Blood and Steel. Harry Sidebottom

Rome we have cut down your oppressor. The Prefect Vitalianus is dead.’

      They regarded him with misgiving, these down-at-heel peddlers of divine foresight. Nothing in their self-proclaimed expertise had given them any warning. They exchanged anxious looks. A couple began to gather up the tools of their trades.

      ‘The tyrant is dead!’ Menophilus brandished his sword. ‘The news has come from the North. Maximinus has been slain. Beyond the Danube, his corpse lies mutilated and unburied.’

      As one, galvanized by his pronouncement, the charlatans scooped and scrabbled up their meagre accoutrements. Wordless, they fled in all directions.

      ‘Maximinus the Thracian is dead!’ Menophilus shouted at their scurrying figures.

       Chapter 3

       Africa

       Carthage,

      The Day before the Nones of March, AD238

      Live out of the public eye, the sage had said.

      It was nine days since Gordian had plunged a dagger into the neck of the Procurator who had been called Paul the Chain, nine days since he had proclaimed his father and in return been made Emperor himself. In the nondescript bedroom, in the second-rate provincial town of Thysdrus in Africa, the crowd had acclaimed him Augustus, all bloodied as he was, his toga like a butcher’s apron.

      A wise man will not engage in politics, Epicurus had cautioned. Gordian had made his decision. There could be no return to the shadows. Paul the Chain had threatened his friend Mauricius with ruin, and worse. It would have not stopped there. Gordian had been compelled to act.

      The crowds had been waiting several miles outside the walls of Carthage. They were all civilians and were ranked along the roadside; first the magistrates, priests, and the rest of the councillors, then the young men of good families, and finally all the other inhabitants in their various lower degrees. They had been there for hours, in good order, not a soldier in sight. At long last, in an outpouring of joy and perhaps some relief, the population had had their opportunity to pour libations, blow kisses, and call out words of good omen. To the music of flutes, they had accompanied the cavalcade to the city, spreading the petals of different flowers under the hooves of the horses. Melodious and good-natured in the spring sunshine, the procession had snaked under the aqueduct, between the tombs, through the Hadrumetum Gate and finally to the Circus.

      With his father, Gordian stepped onto the purple carpet. They walked with slow and measured tread, befitting their combined dignity and the parent’s age. Following the fasces and the sacred fire, they proceeded up the many steps, through the dark interior of the building, up to the imperial box.

      The light was blinding as they came out into the Circus. It surrounded them, its marble dazzling under the African sun. The noise and heat rolled up from the tiers, and buffeted the two men. Forty thousand or more voices were raised in welcome. Hail, the Augusti, our saviours. Hail Gordian the Elder. Hail Gordian the Younger. May the gods preserve father and son. Nicknames were chanted, respectful for the senior – Hail, the new Scipio. Hail, Cato reborn – less so for his progeny – Hail, Priapus; the princeps of pleasure. With no soldiers on hand to keep them within bounds, it was their nature to call out what they pleased. The Carthaginians were second only to the Alexandrians in their irreverence.

      Gordian solicitously took his father’s elbow, and supported him to their thrones. As they settled themselves on the unforgiving ivory, their entourage filed in behind them.

      The crowd quietened. Down on the sand, a city elder stood forth. The white of his toga shimmered in the sun, the narrow purple stripe on his tunic an incision as black as blood.

      ‘With fortunate omens you have come, our Emperors, each as brilliant as a ray of the sun that appears to us on high.’

      The space was vast, but the orator had a strong voice, and the acoustics were good. The words carried up to the Emperors and to those in the seats of honour. The rest would have to be content with reports and saying they had been there.

      ‘When night and darkness covered the world, the gods raised you up to their fellowship, and together your light has dissolved our fears. All men can breathe again, as you dispel all dangers.’

      The enumeration of past miseries would take some time; the iniquities of the deceased Procurator here in Africa, the savageries and stupidities of the tyrant Maximinus Thrax across the breadth of the empire. Amplification was ever the watchword for a rhetor on safe ground.

      Gordian inclined his head slightly, and regarded his father’s profile, the strong chin and aquiline nose. Gordian was glad that at the outset he had thought to have an artist draw them both, and had sent the portraits ahead both to Carthage and to Rome. The coins from the imperial mint would convey a suitable majesty. Here, seated on the throne, Gordian Senior was the very image of an Emperor; serene yet alert. His father had stood up well to the rigours of the hasty journey, but close up Gordian could see the dark smudges under the eyes, the sunken cheeks, and the slight tremor in one hand.

      His father was old, possibly too old to bear the weight of the purple. Gordian had neither expected nor wanted his father to elevate him to the throne as well. Yet his father was eighty, and it would have been wrong not to shoulder some of the burden. Now, together, they would see the race out, fight the contest to the finish.

      On the evening of the acclamation, when they were as near alone as Emperors could be, in just the company of four or five of their immediate familia, they had talked. The conversation remained with Gordian.

      ‘I am sorry, Father. If I had let the Chain kill Mauricius, we would have been next.’

      His father had been calm. ‘I would have done the same, if I was still young.’

      Gordian had been compelled to explain, to try to win his father’s approval. ‘A life of fear, without ease of mind, is not worth living. To live as a coward can not be endured. Once the Chain was dead, there was no choice but open revolt, the proclamation of a new Emperor. When a tyrant threatens your friends and family, your own equanimity, the very Res Publica itself, a man can not continue to live quietly out of the public eye. A wise man will not engage in politics, unless something intervenes.’

      ‘Although I do not share your Epicureanism, you are right.’ A long life had armoured the self-control of his father. ‘We are wealthy. The Domus Rostrata in Rome, the great villa on the Via Praenestina, confiscated by the imperial treasury, they alone would fund a legion for the northern wars. Since your sister’s husband was condemned for treason last year, we are marked down for destruction. You did the right thing. Your mother would have been proud of you, as I am.’

      ‘But I have endangered us all.’

      ‘There is no time now for regrets. You must act swiftly. Seize Rome. Rally the eastern armies to our cause. I am old and tired. All depends on you.’

      ‘It may end in disaster.’

      His father had smiled. ‘At my age death holds no terrors. Perhaps it would be no mean thing to end my days on the throne of the Caesars. Let me at least not die without a struggle, inglorious, but do some big thing first, that men to come shall know of it.’

      A flamboyant gesture by the orator brought Gordian out of his memories. Slowly, for imperial majesty precluded sudden movements, and out of the corners of his eyes, he studied those who stood behind the thrones. Brennus, his father’s silent bodyguard, as ever was at hand. The persistent rumour that Brennus was an illegitimate child of Gordian the Elder was fuelled by the striking resemblance between his legitimate son and the bodyguard, although the old man laughed the story off.

      Gordian took in the rest of the party. Arrian and Sabinianus,