Caesar Triumphant

  Caesar Triumphant

  by R.W. Peake

  Also by R.W Peake

  Marching with Caesar-Conquest of Gaul

  Marching with Caesar-Civil War

  Marching with Caesar-Antony and Cleopatra, Parts I & II

  Coming in August, 2013:

  Marching With Caesar-Rise of Augustus

  Critical praise for the Marching with Caesar series:

  "Fans of the author will be delighted that Peake’s writing has gone from strength to strength in this, the second volume...Peake manages to portray Pullus and all his fellow soldiers with a marvelous feeling of reality quite apart from the star historical name... There’s history here, and character, and action enough for three novels, and all of it can be enjoyed even if readers haven’t seen the first volume yet. Very highly recommended."

  ~The Historical Novel Society

  “The hinge of history pivoted on the career of Julius Caesar, as Rome’s Republic became an Empire, but the muscle to swing that gateway came from soldiers like Titus Pullus. What an amazing story from a student now become the master of historical fiction at its best.”

  ~Professor Frank Holt, University of Houston

  Caesar Triumphant

  R.W. Peake

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2013 R.W. Peake

  Cover Artwork by Marina Shipova

  Cover Artwork Copyright © 2013 by R.W. Peake

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2013

  Foreword

  While Caesar Triumphant contains characters with whom readers of the “Marching with Caesar” series will be familiar, in its genesis it couldn't be more different than the story I tell of Titus Pullus and his friends. One thing that as an author I strive very hard to achieve is a fidelity to the historical record; when I make deviations, it's usually for a particular reason, and I like to explain why I have changed my narrative in a way that shows it's for a good reason. At least, that's my hope; of the many, many things I have learned in what has been one of the wildest and most enjoyable periods of my life, it's that there is still a burning passion for Rome in the hearts of many people, and some of those have come to the conclusion that they are the most appropriate keepers of the flame. This trait is admirable, but it also comes with a bedrock belief in their version of the thousands upon thousands of events in Roman history, teaching me that it doesn't really matter which version you choose, there are going to be people who insist you got it wrong! My goal has been to keep those "mistakes" to a minimum, and as I said, explain those of which I'm aware because I have made them on purpose.

  But this? A story of Julius Caesar invading Japan? In what universe does that happen? It's a fair question, and the only answer I can provide is, "In my universe."

  It stems from a deceptively simple question: If the Legions of Rome met the samurai on the battlefield, who would prevail? And while there's actually a show on the cable network channel named Spike, titled "Top Warrior" and one which I enjoy watching, not only did it not pair up their Roman Centurion with a samurai, their show is more focused on a one-on-one matchup. One thing that the more than four years (actually it's continuous) of research into the Roman army I conducted, in order to have Marching With Caesar meet my own standards, has revealed is that, one on one, a Roman Legionary wasn't the most formidable warrior of his age. Nor would he be, I'm very confident, in any age. However, to leave it at that is, at least to me, a supremely unsatisfying conclusion, if only because it doesn't provide anything like what could be called a reasonably accurate guess. What made the Legions of Rome the finest military machine of the ancient world was that they in fact were NOT warriors. Instead, they were cogs in a great and terrible machine that rarely tasted defeat.

  That meant that a show like "Top Warrior" wasn't going to suffice for my purposes. No, in order for my mental wanderings to give me any sort of satisfaction, it had to be on a much larger scale, army against army. However, although I was willing to stretch the boundaries of credulity, I do have limits, and there was no circumstance that I could dream up whereby the men of Caesar's Legions faced the samurai of the classical era of Japan, namely the Tokugawa Shogunate, without using the convention of time travel. And that, dear reader, I simply couldn't bring myself to do.

  Which got me thinking, and like many of my thoughts, what resulted has turned into this book. What we know of Caesar includes his fascination with Alexander; the scene where he weeps at the foot of Alexander's statue was a powerful one in my mind. We also know that Caesar was to embark on his conquest of Parthia, some sources cite the day after his assassination, so March 16th, to avenge the death of his friend and former Triumvir, Marcus Crassus. But what would he have done if he had achieved his goal? I understand that there's no indication in anything we've found in the form of primary sources he entertained any idea of continuing eastward, but frankly I don't think it takes a huge stretch of the imagination to think that he might indeed have pushed onwards, with the goal of at least matching the record of Alexander. After all, comparatively speaking, by this point Rome was more powerful and had more resources than Alexander had, even with his Hellenic League.

  Besides, if Caesar hadn't kept going, then he wouldn't have reached the spot where Caesar Triumphant opens, on the Korean Peninsula, staring across the water.

  Which brings us to the other huge problem in such a narrative, and this is another area where I beg the indulgence of the reader. In order to bridge the huge gap in time and technology between Caesar's time and when Tokugawa Ieyasu ruled Japan, my answer was to endow the inhabitants of the islands with the characteristics that I believe were exemplified by the code of bushido and the society from which the code sprang. Hopefully I will be forgiven for giving my Wa the appellation of "proto-samurai". My Wa have the unflinching courage and obedience to authority, and the phenomenal skills which have made the samurai justly famous, but otherwise I realize I have been more vague in my descriptions and underlying context than readers have come to expect in Marching With Caesar.

  Part of this vagueness is intentional, but I must also add that, comparatively speaking, the historical record that is available for the same stretch of time that is so abundant for Rome of the Late Republic is correspondingly scarce when it comes to Japan. Granted, I didn't delve nearly as deeply and with as much rigor as I did when it came to the research I did for Marching With Caesar, but what I have tried to do is be somewhat accurate in my descriptions of the lives of the people. That being said, I am prepared for the probability that there will be some readers who are more familiar with this period of Japanese history to let me know that I've gotten it wrong, and for this I offer a preemptive apology. All I can say is that it came from a good place.

  Ultimately, my goal for Caesar Triumphant is simple; I wanted to write something that posed an interesting "What if" while providing a reader with something that would at the very least entertain them. If it gets you thinking along the same lines that sent me down this road, then that's all that I can ask.

  Finally, I want to take this time to thank someone who has become not only
one of my biggest fans and supporters, but a great friend, Ute St. Clair. We began communicating through my blog that forms the basis for this book, and not only was she extremely enthusiastic in her enjoyment of Caesar Triumphant, she is the person responsible for turning this from a series of slightly disjointed blog posts, into the polished, hopefully seamless story that you are about to read. She volunteered for this role, and one of the best parts of our collaboration is that she is extremely conversant with Rome in general, and Caesar in particular. In fact, over the process of editing this project, we enjoyed many a spirited debate over a number of areas when it came to Gaius Julius Caesar, and I am extremely grateful, even when we didn't agree. She made this story better than it was when she first stumbled onto it on the Internet, and in the process has actually taught this grammar savant a number of things, including the proper use of the subjunctive!

  So Ute, thank you. And to the readers, I hope you enjoy Caesar Triumphant as much as I enjoyed telling the story.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Even for a man of the prodigious energy of Gaius Julius Caesar, this day promised to be one of the busiest in a career filled with sleepless nights and long days. It didn't help that he was roused even earlier than he planned, because of the restless thrashing about of Calpurnia. By his estimate, he had barely been asleep a full watch when he was awakened, although he wasn't sure whether it was from the movement of their bed as she waved her arms, or the tortured moans that escaped her lips. Rousing himself, he looked over at her with concern and was forced to dodge one of her arms as they flailed wildly about in a clear attempt to ward off whatever demons were assaulting her in the recesses of her subconscious. If this had been the first time, Caesar would have been extremely alarmed, but it had become an unfortunately regular occurrence, and what made it more disturbing—at least for his wife—is that this dream was always the same. He knew from bitter experience that waking her, when she was like this, was the worst thing he could do, so, heaving a sigh, he decided that since the chances of more sleep was practically non-existent, he might as well get started on what was going to be a challenging day. So much to do, he thought, here on these Ides of March, the day before he was to leave to meet his army for the Parthian campaign. Perhaps Calpurnia had done him a favor, although there was a part of him that was honest with himself: leaving before Calpurnia was awake would allow him to avoid a scene that had become quite tiresome, as his wife begged him essentially to retire from public life. And all because of some silly dreams! No! He was Caesar, and Caesar wasn't subject to such superstitious nonsense. Still, if it had been just Calpurnia's dreams, they would have been relatively easy to dismiss, even if it caused his wife distress. He couldn't say he loved her, exactly, but he did hold her in very high regard, and he did have affection for her. But it wasn't just Calpurnia's dreams, Caesar was forced to acknowledge, however grudgingly, and only to himself. No, there were many other signs, rumors, and whispers of plots by the jealous mediocrities who were, unfortunately, members of his own class, at least by birth. Still, Caesar refused to show that he feared any man, or any group of men; to do so would be unthinkable, especially for a man who had walked into the maelstrom of missiles at Munda and emerged completely unscathed. Nevertheless, the knowledge that there were plots was there, even if he forced it into the recesses of his mind.

  Before he could leave his villa—the official residence of the Pontifex Maximus that he had occupied for many years by this point—like all members of his class, it was customary for Caesar to meet with some of his clients, who always gathered at the crack of dawn to press their petitions with their patron. It may have been customary, but no Roman of his time—and or of the past for that matter—had as many clients as Gaius Julius Caesar. That meant that the vestibule of his residence was always jammed full of men, most of them waving scrolls that contained the details of their particular woes or requests, all of them shouting his name. It was always chaotic, but it was even more than usually so on this day, as every man there knew that the Dictator For Life was leaving for the wastes of Parthia. Consequently, there was a din that Caesar was sure would rouse his wife, so while it made him angry to do so, he made the decision to conduct his daily audience as he walked to what was going to be the most important part of his day and probably one of the more crucial days of his time as Dictator. The fact that the Senate wasn't meeting in the Curia—it had burned down and had yet to be rebuilt—forced the body of men who ostensibly ruled Rome to meet in the only building large enough to hold their newly inflated numbers, Pompey's Theater—and the delicious irony of that location wasn't lost on Caesar. In all honesty,, he had what men like Cicero would call a perverse streak that colored his sense of humor, and perhaps it was perverse to exercise his role as First Man in Rome at the very feet of the Roman he had defeated for that title. But Caesar was also practical, and there simply was no better place to hold a meeting that would undoubtedly be attended by every Senator currently in Rome.

  With his lictors clearing the way, shoving the mass of men who were still arriving to present their cases to the Dictator, Caesar walked slowly from his residence in the heart of the Roman Forum, surrounded by his petitioners. His pace was leisurely, but this was not his norm; the combination of the early start and the sheer number of men with requests to be heard meant that he couldn't move with his usual speed. Using his lictors, Caesar would signal to them to allow one man at a time to approach him and walk at his side, where he would have a very short time to make his case. Although almost all of the supplicants had come bearing scrolls containing the particulars of their grievances or pleas, Caesar rarely looked at any of them, preferring instead to listen briefly, then ask one or two questions that always demonstrated that he had, indeed, been paying attention. Some of the cases were straightforward, so Caesar was able to adjudicate them with a quick aside to one of the half-dozen secretaries trailing in his wake—each of them responsible for a particular area of their master's concerns—whereupon the scribe would hastily jot down the notes Caesar dictated. Other matters, however, did require more of his attention, so with these, Caesar slowed even further, giving him time to ask more questions and, in one or two cases, actually deigning to look very quickly at the proffered scroll, ignoring the hopeful look on the petitioner's face as he took this to be a positive sign of his patron's interest. It was in this manner that what was a crowd totaling some two hundred — exclusively male—Romans made their way along the Via Sacra, the main thoroughfare that passed through the Forum, heading in a roughly northerly direction towards the base of the Capitoline Hill, the most sacred of the seven hills of Rome.

  Just before Caesar and his entourage reached the foot of the Capitoline, the crowd—growing in number, as the ranks of the petitioners swelled with the early risers of the city, drawn to the sight of the most powerful man in Rome—now numbered several hundred. It was always this way with Caesar: as reviled as he was by some members of his own class, he was adored and revered by that teeming mass of people that their betters sneeringly referred to as the Head Count, when they weren't just calling them "the mob". Many among the crowd called out his name, which only added to the commotion and din, all of them hoping that he would at least look in their direction, or better yet, acknowledge their hail with a wave, giving them something to tell their children and grandchildren about: the day that the greatest man in Rome actually acknowledged their existence. And Caesar, knowing as he did that the source of his power rested on the twin pillars of these nameless, faceless people and the Legions, whose ranks were filled by men of the same class, took more of his time in ackno
wledging these shouts and waves than he did with his petitioners, even stopping from time to time to share a quick word with a butcher or a tanner. And some of them, much to their astonishment and delight, he actually knew by name! The fact that his recall of them was just another way for Caesar to demonstrate his most formidable and useful gift, the astonishing memory that never forgot a fact, face or name, didn't matter to them at all. That he remembered them was all they cared about. Yet, even as Caesar did this, there was a part of him that was untouched by this tumult, and was devoting only a portion of that gifted intellect to the activity around him. It was always this way, he thought, when they reached this part of the Forum, because to the right, at the corner of the Vicus Iugarius and Via Sacra, was the partially completed Basilica he had commissioned to honor his daughter Julia, now dead for almost a decade. Even now, after so much time, he felt a familiar tightness in his chest at the loss of his firstborn child, because as fond as he may have been of Caesarion, his child by Cleopatra, Julia was not only pure Roman, she had also been a beautiful, captivating child that had grown into a woman with even more wonderful qualities about her. While her marriage to Pompey Magnus had been arranged for strictly political considerations—as all marriages of the upper classes were—Caesar had been both relieved and happy to see that she had been genuinely happy in her marriage. Although Caesar would never say it, he had personally never really understood how his beautiful daughter had been able to look at Pompey—who had long since passed into the land of the middle-aged man, with the receding hair, jowls and thickening waist, something that Caesar himself hadn't suffered from—and seen something to love in him. It was just another example of how silly women could be about such things, he mused. Shaking himself from his thoughts, inwardly at least, he stopped at the corner of the two streets. However, this was prearranged, and was his signal to his lictors that his audience was now over. This was always the most irritating part of his day, because some men refused to take the hint and disperse on their own, forcing the lictors to muscle them away from their charge. It was one of the times, when Caesar was acutely aware of appearances, understanding that his enemies pointed to this simple exercise of extricating himself as an example of haughtiness and as a sign that he believed himself to be above the rest of them. The fact that, to one degree or another, every one of Caesar's rivals did essentially the same thing—albeit with a much smaller crowd and in the privacy of their own villas—was something his enemies universally ignored. Dispersing the crowd took some doing, more than normally, and although Caesar understood why this was the case, it was still trying his patience. He needed at least a few moments of solitude, as he made his way around the base of the Capitoline to the Campus Martius, where Pompey's Theater was located so that he could marshal his thoughts.