Gordian had been half aware of the flow of the oration: the excellent omens — in fact they had been appalling, for those who believed in such things — the long distant martial exploits of his father. But now it had reached his own triumphs, he was all ears.
‘As Alexander scaled the Sogdian Rock, so our young Emperor climbed the sheer cliff at Esuba. Many was the companion he caught as they slipped, saved from a certain death. When he attained the summit, the brigands discovered neither their remoteness nor their inaccessibility provided any defence against the old-fashioned Roman courage of our Augustus.’
All too soon a new theme was introduced. ‘Justice is a portion of his humanity: for when victorious, the Emperor did not repay the aggressors in kind, but divided his actions in just proportion between punishment and humanity.’
Gordian stopped listening. Not a dog had been left alive in the lair of the bandit Canartha. His thoughts scouted ahead. They would not stay long in Carthage. Leaving Sabinianus as the new governor of Africa, as soon as word came from Menophilus, they would sail for Rome. There they would muster the military forces in the city: the Urban Cohorts, the men of the Watch, those Praetorians and the soldiers of the 2nd Legion who were not away in the North, the detachments of sailors, and however many frumentarii were in their camp on the Caelian. They should raise new troops, perhaps recruit some from the gladiatorial schools. Once they had secured the allegiance of the two great fleets at Misenum and Ravenna, they could hold Italy, and wait for the governors across the empire to declare themselves.
‘Just as the sons of Asclepius rescue the sick, just as fugitives obtain security in the inviolate precincts of divine power …’
Agitated, despite himself, Gordian could find no meaning in the words. Had the gods existed, Gordian would have prayed for news. Events were beyond his control. Everything now depended on what was happening elsewhere; in Rome, in governors’ palaces across the empire, and with the army in the distant North. At least three governors were closely bound to the house of the Gordians. Claudius Julianus of Dalmatia, Fidus of Thrace, and Egnatius Lollianus of Bithynia-Pontus had no legions, but their example might sway the undecided. And in Rome the plebs urbana would be well disposed. Some time ago, his father had distributed a hundred Sicilian and a hundred Cappadocian racehorses among the Circus factions. And he had endeared himself across Italy by giving four days of stage-plays and Juvenalia in the cities of Campania, Etruria, Umbria, Flaminia, and Picenum, all at his own expense.
‘Because of our Emperors, marriages are chaste, fathers have legitimate offspring, spectacles, festivals, and competitions are conducted with proper splendour and due modera-tion. People choose a style of life like that which they observe in the Emperors. Piety to the gods is increased, the earth is tilled in peace, the sea sailed without danger.’
There was no mistaking the tardy arrival of the epilogue. Gordian shifted his numb buttocks. Not long now. Just the already intimated new honorifics, and the interminable speech would be finished. Gordian was dust-stained, tired and hot; the baths would be welcome.
‘We fear neither barbarians nor enemies. The Emperors’ arms are a safer fortress than our city walls. What greater blessing must one ask from the gods than the safety of the Emperors? Only that they incline our rulers to accept …’
Gordian hoped Parthenope and Chione were not too fatigued from the journey. He had earned the special relaxa-tion from the cares of office that his mistresses could provide.
‘Although too modest to share with his father the titles of Pontifex Maximus or Father of the Country, however, let the son also take the name Africanus to commemorate the country of his accession, and that of Romanus to celebrate the city of his birth and make evident the contrast from the barbarous tyrant of hated memory. All hail Imperator Caesar Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus Africanus Pius Felix Augustus, father and son.’
As his father stood to accept on both their behalf the not-unexpected titles, Gordian sensed a disturbance behind him in the imperial box. Suillius, the tribune in charge of the detachment from the 3rd Augusta, leant over his shoulder, and spoke in his ear.
‘Augustus, the legionaries will not leave their barracks. They are tearing down your new portraits from the standards. Only your presence can stop the mutiny.’
Chapter 4
The Far North
The Sarmatian Steppe, Territory of the Iazyges,
The Day before the Nones of March, AD238
The plain was white and flat and without end. To the east a thin stand of trees, in every other direction the plain stretched untrammelled as far as could be seen. The trees, willow and lime, marked a shallow, marshy stream, now iced over and treacherous. Beyond their bare, frozen and delicate-looking branches the Steppe continued its remorseless slide to infinity.
Enemy in sight!
A rider — his horse labouring through the snow — was coming up from the south. He held the corner of his cloak in one hand above his head in the customary signaclass="underline" Enemy in sight!
Like everyone else in the army with a point of vantage, Maximinus gazed past the lone horseman. The snow was flecked with black where the taller grasses and the occasional shrub showed through. In the extreme distance, it merged with the dirty pale grey of the sky. There was nothing else in sight. The scout had outrun the enemy.
Maximinus dropped his reins and blew on his hands. His breath plumed. It was very cold. A movement to his left drew his eyes to the stream. Where reed beds or the trunks of trees provided shelter from the north wind there was no snow. The ice was black, shining. A flight of ducks clattered up, wheeled, and flew away.
‘There,’ Javolenus said.
Maximinus looked south once more, to where his bodyguard pointed. A thin smudge of black on the horizon. The Iayzges were a long way off. It would take them an hour or more to reach the stationary Roman forces. They had no reason to hurry.
His fingers were numb. Maximinus flexed them, rubbed his hands together, before taking up his reins. It was time to inspect the troops again. Indicating that his staff should follow, he turned his hack, dug his heels in its flanks, and set off at a slow canter to the right of the infantry front line. Even though the snow had been trampled, the going was both heavy and uncertain.
When he was first promoted to high command, a fellow officer had asked why he still worked so hard, now he had attained a rank where a certain leisure was permissible. The greater I become, the harder I shall labour, he had replied. Back then — the reign of the glorious Caracalla — he had joined his men at their wrestling. He had thrown them to the ground, one after another, six or seven at a sweat. Once a tribune of another legion, an insolent young man from a Senatorial house, but big and strong, had mocked him, claiming his soldiers had to let him win. Challenged to a match, Maximinus had knocked him senseless with one blow to the chest, a blow delivered with an open palm. Back then, even Senators had called him Hercules. Now they whispered he was a new Spartacus, or another Antaeus or Sciron. The only imperial secretary he trusted — despite Apsines of Gadara being a Syrian — had told him the stories about the last two.
As he pulled up by the standards of the 2nd Legion, the Parthian, its commander stepped forward from the other officers and saluted. Clean, well-cared-for armour showed under the Prefect’s fur-lined cloak.
‘Are your men ready?’ Maximinus asked.
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’