Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Carrhae. Arminius had heard that name but he couldn’t place it.

  ‘It was here that, half a century ago, a tremendous battle took place,’ Sergius Vetilius began to tell the story. ‘A magnificent Roman army with a full seven legions was annihilated by the Parthians. It was commanded by triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus. He had ventured into this territory deceived by information provided by local tribal chieftains, who urged him to attack with all his soldiers. As incompetent as he was greedy, Crassus wanted to reach Seleucia, where he hoped to find the legendary treasures of the Parthians, and he trusted the advice and instructions of an Arab sovereign who ruled over a small kingdom. It was a trap. Crassus drove his men at a forced march into a flat, arid territory under the burning sun. The Roman heavy infantry was exhausted before they ever met the enemy. The commander of the Parthians, who was young and astute, masterfully manoeuvred his armoured cavalry and his fearsome mounted archers. They are such experts with their bows that they can hit their target facing backwards, while fleeing on their horses or pretending to flee . . .’

  The landscape all around them seemed to make those distant events real and dreadful. Varus and his companions on horseback regarded the sun-scorched plain; on their left still rose the walls of Carrhae, an ancient and oft fought-over city. The only sound to be heard was the thin hiss of the wind that raised a slight haze from the vast, flat, barren ground. Varus seemed to be listening to only the wind, absorbed in his own thoughts.

  Sergius Vetilius continued: ‘Crassus drew up his men in a compact block that made it even easier for the enemy to encircle them. The Parthians never engage in hand-to-hand combat; they always strike from afar and disengage. All around the Roman block, the Parthians beat gigantic drums that struck terror and despair into the legionaries. The Roman commander was desperate; his only hope was that the Parthians would run out of arrows . . . but he hoped in vain. They had camels, hundreds of them, laden with what seemed an infinite supply of their deadly weapons. The rain of arrows was incessant. Nothing could protect his men from that deluge. The darts pierced their shields, and then their arms, and their hands. Many of them tried to fight on by wrenching the arrows out of their bodies, but that only served to lacerate their flesh even more, and then the bleeding couldn’t be stopped . . .’

  Sergius Vetilius seemed to be in a hallucinatory state, as if he were seeing the scene play out in front of his eyes. More than once, Arminius found himself turning around to check for an imminent attacker, as if those demonic steel-covered horsemen might appear from one moment to the next.

  Vetilius seemed to be scanning the area all around as well, and he took a few steps back. He was like an actor in a tragedy, moving around on stage, his face covered by a mask from which his laments could be heard. ‘The Roman commander attempted a risky manoeuvre: he had his own son Publius lead a charge of the Celtic cavalry against the enemy horsemen. The enemy rode off as if they were fleeing and his men gave chase, giving Crassus the illusion that the charge had been victorious; once again he was wrong. When Publius and his Gallic horsemen were far enough away from the heart of the battle, the Parthians surrounded them. In the end, Publius was suffering from so many wounds that he asked his attendant to kill him because he didn’t have the strength to wield his own sword. The Parthians chopped off his head. One of them stuck it onto a pike, rode over to the Roman formation and galloped by, his trophy raised high, so close that Crassus and all his men could see the end his son had come to.’

  The narrator’s voice trembled as he pronounced those words. Rufius Corvus said something into Arminius’s ear: ‘The young attendant who plunged his sword into Publius Crassus’s side and helped him to die was his grandfather. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this story.’

  Arminius could not understand how they had ended up in that place, at that time, listening to that tragic reenactment and why Varus had wanted to come all this way, since he seemed completely disinterested. He had not said a word, and his back was turned to the huge deserted stretch of land.

  ‘The massacre went on until nightfall, because the Parthians, like the Persians, never fight after darkness falls. Crassus abandoned his wounded and tried to reach Carrhae to save himself. The next day, the wounded were all killed, one by one, four thousand men. All told, the battle lasted three days. In the end Crassus died as well. His head was taken to Seleucia and was later used, I’ve heard say, in a play: The Bacchae, by Euripides, in a scene where King Pentheus is torn to pieces by women in a Dionysian orgy.’

  Sergius Vetilius fell silent as the sky began to cloud over to the north. Varus roused himself from his torpor and said, ‘Let’s go on. I want to see where the battle took place.’

  ‘Proconsul,’ objected Rufius Corvus, ‘perhaps we should go another day, when the weather is better.’

  ‘I want to go now,’ replied Quinctilius Varus. ‘The storm is far off, over the mountains.’

  The two officers and Arminius thus put themselves at the head of the squad and proceeded south. Varus joined them on horseback as well.

  Both Rufius and Sergius seemed familiar with the road and Arminius thought that was why Quinctilius Varus had wanted them with him.

  Their route was not free of perils. Borders were very unclear in that area, because the desert extended for hundreds of miles in every direction and marauders from the nomadic tribes came and went as they pleased, often travelling with groups of Parthian horsemen, still swift and deadly half a century after the battle.

  It was nearly mid-afternoon when the first signs of the massacre began to appear: rusty weapons corroded by the wind and sand, Roman helmets and swords, broken fragments of armour which were hard to even identify, arrowheads stuck in the ground in such numbers that Arminius and the others chose to proceed on foot so they could pick out a clear path and their horses wouldn’t be injured or lamed.

  As they went on, the landscape became increasingly horrifying.

  Bones.

  Tens of thousands of bones.

  There were so many of them. The remains of the four thousand wounded men abandoned by Crassus and butchered by the Parthians. Chopped to pieces. Beheaded. Varus had become increasingly withdrawn. He didn’t say a word as he let his gaze wander over the endless field of death. Now and then his face would contract suddenly, or he would jump slightly, as if he were hearing the screams of the dying and the thunder of the enemy’s drums.

  Then they saw the bones of horses mixed with human remains: the huge skeletons of Publius Crassus’s Celtic warriors. You could still see the marks left by the teeth of the jackals and hyenas that had stripped them bare half a century earlier. There were Gallic horsemen among the Germanic auxiliaries accompanying them, and their faces turned as grey as the soot at their feet at seeing the wretched remains of their ancient comrades.

  ‘Let’s turn back, Proconsul, please,’ said Sergius Vetilius, incapable of staring for another instant at the remnants of the worst defeat Rome had suffered, after the Battle of Cannae. ‘The weather is getting worse. If a dust storm picks up, we’ll risk getting lost and ending up like these poor souls here.’

  Varus seemed to suddenly become aware of the situation, as thunder rumbled in the distance. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we’ll go back to Carrhae.’

  The wind picked up, raising a cloud of dust, and the sky darkened. The parched tamarisks in the dry riverbeds were blown through by the wind, which had turned into a hiss and then a lament. The horsemen rode bent over in the fog like ghosts. The first raindrops fell and the air was filled with the scent of quenched earth. The haze cleared and a bolt of lightning flooded the plain with blinding light, as a crack of thunder exploded over their heads. The rain began to fall thick and heavy. The soil could not absorb all the water and rivulets soon formed, gathering in cracks in the rocks and then pouring into the riverbeds. Arminius thought of the skulls of the fallen soldiers being bathed by the rain, the water slaking the thirst of their disjointed jaws. He asked himself again why they had come
in the first place. He couldn’t ask the proconsul the reason for their journey, but perhaps Sergius and Rufius could help him understand.

  Arminius missed his brother, who he would always turn to when he had a question on his mind. He had no idea at all where he was.

  The rain stopped late that night and the full moon showed through the tattered clouds, spreading its glow over the chalky plain. Arminius saw Rufius and Sergius sitting near a campfire, where they were drying their wet clothes. He got off his horse and joined them.

  ‘Why have we come all this way if there’s nothing here but bones? Why did we come to see that battle ground?’

  Sergius Vetilius spoke first: ‘It’s been the dream of many commanders to defeat the Parthians and avenge this massacre. Varus was the governor of this province, and he may be considering doing just that. His ambition is enormous. He put down a huge revolt in Judaea and crucified two thousand people. Not a glorious endeavour. The work of a butcher.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Arminius.

  ‘I think that maybe this gruesome reconnaissance mission is his way of putting the temptation out of his mind. It would be suicide, and Varus is no fool. The debacle of Carrhae would be enough to dissuade anyone of the notion. It’s the only thing I can think of.’

  Rufius stepped in: ‘Your interpretation is just not plausible. It’s highly improbable that he would be re-assigned to this region. But he is also very aware that his career has room for advancement and the fact that he’s close to the house of Augustus just feeds into his ambitions. He is here simply to look at the errors of the past so that he will not repeat them in his future military career. After dinner, when I read him my report based on the diary I’ve been keeping, that was the impression he gave me.’

  ‘So what conclusions has he come to?’ asked Arminius.

  ‘There’s no way he would tell me, nor would I dare to ask. But I told him the conclusions that I came to myself,’ Rufius continued, counting on the fingers of his hand.

  ‘The Roman army, as battle-ready as it may be, can be defeated.

  ‘Never trust a foreigner, even when he is an ally.

  ‘And lastly, never let yourself be lured into a territory that you don’t know but that the enemy knows like the palm of his hand.’

  The three officers regarded each other in silence. The call of a jackal, sounding like a long lament, echoed through the desert of Carrhae.

  16

  ARMINIUS THOUGHT LONG and hard about Quinctilius Varus’s strange quest. What struck him most was his comrade’s assertion that the Roman army could be defeated. Although this remained with him, he would have many occasions in the following years to convince himself of the opposite. He spent nearly four years in the East, travelling almost always with the same people who had seen Carrhae with him. In that long stretch of time, he learned much about the Empire of Rome and became good friends with Rufius Corvus and Sergius Vetilius.

  In these long years, he also learned how the postal system worked. One merely went to the nearest port and got information about the ships that were setting sail, on what day of what month, and the name of the captain, with whom you could discuss price. If you were lucky, you’d find a direct ship to Ostia, which then went to Rome, sailing up the Tiber. In Rome, you got someone to go to the harbour to pick up the parcel or letter. He would then consign it to the cursus publicus office, and from there it would continue by road until it reached its destination.

  He wrote to Diodorus first, at the house on the Aventine, certain that he would still be there. He was much less certain of where to find Taurus, who as a man of arms was certainly sought after because of his experience and his many virtues; he would never be left at home for long. He asked his one-time tutor to forward a letter to his brother Flavus, including it in the same sealed case. If he received a reply, Arminius asked him to send it to Antioch, to the headquarters of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata. In less than two months he received, to his great surprise, an answer.

  ‘Winds are favourable on the sea,’ explained Rufius Corvus, handing him the message. ‘And the weather on the continent is good. Here’s your letter.’

  Arminius’s heart was pounding as he opened it. The case showed all the signs of its long travels; it was scratched and scraped, the least you could expect from a journey many thousands of miles long. He carefully unrolled the parchment. The letter was written in clumsy, ill-formed Latin, surely the work of a camp scribe, but Arminius felt a strong jolt of emotion at reading those words:

  Flavus, to his brother, hail!

  Yesterday I received with great joy your letter in which you tell me about the wonders of the East and its cities. Instead, I find myself in Germania on the Rhine front, in the army of Marcus Vinicius where we combat continuously, making very little progress.

  I have been named prefect of one of the cavalry alae and I have been assigned special quarters here in camp. I have an Illyrian slave who serves me at table and a woman who washes my clothes and consoles me during the long nights.

  It is still very cold here. I miss the climate in Rome greatly. I have no doubt about where I’d rather live. I hope that destiny will join us again soon.

  Stay well.

  It wasn’t much, and yet Arminius was happy to receive a letter from his brother from the edge of the world and the ocean shore. It seemed like a miracle to him. He read it again and again. He was really glad to hear that Flavus was hoping they’d be together again. He went to his room and prepared his reply:

  Arminius to Flavus, dearest brother, hail!

  It was with great pleasure that I received your letter this morning. Congratulations for your promotion in Vinicius’s army.

  I hope to be in Rome next autumn and I count on seeing you there. I have so many things to tell you and I’ll be bringing a gift. Let me know as soon as you can when you will be returning to Rome, and if you’ve had the fortune of seeing our father and finding him in good health. Be careful not to put yourself in harm’s way and take care of yourself.

  The letter was sent off on a cargo ship heading first to Naples and then to Rome, from where it would be carried north.

  Even if Flavus managed to answer him, his brother’s letter would have to wait for him at the headquarters of the Twelfth for a long time. Arminius was preparing to escort Quinctilius Varus to a number of cities in Syro-Palestine, where he had work to carry out on behalf of the emperor. When King Herod was still alive, he had enjoyed Augustus’s favour and the emperor had educated two of his sons in Rome. But when he died, a number of years earlier, tiny Judaea had been divided among his sons, who fought over succession in both lawful and unlawful ways. Varus was thus acting incognito as the emperor’s privileged informer on current happenings in Judaea.

  And so Arminius had the opportunity to visit the most austere city of the East, the opposite of Antioch: Jerusalem. Here the people adored a single god, quick-tempered and invisible. He was said to be present in the temple which was one of the largest constructions of the world. It had been built by King Herod and was frequented by millions of pilgrims who flocked in from the east and the west. In the beginning, Augustus did not pretend direct dominion over the Romans in Judaea, rebellious and uncontrollable as the region was. He preferred to let first his client-king Herod, his protégé, maintain order in those lands, and then to let the task fall to Herod’s sons after his death. Their borders were protected from the Parthian Empire by the Roman legions stationed in Syria. Including the Twelfth.

  Arminius visited the Antonia Fortress and from the top of its towers he beheld, amazed, the immense temple enclosure, the porticoes, the staircases and the Holy of Holies, the place where their invisible god dwelt. No one was allowed to go in there except for their high priest, who entered once a year and pronounced the name of their god.

  Arminius had never seen another place like this one. So small and yet so crucial. The Parthian Empire was just one hundred and fifty miles from the coast and they must be prevented from reachi
ng it, at any cost; if they did, that would split the Roman Empire in two. Arminius had never been so keenly aware of how the government of Rome succeeded in mixing wisdom and cynicism as in Judaea, in this tangle of small territories ruled by tiny kings, complicated by delicate and difficult dealings with the clergy of that temple and the high priest himself, who was not only the direct intermediary with god but also with the Roman emperor. Arminius realized that wielding power well was an extremely complex operation, which required intelligence and a great deal of experience. It occurred to him that in his ancestral land, this art was wholly absent. The only way that power was exercised was through force.

  One night, when he got back to the fortress where Varus was being lodged, Arminius noticed that he was scowling.

  ‘Is there a problem, Proconsul?’ he asked.

  Varus nodded. ‘I’ve just received word that the grandson and adopted son of Augustus, Lucius Caesar, son of his daughter Julia and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, has died.’

  Arminius was shocked. Had Julia heard as well, on her desert island?

  ‘Augustus is heartbroken,’ continued Varus. ‘He adored that child and had certainly hoped he would be his successor. The letter recounts that the emperor immediately donned mourning robes; it says that his face seemed all the paler in contrast with his black tunic. And he escorted the body to Rome in tears, burying the boy’s ashes in the family mausoleum.’

  So the master of the world could cry. He had punished his daughter by ruthlessly banishing her but he bitterly wept over her son’s body. The harshest reason of state could thus co-exist with human emotion.

  ‘I’ve had my secretary write a letter of condolence for the emperor,’ continued Varus, ‘and I’ve ordered a statue portraying Lucius Caesar to be sculpted and installed in the Campus Martius.’

  ‘If I may ask, Proconsul,’ said Arminius, ‘does this mean we’ll be returning home?’