The crowd cheered. Thick ropes of black smoke were curling up. Flames licked up to devour Maximinus, his soldiers, and the women and children in an indiscriminate holocaust.
Caenis stumbled as the throng shifted back. The Lictors were pushing people out of the way. Once their attendants had opened a path, the magistrates and other Senators processed to the Curia. Much-obscured by the heads of those in front, Caenis could only see a few of them. She glimpsed the attractive Menophilus. After him went the long-bearded figure of old Pupienus; a harsh man; as Prefect of the City, he had used the Urban Cohorts to drive the people from the Temple of Venus and Rome. Men had died, and the plebs had not forgotten. He ignored the insults that dogged his progress.
Among the very last, she saw Gallicanus in his homespun toga. He turned left and right, exchanging rough, manly banter with the crowd. Surely it could not be true about Gallicanus? The slave had been drunk, but he was in the household of the Senator, and he had sworn he told no lie. Public morality, and private vice; it was the oldest story. Caenis smiled. It felt good that she knew a secret that could bring down a high and mighty Senator like Gallicanus.
Once all the Senators were safely gathered in, the great bronze doors of the Curia clanged shut. Again the Senate would meet in secret session. The plebs made their disapproval known. The mob surged towards the Senate House. Libertas! Libertas! The atmosphere had changed in an instant. The shouts of Liberty echoed back off the surrounding buildings with an air of menace, as if the stones of the Forum itself called for blood.
The way back to the Subura was blocked; an angry mob wedged between the Curia and the Basilica Aemilia. Pushing and squirming through, careless of groping hands, Caenis fought her way past the Shrine of Venus Cloacina, and into the comparative quiet of the Portico of Gaius and Lucius Caesar. She would have to take a longer route home.
From the passage by the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, she emerged into the immense courtyard of the Temple of Peace. The wind had shifted and was stronger, bringing down from the north isolated dark clouds, the forerunners of a storm. But for now the sun shone on neat flowerbeds, fountains, statues, and ornamental trees. The stalls of the merchants were closed, and it was pleasantly empty after the Forum, just the occasional stroller. She had most of the day. It made no odds if the rain caught her. She would have to change before going to work.
Calm now, she turned to the right, ambling along under the colonnade. The columns were a pretty pink, with white bases and tops. Most of sculptures and paintings she could not identify. Unable to read their inscriptions, to her they were just a young athlete, a beautiful girl, or a grizzled wrestler. But some she knew. Here was Venus climbing from her bath, and over there was the shrine of Ganymede, with the convenient privacy of its hedges. It was deserted now, but memories of other days at that naughty little shrine made her smile.
She turned the corner, and made her way towards the offices of the Prefect of the City. Sometimes she liked to go into the public room, and look at the great marble plan of the city on the wall. It made her feel like a bird or a goddess gazing down at Rome, as if able to peer into the lives of all those people in the endless buildings, and then soar away. Once an earnest young man standing beside her had said it was odd that South was at the top of the plan. He was trying to pick her up, but she had asked him why. He had looked at her strangely, and said because North was at the top of most maps. When she had again asked why, he had looked put out, obviously not knowing the answer.
The offices were shuttered and chained today. Everyone said that the Prefect of the City had not been seen since Vitalianus had been murdered yesterday morning, and certainly the Urban Cohorts had remained in their barracks. Apparently the Prefect was a friend of Maximinus. Some said he had fled north to the protection of the tyrant.
‘I smell a she-wolf.’ Three men were sitting by the doors. They were unshaven, dirty, and were passing a jug from hand to hand. Normally the guards would have shooed their sort away.
‘Come and have a drink, little she-wolf.’
Caenis ignored them, and went to walk past.
One of them reached out, and caught the hem of her gown. ‘Just a little fun, no need to be stuck-up.’
Caenis pulled her gown free, saying she had to get to work.
‘Start early,’ the man said. ‘We have money.’
She walked on.
One of the others laughed. ‘Turned down by a Quadrantaria.’
Caenis bristled; how dare he call her a quarter-ass whore.
‘Come back here.’ She sensed the man who had grabbed her getting up.
She walked faster, knowing the others were on their feet too, that they would all follow her. There was no one in sight.
‘Come back here, and get what is coming to you.’
They were gaining, she hitched up her gown, and started to run.
‘Fucking bitch,’ one shouted.
She darted to the left, down between a row of stalls, then right along a flowerbed, cutting towards the nearest gate. Their footfall slapped on the earth behind her.
There were two men, a little way off.
‘Help!’
They turned, took in the situation, shrugged, and turned away.
She burst through the gate. No one. The Street of the Sandal-makers was near deserted; just an old beggar off to the left, slumped against the base of the statue of Apollo. Of course, fear of unrest must have driven away the fashionable young men, and shut all the bookshops.
Her pursuers crowding through the gate, she sprinted towards the statue. There was a bar there, The Lyre, if it was open, and she got inside, she might be safe.
Her head jerked back, searing pain as one of them grabbed her hair. Her legs went out from under her. She landed hard, agony driving up her spine.
‘Over there, do her up against the wall.’
She was half-pulled, half-dragged across the street. They pushed her into a corner formed by a buttress, crowding in at her.
‘You should have taken the money, bitch.’
Hands were hauling her gown up her legs, pawing her breasts, pushing between her thighs.
‘Show us what you have got.’
The neck of her gown was torn open, her breast-band yanked up.
‘Look at those tits.’
She was forced to her knees. No point in fighting now, they would beat her, perhaps mark her for life.
The man who had first accosted her, undoubtedly the leader, unbuckled his belt, pulled up his tunic, and fumbled in his breeches.
‘Get the old beggar. Let him have a go after us.’
The laughter died. The man facing her spun around, his penis still in his fist.
Caenis tugged her gown together, gathered her legs under her, waiting for a chance to run.
‘Put it away, and go.’ The speaker was her neighbour, young Castricius. The old die-cutter stood with him.
The man laughed, with no mirth and little conviction. ‘A boy and an old man.’
One of the others had a knife in his hand.
Castricius shook his head. ‘Leave.’
‘Run along, boy.’
‘Last chance.’ Castricius spoke softly, as if saddened by the stupidity of the world.
‘Fuck off, and take your grandfather with you.’
One hand stuffing his penis back into his breeches, wrestling with the buckle of his belt, with the other the leader tugged a knife from the sheath on his belt.
In a moment, all the men, even the die-cutter, were crouched forward, balanced on the balls of their feet, steel flicking this way and that.
‘The die is cast.’ A strange, unreadable emotion slid across Castricius’ thin, angular face.
A sudden movement, making Caenis start. A scuffle of feet and a grunt of pain. The die-cutter was down, clutching his thigh. His assailant bent over him.
Neatly, Castricius stepped inside the knife of the third man, and stabbed him deep in the stomach.
Before anyone else c
ould react, with the grace of a dancer, Castricius whirled, and again faced the leader.
The man who Castricius had stabbed dropped his weapon, and curled over, blood flooding out between his splayed fingers. ‘He has done for me.’
‘Yes,’ Castricius replied, never taking his eyes off the other two. ‘And now I will deal with your friends.’
The leader backed away. The remaining man joined him. Their eyes flitted between each other, their friend gasping his life out in the dirt, and the long blade in Castricius’ hand.
‘We will get you one day,’ the leader shouted. Then they turned, and ran.
Caenis sprang up to do the same.
‘Give me a hand with him.’ Castricius was kneeling by the old man, cutting the material away from the wound, peering closely at it.
She wanted nothing but to run.
‘We have to get him away, before the Watch arrive.’
Caenis had to live in the same block with them. Tugging her clothes into some decency, she went to help the die-cutter.
Chapter 8
Rome
The Senate House,
The Nones of March, AD238
Today I shall meet with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness. Menophilus turned over the words of the Meditations. Was Marcus Aurelius correct that man naturally inclines to virtue, and so all vice was due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil, all some sort of near-blameless mistake? Regarding his fellow Senators, he judged that the divine Emperor’s view could be true only in the very strictest sense of Stoic philosophy.
Menophilus had answered Gallicanus’ question with honesty. He could give no realistic estimate how long it would be before the Gordiani arrived from Africa. The tone of the query had been offensive, somehow implying both that any tardiness was his fault, and that previously he had failed to give proper consideration to the issue. The hirsute Cynic appeared quick to impute blame, like most of his kind.
Since he had despatched the summons, Menophilus repeatedly had deliberated on the capabilities of ship and crew, the vagaries of the weather and potential routes, and the parameters of previous voyages. The Liburnian was said to be a fast galley, well manned, and its captain recommended as a seafarer of experience. Yesterday, after it had pulled out of Ostia, obligingly the wind had picked up and shifted to the north. It was just possible that it would make Carthage today. But if it had been overtaken by the full force of the storm, it might have been forced to run for shelter in Sicily or Malta, or might have been blown wildly off course, perhaps even to the dreadful shoals of the Syrtes. At worst, it could have foundered. When the storm abated, he would send another ship. Perhaps Gallicanus was right; he should have sent two vessels initially. There was all too much to think about in the midst of a revolt, even if he did not have the killing of Vitalianus on his conscience.
Like countless generations of Senators before, Menophilus gazed out of the window set high in the wall opposite the bench where he sat. Low, black clouds, dragging curtains of rain, scudded across. Open the doors! The angry chants were muffled, but audible. Only conspirators debate behind closed doors! Someone behind the scenes was whipping up the plebs, Menophilus had no doubt. Normally the first drops of rain dispersed any mob, no matter how riotous. Continued urban unrest best served whose interest?
Gallicanus had the floor. There had still been no sighting of the Prefects of either the City or the Watch, and, in the continuing absence of Sabinus and Potens, with no soldiers on the streets still loyal to Maximinus, many more Senators had found the courage to venture out of their close guarded homes, despite the mob. The Curia was packed. Gallicanus was speaking. Menophilus dragged his mind back.
‘Outside the storm rages. The people of Rome grow impatient. They need leadership. There is no telling when the Gordiani will come. Conscript Fathers, it is our duty to bring order to the streets of the city.’
Yes, Menophilus thought, your bluff democratic posturing appeals to the plebs.
‘The Gordiani are far away over the seas. Maximinus and his army are close at hand. At any moment the tyrant will cross the Alps.’
An exaggeration, but a real fear. What Maximinus would do to the man who had killed his Praetorian Prefect did not bear thinking. Still, the human condition was that of a soldier assaulting a town; at every moment you should expect the barbed arrow.
‘The barbarian and his vicious son will bring fire and sword, murder and rape. In their savage and perverse fury none will be spared. I see the Tiber foaming with much blood. I see shrines and temples consumed with fire; northern tribesmen ruling amid the ruins and on the ashes of a burnt-out empire. Conscript Fathers, it is our duty to protect Italy.’
Followers of Diogenes were encouraged to eschew bookish learning, instead to rely on a god-given education, a bolt of instruction from the blue, something open to all, something far less time consuming and requiring no foreign languages. Replete with reminiscences of Cicero and Virgil, Gallicanus’ speech might not fit the ideal of Cynicism, but it was having an effect on its cultured audience. The Senators were receptive. Now all that remained, Menophilus thought, was to discover where it was all leading, and what Gallicanus actually wanted.
‘We must elect from among ourselves a new college of magistrates. We must elect twenty men from the Senate to oppose Maximinus, to defend Rome and Italy, to defend the Res Publica.’
Amid a general roar of approval, the presiding Consul, possibly not without intention, failed to notice the Father of the House waving his walking stick in an attempt to get his attention. As old Cuspidius Celerinus relapsed into muttered imprecations against modern ways – it never would have happened in the time of Marcus Aurelius, not even under Severus – Balbinus was granted the right to speak.
Previous generations respected age, valued experience. The queru-lous complaints of Cuspidius went unheeded.
Fat, jowly, with a face like a pig, and the manner of an Oriental potentate, Balbinus got up. Paying no more attention to the Father of the House than anyone else, he strode to the centre of the Curia, his habitual lethargy cast aside.
‘Roman virtue, true old-fashioned virtus, is near extinct. True Roman blood runs thin in this august house. For centuries the Emperors have admitted men whose fathers could teach them nothing of the weighty responsibilities of a Senator. They have scoured the provinces to let in trousered Gauls, yapping little Greeks, and Africans with loose clothing and looser morals.’
Himself a new man, Menophilus thought Balbinus a fool. Great houses died out, new ones took their place. The majority of those present had no Senatorial ancestors; over half came from the provinces. It had always been the way. Unlike Athens, let alone exclusive Sparta, Rome had grown great by admitting outsiders. Romulus had given refuge to runaway slaves who wished to join his new community.
‘Once in a while, however, one of these novi homines reminds us of our duty. Despite coming from some unheard of village near Carthage, Gallicanus has shone a light on the path of duty. Yet he has not surveyed the path to its end. To command respect, the twenty men elected must have seniority and distinction. I support his motion, but propose an amendment. The election should be limited to those who have held the Consulship.’
Balbinus sat down. He was patted on the back by Rufinianus, Acilius Aviola, Valerius Priscillianus, and other patricians. None of them attempted to conceal their mood of triumphal cunning. Perhaps dissimulation was beneath them.
Menophilus tasted disgust, like vomit in the back of his throat. Men were despicable; politicians worst of all, no better than animals. Some were wolves, faithless and treacherous and noxious, others lions, savage and wild and untamed, but most foxes, ill-natured and wretched and mean. Menophilus wished he did not have to be among them. The tenets of their philosophy demanded participation, yet several Stoic wise men had never entered politics. Appealing as it was, Menophilus could not follow their example. In retirement they had framed laws for the greater state of al
l mankind. Menophilus knew he lacked their intelligence. He was bound to serve the temporal Res Publica, or abandon any claims to live according to his nature, and thus all hopes of happiness.
The sometime Prefect of the City Pupienus was on his feet. Not exactly pompous, although his luxuriant beard would support such an interpretation, there was something stiff and slightly off-putting about his evident self-control.
‘Conscript Fathers, we have heard good advice, both from the scion of a patrician house, and from a man whose virtus is its own nobility. Balbinus should be thanked and honoured, perhaps with a statue listing his qualities. Certainly his name must be the first put forward for election to the Twenty. Now, it would be a travesty if the man who conceived this excellent board of magistrates to save the Res Publica were debarred from serving in its ranks. Therefore, I recommend that, for the good of Rome, we elect Gallicanus as a Suffect Consul.’
Menophilus calculated rapidly how these measures would affect the following of the new Emperors. Egnatius Proculus was an ex-Praetor, as was Celsus Aelianus, and he was an ineffectual reprobate to boot. Menophilus himself and his friend Virius Lupus mere Quaestors. The latter’s father was a good man, and had held the Consulship. So had Valerian and Egnatius Marinianus, although each had his limitations. Appius Julianus was another ex-Consul, but he was old and infirm. As things stood, the Gordiani only had four men here in the Senate House who had held the highest office, and only one of them could be relied on to advance their interests on this new committee.
The presiding Consul was preparing to call a vote.
If only Arrian and Sabinianus were not in Africa, if Caudius Julianus not governing Dalmatia, and Egnatius Lollianus likewise in Bithynia-Pontus; all of them were of Consular status, devoted to the Gordiani, and men who could get things done. No point in crying over spilt wine. Menophilus had to think of something quickly.
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