Throne of the Caesars 01 - Iron and Rust (5 page)

‘Let all who are not Conscript Fathers depart. Let no one remain except the Senators.’

Some moments after the ritual sanction, the young patricians Acilius Glabrio and Poplicola sauntered towards the rear of the house. They did pass the tribunal, but stopped before the doors, still well inside the Curia itself. Pupienus was not alone in eyeing them balefully. There was always a majority of new men in the Senate.

The other Consul, the polyonymous Lucius Tiberius Claudius Aurelius Quintianus Pompeianus stood.

‘Let good auspices and joyful fortune attend the people of Rome.’

As he recited the injunction which always proceeded a proposal there was something of a disturbance behind him in the crowd of onlookers wedged in one of the rear doors.

‘We present to you, Conscript Fathers—’

Acilius Glabrio and Poplicola turned. Abruptly, the two arrogant young patricians were thrust aside, Poplicola so hard that he stumbled. A pair of Senators pushed past and got on to the tribunal to make their offerings.

The Consul exhibited the admirable self-control to be expected of a descendant of the divine Marcus Aurelius, and continued speaking.

Having paid their respects to the deities, the two latecomers descended and walked to the floor of the house. They stood there, glaring about them defiantly.

Pupienus regarded them with what he hoped was well-hidden disfavour.

Domitius Gallicanus and Maecenas were inseparable. The former was the elder and the instigator. He was an ugly man with a shock of brown hair and a straggly beard. His toga was conspicuously home-spun. Everything about his ungroomed appearance chimed with his self-proclaimed love of antique virtue and old-style Republican freedom. He was in his mid-forties. He had been Praetor some years before, but his ostentatious free speech and continual truculence towards the imperial authorities had stalled his career and so far prevented him becoming Consul.

Pupienus had never had much time for Gallicanus – a noble spirit should seek the reward of virtue in his consciousness of it, rather than in the vulgar opinion of others; he had even less since last night.

‘And that it be lawful for him to veto the act of any magistrate.’ The Consul had no need of the notes in his hand. ‘And that it be lawful for him to convene the Senate, to report business, and to propose decrees, just as it was lawful for the divine Augustus, and for the divine Claudius …’

Claudius Aurelius was proposing Maximinus be voted the powers of a tribune of the plebs, which gave an Emperor legal authority in the civil sphere. Distracted by the theatrical entry of Gallicanus and Maecenas, Pupienus must have missed the other of the twin bases of an Emperor’s rule: the clauses about the Emperor’s overriding military command.

Events had moved fast since noon the previous day when Senator Honoratus and his escort had arrived from the North, pushing their foundering horses down the rain-swept Via Aurelia and into Rome. It had been three days after the
ides
of March. It was the day of the
Liberalia
, when boys are awarded the
toga virilis
of manhood. Attending family ceremonies, the Senators had been scattered throughout Rome and beyond. It had been late in the afternoon before enough had been gathered in the Curia.

Honoratus was another
novus homo
. His hometown was Cuicul in Africa. Pupienus did not hold that against him. Honoratus had worked his way up the
cursus honorum
. After he had held a Praetorship, he had been given command of the 11th Legion up in Moesia Inferior, and from there appointed to a special command with the field army in Germania. Honoratus knew the ways of the Senate House as well as the camp. There had always been much to admire about him. Now there was something to fear as well.

Still in his mud-splattered travelling clothes, Honoratus had told the tale simply, without affectation. The Emperor Alexander had been murdered in a spontaneous and unsuspected uprising of the troops. The senior officers and the army had proclaimed Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus Emperor. With mutiny in the ranks and a barbarian war on hand, there had been no leisure to consult the Conscript Fathers. Maximinus hoped the Senate would understand the need for alacrity. The new Emperor intended to take advice from the Conscript Fathers, and to continue the senatorial policies of his predecessor. Maximinus was a man of proven courage and experience. He had governed Mauretania Tingitana, and Egypt, and held high command on both the eastern and the northern expeditions. Honoratus commended him to the house.

It was a fine speech, Honoratus’ slight African accent – where the occasional ‘s’ was lisped into ‘sh’ – notwithstanding. The Senate would have voted Maximinus the imperial powers immediately – some had even begun to chant acclamations – had it not been for Gallicanus.

Like a hirsute revenant from the old Republic, Gallicanus had risen up and thundered against the vitiation of senatorial procedure. It was well past the tenth hour of the day. After the tenth hour no new proposal could be put to the house. It was almost dark. Were the Conscript Fathers ashamed of their deeds? Did they seek to hide in obscurity like foul conspirators, or depraved Christians? Had they forgotten that a decree passed after sunset had no legality?

The Consuls had been left with no choice but to end the session and call for the Senate to reconvene the following morning at dawn.

Custom demanded the Senators escort home the presiding magistrates. Pupienus was one of those who accompanied Claudius Severus through the rain to his house. At least it had not been at all out of the way. The Consul was his neighbour on the Caelian Hill.

Returned to his own home, Pupienus had time only for a quick bath and to put on dry clothes before his secretary, Curius Fortunatianus, had announced the presence at the door of none other than Gallicanus. For once, his shadow, Maecenas, had not been with the arbiter of traditional senatorial mores. Indeed, Gallicanus had made a request to speak to the Prefect of the City in complete privacy. The circumspect Fortunatianus had suggested Pupienus receive his visitor in the garden dining room. The hidden back door would allow the secretary, and for certainty perhaps another trustworthy witness, to listen unobserved. Although tempted, as it would ensure his own safety, Pupienus dismissed the idea as unworthy. Gallicanus might be unsavoury, a seeker of notoriety, and his conversation might move towards the treasonous – under the circumstances, Pupienus would have been amazed if it did not – but Senators should not inform against each other, and most certainly they should not set underhand traps.

Fortunatianus had shown Gallicanus into the small room where Pupienus had dressed and then left them alone. Gallicanus had never been known for subtlety. Peering into every corner, only just stopping himself from tapping the panelling, he had demanded Pupienus swear that no one could overhear them and that nothing said would be repeated. The oaths taken, Gallicanus had launched directly into business. This new Emperor was but an equestrian. Only one man from the second order in society had ever taken the throne. Pupienus would recall the weakness and brevity of the reign of Moorish bureaucrat Macrinus. This Maximinus was worse still. At best, he was a peasant from the remote hills of Thrace. Some said one of his parents was from beyond the frontiers, a Goth or one of the Alani. Others said both had been barbarians. He was a man of no education, no culture.

Pupienus knew the law of treason was ill-defined, but its malleability tended towards inclusion and condemnation. Gallicanus had already said more than enough to lose his estates and find himself heading towards either an exile-island or the executioner. Still, Pupienus had given his word. ‘What would you do about it?’ he asked.

Gallicanus had not answered directly. The principate of Alexander had been good for the Senate. Gallicanus’ tone was earnest. Both the Emperor and his mother had shown respect to the Curia. They had given the Senators the chance to regain their
dignitas
. More than that, with the creation of the permanent council of sixteen Senators always in attendance on the Emperor, they could be thought to have admitted the Senate into a real sharing of power. You might call it a dyarchy.

Although he had done very well under the regime, a dyarchy would have been far from what Pupienus would have called almost a decade and a half of ineffective and corrupt rule by a weak youth and an avaricious woman who had attached various ambitious and often venal Senators to themselves in an unavailing attempt to gain a reputation for statesmanship. He said nothing in response.

The Senate had been reawakened, Gallicanus had ploughed on. Not since the first Augustus had cloaked his autocracy in fine-sounding words and smothered the last of true freedom – maybe not since long before that – had the Senate been stronger. This Thracian barbarian had not yet squatted securely on the throne. Maximinus had few backers. Most of the Senators with the army would welcome his fall. Maximinus had no legal authority. The Emperor had never been weaker. It was time to bring back
libertas
. It was time to restore the free Republic.

It had been a measure of Pupienus’ many years of public service that he neither snorted in derision nor laughed out loud. Apart from the court fools and a man in Africa who had been driven out of his wits by the sun, he had never heard anyone say anything more insane.

Gallicanus must have taken the continued silence of his interlocutor as a sign of something else. ‘The Urban Cohorts under your command number six thousand men. Almost all the Praetorians are with the field army on the northern frontier. There are no more than a thousand left in Rome. Many of your men are quartered in their camp. It would be easy to win them over or crush them.’

‘Herennius Modestinus?’ Pupienus had said, speaking at last.

Gallicanus had smiled like a not over-bright student asked a question he had been expecting. The Prefect of the Watch was an equestrian of the traditional type, imbued with a respect for the Senate. Anyway, if he proved contumacious, the
vigiles
he commanded were just seven thousand armed firemen. There were almost as many in the Urban Cohorts, and they were real soldiers. Modestinus himself was only a jurist, while Pupienus had commanded troops in the field.

‘The detachments from the fleets of Ravenna and Misenum?’

At this question Gallicanus had shrugged with a certain irritation. ‘A few sailors in Rome to put up the awnings at the spectacles.’ It was evident they had not previously crossed his mind.

‘One thousand from each fleet, all trained and under military discipline.’ Pupienus had always tried to know such details: the numbers of troops, their billeting and mood, the disposition of their officers, the family connections of the latter. He had always talked to all sorts of people. Since his rise, especially since he had become Prefect of the City, he had also paid good money to know such things.

Gallicanus had waved the sailors away as of no consequence. There was something vaguely simian in the motion.

‘If I threw my lot in with you—’ Pupienus spoke slowly and carefully; even in the security of his own house he felt a vertiginous fear at saying these things ‘—and if I gathered under one standard all the armed forces in Rome, I would command some sixteen thousand. Of which, as you say, almost half are merely firemen. The imperial field army numbers some forty thousand, before reckoning what further forces could join it from the armies on the Rhine and Danube.’

Gripping him by the arm, Gallicanus thrust his ill-favoured face close to that of Pupienus. ‘My dear friend.’ Gallicanus squeezed the arm. His gaze and voice were fervent in their sincerity. ‘My dear Pupienus, no one doubts your commitment to
libertas
, your devotion to the Senate, or your courage. But in a free Republic it will not be for us to assign ourselves commands. As it was when Rome grew great, the Senate will vote who leads its armies.’

Gallicanus released Pupienus’ arm and began to pace the room. He was babbling about electing a board of twenty from the Senate, all ex-Consuls, to defend Italy. Others would be sent to win over the troops and the provincials. In his eagerness he was bobbing about the confined space and swinging his arms like an agitated primate in a cage.

Pupienus was seldom flabbergasted, and he had not been so angry for a long time. What sort of fool was Gallicanus? He had come into Pupienus’ home and endangered everyone in it with his talk of treason. And he had done so not to offer Pupienus the throne, not even to offer him a leading role in a new regime. Instead the ape had wanted Pupienus to seize the city for his insane cause, and then, rather than reap the rewards, simply give up his legitimate authority and step down to the level of a private citizen.

‘This must stop.’ Pupienus had recovered quickly.

Gallicanus had rounded on him, suspicion and anger in his eyes.

Pupienus had smiled. He had hoped it looked reassuring. ‘All we Senators wish we had lived in the free Republic. But you know as well as me that the principate is a harsh necessity. The
imperium
was tearing itself apart in civil wars until Augustus took the throne.’

Gallicanus had shaken his head. ‘We can learn from history.’

‘No—’ Pupienus had been adamant ‘—the same would happen again. The leading men would fight for power until one of them won or the empire fell. You have read your Tacitus. Now we must pray for good Emperors, but serve the ones we get.’

‘Tacitus served under the tyrant Domitian. He was nothing but a quietist, a time-server. He was a man of no courage, a coward.’ Gallicanus had shouted the last words.

‘You and I, we both held office under Caracalla.’ Pupienus had pitched his voice at its most reasonable. ‘Give up this scheme before you bring disaster on your family and your friends.’

Gallicanus stood wringing his hands and pressing them together as if he could physically crush this opposition. ‘I thought you were a man of honour.’

You ape, Pupienus thought, you stupid, arrogant Stoic ape. ‘I hope you will think so again, because I will never mention this conversation to anyone.’