Wolves of Rome

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Then word got out that he was plotting to become king. King of Germania.

  BEFORE LONG, a letter sent by the Chatti chieftain to Rome was read aloud to the assembled senators:

  From Adgandestrium, the chief of the Chatti, to the Senate and people of Rome.

  Armin’s arrogance has become unbearable. We fought so many years against the Roman people to regain our liberty and we will certainly not give it up now to an ambitious man who pretends to be our king. If you have a poison strong enough to kill a brawny man with a robust build, send it to me through the man who has delivered this letter and Armin, son of Sigmer, prince of the Cherusci, will soon have ceased his life.

  The Senate replied that the Roman people were accustomed to avenging wrongs face to face, with weapons in hand, certainly not by means of dark, poisonous plotting.

  ONE EVENING TOWARDS dusk, Flavus was returning to his quarters at Castra Vetera after having participated in a general staff meeting when he found himself suddenly facing the Hermundur whose face was striped with black tattoos.

  ‘You scared me,’ he said, returning his sword to its sheath, ‘and that can be dangerous. Is it me you’re looking for?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied the Hermundur. ‘It’s about something important . . .’

  Flavus motioned for him to continue.

  ‘Three days from now Armin will find himself on horseback at dawn together with his personal guard, now commanded by Herwist. They’ll be riding from the bridge over the River Kreis towards what was once called Drusus’s road, which has been abandoned. It’s an isolated spot, surrounded by a dense forest. There your brother will be assassinated. Herwist has sold himself to the chief of the Chatti.’

  ‘I don’t see how that would concern me,’ replied Flavus curtly.

  The Hermundur bowed his head in silence. He adjusted the cloak on his shoulders, tapped his reins on his horse’s neck and set off at a gallop, vanishing from sight.

  ARMIN WAS FIRST to cross the bridge over the Kreis; he was heading for the old Drusus road. Borr slowed his step as if he could smell something and he started moving sideways, snorting impatiently.

  ‘Good boy, Borr, be good . . .’ said Armin, stroking his neck. He turned to Herwist. ‘Something is spooking him.’

  Herwist drew close as if to provide cover but instead pulled out his sword and drove it into Armin’s side. Armin did not fall from his horse; he unsheathed his own sword instead and cried out, fending off the attack of two more guards.

  At that very instant a horseman appeared, armed with a Roman sword and a Germanic axe that he was whirling with a sinister roar. He raced from the forest at great speed, fell upon Herwist and slaughtered the man, while the others moved swiftly to close in on their prey. A cry burst out: ‘Help me, Wulf, help me!’ as Armin persevered in defending himself, even as blood gushed from his side. He managed to take one of his attackers down, while Flavus axed the other in two at his waist. Armin began to slip slowly then to the ground. Flavus jumped off his horse and drew near; his brother was gasping for breath and blood was pouring down his side.

  Flavus bound Armin’s wound tightly and made a litter using pine branches, which he secured to Borr’s straps so it could be dragged behind the horse. He set off at once, in the direction of a village that he remembered was nearby.

  He would turn often to see how his brother was faring. Armin was thrashing, and calling out; this reassured him. There would be a shaman in the village who could take care of him. He stopped once or twice and put his index finger to his brother’s jugular vein to test the beating of his heart and then set off again. He was nearly there, by his calculations.

  When he got to the clearing he was looking for, he realized that the village had been abandoned and that Armin was dead. He stayed at his brother’s side until dusk, listening to the remote voices of two boys echoing through time who had once sworn never to leave one another. He took his axe and went into the forest to collect wood for the pyre. He set it aflame. He collected his brother’s ashes in a clay jar and buried them in a hidden place. He let Borr run free and he mounted his own black horse and rode into the distance.

  Epilogue

  MANY YEARS PASSED, during which Flavus became a Roman citizen and was promoted to the highest ranks of the army. He never managed to learn where his nephew Tumlich, son of Armin, could be found. Nor did he dare ask. He knew that Thusnelda was dead.

  He thought that one day, sooner or later, the Hermundur would appear to show him the way, but he waited in vain. Maybe he’d died in combat in one of the frequent skirmishes among the Germanic tribes or maybe he’d simply vanished. Maybe he was only a ghost, a mysterious connection he’d once shared with his brother.

  It was a dream that roused Flavus’s memory. A dream in which he was alone in a place he’d never seen before, a ring-shaped building made of wood, with the voice of a Germanic auxiliary telling him, ‘It’s a school for gladiators.’ He turned and heard the sound of a gallop and saw a blond horseman emerging from the fog on a black stallion that snorted puffs of steam from his nostrils. Then the horseman disappeared.

  Recalling that image was like looking in the mirror for the first time. He was the blond horseman on the black stallion and the moment had come to join himself to that person in his dream.

  He returned one night to the place where he had secretly buried the jar with Armin’s ashes. He dug it up, placed it in the sack which held his personal belongings, and readied for a long journey.

  He first passed through the headquarters of the Army of the North. It was dawn. He’d come to say goodbye to Centurion Taurus. His likeness was sculpted on an empty tomb, but he was present.

  ‘Hail, Centurion.’

  ‘Have a safe journey, son,’ resounded a hoarse voice inside of him. As he walked away he heard the notes of an old legionary song that he’d never managed to learn well.

  Miles meus contubernalis

  Dic mihi cras quis erit vivus

  Iacta pilum hostem neca

  Miles es, miles Romanus!

  Flavus travelled untiringly by day and night. He crossed the Alps over the same pass where he and Armin had once tried to run away and there he saw the old woman with the ointment. How old was she now, a hundred? He descended towards the great lake to the south and spent the night in the same mansio where he had met Iole.

  Where was Iole?

  What Iole – some whore? They’d never heard of any Iole.

  ‘If you should see her, can you give her this bracelet from me . . . thank you,’ said Flavus.

  The innkeeper had given him a wide smile.

  His destination was Ravenna, the great bay where he had once stood with his brother in wordless amazement as the immense quinquereme, the Aquila Maris, sailed in. He found the city enveloped in dense fog and he felt that the place of his dream was close by. He spurred on his horse and he heard a pounding of hoofs and, as if he were in front of a mirror, he saw himself emerging all at once from the fog and he knew he had to stop.

  In front of him was the building shaped like a ring, made all of wood.

  He waited until daybreak.

  A servant came out from under one of the arches with a sack slung over his shoulder. Maybe he was a slave, heading out to the market. Flavus took the helmet from his saddle and put it on.

  ‘I want to know when the school opens.’

  ‘No one can watch the training.’

  ‘I can. I’m the commander of the Twentieth Legion and I can go wherever I like.’

  ‘Of course. Please forgive me, Legate. Training begins right after breakfast. You can enter when you like. I’ll talk to the man in charge.’

  Flavus waited a little. There was a small tavern opening nearby and he took the opportunity to get something hot to drink. When the servant came back with what he’d bought, Flavus took the saddlebag from his horse and entered the school with him.

  At the entrance to the cavea, the servant showed him the way to the sixth row of seats, the best,
and Flavus took a place. After a while, the lanista and trainer appeared with the servant alongside them. He pointed to the unexpected guest who was sitting all alone up on the sixth row.

  Three pairs of boys played off, with the winner of each round continuing. In the end, just one was left standing: the strongest, the most handsome and the most violent.

  It’s him, thought Flavus. His father’s spitting image.

  He asked the lanista if he could meet the young man in private.

  ‘He’s not for sale, Legate, not even to an officer of your rank.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Flavus.

  The lanista nodded and accompanied him to a room close to the ring. The boy came in; he was still covered in dust and sweat. He closed the door behind them and left them alone.

  Flavus took off his helmet, releasing the blond locks that had given him his name. His left eye was covered by a leather patch.

  ‘I’m your uncle Wulf-Flavus,’ he said as he took a little ivory coffer from his bag. ‘And these are the ashes of your father Armin, the first leader of the Germanic people. He made many mistakes, but he lost his life in the quest for the freedom and unity of his land and his people. He loved you infinitely, although he had never seen you. Do not forget him for as long as you live.’

  The young man regarded him with bright eyes, without managing to say a word. He took the box and clutched it to his chest.

  ‘Farewell, son.’

  ‘Farewell, Commander.’

  Flavus left. He felt a knot in his throat for the first time in his life. He jumped onto his stallion and galloped off, disappearing into the fog.

  Author’s Note

  THE BATTLE OF Teutoburg Forest of AD 9 is one of the watershed moments of Roman and European history. It was one of the three greatest defeats, along with Cannae and Adrianople, suffered by the Roman army over nearly a millennium of history. This debacle was a devastating shock for Augustus, who had invested enormous resources in twenty years of war in Germania, and it prompted him to move the north-eastern border of the Empire back to the Rhine. His idea of extending the frontier to the Elbe was forever forsaken.

  But why did Augustus so want the Elbe to be the Empire’s border, six hundred kilometres east of the Rhine? It couldn’t have simply been the desire to rectify the eastern frontier in such a way so as to eliminate the wedge that stretched from the upper Rhine to the upper Danube; this alone could not justify the deployment of tens of legions and thousands of war and cargo ships. Over the twenty-year period, Rome’s finest commanders, including Drusus, his brother Tiberius, Germanicus and Aulus Caecina, were put to the test there. There were many successes, but a great number of failures as well, especially if we consider that our sources are Roman and thus prone to exalt victories and to play down the defeats or draws, at least to some extent. In these cases, spin played a role at least as important as that of the legions.

  From the Res Gestae we know that Augustus sent his deputies (per legatos meos) to the extreme limits of the known world. We also know that the Caspian Sea and the Baltic Sea were considered gulfs of the ocean which, according to the geographical beliefs of that time, surrounded the entire earth. In other words, what Augustus truly wanted to reach was not a river border (the Elbe) but the ocean itself, although he could have no idea of how distant it actually was. His intention, therefore, must have been to unite all of the earth’s land mass under the aegis of Rome. The Urbs (the City) had to coincide with the Orbis, that is, the world. This narrative imagines a wider goal: to prevent what Horace feared and what eventually occurred in actuality. The destruction of the Roman Empire by the Germanic peoples.

  Germania, at that time, had nothing to offer a potential conqueror: the land was covered by forests and swamps and the state of the economy was primitive. Agriculture was practically unknown, as was iron and steel working, although there have been sporadic finds of iron blades with traces of carbonitriding. Germanic settlements had not yet reached a pre-urban state, even according to the most recent archeological discoveries which classify communities inhabited by more than five hundred people as indicative of important development. The climate was terrible by Roman standards (horribile coelum, says Tacitus), with long, frigid winters and short rainy summers.

  All this would lead us to believe that the founder of the Roman Empire saw the necessity of including Germanic ethnicities in the Empire, assimilating them through military enrollment. He most likely saw them as the most dangerous adversaries of the State and as potential invaders. Horace’s lines (‘The victorious barbarians, alas! shall trample upon the ashes of the city and the horsemen shall smite it with the sounding hoofs’, Epode 16) represent an almost prophetic scene of barbarian invasion, already evoked by Scipio Aemilianus in tears before the ruins of Carthage (Polybius, XXXVIII, 21; Diodorus, XXXII, 24). All sources recall the invasion of the Cimbri and the Teutons who had invaded northern Italy, before being defeated by Gaius Marius in the Battle of Vercellae. Although prevention may have been foremost on their mind, it cannot be excluded that the Romans saw the Germanic peoples as bringers of new energies.

  The true enigma is how Publius Quinctilius Varus allowed himself to be so completely deceived by his commander of the Germanic auxiliaries: Armin, Cherusci prince, Roman citizen and member of the Equites (knights), the second rank after the senators. In vain, Germanic chieftain Seghest warned him of the trap, exhorting him to put Armin and all of his friends in chains. Varus was unshakeable in his trust and led three elite legions, the Seventeenth, the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth, down an impassable route littered with boulders and crossed by brooks and rivulets, surrounded on all sides by thick woods that made it perfect terrain for ambushes. All without an iota of suspicion. Meanwhile, the lower part of the massif of Kalkriese had been fitted with a screen of grates covered with clods of earth, behind which twenty thousand Germanic warriors were hiding, waiting to hurl their javelins. It appears that the path itself had been deviated so that the Roman column on the march could offer their flank without defence to the warriors lying in wait behind the wall. This was no battlefield but a slaughterhouse, and the legions had no possibility of escaping. Both the deviation of the route and the presence of a wall disguised by clods of soil have been deduced by archeologists, who have thus interpreted the results of their findings, although the ancient sources are insufficiently clear on these devices.

  It is also difficult to explain how Armin was able to win the trust of the chiefs of the great Germanic tribes, who must have known well how the Cherusci prince had earned Roman citizenship: by fighting in the Roman army against his own blood (Tiberius’s campaigns in AD 4–6, Velleius II, 118).

  This story respects the information provided by the sources as far as possible, although many gaps exist, especially in Tacitus. Other versions (Cassius Dio and Velleius Paterculus) are more complete. In any case, this story gives an emotional retelling of events, inspired by the cenotaph of Marcus Caelius currently on display at the Archeological Museum of Bonn, as well as by figures who are barely mentioned in the original sources but who have an important weight in the decisions and thoughts of the characters. Armin’s mother is a prime example: we know next to nothing about her (PW RE, 1191); even her name is invented in this novel. Armin’s beloved Thusnelda (Strabo VII, 292) was carried off by him at a non-specified time, and was later recaptured by her father Seghest who held her prisoner and then turned her over, while pregnant, to Germanicus. Mother and child were exhibited at Germanicus’s triumph in Rome, earning the disgust and rage of Armin. Tacitus reports this in keeping with the rhetoric prevalent in his day and he cannot thus be taken literally. The same can be said of Tacitus’s account of the encounter between Armin and his brother Flavus (who indeed remained faithful to Rome) on the Weser.

  As far as character names are concerned, I’ve attempted to recreate the Germanic names (present in Latin texts as Segimerus, Inguiomarus, Segestes, Maroboduus, Tumelicus, etc.) in a purely phonological way. The Germanic name of
Flavus is unknown and the name chosen here, Wulf, is pure imagination. Armin’s Germanic name is also uncertain: Hermann is generally accepted today in Germany, but many scholars have disagreed (PW RE 1190); Armin or Irmin have been suggested.

  Armin’s father died in AD 7 (PW RE 1192) while his mother lived until AD 16 (Tacitus II, 10).

  The victory of Teutoburg must have turned Armin into a hero and almost certainly the unquestioned chief of the coalition of peoples who had joined in the fight. The destruction of Varus’s army surely marked a point of no return. Rome could not avoid avenging such a defeat, but six years passed before another Roman army crossed the Rhine. Germanicus’s expedition began with a journey to honour the battlefield of Teutoburg and to bury the remains of the Roman soldiers killed there. But despite the great victory of Idistavisus in AD 16, Germanicus had to cut short what he had hoped would be a decisive campaign a year later by obeying Tiberius’s orders to return to Rome. Germanicus’s subsequent deployment to Syria and his death there under mysterious circumstances contributed to definitively burying all plans for Romanizing Germania. Tiberius himself, the greatest soldier that Rome had ever known, came to the conclusion that the project was too costly and dangerous and that when the Roman armies withdrew to the west bank of the Rhine, the Germanic tribes would be forced to fight out their disputes against each other.

  In his campaign against Marbod, Armin very probably wanted to achieve the union of all the Germanic peoples under his leadership. But the rumour was circulating that he was seeking to name himself their king (the first Reich?) and this must have set off a plot that involved poisoning him and which ended in his murder in AD 21 at the hands of his own men. Shortly before his death, Germanicus, his great adversary and peer in age also died, probably by poisoning. Armin’s wife Thusnelda died in Ravenna in AD 17 and his only son Tumelicus died as an adolescent, probably in a gladiators’ arena.