Emperor of Rome Page 3

  ‘Now!’ the younger Sabinus roared as the Germanic Bodyguard approached the gates to the Capitoline at full sprint.

  Hundreds of broken tiles and bricks hailed down upon the attackers, forcing them to raise their shields and crouch under the onslaught.

  With the relentless energy of those whose lives depended on it, the younger Sabinus, his father, Nerva and all those defending the Capitoline hurled missiles down into the Imperial Guards who had brought nothing but their swords and shields. Back they were forced as more of their number fell unconscious or clutching broken limbs.

  ‘They’ll be unable to threaten us even if they come back with a thousand javelins,’ the elder Sabinus asserted as the last Germanic troops disappeared towards the Temple of Saturn and the safety of the Forum. ‘They need siege equipment to get into here and there’s none in the city.’ He looked down at the iron-reinforced, wooden gates secured with two metallic bars across them and stout wooden logs wedged against them. ‘They’re not going to force those without a ram or some serious artillery.’

  ‘Or fire, Father,’ the younger Sabinus said, his voice low with dread.

  The elder Sabinus looked up. ‘Jupiter’s great sack, even the Gauls, four hundred and fifty years ago, had respect enough for our gods not to destroy their temples.’

  ‘The Gauls may have; but these are Germans.’ His son glanced once more at the approaching enemy, each man bearing a flaming torch, before turning to his comrades. ‘Get water! Get it from the cistern; as much as you can or we’re lost.’

  Water, however, was in short supply on the summit of the Capitoline but, even in December, dry wood was not. The younger Sabinus and his father urged their followers to greater efforts in emptying the cistern with the few pails that could be mustered along with brass bowls used for collecting the blood of sacrifices. But torches streaked over the walls continuously, firing everything combustible.

  It was a sharp flash that made the younger Sabinus turn and stare in horror. ‘The gates! Get water onto the gates; damp them down!’ But even as he shouted he knew that it was too late, for the gates had been ignited from without and his nostrils detected a smell stronger and rarer than wood: Naphtha had been used, hence the flash, and Naphtha paid little heed to water.

  His father had seen it too. ‘Block the gates, tear down all the statues and pile them up, and then find some way to escape,’ he ordered. ‘The Capitoline is lost!’

  ‘But that’s sacrilege; many are statues of the gods.’

  The elder Sabinus pointed up to the roof of Jupiter’s temple; flames had begun to crack the tiles and lick through holes that multiplied rapidly. ‘And that’s not sacrilege? Germanic tribesmen in the Emperor’s service setting fire to Rome’s guardian god’s temple! The statues will hold them back for long enough to get a lot of people away; if that adds a bit more sacrilege to what’s already happened then it’s worth it. Now get going and take that little shit Domitian with you, if he hasn’t already scarpered. You should be able to climb down from the Arx into the Campus Martius.’

  ‘What about you, Father?’

  Sabinus looked at his son and namesake and, with a grim smile, shook his head as a thunderous crash and a burning jet of air issued from the Temple of Jupiter, heralding the collapse of the roof. ‘I’m staying here. The prefect of Rome does not flee the city; if Vitellius wants to live then he needs to negotiate with me.’

  ‘And if he thinks that he can live without negotiating with you?’

  ‘Then we are both dead men. Now go!’

  Smoke wafted across the Forum Romanum and over the Palatine from the blackened ruins of the Capitoline now a husk of its former glory. The younger Sabinus looked down from his hiding place, on the roof of the Temple of Apollo, to the palace built by Caligula and newly restored after the Great Fire five years previously. Below him, Vitellius hauled his bulk out of the main doors and stood at the top of the steps, surrounded by his loyal Germanic Guards. Waiting to greet him were senators and equites, many of whom had been up on the Capitoline that morning, but had escaped as Sabinus and the Urban Cohorts delayed the storming of the hill; now they had sneaked from their hiding places to support the Emperor they hated as he passed judgement on those who had opposed him and failed.

  Sabinus’ fingers squeezed the parapet, his knuckles white, as he looked upon a figure, weighed down with chains, being frogmarched up the steps: his father.

  The elder Sabinus was thrown to the ground in a rattle of fetters, causing the crowd, which had hitherto remained silent, to jeer.

  Vitellius indulged his audience for a while before raising his arms; he looked down at Sabinus, hawked and spat the contents of his throat over his head. ‘How dare you bargain with the Emperor? How dare you tell me whether to come or to go; to offer me my life, as if it were yours to give, and deigning to grant me a patch of land in Campania when I have all this?’ He indicated to the vast expanse of Rome before him, over the charred Capitoline to the Campus Martius with the Tiber and the Via Flaminia disappearing north, calm in the evening light. ‘This is mine, all mine, and I see now that there is no need to give it up as the people love me.’ Vitellius paused to allow the crowd to cheer and affirm their misplaced support. ‘So what shall I do with you?’ he asked, addressing the question to the crowd.

  The answer was unequivocal. ‘Death!’

  ‘Death?’ Vitellius mused, pulling at his many chins. ‘What say you, Sabinus; do you not deserve death for your arrogance?’

  The elder Sabinus looked up at Vitellius, squinting through swollen eyes. ‘Kill me and you’ll be dead by sunset tomorrow. Spare me and I’ll see what I can do to save your miserable and copious skin.’

  Vitellius tutted. ‘More arrogance. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Sabinus, seeing as we’re old friends. Do you remember, all those years ago, on Capreae when I made you an offer, a generous offer and you called me a disgusting whore-boy? You said that you wouldn’t suck another man’s cock to save your life; I hoped one day you would be in the position to prove that. Well, here you are.’ He lifted up his tunic and pulled his penis out of his loincloth. ‘Here’s my cock; suck it and live.’

  The older Sabinus started shaking; for a moment the younger Sabinus feared that he was sobbing until thick laughter burst from him. ‘Look at you, standing there proudly showing off a cock the size of my little finger. Is that the dignity of an emperor? Is this what it’s come to? I remember that conversation; I was disgusted with you then, whore-boy, and I’m disgusted by you now so get it over with. I’ll not suck your cock, even if I could find it.’

  Vitellius’ mouth opened and closed; he gazed around, seeing the ludicrousness of his position. Quickly adjusting his dress, he turned and waddled away. ‘Despatch him and expose the body,’ he called as he disappeared into the palace.

  It was the silence that the younger Sabinus remembered most as his father voluntarily offered his neck to the executioner’s sword: the silence of the crowd watching as the blade flashed in the evening light, taking his head from his shoulders in a fountain of blood that slopped over the swordsman’s feet. Sabinus’ head rolled down the steps, his body collapsed, disgorging its contents, and the crowd watched in silence. The younger Sabinus would always recall that silence, choking back his grief as his father’s corpse was dragged off to the Gemonian Stairs, for it was because of that silence that he heard a faint call of a horn drift on the breeze. He turned, looking north whence the sound came, and there, in the distance on the Via Flaminia, were tiny mounted figures glinting in the setting sun.

  Too late to save Sabinus but not too late to avenge him, Vespasian’s army had come.

  PART I

  GABARA, GALILEE, MAY AD 67, TWO

  YEARS AND SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER

  CHAPTER I

  TITUS FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS had the strange sensation that he had been here before. In fact, to Vespasian, the circumstances of the situation were so similar to an incident twenty-two years previously that he was not surprised
by this sense of revisiting time. Almost every detail was in repetition: the legions and auxiliary cohorts drawn up awaiting the order to begin the assault; the objective itself: a small hilltop sett lement of rebels holding out against Roman rule; and then the possibility that the leader of said rebels was trapped within the township. It was uncannily akin to the siege of a hill fort in Britannia, during the second year of the Claudian invasion, when he, Vespasian, had hoped to capture the rebel chieftain, Caratacus. It was all so similar; all, except for one detail: then he had been a legionary legate in command of a single legion, the II Augusta, and its associated auxiliary cohorts; now he was a general in command of three legions and their auxiliaries as well as other contingents supplied by friendly, local client kings, including Herod Agrippa, the second of that name, nominal tetrarch of Galilee, as well as Vespasian’s old acquaintance, Malichus, King of the Nabatean Arabs. All in all he had over forty-five thousand men under his command. It was a huge difference; almost as big as the difference in the climate between that damp isle and this realm of the Jews, he reflected as he watched his son and second in command, Titus, ride, kicking up a cloud of dust, towards him and his companion sitt ing quietly upon his horse to his right. Vespasian could not remember the last time it had rained anything more than a light drizzle in the three months since he had arrived in this arid part of the Empire that had so violently risen up against Rome.

  And it had been violent; violent and humiliating. For, but a year ago, Cestius Gallus, the then Governor of Syria, had come south to Galilee and Judaea, in an attempt to quell the burgeoning rebellion; with him he brought the XII Fulminata bolstered by contingents from the three other Syrian legions and their auxiliaries, upwards of thirty thousand men in total. His initial success in retaking Acre, in western Galilee, and then marching south to Caesarea and Jaffa in Judaea, where he massacred almost nine thousand rebels, was overturned when, citing threats to his supply lines, he withdrew, just as he was on the point of investing Jerusalem, and was ambushed at the pass of Beth Horon. More than six thousand Roman soldiers died that day, with nearly twice that number wounded; the XII Fulminata was almost annihilated and its Eagle lost. Gallus had fled back to Antioch in Syria, shamefully abandoning the remnants of his army to extract themselves from the province that, buoyed by this triumph, had now gone into a full-scale revolt. Now, however, the Jews’ revolt was bolstered by their leaders who claimed that their singular Jewish god had brought about the victory and therefore their success in ridding their land of Rome was a foregone conclusion.

  The Emperor Nero had turned to Vespasian to disabuse the Jews of this notion.

  But it was not the help of the jealous Jewish mono-deity that caused Vespasian concern as he awaited the reports of spies, working for Titus, who had infiltrated Gabara, the first town he had targeted in his campaign: it was the fact that the dead at Beth Horon had all been stripped of their armour and weapons; many of the wounded, and, indeed, many not so, had also abandoned their arms as they fled. Vespasian was very aware that he faced a well-armed fighting force and no mere rabble of rebels. And more than that, their leader, Yosef ben Matthias, the rebel Governor of Galilee, had the ability to inspire men; this Vespasian knew from first-hand experience having met him when he was a part of a Jewish delegation to Nero three years previously.

  ‘Well?’ Vespasian asked as, with prodigious skill and much dust, Titus brought his mount to a skidding halt next to him.

  ‘They refuse to parley and are keeping their gates closed.’

  ‘And Yosef?’

  ‘He’s not in there, Father.’

  ‘Not there? Then how did he get out?’

  ‘He didn’t; he was never in Gabara. Our informants were wrong.’

  ‘Your informants.’ Vespasian took off his high-plumed helmet and the cushioning felt cap and rubbed his bald, sweat-soaked pate; his strained expression, which was the default mode of his rounded face, gave the impression that he had been attempting to pass a stool which was putting up more of a fight than was the norm. ‘So who is the commander?’

  ‘Yohanan ben Levi, he’s Yosef’s rival for power in Galilee and every bit as fanatical; he leads the Zealot faction in Galilee.’

  ‘Zealots?’

  ‘They’re zealous for their god, which basically means that they’ll kill anyone who doesn’t believe or think like they do, especially us; and, even more especially, any Jew who has a less fanatical view of their religion than they do. They were the people who destroyed all the art and statuary in Tiberias because they claimed it offended their god.’

  ‘Barbarians!’ Vespasian’s disgust at such behaviour was plain. ‘How many of the fanatics do your informants reckon this Yohanan has under his command?’

  Titus, whose prominent nose, intelligent, quick eyes and large ears made him the image of his fifty-seven-year-old father, suppressed the petulant urge to point out that many of the spies had been recruited by Vespasian; he had taken on the role of chief intelligence officer upon his arrival at the rendezvous with his father in the port of Ptolemais, having brought his legion, the XV Apollinaris, from Egypt. ‘Not as many as we first thought, our informants seem to have exaggerated somewhat.’

  Vespasian shook his head and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, Son; I learnt long ago not to apportion blame. They’re as much mine as yours; more so, even, since it’s my army.’

  Titus returned the smile. ‘Don’t you mean “the Emperor’s army”, Father?’

  ‘I do, of course. It’s just that he has, very kindly, lent it to me at the moment and the question is now: how am I going to use it? Roughly how many men of fighting age do our informants think are inside the walls?’

  ‘No more than five hundred.’

  ‘And others?’

  ‘At least two, but no more than three, thousand.’

  ‘Good; I can give this to the auxiliaries and let them have the chance to show me what they’re made of. It should provide the rest of the army with a bit of sport to whet their appetite for the coming campaign.’

  Titus looked with regret at the stone walls of Gabara. ‘It’s a pity about that sly rat Yosef, though; it would have been good to have caught him this early on. Still, getting Yohanan ben Levi will be almost as good; that will be a great piece of news to have trumpeted around Rome. Nero should be very pleased to hear that we have made such a good start and captured one of the main rebel leaders.’

  ‘What should please Nero and what you think would please Nero and what really does please Nero are three completely separate things, as you should know by now, my boy. Doing too well too quickly won’t necessarily endear us to our Emperor; look at what happened to Corbulo.’

  Titus sighed. ‘Very true.’

  And that was just the problem that Vespasian faced: considered to have been the greatest general of the age, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo had been a victim of a combination of his own success and Nero’s jealousy. Having effectively prosecuted a war with Parthia to wrest Armenia back into the Roman sphere of influence, it would have been thought a certainty that the Emperor would have sent Corbulo, his best general, to deal with the crisis, when news of Gallus’ defeat had reached his ears as he was touring Greece entering every competition for singing, poetry and chariot racing and, unsurprisingly, winning them all – all one thousand eight hundred of them; indeed, the Olympic Games and many other religious festivals had been brought forward out of their normal cycles so that Nero could indulge his vanity, believing himself to be the greatest artist and the most competent charioteer of all time.

  But it was not so in Nero’s mind. It had been Vespasian to whom Nero had turned; and this despite the fact that he had angered the Emperor by falling asleep and then spluttering awake during one of Nero’s interminable recitals.

  Vespasian had been hiding from the Emperor’s displeasure in the lands of the Caenii in Thracia having taken his long-time mistress, Caenis, home to visit her people for the first time since her mother had been sold into slavery whilst pregnant with
her. It had been his old friend, Magnus, who had sought him out with the Emperor’s summons, having guessed where he was; Magnus had been with Vespasian, Corbulo and Centurion Faustus when they had been captured by the Caenii forty years previously. A pendant that Caenis had given Vespasian had saved their lives just before the four of them were due to fight to the death; the chieftain of the Caenii, Coronus, Caenis’ uncle, had recognised it as the emblem of his tribe. Upon their release, Vespasian had promised to, one day, reunite Caenis with her people.

  Vespasian had known that if he did not obey Nero’s order to return then he would be forever an exile and always on the lookout for the executioner that the Emperor would, inevitably, send. But one man’s reprieve is another man’s downfall as Vespasian found out when, having been forgiven, Nero charged him with suppressing the growing uprising in Judaea and to meet with Corbulo in Corinth on his way to the province. Vespasian had assumed that the orders that he carried from the Emperor for his old acquaintance were for the great general to brief him on the finer points of eastern politics and dealing with rebel guerrillas. It was not so: Corbulo had committed suicide there and then, in compliance with the imperial command and had died at Vespasian’s feet.

  It had been a salutary lesson in the workings of the imperial mind and it had left Vespasian in a dilemma: do too well in Judaea and he would attract the Emperor’s jealousy and, most likely, be obliged to suffer the fate of Corbulo; do too badly and, if he was spared execution or enforced suicide, then a fate worse than death awaited: humiliation and the disapprobation of his peers. Either way, the rise of the Flavii, which he and his brother, Sabinus, had striven for throughout their careers, would certainly be put on hold if not terminated.