Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Caesar Augustus had asked them to continue their investigations. Although they had solved the enigma contained in the message by relating it to the Altar of Peace, they still had to understand what the last part, about being ‘the centre of everything, of life and of death’ meant. The main thing was, whose life and whose death? The Hermundur had made it clear that they were free to decide how to handle the significance of what they managed to decipher; to act or not. Could that directive be coming straight from their father Sigmer?

  Flavus attempted to tease apart the intricate puzzle.

  Taurus clearly had direct access to the emperor; that’s why they’d been summoned to meet with him in the first place. The emperor knew that it was the Hermundur who had brought them the message. Had he got that information from Taurus? That was logical; they themselves had told Taurus about it. It was also quite evident to the two boys that it was Caesar who had put the Hermundur in charge of protecting them as they battled the gladiators.

  ‘So, the Hermundur was part of the group who escorted us to Italy,’ mused Flavus. ‘Taurus enlisted him then, surely, and is probably responsible for placing him in Caesar’s service as a member of his bodyguard. As such, the Hermundur can easily maintain contact with our father, through the auxiliaries who have contact with the Germanic chieftains. I’m thinking that means that the message may have actually been given to him directly by our father. But how could Father have imagined that we would be able to identify the figure who stands at the centre of life and of death?’

  ‘You’re right,’ nodded Arminius. ‘He couldn’t.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘For now we don’t have an answer to that question. And if we’re saying that Caesar learned about the message through Taurus, why didn’t he just have the Hermundur tortured to get him to talk?’

  ‘Of course. So why didn’t he do it?’

  ‘If I were him, I wouldn’t have done so either. It’s evident that if you entrust someone with a message to pass on by word of mouth, you’re going to pick a person who’s capable of memorizing it but who can’t understand what it means. No sense in torturing the messenger.’

  TAURUS INVITED THEM to dinner and the two youths were quite gratified by the invitation. Their relationship with the centurion was changing day by day, becoming more direct and confidential. Although it was clear that the veteran of so many battles had his favourite: he preferred Flavus’s spontaneity to Arminius’s more reserved, introverted personality.

  They told him of the encounter with Caesar which had impressed them greatly.

  ‘What struck you most about him?’ asked the centurion.

  ‘His simplicity,’ replied Flavus. ‘I was expecting a man wrapped in precious fabrics and flaunting jewels, crowns and bracelets, sitting on a throne in a room gleaming with marble and mosaics. A man in his position can afford whatever he likes. And instead we found ourselves talking to a man dressed only in a white hand-woven tunic, with a belt of plain leather and a pair of sandals that were sturdy-looking but not fancy. The only jewellery he was wearing was his family ring. And the room we met him in was elegant, but very simple as well. It could have belonged to anyone. Your own reception room, Centurion, is bigger and, may I say, even more ornate.’

  ‘He who holds true power doesn’t need jewellery or fancy clothing to demonstrate his worth. If someone feels this need, it’s only a sign of his weakness . . . What do you think, Arminius?’

  ‘I was struck by his hands. They’re not the hands of a warrior. The only time they’ve touched a sword is in a parade.’

  ‘He has the hands of a politician. He doesn’t need to be strong. He has men who do that for him. The Battle of Actium was won by Agrippa, his right-hand man, while he was below deck vomiting his guts out. What he does need to be is intelligent, shrewd, wise, but also sceptical and even hypocritical, if necessary. You see, appearance can be more meaningful than truth, at times. It is thus that Caesar creates an image of himself and communicates that image to his people.

  ‘More than one room in his palace,’ Taurus continued, ‘is decorated with theatrical masks. You could say it’s an obsession. Did you notice? Did you ask yourselves why?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Because power means wearing a mask. He wears that simple hand-sewn tunic because he wants people to think that he’s not much different from an ordinary citizen who lives on a modest salary. I can tell you that he’s a man capable of real emotion when he can afford to express it.

  ‘Peace and prosperity reign within the confines of the Empire. It’s certainly not the golden age that was announced by the procession sculpted in the Altar of Peace. But that man dressed in white has put an end to the civil wars and built roads, ports, aqueducts, bridges, thermal baths and libraries. He’s reorganized the army and state administration. He’s distributed land to those who owned no property. He’s even asked a great poet to compose a national poem consecrating Italy as the heart of the Empire.

  ‘What is he asking of you?’

  It was Arminius who answered first: ‘He wants us to keep probing, in order to understand what it could mean that Julia is at the centre of life and of death, but we’re not spies, we’re warriors! Although I’m afraid we won’t be able to avoid finishing what we’ve started.’

  ‘I fear you’re right,’ replied Taurus.

  ‘But we’re just not capable of getting at what he wants to know. We don’t even know how to start. Julia’s the most powerful woman in the City; it’s pretty much impossible for someone like us to even approach her.’

  ‘The most powerful woman in the City? Perhaps . . . but also the most fragile. As far as the two of you are concerned, show your faith in Rome and in the emperor. He will know how to repay you. As far as Julia is concerned, you’re right to think you shouldn’t approach her. You wouldn’t stay alive long. I’ll tell you what you need to know, and then you’ll have to decide how to go forward from there.’

  Both Arminius and Flavus were feeling rather dizzy: they had just met with the most powerful man in the world and now Taurus was suggesting that they could remain within the circle of the great and powerful men of the Empire. Their childhood and youth were far away in their minds and insignificant when compared with where they found themselves now. The sensation was very strong and was growing by the day. Even Arminius had had his leonine tresses cut off and wore his hair in a flowing style that framed his face but didn’t reach his shoulders. He expressed an original kind of elegance that made him even more interesting. Flavus instead had had his blond hair cut short in the military manner and had grown a short beard.

  As the two boys sat down at the table across from their host, the first guard shift was going on duty and in the silence that followed Taurus’s words, they could hear the commanders exchanging passwords.

  ‘The night is still long,’ said Taurus. ‘When you leave here you’ll know everything you need to know in order to tease the sense out of the message you’ve been given.’

  He began to tell his story: ‘Julia was Caesar Augustus’s only child. Now, although the supreme ruler did not intend to formally announce that the Republic was finished and that a dynastic monarchy had arisen in its place, he wanted a direct heir. So he destined his daughter to a series of state marriages. The first was to her cousin, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, but he died very young after a year of marriage without generating a son. Poisoning was suspected. Julia was then joined in marriage with Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who was twenty-five years older than she. They had two daughters and three sons: Gaius and Lucius Caesar and Agrippa Postumus, born after his father’s death. Agrippa died ten years ago, while you were still children and I was at the height of my own career. But Julia’s womb was too precious to let her go, and so Augustus forced Tiberius to divorce his own wife Vipsania, whom he loved dearly and with whom he’d had two children, and to marry Julia.

  ‘For Tiberius, the loss of his wife has remained an open wound. I’ve heard that whenever he catches sight of her in public, t
ears come to his eyes.’

  ‘But if he loved her, why did he repudiate her?’ asked Arminius. ‘I’d never . . .’ he stopped, sorry that he’d spoken.

  But it was Taurus who continued: ‘You’d never what? You’d never do such a thing, would you? This leads me to understand that you still don’t know what makes Rome great. Something that you barbarians . . .’ Arminius’s face flushed and Flavus’s lips twisted into an ironic smile, ‘can’t even begin to imagine. The State. That’s what makes Rome great. That is, the people, the Senate, the army and the magistrates, the gods and priests and temples. Rome’s sacred borders. The vestal virgins who cultivate the sacred fire of our ancestors in their sanctuary. Our seas and our lands. For all this, we are willing to sacrifice anything and any person: our home or our fields, our wives or our sisters, our sons and daughters, all of our worldly goods and those of our forebears.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. That there aren’t many of us that uphold these ideals. That a great number of us have been corrupted by money and our greed for more, by excess and decadence, by the ultimate, extreme conceit of owning other human beings as if they were objects or hardly more than animals. But the few of us who remain faithful, raised by our fathers to respect hard rules of discipline, are more than sufficient to keep our ideals alive for those who have lost them. Tiberius’s tears, if what they say is true, show how painful giving her up was. But they also show his firm intention to place obedience to the State and its supreme ruler before private sentiments, no matter how deep and intense those may be.

  ‘Tiberius was with Julia long enough to conceive a child who was born at camp in Aquileia, the city of the legionary eagles, but who died soon thereafter. Generated against the will of his parents in that far corner of Italy. After that Tiberius left at the head of his army, heading east to extend our domain all the way to the Danube.

  ‘Julia, on the other hand, tired of the political marriages she’d had to submit to starting from the age of fourteen and found freedom. Her body was slim and desirable again after giving birth, her husband far away in savage lands. She finally gave herself over to the high life of Rome that she’d always dreamed of. Parties, elegant gowns, perfume and jewels, admirers who would cut their veins to enjoy her favours. She happily gave herself to some and denied others if only for the pleasure of seeing them consumed with jealousy and maddened by desire . . .’

  Arminius and Flavus both had the same thought at that moment: that Taurus himself had tortured himself over her or had perhaps even enjoyed her favours.

  The centurion picked up where he had left off, while fingering a little bracelet of silver and Nordic amber: ‘Her intemperance was always overlooked. Her father knew well that he owed her for having provided him with heirs. If it became hard to ignore her excesses, he preferred to write to her: “I’m told your behaviour at so-and-so’s house left something to be desired . . . remember your position and your responsibilities . . . that dress was rather low-necked . . .” But she always knew how to retaliate.’

  Arminius and Flavus found themselves thinking the same thing once again: how could he know the content of such letters? Maybe he was just imagining those phrases. It could be that he was simply dropping names to show how high up he was, or even that such things were common knowledge in certain circles. In any case, Taurus’s words made it clear that these kinds of matters were always resolved within the family. And that Julia was in fact untouchable, because her father loved her sincerely and she knew that.

  ‘But it might well be this attitude of hers that ends up betraying her in the end.’

  Taurus paused and Arminius thought he had finished his talk, but that wasn’t the case. Privatus entered the room along with a servant carrying two small trays with their simple supper. A third was immediately brought out for the host, who ate a bit and then continued.

  ‘Gaius and Lucius,’ he said, ‘are their grandfather’s pride and joy. Augustus adopted both of them as his own children. They’re just a few years younger than you are and they’ll soon be sent to the legions to start their training to become great leaders of armies.’

  ‘Like General Drusus?’ asked Flavus.

  ‘Exactly,’ Taurus said. ‘Agrippa Postumus is much younger than they are, and for now he’s a bit timid and doesn’t seem particularly clever. But that doesn’t mean that when his time comes, he won’t be treated like his brothers, as is fitting for his rank.’

  Everything that the centurion had told them was clear, but he hadn’t finished. ‘Julia is also very fond of her children, but lately she’s become distracted by a new group of . . . acquaintances. I fear they may lead to her ruin.’

  Taurus stopped and ate a few spoons of stewed lentils with some bread toasted on the embers. Arminius and Flavus asked no questions, but waited for him to continue with his story. ‘The people she frequents purport to be a kind of literary circle but they are suspected of spreading insinuations and even harsh criticism of Augustus’s government. The emperor doesn’t seem alarmed, but I’m sure that nothing escapes him. He has informers everywhere and I believe that one of his people may even have infiltrated the group. He obviously knew about the message that you received from the Hermundur because the man is one of his bodyguards. And you, Arminius, discovered that Julia is the central figure of this situation. You don’t know why yet, but I’m almost certain you’ve hit the mark. She is at the centre of everything.

  ‘I’m quite fond of her myself and I would do anything to save her from her own carelessness and from frequenting the wrong kind of people, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do here. There’s a simple reason: the soul of that “literary” circle is the man that she’s been in love with since she was a child – Iullus Antonius, son of Marc Antony and his first wife Fulvia. The people he associates with are a suspicious bunch. There are others who have been orphaned, like himself, by the Dictator perpetuo, and they are fierce, angry and out for his blood. There are veterans from the civil wars who have never resigned themselves to peace and who dream about uprisings, reprisals and more blood. Then there are the scions of the Republican nobility, frustrated and impotent, who don’t want to believe that the world has changed. I’m sure she feels it’s all an exciting game. She’s fascinated by them because she was robbed of her own youth and she’s still looking for thrills. She doesn’t realize she’s playing with fire.

  ‘Augustus himself doesn’t dare strike out against them because he’s terrified by the mere thought of another civil war. He’s dedicated his life, you see, to making sure it will never happen again.’

  He chewed on some bitter greens with a bit of toasted bread in silence, allowing the voices of the night to penetrate the walls of his house.

  ‘Well, what can we do?’ asked Flavus.

  Taurus seemed startled. As he motioned for the freedmen to remove their tables, he had red wine poured into three cups. He handed two of them to his guests. ‘Drink up. The wine may excite your minds and give you an idea that could prove useful.’

  Arminius drank. There was so much to think about: had the emperor heard about the cryptic message from his bodyguard, the Hermundur, or could he have actually thought it up himself? No one knew the sculptures on the Altar of Peace in their every detail better than Augustus did, but that particular image must have been always present in his mind.

  But there was another image that kept pushing itself to the forefront of Arminius’s mind: the ceremony of the festival of spring in the Germanic forest so many years ago. He was standing next to his father when he saw the girl crowned with flowers who glanced at him for a moment. She was flanked by two other girls and by two gigantic Hermunduri; again, there it was: three heads between two bodies. Sigmer had seen that as well as he had, and it may have remained impressed on his mind too.

  A possible explanation was beginning to take shape. Sigmer may have learned from the Hermundur that Julia was part of a dangerous plot, and he had thought of associating two images – similar yet different – t
o a moment that he knew Arminius would remember well. The procession in the forest and the procession of marble. Arminius was also suddenly struck by the realization that Sigmer may have seen the altar with his own eyes; when the monument was inaugurated, the allied sovereigns had certainly been invited to the ceremony.

  So it might truly have been his father who had sent the message, leaving Arminius free to choose whether to reveal its meaning . . . or to keep it hidden and allow the events to play themselves out. Might Julia be thinking of taking a leading role in some plot? She was certainly protected by her high social position and by the love of her father, who would never believe she would do anything to harm him. So just where exactly might this all be leading? Certainly to something that would deal a harsh blow to the emperor and to the Empire.

  If, on the other hand, Arminius chose to speak up, he could put a halt to the events which seemed to be coming to a head, and he would thus earn the unconditioned trust of the emperor, along with all the rewards that would result from such a situation.

  Taurus unrolled the parchment depicting the procession of the Altar of Peace on his work table and gestured for the two boys to join him. He pointed to one figure in particular, the first on the left on the northern side. ‘The next time you visit the altar, look at this man well and fix his features in your minds. He is Iullus Antonius, the love of Julia’s life. He’s most likely the one who has pulled her into this mad adventure that could destroy her in the end. And now tell me whether you are willing to help me.’

  Arminius and Flavus rapidly exchanged a glance and then turned to the centurion and nodded.

  ‘Then we’ve understood each other,’ said Taurus. ‘It’s time to move. I’ve reflected upon this at length and I believe I can introduce you into a setting which should prove to be an excellent observatory and where you may be able to make some very interesting encounters. The work site of the naumachia on the Vatican Hill.