There was the Princeps Peregrinorum. Ballista did not like the thought. No one in his right mind sought out the head of the frumentarii. Their innocuous name suggested something to do with grain distribution or army rations. It fooled no one. Across the whole empire they were known, feared and hated for what they really were – the emperor’s secret service, his spies and assassins. At least they were known collectively. They were a special unit of soldiers, its members transferred out of other units, with their base on the Caelian Hill. Individually, they were seldom known at all. One of their duties was to dress as civilians, and eavesdrop on those suspected of disloyalty. In the normal course of things, Ballista would not consider going to their camp. Few went into their camp willingly, and many of those who did were never heard of again.
Ballista yawned. The title of the commander of the frumentarii meant Leader of the Strangers. The man was called Rufinus. Ballista had never met him, and had no desire to meet him. Now necessity demanded that Ballista make his way to the Caelian Hill, make his acquaintance, and try to enlist his support. At least the Caelian was not far, and, given his unsavoury occupation, the Leader of the Strangers should be predisposed to believe the existence of a conspiracy.
The murmur of conversation faded as the speaker took the floor. He wore no tunic, just a cloak. The almost rustic simplicity of his dress combined with his long hair and beard proclaimed him a philosopher. The staff and wallet that he carried might indicate he was a Cynic, although the symbols were apposite to any sect, and the magnificent location argued against an adherence to the teachings of Diogenes. As soon as he started speaking in the fine Attic Greek of Plato and Demosthenes, it was obvious that he was an educated man, and no ranting dog-philosopher from the street corner.
‘Words addressed to private persons pertain to those men alone, or to but a few others. But words addressed to kings are like public prayers or imprecations. Should I report the words that I spoke to the emperor as if they were a matter of no consequence?’
Ballista wondered what gave these hairy Greek intellectuals – unkempt philosophers and groomed sophists alike – the confidence to dare to lecture the ruler of Rome, and what induced every emperor to sit and listen? At heart, it must be politics. On the estimation of the Greeks themselves, a people had no history when they lacked autonomy. The Greeks could not escape the fact that they were ruled by Rome, but that subservience might be made more bearable if the foreign ruler was seen in public heeding the advice of his Greek subjects. For the Romans it might be more than conciliating the most vocal of the races in their dominion. By listening attentively to these interminable orations, the emperor exhibited his commitment to free speech and liberty. And it was libertas that the Romans judged made the emperor different from an oriental despot or a barbarian warlord.
As the philosopher got into his stride recounting the words of wisdom with which he had regaled the emperor, a late arrival joined the audience on the far side from Ballista.
‘A king is a king because he chooses virtue. Because he has virtue, both his subjects and the gods love him. Because he is loved by men and gods alike, there will be no plots against him, and his rule will last the length of his natural life.’
The newcomer was muscular and squat, clad in the plain tunic of a working man. He looked an unlikely devotee of political philosophy.
‘But if the ruler turns to vice, then he is no king, but has become a tyrant. A tyrant rules not for the common good, but for his own advantage and pleasure. Such a one is hated on earth and in the heavens. His subjects will conspire and rise up against him, and the gods will make haste to cast him from the throne, and trample him underfoot.’
A king is a king because he has virtue. Did Gallienus still possess that quality? Dressing as a woman, squandering money with both hands, did he still rule for others, and not for his own pleasure? Did Gallienus still deserve to be emperor? Ballista did not have the liberty to entertain the treasonous question. He had no choice but to preserve Gallienus on the throne. Ballista owed his life to the emperor. And as well as honour, there was pragmatism. If Ballista failed to save Gallienus, he himself would die soon after, and so would his whole family. If the emperor was assassinated, everyone Ballista loved would be put to the sword.
The late arrival stretched, and looked around at the other members of the audience. His gaze passed over Ballista, then darted back, before sliding quickly away. When he appeared to give his attention back to the philosopher, Ballista got up and left.
On the far side of the palaestra, Ballista glanced back. The man was following. Angling across the exercise ground, he was walking normally, but trying to keep the statue between him and his quarry. Ballista went into the baths, and turned to his right.
The columns of the luxurious ante chamber of the caldarium soared high to where arches sprung across the vault. The room was bright with light shining through the expanse of glass in the tall windows. It was warm next to the hot baths. An attendant approached deferentially.
‘My apologies, master, but the pools are reserved for women on the Kalends of April.’
‘You know the service corridors under the baths?’
‘Yes, master.’
‘The ones that run outside to the cisterns?’
‘The public are not allowed down there, master.’
‘Show me the way.’
A moment’s indecision – the slave was reluctant to contravene the rules of the baths, but long subservience had taught him the dangers of disobeying the command of a free man. A slave should not wait for a master’s hand. Either way, he might get a beating.
‘Follow me, master.’
A discreet door was hidden by a panel. The man from the lecture was not in sight.
The corridor was plastered, its steps led steeply down. At the bottom it divided into two. The light dimmed as the figure of a man blocked the top. Before Ballista could stop him, the slave darted away. Not stopping to think, Ballista gave chase. Above him, he heard heavy boots thumping down the stairs.
The corridors were dark and stifling, full of smoke and steam. Only occasional holes in the low ceiling let in any light, or offered an inadequate ventilation. The narrow bare-brick passageways turned left and right, went up and down flights of steps. Other tunnels opened off at right angles. It was hard to breath in this subterranean maze. The sweat poured off Ballista as he pursued the sounds of the vanishing slave. He ran past naked slaves feeding furnaces set in the walls, brushed past others lugging wood.
In a deserted place, where four passages met, Ballista pulled up, panting. The slave had got away. Only the gods knew what had happened to the man from the auditorium. Eerie, disjointed noises – shouts, snatches of conversations, sudden footfalls, and bursts of mournful songs – echoed from the four gloomy openings.
Bent double, Ballista struggled to fill his lungs. Under the cloak, his tunic was stuck to his body. Down here it was like Tartarus, or a Christian vision of hell. Did the women bathing in the light and scented air above give a thought to the sufferings of those labouring in this infernal region beneath their feet? If they did, would they care?
Ballista was lost. There was no point in blundering about blindly. He could wander down here for days. Find a slave, and make him lead the way out of this horrible nether world. Ballista straightened up, and unsheathed his knife. He held it under the folds of his cloak. Best not to alarm or scare off whoever he found before he could reveal what he wanted.
Taking a corridor at random, he set off. It was hard to see through the darkness and swirling smoke. He moved slowly, senses alert. At every turning and opening, he stopped, and listened. The tunnels seemed unnaturally empty. There was nothing but crumbling bricks, choking smog, and distant noises. At a fork, the glow of a fire flickered from a passageway. Ballista went into the opening. Where there was a furnace, there would be slaves.
A disturbance in the atmosphere behind him. Ballista crouched and spun half round. The blade scythed just over his hea
d. Sparks flashed where it scraped down the brickwork. The momentum of the blow drove the assailant into Ballista. They grappled, pressed together. The man’s knife arm was trapped between them. Ballista could not get his weapon free from his cloak. They staggered like drunks.
The fingers of the man’s free hand clawed at Ballista’s face, nails seeking his eyes. Ballista pulled away. The man recovered his knife. Before he could use it, Ballista lunged forward. Arching his body, Ballista head-butted him. A sharp crack, a grunt of pain as the nose broke.
As the man reeled back, Ballista got his blade free from the clinging material.
Both dropped into a fighting stance. Feet balanced, knives out, each waited. The corridor was too narrow for manoeuvre. No room to sidestep. Face to face, like gladiators chained together.
Not taking his eyes off the man, Ballista unclasped his cloak, let it hang from his left hand.
‘Been looking for you for all night.’ The man spoke in the Latin of the camps.
Feinting with his knife, Ballista flicked the trailing cloak up at the man’s face.
The man did not flinch. Instead he caught the leading edge neatly in his left hand. The cloak was stretched taught between them.
‘You killed my friends at the Mausoleum.’
Without warning, the man tugged the cloak towards him. Yanked forward, off balance, Ballista threw himself to his right. His back thumped against the wall. The impact knocked his own knife from his hand. Ballista twisted away. Too slow, white hot pain as the blade slashed along his ribs.
Ballista crumpled. The blood was running hot down his chest. Go down now, and he was dead. The man drew back for the killing blow. Ballista surged up and into him. He drove him across the corridor. Using all his weight and strength, he hammered the man face first into the opposite wall. The breath wheezed out of his opponent. Ballista got hold of his hair, pulled his head back, then smashed it into the wall. A clatter as his opponent’s knife fell to the floor.
As Ballista went to beat the man’s face into the bricks again, his left leg was whipped out from under him. Ballista went sprawling. This fellow knew how to wrestle.
Groggily, the man shuffled towards where his knife glinted in the half light.
Feet slipping, Ballista used the wall to lever himself up. His chest hurt like Hades.
The man put out an arm to steady himself as he bent to pick up the knife. There was a dark smear on the wall where his face had been.
Three running, staggering steps, and Ballista hurled himself onto the man’s back. The man collapsed under him. Ballista’s weight came down through his knees into the small of the man’s back. A scream of pure agony.
The man was a fighter. Despite the pain, his hand scrabbled towards the knife. Ballista flicked the blade away down the corridor.
‘Who sent you?’ It was hard to get the words out through the hurt. The foul air was catching in Ballista’s throat.
The man did not reply.
‘Who?’ Ballista gripped the back of his head, punched his face into the ground.
Still nothing.
From the distance came the sounds of men approaching.
‘Tell me, and I might let you live.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Not a good answer.’
Again and again, Ballista beat the ruined face into the stones.
‘Over there!’ A disembodied shout from the labyrinth.
Slaves approaching, lots of them. There was no time to explain this away.
Ballista clambered to his feet, snatched up his cloak and one of the daggers, and lurched into the smoke in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER 19
The Colosseum
T
HE PEASANT TOOK A SIP OF heavily watered wine. He wanted to keep his wits about him. At the front of the imperial box, the emperor evidently had no such qualms. Gallienus never drank more than one glass of the same wine, but through the morning his cup had been refilled again and again with Falernian and Caecuban, Lesbian and Chian; with wines from fine vineyards across the empire. It was a recipe for early inebriation and a powerful hangover, and that was all to the good.
Shifting the scabbard of his sword, the peasant stretched, and looked around the box. At the rear stood a rank of German guardsmen. Tall, with long braided hair and gold rings on their arms, they stood immobile and impassive. The peasant had fought alongside them, and against their kinsmen in the forests of the North. Fierce and strong, they made terrible enemies. The gods willing, everything should be over before they could intervene.
Off to one side the vestal virgins sat, quiet and decorous. The peasant considered he had the desires natural to a man. Yet the virgin priestesses had never aroused in him the prurient lust they inspired in many. Touch one of them, and you would find yourself out there on the floor of the arena. If a vestal broke her vows, she was entombed alive. Their presence made no difference to the plan.
Around the peasant were those with the title of amicus of the emperor. Most of these imperial friends wore the snowy toga and broad purple stripe of a senator. No more than half a dozen were in the undress uniform which denoted that its wearer was a member of the protectores. Apart from the praetorians, the only citizens permitted to be armed in the company of the emperor were the small group of officers admitted to the exalted ranks of the protectores. The peasant was careful not to catch the eye of either Scarpio or Cecropius, but he smiled reassuringly at the senator Sempronius. The latter was sweating, as well he might. It was only midday. There were hours to wait, but the peasant had already passed him the knife.
Looking at the seats reserved for the imperial family at the front of the box, the peasant felt a mixture of irritation and anxiety. The empress Salonina was not in attendance. Apparently she had preferred to go to a lecture by a philosopher called Plotinus. Men could not control their women these days. The peasant would not have his wife running off to be corrupted by the theories of Plato, or any other hairy charlatan. Women did not need education. Salonina did not matter. Of more concern was the absence of both Gallienus’ half-brother and his youngest son. This evening they would have to be hunted down, and quickly. So would Salonina, although that was less pressing – what could a woman do?
Gallienus threw back his head and laughed. Even in the shade of the awnings, the emperor’s hair shone. Every morning, after he had taken his draft of preventative poisons, Gallienus had his hair sprinkled with gold dust. Lacking his wife, the emperor had brought his mistress. With one hand he held his glass, with the other he pawed her. It would have been unseemly, even if she had not been a barbarian. The peasant was fully aware of her diplomatic importance. The daughter of the king of the Marcomanni, as a hostage in Rome, she helped secure the frontier on the upper Danube. It would be best if she were not harmed when Gallienus was struck down.
A burst of music brought the peasant’s attention back to the arena. From a trapdoor in the middle appeared a man dressed as Hercules. He carried a club, and had the skin of a lion tied over his tunic. Four attendants followed him with torches. The crowd roared with expectation. Hercules stood stock still, perhaps stunned by the sudden light and noise. The attendants ringed him. As if awakened from a spell, Hercules swung his club at one of them. The blow was clumsy, easily avoided. Another attendant approached him from behind. Hercules twisted away, turning, looking for somewhere to run. There was no escape. As he tried to fend off one of the torches, another touched his costume. Hercules screamed as the pitch smeared on his tunic caught fire. Now they let him run. He dropped the club, tore at his clothes, beat at the flames. His hair and beard were burning. After a few staggering steps, he threw himself to the ground. Desperately he rolled on the sand. Liberally applied, the pitch could not be extinguished. His death throws did not last very long.
The peasant picked up a prawn wrapped in a fig-leaf. These elaborate executions at lunchtime did not interest him. Of course it was right that criminals – murderers, Christians, those guilty of other offenses
against the gods – should be punished with exemplary cruelty. It was salutary for the public to see their suffering. But the point of such mythological charades often escaped him. Earlier, when a man with ineffectual wings strapped to his back had been dropped from a crane, he had had to ask a neighbour the character represented by the victim.
A slave proffered a fingerbowl, another dried his hands. Despite the costly perfumes which were sprinkled from the awnings, from the floor of the arena drifted up a smell unpleasantly like roast pork.
The morning’s beast fights had been little more to the taste of the peasant. They had been lavish: leopards from Libya, panthers from Cilicia, a hundred lions from Africa. Even the meanest intelligence of a visiting barbarian would have appreciated the extent of the dominion of Rome, the wealth and power necessary to capture and transport such a number of dangerous animals. Yet the beasts had been killed almost as soon as they had emerged from the trapdoors. Some, mangy and enervated by captivity, had been unwilling to charge. They had been despatched with arrows. As for the herds of deer, ibexes, and ostriches, slaughtering them in the confines of the arena exhibited little expertise and no valour.
A slave proffered a tray of pastries. Biting into one, there was a taste of something like fennel with which the chicken had been flavoured. No doubt it was asafoetida from Persia. Asafoetida or Median silphium: such exotic delicacies had not appeared on the table at the Etruscan farm where the peasant had been born. In the Spring the year after a bad harvest, there had been next to nothing. The peasant had watched his mother grinding acorns to make bread. His father had got into debt. The farm had been sold. The family reduced to penury. The army had offered the young peasant a living, a means of escape.
Neither his brothers nor his sister had survived infancy. The peasant had been a strong child. His father had called him the bull. Both parents were long dead. Should his undertaking fail, they were beyond imperial retribution. He had a son of his own. The boy had been born into very different circumstances from the father. A couple of years before, Publius had been elected Quaestor. Now Publius was entitled to the broad purple stripe of a senator. Young Publius knew nothing of the plot. Yet he would suffer if it miscarried. Life was full of unforeseen risks. It was not ambition that had set the peasant on this path, but duty. It was for the good of Rome.
The Last Hour: Relentless, brutal, brilliant. 24 hours in Ancient Rome Page 20