The Last Hour: Relentless, brutal, brilliant. 24 hours in Ancient Rome

by Harry Sidebottom

  Without warning, Scarpio started to run. He careered off towards the right.

  The lion gathered itself, then accelerated faster than seemed possible for such a hefty animal. Scarpio threw away the sword. His racing feet raised puffs of sand. The lion knocked him to the ground with its momentum. Scarpio went sprawling. In one fluid motion, the lion rolled back to its feet, spun around, and was on him. It pinned him with its weight and wide-spread, razor sharp claws.

  Slowly, with no sudden movements, Ballista started to sidle away towards the left hand ramp.

  Scarpio was thrashing and screaming, ineffectually trying to fend off the lion.

  Eyes fixed on the horrible sight, Ballista edged around. Neither line of praetorians was venturing out onto the arena.

  Delicately, almost tenderly, the lion sank its long, yellow teeth into the man’s windpipe. Scrapio stopped screaming. His body arched, then lay still.

  The lion looked up, its muzzle bloody. The yellow eyes studied the man still standing. Ballista stood stock still. What bestial calculations flickered inside that great skull? Heartbeat after heartbeat, Ballista stared back at the inhuman eyes.

  An eternity of fear, and then the tongue lolled out, and lapped the warm blood. The lion settled to its feeding.

  Softly, softly, Ballista walked backwards.

  As the shields of the praetorians parted, all he could hear was the ghastly crunching of bones.

  EPILOGUE

  The Milvian Bridge

  The Ides of April

  When they reached the Milvian Bridge, Ballista pulled his horse out of the column, and looked back at the city. From here he could still see the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline, and the roofs of the imperial residences on the Palatine. Off to the right, its bulk diminished by the distance, stood the Mausoleum of Hadrian. It had all started there, at the last hour of light, fourteen days before.

  Ballista had been feted. He was an acclaimed hero. The emperor had taken him out onto the balcony of the Palace, praised him to the assembled crowds. When Gallienus crossed the Alps, Ballista was commanded to be at his side, an honoured travelling companion. Henceforth Marcus Clodius Ballista would be numbered among the protectores. For the rest of his life it was his privilege to be armed in the imperial presence.

  Ballista rested his hand on the hilt of Battle-Sun. The blade indeed had its own nature. It had remained hidden in the Mausoleum until Ballista had returned. Battle-Sun would not serve the unworthy. Almost as miraculous, despite vigorous questioning, the old Tiber fisherman had managed to keep the gold ring from the City Watch. Ballista had rewarded him well for its return, enduring another lengthy diatribe against immigrants, and their iniquitous influences.

  Volusianus also had been celebrated as a hero by the emperor. Together, exhibiting no concern for their own safety, the Praetorian Prefect and Ballista had killed the assassins in the Colosseum. Volusianus had been given charge of the investigation to lay bare the ramifications of the conspiracy, and stamp out the embers of treason. The Praetorian Prefect personally had led the search of the mansion of Sempronius. His statement had told how the son and secretary of the senator had been apprehended destroying incriminating documents. Both men had been killed resisting arrest. Unfortunately the documents were so burnt that nothing of their content could be recovered. No other conspirators had been unearthed. The plotters were judged not to have spread their net far.

  Ballista had his doubts. Sempronius and his son; Rufinus, Commander of the frumentarii; and Scarpio, Prefect of the City Watch. Just four men. Two senators and two equestrians, the latter not of the highest rank. It was not enough to hope to overthrow an emperor, and survive. The trade of Rufinus had been subterfuge and treachery. He had been meant to report to the Praetorian Prefect, but he would have been well versed in covering his tracks. But it was hard to believe that Scarpio could have remained undetected without his actions being shielded by more powerful figures.

  And there were the words of the unknown conspirator to Sempronius reported by the dying man in the Mausoleum. Strike quickly. Do not be afraid. The guards will not stop you. Remember we will all be there. Apart from Sempronius, of the known plotters, only Scarpio had been in the imperial box. All implied more than one, we that the speaker would be present.

  Then there were the descriptions that the mortally wounded man had given. Two men, both old, one bald, the other looking like a peasant. There was no doubting that the bald assassin had been Sempronius. But the other man? Neither Rufinus or Scarpio in any way resembled a farm worker. Ballista had no idea what the son of Sempronius had looked like, but he had been in his twenties.

  ‘Your hair is beginning to grow back.’

  Ballista looked over at the speaker. Maximus was battered, but alive. That was all that mattered. Tarchon was in a worse state. He had lost two fingers from his right hand. Tarchon was tough. Already he was training himself to use a weapon with the other hand. Thank the gods, all Ballista’s familia had survived.

  The thought of his family caused a rush of mixed emotions. The reunion with his wife and sons had been blissful. Julia had been her old self. The distance between them had disappeared. His younger son had the uncomplicated happiness of the innocent. The older was of an age to comprehend the danger they had escaped. A few days of unalloyed happiness, and then the parting.

  Ballista’s eldest son, Isangrim, was to be educated at the imperial school on the Palatine. Ballista had requested the boy stay with him. Gallienus had been adamant. The order was framed as an honour, but Isangrim was as much a hostage as his father had been all those years before.

  Ballista had sent his wife and younger son back to Sicily. It was a peaceful province, far from the borders, free from unrest. Grim the Lame, the Heathobard warrior, was with them. They would be safe. Decimus, Julia’s cousin, had accompanied them to the villa to recuperate from his torture. He seemed not to blame Ballista for giving him the message that had caused his suffering at the hands of the frumentarii. The young man had a forgiving nature.

  Ballista would have given anything to be travelling with them. That was the problem with being the hero that had saved the life of the emperor. You became a living symbol of loyalty, a man whose example was to be paraded. You were not allowed to retire into quiet obscurity. While the familia went by easy stages to Sicily, Ballista was bound for the war in the North.

  ‘Someone coming,’ Maximus said.

  The long lines of infantry were shuffling to the side of the road, moving out of the way of a cavalcade headed by a man in resplendent armour.

  ‘Hail, Marcus Clodius Ballista, Protector!’

  Volusianus’s voice boomed over the din, as it had all those years before on the battlefield at Spoletium. It was a voice of command, of a man risen from the ranks.

  ‘Hail, Lucius Petronius Taurus Volusianus, Protector!’

  The Praetorian Prefect reined in, every movement vigorous despite his age.

  ‘Hail, Ballista Protector!’ The voice was unchanged. Ballista had heard it recently, in very different circumstances – echoing up the corridor of an imperial sepulchre. Surely not, loyal Volusianus?

  ‘A long march ahead, Ballista.’ Volusianus smiled, his wide, bucolic face shining like the sun. ‘There is a long way to go.’

  THE LAST HOUR

  Afterword

  Playing with History

  The Last Hour is a novel. While I have made every effort to make it true to history, on a few occasions I have altered the topography of Rome to fit the story.

  Should someone have jumped from the Mausoleum of Hadrian in reality, the outcome would have been no better than it was for Tosca in Puccini’s Opera.

  The first Emperor Augustus laid out the northern Campus Martius as a stately pleasure park for the people of Rome. By the third century AD the area seems to have been built over, although in this novel it remains rus in urbe.

  The Via Fornicata was somewhere in the Campus Martius, and not in the subura. W
e know the names of few streets in ancient Rome, and this one, with its agreeable potential for modern misreading, was too good not to use.

  The Built Environment of Rome

  Once in a while a book changes the way history is studied. Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Eng. tr., Ann Arbor, 1988), put the built environment at the heart of political, social and cultural history of ancient Rome.

  Imagining the ancient city, while walking the modern, the best books to have in hand are F. Coarelli, Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide (Eng. Tr., Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 2007), and A. Claridge, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (2nd ed., 2010).

  At home or in the library, L. Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore, and London, 1992), is invaluable.

  Literary sources are collected by D. R. Dudley, URBS ROMA (Aberdeen, 1967), and P. J. Aicher, Rome Alive (Mundelein, 2010).

  An excellent overview is S. L. Dyson, Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City (Baltimore, 2010).

  The Plebs Urbana

  The depiction of non-elite life is underpinned by three superb, and very different books: Z. Yavetz, Plebs and Princeps (2nd ed., New Brunswick, and Oxford, 1988); N. Horsfall, The Culture of the Roman Plebs (London, 2003); and J. Toner, Popular Culture in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, and Malden, MA, 2009).

  The Background History

  The most authoritative survey is Volume XII of The Cambridge Ancient History: The Crisis of Empire, AD 193–337 (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2005), edited by A. K. Bowman, P. Garnsey, and A. Cameron. More accessible is D. S. Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay AD 180–395 (London, and New York, 2004). Briefer, thematic overviews are provided by O. Hekster, Rome and its Empire, AD 193–284 (Edinburgh, 2008), and C. Ando, Imperial Rome AD 193 to 284 (Edinburgh, 2012).

  The City Watch and Other Military Units in Rome

  The standard work on the City Watch remains P. K. Baillie Reynolds, The Vigiles of Imperial Rome (Oxford, 1926). All military units quartered in the city are covered in J. Coulston, ‘ “Armed and belted men”: the soldiery in imperial Rome’, in J. Coulston, and H. Dodge (eds.), Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City (Oxford, 2000), pp. 76–118. In this novel the Urban Cohorts and the Equites Singulares are written out to avoid overburdening the reader with a confusion of military units.

  The Colosseum and Gladiators

  The best introduction, both wide ranging and exciting, is The Colosseum (London, 2005) by Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard.

  Other interesting studies are T. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (London, and New York, 1992), and D. G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London, and New York, 1998).

  The hideous theatrical executions in the arena are analysed by K. M. Coleman, ‘Fatal Charades: Roman executions staged as mythological enactments’, Journal of Roman Studies 80 (1990), pp. 44–73.

  Slaves

  In this novel, more than in any previous one, I have tried to explore Roman slavery.

  The most imaginative way into the subject is How to Manage your Slaves by Jerry Toner (London, 2014); a work of profound scholarship lightly worn, as it straddles the line between fiction and history.

  Much evidence is collected in T. E. J. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (London, 1981).

  Keith Hopkins, ‘Novel evidence for Roman slavery’, Past & Present 138 (1993), pp. 3–27, is a dazzling attempt to recover the thought world of ancient slaves.

  Quotes and Sources

  The prayers of the Pythagorean in Ch. 14 are taken from The Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus.

  In Ch. 14 the interpretations of dreams of crucifixion can be found in Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, translated by R. J. White (1992).

  Gnaeus’ jokes in Ch. 16 are adapted from the translation of Philogelos, ‘Laughter lover’, by D. Crompton (London, 2010).

  The debate on heterosexual versus homosexual love in Ch. 17 might strike a modern reader as artificial, or even unlikely, but it is abridged and only lightly altered from the Erotes of (Ps-)Lucian.

  Unsurprisingly, Ballista’s views in Ch. 18 on the symbolism of philosophical garb bear a close resemblance to the arguments of H. Sidebottom, ‘Philostratus and the symbolic roles of the sophist and philosopher’, in E. Bowie, and J. Elsner (eds.), Philostratus (Cambridge, 2009). The same is true of the political philosophy expounded in that chapter and analysed in H. Sidebottom, ‘Dio Chrysostom and the development of On Kingship literature’, in D. Spencer, and E. Theodorakopoulos (eds.), Advice and its Rhetoric in Greece and Rome (Bari, 2006).

  Other Novels

  All my novels include a couple of homages to other writers.

  Setting out on a thriller, it seemed wise to learn from the best.

  The classic Rogue Male (London, 1939), by Geoffrey Household, showed how to structure a chase, and provided an example of field craft.

  Lee Child, Personal (London, 2014), was the inspiration for a specific fighting technique, and much more besides.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Writing a novel is often imagined as a solitary pursuit. For me it would never be managed without help and support.

  I could not hope for more sympatico or critical readers than my new editor, Kate Parkin, or my literary agent, James Gill.

  As ever, many thanks are due to various other friends: in Oxfordshire, Maria Stamatopoulou, Peter Cosgrove, Jeremy Tinton, and Kate and Jeremy Habberley; in Suffolk, Michael Dunne and Jack Ringer.

  The greatest debt is to my family: my wife Lisa, my sons Tom and Jack, my mother Frances, and my aunt Terry. This novel is dedicated to the latter.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Harry Sidebottom was brought up in racing stables in Newmarket where his father was a trainer. He took his Doctorate in Ancient History at Oxford University and has taught at various universities, including Oxford, where he lectures in Ancient History.

  His first book Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction was published in 2004 to critical acclaim and he has published numerous chapters in books, and articles and reviews in scholarly journals. His career as a novelist began with Fire in the East, the first of his six-novel Warrior of Rome series, which has sold over half a million copies worldwide. His next series, Throne of the Caesars, was equally acclaimed. The Last Hour, his tenth novel, introduces us once again to Marcus Clodius Ballista, hero of the Warrior of Rome books.

  www.harrysidebottom.co.uk

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you very much for reading The Last Hour – I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Unusually for me, the opening came to me fully formed in one image: Ballista, the hero, standing alone on top of the Mausoleum of Hadrian, the sun setting behind him, the river Tiber far below his feet, the city spread out beyond the far bank and the bad guys coming up the stairs. And I suddenly saw what it was all about: Ballista has until the last hour of light the next day to get across Rome and save the Emperor and his own family. Jack Bauer in 24, if you like, but set in ancient Rome.

  The challenge I set myself was to write a thriller, a story with relentless menace, punctuated by bursts of violent action, a story that in modern-day terms would appeal to readers who love Lee Child or Michael Connolly. At the same time I wanted to paint an authentic and atmospheric portrait of the city of ancient Rome, taking in all its grandeur and squalor, summoning up its sights and sounds and smells, recreating the rhythm of its streets, and viewing its inhabitants from the grandest Senator to the lowest dweller in the slums of the Subura. If you’ve got this far, then I’m hoping I pulled it off!

  The plot of The Last Hour with its tight twenty-four hour timeline, its focus on one main character, the relentless pace and the ticking clock (or hourglass . . .) instilled a new sort of discipline for me. Yet telling the story this way also comes with a responsibility. Historical novelists are the gatekeepers of history. We have a duty to get things right. And despite the ‘modern’ plot, as much research went into this novel as any of the historical works that I
have published in the almost twenty years that I have taught at the University of Oxford.

  If you enjoyed The Last Hour, please do look out for my next novel, which will be out in 2019. As yet untitled, it will follow a misaligned group of Roman cavalry who find themselves on what appears to be a suicide mission, cut off hundreds of miles behind enemy lines. There will be action, heroism, betrayal, twists and turns – in fact I’m thinking it will be Bravo Two Zero meets Gladiator . . .

  If you would like to hear more from me about this and my other future books, you can get in touch with me at www.bit.ly/HarrySidebottom where you can join the HARRY SIDEBOTTOM READERS’ CLUB. It only takes a few minutes, there is no catch and new members will automatically receive an exclusive e-book short story. Your data is private and confidential and will never be passed on to a third party, and I promise that I will only be in touch now and again with book news. If you want to unsubscribe, you can of course do that at any time.

  I’m always grateful, however, for readers who spread the word. If you have enjoyed The Last Hour, I would love you to leave a review on Amazon, on GoodReads, on any other e-store, on your own blogs and social media accounts – or even tell another human being directly! You’ll help other readers if you share your thoughts, and you’ll help me too: I love hearing what people think about my books – and I always read any comments.

  But for now, thank you again for following Ballista on his mad dash across Rome in The Last Hour – I’m glad you came along for the ride.

  Best wishes,

  Harry

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Zaffre Publishing

  This ebook edition published in 2018 by

  ZAFFRE PUBLISHING

  80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

  www.zaffrebooks.co.uk