Rome's Sacred Flame

by Robert Fabbri

  So, as vengeance for forcing him to forego a substantial bribe, Epaphroditus had suggested to Nero that whilst Vespasian was serving as Governor of Africa he should be responsible for securing the release of the scores, if not hundreds, of Roman citizens enslaved on the farms in the Kingdom of the Garamantes. Poppaea Sabina had enthusiastically supported the idea, saying that it would be a great coup for Nero achieving something that previous emperors had tried but failed to do before. Nero had therefore charged him to send a mission to Nayram, the king of the Garamantes, with the power to negotiate on the Emperor’s behalf. It had been with a cold smile and darkened eyes that Poppaea had suggested to her husband that it would be much better if Vespasian went himself, and that if he did not succeed then it would be much better if he did not return. After due consideration of one heartbeat’s duration, Nero had concurred. Vespasian had inwardly cursed but could not blame Epaphroditus for doing what he knew anyone would do to repay a bad debt; however, Poppaea’s sudden malevolence had perplexed him. He had had no choice but to comply and saw the positive side of the deal in that he would be out of Poppaea’s reach for over a year whilst his elder brother, Sabinus, back in Rome would, perhaps, be able to find the cause of the Empress’s malice. And so, at the age of sixty-three, he had departed for Africa, soon after the marriage of his elder son, Titus, to Arrecina Tertulla, Sabinus’ niece, for what should have been a year of luxury and ease but instead had been quite the opposite.

  Thus, here he was at the head of a caravan made up of merchants, who plied the desert route, and a half ala of Numidian auxiliary cavalry on their stocky little ponies that seemed to be able to go all day on as much water as their riders, such was their habitude to the desert. Also with him were his eleven lictors, mounted for the purposes of the journey with the fasces strapped over their horses’ backs.

  Vespasian kicked his own mount again to get it to put some effort into the ascent as he wished to be in the city away from the sun before it reached much higher in the clear, desert sky. The city’s towers loomed overhead and horns boomed out from watchmen within, warning of the approaching, much enlarged, caravan.

  For fifteen days – or, rather, nights – they had been travelling from Leptis Magna via a series of wells, oases and water dumps along the caravan route that connected the Kingdom of the Garamantes with the Empire. However, the journey had taken far longer in its planning than in its execution as the water supplies en route were sufficient only for a small caravan of twenty to thirty merchants and Vespasian needed to take many more people and then bring hundreds more back.

  Immediately upon his arrival in the province, back in April, he had given orders that the water dumps be greatly enlarged, sending thousands of amphorae south to be buried along the way; it had taken six months to achieve once the Suphetes, the two leading magistrates in Leptis Magna, the closest city to Garama, had been threatened into complying with his will. He had set sail from Carthage, the capital of Africa, in November once the work had been completed. Hugging the coast, he had stopped off at Hadrumetum, the province’s second city, to hear appeals, only to find that the backlog was considerable as his predecessor, Servius Salvidienus Orfitus, had neglected to leave Carthage for the entire duration of his tenure. Anxious to be pressing on, Vespasian had left the city after only one day, before even a tenth of the appeals had been heard, and, consequently, despite the presence of his eleven lictors, received a barrage of turnips from disgruntled appellants as he re-boarded his ship. Cursing Orfitus for his negligence and vowing some sort of retribution for the insult to his person, he continued on to the port of Leptis Magna; this city was as close to Carthage as it was to distant Cyrene in the neighbouring province of Cyrenaica where he had served as a quaestor twenty-five years previously.

  The port-city’s remoteness was the reason for the Suphetes’ reluctance to obey him as, up until the beginning of the year, Leptis Magna had been a free city over which the Governor had minimal control. Nero’s constant quest for cash had changed that and, in return for Latin Rights, he had made the city a municipium, something the locals had resented but, as with the new taxes imposed, could do nothing about. The Suphetes’ truculence had been the result; unused to receiving orders, they had automatically reacted against him and one of his early messengers, an optio with an eight-man escort, had failed to return, causing Vespasian to demonstrate his resolve with a serious threat. This obstinacy had much amused Vespasian as Leptis Magna had been the birth-city of his wife, Flavia Domitilla, whom he had met when serving in Cyrene.

  Vespasian smiled to himself as he finally reached the summit and Garama’s gates came into view; his wife’s wilfulness, which had dogged him all their marriage, could, perhaps, be explained by the independent-minded ethos of the city she had grown up in.

  ‘What’s so amusing?’ Magnus asked, taking off his floppy hat and wiping his brow for the hundredth time that day.

  ‘What?’ Vespasian pulled himself out of his reverie.

  ‘Were you thinking about your being pelted by turnips? Because I was and I still find it hard not to burst out laughing every time I look at you.’

  ‘Yes, very funny; just about as funny as Orfitus will find it having a turnip rammed up his arse when I see him back in Rome. If you must know, I was just thinking that the Suphetes’ attitude to authority goes a long way to explaining Flavia’s demeanour, seeing as she spent the first twenty years or so of her life in Leptis Magna.’

  Magnus grunted in a non-committal way. ‘Perhaps; but you ain’t got the same power over her as you have over them.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it stands to reason, don’t it? They soon came into line after you wrote to them saying that if they didn’t want to help expand the water dumps, that was fine by you so long as they came along on the expedition to show you where to find the extra water you’ll need. The difference is, with them you would have done it, but would you ever try and get Flavia to bend to your will by threatening to take her with you and have her endlessly complaining?’

  Vespasian shuddered at the thought.

  ‘Whereas you’d have loved to see those two fat bastards sitting, sweating on a horse two hundred miles from the nearest bath house and boy-brothel, but you’d rather go eye to eye, as it were, with Medusa’s arsehole than have Flavia here.’

  Vespasian could only agree. ‘But at least I’d know that she wasn’t spending all my money like she tried to do the last time I was away for any length of time.’

  ‘True; and I’m sure that she’ll be calculating that you’ll make a fortune out of your position here and has therefore already doubled or tripled her expenditure.’

  Vespasian shuddered again at that thought.

  ‘So my advice is start using your power to make a lot of money before the sailing season opens up in March and your replacement arrives, because my bet is that you’ll find yourself going home to a wife who now has four slaves each to bathe her and then do her hair, make-up and then dress her. Of course, that doesn’t even include the ones selecting her jewellery or her shoes or just hanging around on the off-chance that she might feel like nibbling on something sweet or getting absolutely Bacchurlitic on the very finest Falernian, bought, at no expense spared, from the most fashionable of wine-merchants in the forum, frequented by the Emperor’s steward himself because why would the wife of a governor want anything less?’

  Vespasian frowned at his friend as he caught his breath after his tirade. ‘Have you quite finished?’

  Magnus grunted again. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, thank you; you must be exhausted after that.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget that I was right about her when you brought her back from Cyrene: I said she’d want more than two hairdressers and you had a massive argument with her when you sold the third one that she’d bought, behind your back, stupidly thinking that someone as tight with money as you are would never notice.’

  ‘I thought you’d said you’d
finished.’

  ‘I have now.’

  ‘Good. Then perhaps I can get on with negotiating the release of all Roman citizens enslaved here?’

  ‘Just make some money on the deal,’ Hormus said, almost under his breath.

  Vespasian looked at his freedman in shock; he had never been so outspoken before. ‘You too, Hormus?’

  Hormus nodded. ‘Magnus is right: Flavia will spend it before you have it so make sure you get it.’

  Vespasian tried to dismiss the remark but in his heart he knew that Magnus had a point; a very good point. He pulled his horse up as the gates of Garama opened and an excessively fat man in a litter was carried out by straining bearers, surrounded by half a dozen slaves all wafting him, energetically, with huge palm-frond fans so that his robe rippled in the breeze and his long beard swayed, rather disconcertingly, from side to side.

  A chain of office hung about his neck and fitted snuggly into the crevice between his breasts. ‘I am Izebboudjen, chamberlain to His Most Exalted Majesty, Nayram of the Garamantes, The Lord of the Thousand Wells. His Most Exalted Majesty demands to know who approaches his capital.’ He spoke in Greek with the accent of a highly educated man.

  Vespasian studied the chamberlain for a few moments and found it remarkable how little sign of sweat there was on either his clothes or his exposed brown skin; the slaves fanning him must have been doing an extremely good job and, judging by the streams of fluid dripping from their bodies, as well as those carrying his bulk, they were certainly making up for their master’s lack of perspiration. ‘My name is Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the Governor of the Roman province of Africa, come to speak with your master, Nayram.’

  ‘You mean, of course, Governor, His Most Exalted Majesty, Nayram of the Garamantes, The Lord of the Thousand Wells.’

  Vespasian dipped his head with his best impression of solemnity. ‘Indeed I do, Izebboudjen.’ Believing in the innate superiority of his race he was not about to kowtow to some petty potentate, no matter how many wells he was lord of.

  Recognising that it was probably best not to force the issue of getting the Roman to acknowledge his master’s full title, Izebboudjen bowed as deeply as he could for a man of his girth seated in a litter. ‘Welcome, Governor. Your troops must make camp outside the walls along with the merchants in the caravan; they shall be given food and drink – whatever they desire, we will not have anyone wish to accuse The Lord of the Thousand Wells of ungenerosity. You, however, may enter with a small escort; rooms will be prepared for you in the palace. How many will you be?’

  ‘I will be bringing my eleven lictors and two companions.’

  ‘Very good. Follow me and I shall arrange an audience for you with The Lord of the Thousand Wells.’

  Garama was old, very old; that much was certain from the wide thoroughfare that opened out on passing through the gate. The buildings, mainly two storeyed and constructed of sun-baked mud-bricks with small, shuttered windows, to either side of the street had many differing layers of repair and paint as succeeding generations had seen to their upkeep; none of them were shabby but, equally, none of them were in pristine condition. But it was the road itself that gave away the extreme age of the place: deeply worn stone from the passing of many wheels, hoofs and feet gave testament to centuries of usage; smooth and undulating, it dimly reflected the burning sun in many different directions. But what was so intriguing was just how clean it was. Nowhere was there any sign of the normal detritus one would expect to find in a public street, whether it be rotting vegetables or fruit, or human and animal waste or just, even, lumps of indeterminate refuse. There was nothing, not even a nutshell, and it was not even as if the street were empty. There were many people, all male and all rather corpulent, either walking with friends or frequenting the open-fronted shops or sitting playing some sort of game with counters on a strangely marked board whilst eating from Roman-import tableware or drinking from cups of the same provenance.

  Delivery carts, too, made themselves busy and it was through them that Vespasian saw how the place was kept so tidy when a mule eased itself copiously in the middle of the road. The driver did nothing about the resulting steaming mess and drove off; as he left, two slaves ran out from wherever they had been waiting, one with a shovel and sack and one with an amphora and cloth. The pile of nuggets was soon in the bag and the stain washed down with water and rubbed clean with the cloth. ‘Did you see that?’ he asked in surprise.

  Magnus nodded. ‘Never seen the like of it. Does that happen with every bit of rubbish?’

  ‘If so, who pays for the slaves?’ Hormus wondered.

  As they progressed up the hill, the lictors drawing curious looks, it became apparent that it happened everywhere: two more piles of fresh excrement, a dog that had expired in the heat and a few mouldy cabbages, rejected by a costermonger and thrown to the ground, also ended up in the street-cleaners’ sacks. Any time a piece of rubbish fell to the street another scuttling slave appeared from somewhere to retrieve it.

  ‘Do you keep all your streets so clean, Izebboudjen,’ Vespasian asked the chamberlain, ‘or is it just this main thoroughfare?’

  Izebboudjen strained to turn his head; his expression was of amusement. ‘Clean? We don’t do that to keep the city clean; cleanliness is just a by-product of collecting every scrap of waste that we can to fertilise our fields with.’ He gestured to the desert below, stretching as far as could be seen. ‘We’re surrounded by wasteland so here nothing must be wasted. The only things we burn are our corpses; those of freeborn citizens, that is. Slaves and freedmen are consigned to the fields.’

  ‘Freedmen?’

  ‘Yes. There are very few of them and it is part of the deal that guarantees their manumission. They are always willing to make that small sacrifice in return for their freedom.’

  ‘Master!’ a voice called out in Latin from behind Vespasian. ‘I’m a Roman citizen!’

  Vespasian turned around to see a slave pelting up the road towards him. Pedestrians scampered to either side of the street to get clear of his path as he closed on Vespasian’s party, shouting and waving his arms.

  Vespasian twisted his horse round.

  ‘Be careful, Governor!’ Izebboudjen shouted.

  The moment Vespasian kicked his mount forward, back towards the slave, the man gave a sharp cry and flung his hands in the air; he pitched forward, back arched, and crumpled to the ground, sliding a few feet over the smooth stone of the street before coming to a stop, his eyes wide and glazed. Blood trickled down from behind his ear and dripped into a slowly increasing pool. Down the hill, two huge, muscled men, shaven-headed and dressed only in leather kilts, strolled towards the body swinging slings in their right hands.

  ‘You were lucky, Governor,’ Izebboudjen said. ‘The slave-keepers don’t often miss but it’s always advisable to move away from a rogue slave as everyone else in the street was doing.’

  Vespasian looked around: the street was full again with pedestrians carrying on about their business as if nothing were amiss. One of the slave-keepers hefted up the limp body and slung it over his shoulder to bear it away to whatever process it went through before it enriched the soil.

  Vespasian turned back to the chamberlain, outraged. ‘He was a Roman citizen!’

  Izebboudjen shrugged. ‘What he was before he became a slave is neither here nor there; here he was just a slave bought and owned, as are all the slaves in the kingdom, by The Lord of the Thousand Wells himself. He tolerates no insubordination from them.’ He indicated to his bearers and wafters, ordering them to move on. ‘There are far more of them than there are of us. That’s why we free a few of them, the strongest, to act as the slave-keepers. If for one moment we let our grip slip then imagine what would happen. I believe that it is much the same situation back in your Rome, but perhaps not quite as acute as it is here.’

  Vespasian could see Izebboudjen’s point – an idea to make slaves in Rome all wear a distinctive mark had been scrapped for the very
reason that if they were to realise just by how much they outnumbered free and freed, the consequences could be devastating. ‘Yes, but this man was a Roman citizen; he shouldn’t have been a slave.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because ... because he’s a citizen of Rome.’ Vespasian could think of no logical reason and knew perfectly well that there was no law against citizens being enslaved. He had met Flavia after her then lover, Statilius Capella, had been captured by the Marmarides, a tribe of slavers east of Cyrene. Had Vespasian not rescued the man he would have made the hazardous journey across the desert to this kingdom and would now be still toiling in the fields, or, more likely, be a part of them. ‘It’s wrong to enslave freeborn Romans.’

  ‘Why? How many Garamantes have you got enslaved in your empire? Or Parthians for that matter; Nubians, Scythians, Germans. Shall I go on?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re all ... well, none of them are Roman citizens.’

  Izebboudjen chuckled. ‘I think that it would be best if we discontinued this argument before one of us embarrasses himself.’

  Vespasian bit back a stinging retort that he knew would just sound like empty bluster and was painfully aware of who of the two of them was in danger of embarrassing himself. Besides, he had no wish to aggravate Izebboudjen as he did not know whether he would be of help when negotiating with his master, he of the many wells.

  Nayram was, quite possibly, the fattest man in existence; he was certainly the fattest that Vespasian had ever seen. ‘Don’t say a word,’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth to Magnus as his friend stifled a gasp. Vespasian adjusted his toga so that it fell to his satisfaction, feeling refreshed from the bath and shave that he had enjoyed upon arrival in his quarters at the palace. His eleven lictors, resplendent in their pure white togas, added dignity to his appearance, standing behind him and to either side, their fasces held upright before them.