, you do, do you?’
It was noon before they sighted camp, a neat grid of the leather tents known as papiliones, ‘butterflies’, each holding eight soldiers. All around rolled a bleak landscape of undulating plains, sparsely clothed with esparto grass, thistles, and asphodel. To the north rose the wall of the bare, gullied Capsa Mountains. Southwards, shimmering mirages floated above the sparkling salt crust of the Shott el-Gharsa, one of the chain of salt lakes demarcating the limit of Roman rule. The lakes fringed the Great Sand Sea, which was traversed only by caravans bringing gold, slaves, and ivory across five hundred leagues of desert from the lands of the black men.
The camp was a temporary mobile settlement, erected at one of the stopping-points on Boniface’s annual tour of what had become almost a personal fiefdom, rather than the Roman provinces of Africa Proconsularis and Byzacena. He had come to the decision that these peregrinations were a useful reminder to the local populace that Rome still had a mailed fist and was prepared to use it to maintain order and justice – Roman justice, not the primitive ‘eye for an eye’ code that prevailed beyond the frontier. Though officially ‘Roman’ for the past two hundred years, the natives were still tribesmen at heart. They were apt to become slack and unruly unless kept in check, witness the present unrest caused by the Donatists, a militant anti-Catholic sect guilty of whipping up tribal sentiment among the peasants (many of whom had Punic blood) against their Roman masters.
Boniface thought longingly of the bath and clean clothes that awaited him, followed by a cooked meal washed down with Mornag, the excellent local red wine, in contrast to the hard biscuit, sour wine, and salt pork on which he and his men had fared these past three days. A Berber war-party had been raiding villages in the vicinity of Shott el-Jerid, a huge salt lake on the Roman frontier. A punitive expedition was entirely successful, the insurgents being chased back across the border with heavy losses. Nevertheless, the affair had proved a costly diversion for the Romans; while in pursuit, several troopers had inadvertently strayed from the safe path, plunged through the salt crust and been instantly engulfed.
Arriving at the camp, Boniface thanked the soldiers, detachments from the Vexillationes ‘Equites Mauri Alites’ and ‘Equites Feroces’, and dismissed them. Then, dismounting, he flung the reins to a groom and walked swiftly to the command tent, which was fronted with the unit’s standards. Crouching by the entrance flap was a young native in a worn jellabah. He rose as Boniface approached. He was a Blemmye, judging by his tribal markings, and looked vaguely familiar.
‘Lord Boniface,’ the man addressed the Count in tones of quiet desperation, ‘my petition – you remember?’
A tribune emerged from the tent carrying a goblet of wine, which he handed to the general. ‘Sir, I’m sorry about this,’ he said apologetically, indicating the native. ‘He insists that you promised to see him. I sent him packing, of course, but he kept coming back and repeating his story. He seems harmless enough, so eventually I let him wait here. But I’ll get rid of him if you like.’
‘No, let him stay,’ said Boniface, his memory suddenly clearing. He had been about to hear the man’s case at his customary morning tribunal when the news of the insurgency had arrived. He had immediately cancelle
d proceedings and prepared to depart for the south. That was three days ago; the poor fellow had been waiting for him all that time! His plea must be an urgent one indeed.
‘Have you eaten while you’ve been here?’ he asked the Blemmye.
The man shook his head.
‘And you never thought to feed him?’ Boniface barked at the tribune.
The tribune paled before his commander’s anger. ‘He – he was given water, sir.’
‘How considerate,’ sneered Boniface. ‘Perhaps a spell of duty supervising the digging of new latrines will remind you of our common humanity. Bring this man some food at once.’
The Blemmye’s story, recounted while he devoured a bowl of couscous spiked with lamb, was a pathetic one. He was a date farmer near Thusuros,9 whose living had been destroyed when his palms, inherited from his father, had been submerged in the worst sandstorm in living memory. (Boniface could well believe it. Everyone knew the story of the legion caught in a sandstorm which had blown for four days. The men had kept alive by stamping up and down in the raging sand. When the wind stopped, they found themselves standing level with the crowns of palms a hundred feet high.) To pay for food for their baby, the farmer’s wife had consented to sleep with a soldier billeted on them. When he was posted to another base, she had accompanied him as his concubine, he having refused to pay the rent he owed unless she agreed.
‘She only did it for the baby,’ the young Blemmye pleaded, his face an anguished mask. ‘She is a good woman, but—’ He broke off, then continued in a trembling whisper, ‘She loves the child, my lord. We both do. I could not stop her.’
Boniface felt a surge of compassion for the young man. Unlocking a strong-box, he withdrew a bag of coin and handed it to the other. ‘This will help you restart your business, and feed your family meanwhile. If what you say is true, my friend, you have been gravely wronged. But I’ll see that you have justice, never fear. Be here at my tribunal in the morning.’ Dismissing the Blemmye’s stammered thanks, Boniface sent for the primicerius to make enquiries about the offending soldier’s posting.
So much for rash promises, thought Boniface wryly, as he rode north towards the Capsa Mountains. Having told the Blemmye to attend tomorrow’s tribunal, it was imperative that, he Boniface complete his mission before then, both to keep his word to the plaintiff, and to maintain his reputation as a larger-than-life heroic figure, guaranteed to mete out swift and terrible justice. Boniface chuckled to himself; living up to this carefully nurtured reputation was hard work. It was, however, important that he do so, not from vanity, but because it promoted high morale and loyalty among his troops.
He had learnt that the soldier was now billeted in a village just to the north of the Capsas. It was a mere ten miles away as the falcon flew, but several times that distance by the standard route, which detoured round the western end of the mountain chain – a choice barred to Boniface. The Seldja Gorge, he had learnt, did lead directly through the mountains, though it was used only by the foolhardy or the desperate. To have any hope of keeping his promise, that was the route he must take.
Obeying instructions given to him at camp by a Berber scout, Boniface skirted the foot of the range till he encountered the Seldja river. He followed it as it suddenly angled into the mountainside, and found himself entering a rocky portal hitherto invisible. This natural gateway debouched into a wilderness of shattered rock, choked with debris from the heights above, and impossible to traverse save by keeping to the river-bed itself, which was fringed by spiky reeds and tamarisk. His mount, slipping and starting over the chaos of boulders, disturbed sandpipers and wagtails that skimmed the surface of the brook. Boniface emerged eventually into a fantastic canyon whose winding vertical walls maintained a distance apart of some thirty yards. High above, cliff-swallows and rock-doves swooped and fluttered.
Here, the track left the stream and ascended the gorge’s right-hand side. Never before had Boniface’s nerve and control of his horse been so severely tested, as he pressed on and up along a track barely eighteen inches wide, with a sheer precipice to his left. The danger was compounded by the presence of snakes. Several times, the general heard an angry hiss issuing from the rocks that strewed the path, and once a cobra rose up before him on its massive coils. Retreat being impossible, Boniface halted his trembling mount and tried to calm it, while the huge snake’s hissing rose to a furious crescendo and its throat swelled ominously. But after a few nerve-shredding seconds it glided off, apparently deciding that the creatures confronting it posed no threat.
After a few miles, to Boniface’s immense relief the canyon opened out, its sheer walls giving place to easy slopes up to a plateau. Soon, Boniface was descending the north flank of the range, and by early evening had come in sight of the village – a scatter of one-storeyed mud-brick buildings, with here and there the black goat-skin tent of a nomad family. Militarily, the place was an outpost of Thelepte, a largish town some distance to the north, where two numeri, or infantry units, the Fortenses and the Cimbriani, were temporarily billeted.
A few questions to a couple of villagers elicited the information required. Boniface knocked on the door – painted the ubiquitous blue – of one of the larger buildings, and was directed by the landlord to an annexe at the rear. He ripped aside the goatskin curtain that screened the entrance and stepped inside. Dim light from a small unglazed window revealed, besides domestic clutter, and soldier’s kit hanging from pegs, a cot with a sleeping infant, and a bed containing two figures, one a native woman, the other a huge, fair-haired man. Both sat up and blinked at the intruder.
Boniface rapped, ‘Soldier, she came with you under duress did she not?’ The man shrugged but made no attempt to deny it. To the woman, the general said gently, ‘Tomorrow, you will return with your child to your village, and rejoin your husband. I will arrange an escort.’ To the soldier he said, ‘Get dressed and say farewell. I’ll wait for you outside.’
In silence, Boniface and the soldier marched to a cypress grove a little way beyond the village. Admiring the man’s stoic courage in the calm acceptance of his fate, Boniface drew his sword . . .
Attempting to return through the Seldja Gorge in darkness would have been tantamount to suicide, so Boniface took the safe but much longer route round the mountains. Dawn was breaking as he approached camp, and a ghostly radiance shimmered over the pale expanse of the Shott. As the sun’s disc lifted above the horizon, he gazed in wonder as an extraordinary phenomenon developed: an apparent second sun beginning to detach itself from the other. The two orbs separated; the upper rose aloft, the lower wobbled, sank, and deliquesced into the Shott.
An hour later, bathed and shaved, imposing in his parade armour (a splendid though antique suit dating from the time of Alexander Severus, and handed down from father to son through seven generations), Boniface was seated in his command tent, ready to hold tribunal.
First in line was the cuckolded Blemmye.
‘Today, your wife and child return to you,’ the general informed the peasant.
‘And . . . the other, lord?’
‘Fear not, my friend, he’ll trouble you no more.’ And with a grim smile, Boniface emptied at the man’s feet the contents of a sack – a severed human head.
Titus’ ship docked in Carthage’s commercial harbour (warships had their own), overlooked by the capitol on Byrsa Hill. Regretting that time did not permit him to explore the great city, Titus showed his travel warrant at the central post station, and pressed on at a gallop straightway for Bulla Regia as instructed. His route took him south-west along the beautiful valley of the Majerda river wide and flat with extensive vineyards for the first twenty-five miles, after which the terrain became gradually more hilly, terraced vines giving way to olive groves, with broom and terebinth covering slopes too steep for cultivation.
Titus had been born and raised near the border with Gaul, in what had once been the non-Roman territory of Cisalpine Gaul, where his family had been settled for over four hundred y
ears. To Titus Italia proper had always seemed in some ways like a foreign country. Apart from changing horses at a post-station outside the city on his journey to Africa, he had never even been to Rome!
After the flat, misty reclaimed land and small provincial towns of the Po basin, Africa came as a revelation. The brilliant light in which even distant objects stood out sharp and clear; the teeming, cosmopolitan city of Carthage, full of impressive monuments and huge public buildings which seemed almost to be the work of superhuman beings; the staggering fertility – the wheatfields, vineyards and olive groves: all this made a great and lasting impression on the young man. Such evidence (much of it admittedly at least two centuries old) of Rome’s power and far-flung influence almost convinced Titus that the Western Empire was not in serious jeopardy. The barbarians could surely never overthrow a race capable of producing such mighty works. Could they?
After an overnight stop at Tichilla,10 a small town with a postal mansio catering for travellers, Titus pushed on at first light, pleased at having covered eighty miles the previous day – almost half the distance to Bulla Regia. Woods of cork oak, red kites flashing in the air above their glades, stippled the valley’s sides; they were joined by stands of holm oak, pine, and laurel as he neared his destination. The cursus velox, the express post, enabled him to change horses every ten miles, and he made excellent progress, reaching Bulla Regia in the afternoon.
When he entered the city, Titus passed a theatre (clearly of recent construction) on his left, then turned right into the main cardo. Leaving his mount at the post station, he proceeded on foot past a busy market to the forum, which was flanked on opposing sides by an ancient temple (boarded up) and a huge basilica. He enquired in the latter where he would find the president of the decemprimi, the inner committee of the city council, and was directed to a villa at the north end of the town. His route took him past a disused temple fronted by statues of city fathers, and a monumental fountain enclosing the Springs of Bulla around which the city was founded. Titus was enchanted by the beauty of the place – the gleaming marble of its splendid public buildings made a striking contrast with the dark foliage of pines and cypress, which everywhere gave grateful shade. Could this really be the place that Augustine, the Church’s moral mouthpiece, when haranguing the citizens in the very theatre Titus had just passed, had denounced as a sink of sin and a den of iniquity?