28th August 46 BC
‘What about funeral games for my father?’ Lucilia snapped angrily. ‘Why was he less important?’
Fronto took a deep breath. ‘It’s not like that, Lucilia. Your father was seen off in a good, traditional ceremony. Understated and noble, and with anyone he ever really cared about in attendance. That’s precisely what he would have wanted.’
The funeral, just a few days ago, had been costly and quite lavish, in truth, yet it looked positively Spartan compared with what was to come. Balbus had been laid out in the house for visitors, then cremated and interred with the family in their vault close to the second mile marker on the Via Flaminia. Fronto had hoped Lucilia would perk up with the closure that would bring, and she might have done had it not been for the overshadowing of a much more important funeral.
That Caesar had stepped back from the preparations to pay his respect for Balbus had impressed Fronto, given the rift between the pair, but it had done little to console Lucilia. And then Caesar’s great funeral games began. Like his delayed triumphs, held back until there had been sufficient time and opportunity, so too had the general held off any real acknowledgement of the passing of his daughter: Julia, wife of Pompey. To have held such celebrations while being currently at war with her husband would have been hypocritical to say the least. Now, however, things were different. Caesar had given Pompey every honour he could in death, for they had once been friends and relations, and the loss of the great general had been dimmed with the passage of years. Now, then, while Caesar was in Rome for the summer, and while there were already great triumphs every week or so, the general had organised the funeral games for his only daughter.
The games had begun in grand style with naumachia, a sea combat performed in a great circular basin that had been dug out for that very purpose on the far bank of the Tiber. The city had seethed with excitement, still awaiting, as they were, the final of Caesar’s triumphs. Following that there were gladiator fights in the Circus Flaminius, chariot races, and a series of plays.
In some ways, it was heart breaking for Lucilia that her father’s passing be so overshadowed by Caesar’s daughter, but Fronto had slowly tried to reason with her. Her father had died a few days ago. Julia had been gone for years. Balbus was her father, but Julia was Caesar’s daughter. It must have hurt, he reasoned, for Caesar to have spent so many years with that door of grief still open. And despite all that, Caesar had come to pay his respects to his old friend. Fronto had thought his reasoning had laid matters to rest. Until this morning, while Caesar’s last triumph was carried out, and once again Lucilia became more than a touch bitter.
‘Your father wouldn’t have wanted funeral games, Lucilia. And if he had they would have been low-key and personal. Two men fighting over his urn. But I don’t think he’d even want that. Balbus was sick of fighting. Gods, my love, but we’re all sick of fighting.’
As she slumped into dismal silence, he left it, content that he’d be ready for her next wave of grief in the evening. He watched it all, trying to ignore the shriek and thud of sacrificed animals as the general made his final offering of the triumph. Fronto’s eyes instead played across the gathered masses. Vercingetorix, once chief of the Arverni, perhaps even king of the Gauls before it all went wrong, languished in chains at the head of the triumphal column, bruised, bleeding, and covered in shit and rotten food. Rome never forgot that Gauls had raided her sacred places centuries ago, and Vercingetorix was the symbol now of everything they both feared and despised. Fronto could only see the ‘what-if’, instead. A man who was almost king of a united Gaul. Had the man been a few years sooner in his uniting of the tribes, Caesar would have lost within the first season. That was Fronto’s opinion. Still, if there had been any way for the two to meet in peace, what might have happened with Gaul and Rome as close allies? Certainly many thousands of Romans, and millions of Gauls if the estimates were true, would still be alive. Oddly, even after six years in a dank room the size of a latrine, covered in shit and mess, chained and cowed, still Vercingetorix radiated power and a certain regal honour. If Rome had had kings like that, maybe the republic would never have happened.
A figure moved in the crowd near the prisoner and for just a moment, as Fronto tried to spot it once more in the mass, he thought it had been the Gaul Cavarinos, another man from among their enemy that Fronto found it hard to see as anything but a friend. Though the figure was gone in an instant, a small smile crept over Fronto. It had been Cavarinos. He was sure. The slick bastard was still alive, out there, somewhere.
His attention was drawn back to the Capitol as Caesar completed his sacrifices. The general had ascended Rome’s most important peak with only his close attendants, allowing space for the sacred rites that closed the triumphal ceremonies and marked the beginning of an afternoon and an evening of games and entertainments at the great man’s expense. Only his lictors and those senators forming part of the parade had climbed with him, and stood in attendance before the great temple of Jupiter. Octavian, of course, as one of the college of priests, was there already, awaiting him. It was a credit to the young man’s organisational skills that he managed on each occasion to get the procession off and away from the villa publica, and then moved across to the Capitol while the triumph was in progress in order to await the general at the temple.
Down below, looking up at him, the commanders and men of the procession’s legions stood in their ranks on the southern side of the forum, awaiting the expected announcements, and eagerly anticipating the amusements to follow. The masses of Rome filled every open space, all across the northern side of the forum, up the steps and among the colonnades of every temple, the viewpoints from the corner of the Palatine hill, and every street nearby that offered even a partial view of the Capitol. Only a short space separated legions and crowds.
Four triumphs completed. The general’s principle reason for returning to Rome before continuing the campaign, or at least, that and Cleopatra. Fronto found himself wondering what the general’s home life was like this summer, between great events, with Calpurnia and Cleopatra in the same house. He winced. In truth his own home life was tense enough this summer, walking on eggshells around his grieving family. The general had insisted that Fronto join his cavalcade on each of the four triumphs, and by the last, though it had been the one with the most meaning for Fronto, Lucilia had been equally insistent that if she were to plaster some visage of excitement over her features and attend the ceremonies, then Fronto had to be at her side. He’d tried to get out of it all, on all counts, but both general and wife had refused to budge. In the end, he’d done the only thing he could, compromising subtly. He had ridden with the officers to the very end of the procession, but as Caesar had climbed the steps to the temple, all eyes on him, Fronto had quietly dismounted, handing his reins to Galronus, and hurried across to where Lucilia and Faleria stood, falling in beside his relieved spouse.
‘When this is over, you’ll go and fight for him again.’
Not a question, and a subject Fronto had been dreading coming up.
‘It is my duty. But it’s almost over, Lucilia.’
‘It’s always almost over. Every year. You’ve missed the boys growing up chasing after that man.’
‘I promise you, Lucilia. I’ll place my hand on the altar of Apollo as I promise, if you like. One more season. Hispania will end it. Syria is troublesome, but it can be resolved politically. I need to see the end of Labienus and the Pompeys. But that’ll be over by next summer. In fact, I hope to be back by the Dies Natalis festival in April. And then I will finally lay down my sword.’
‘And what if Hispania ends you as well? You’re not an energetic teenager any more, Marcus.’
‘Believe me, I’m becoming more and more aware of that. I think I ruptured something getting off my horse. I think one of my balls is somewhere up near my armpit now.’
The glare she gave him suggested his humour had somewhat missed the mark.
‘Shh,’ hissed someone behind them.
‘I promise to come back safely by summer, and that this will be the last campaign. When I get back, we’ll get out of the city for the summer and head down to the coast at Puteoli, eh? I give you my word I’ll be back. You know I keep my word.’
Lucilia nodded, saying nothing, as the crowd burst into cheers around them. Fronto looked up at the hill. Caesar had cleaned his hands in the ritual bowl, Octavian’s servants clearing away the remains of the sacrifice as the young man stood, silent and serene by his great uncle’s side. The general was raising his hands now to quieten the crowd. There was a positive buzz among the soldiers, in anticipation of what was to come next. Fourteen years of warfare, and many of the soldiers present had seen most of those campaigns. They had been paid, and they had received shares of loot, but the great bonuses Caesar had continually offered them had yet to appear. That fact had caused a number of troubles, and even the odd mutiny, for while the wars were ongoing, Caesar had neither the time nor the resources to satisfy the army. This was no longer the case. Though the general had made no promises openly since their return to Rome, he had spent much of the past month working with the treasury, and there was an expectation of generosity now. Here, at the end of the triumphs, if Caesar was going to make good on years of promises, now was the time.
The general waited, arms raised, for the crowd to subside, and finally cleared his throat. When he spoke, it was with the deep and strong voice of an orator. It was a good distance from the temple front on the top of the Capitol down to the men in the forum, but somehow the general’s words echoed out into the silence across the waiting ranks, carefully placed men repeating the speech back to those too far away to hear clearly.
‘Half a lifetime of service all across the world,’ Caesar said. ‘More than a decade of conquest and victory concludes here, in this hallowed place, on this feted day.’
A cheer arose, and the general had to wait, hands still raised, for it to die away once more.
‘The legions of Rome have a right to feel unparalleled pride in their achievement. In our achievement.’
Another surge of noise, and another pause.
‘In that time we have added our most ancient enemy to the republic as a new and lucrative province. The peoples of Gaul, who had once sacked our city, now stand behind the eagle of Rome.’
Another cheer.
‘The unsettled and troubled land of Aegyptus, which has long gifted Rome with gold and grain, but which fell into strife and civil war, is calm once more, and those commodities flow into Rome from that ancient ally.’
The general paused for noise once more.
‘And the great enemies of Rome, who took up arms against the senate, Pompey and Scipio, Cato and Domitius, have been defeated and the fractured lands brought back into the arms of Rome. Only one small faction remains, and they cower now, for the republic is whole once more, and strong, and they know their time is come.’
This brought a smaller cheer, but still Caesar paused, then continued.
‘You have been loyal through good times and bad, serving the republic with honour and strength, and such devotion is deserving of reward.’
Now, the cheer could have stripped the roofs off buildings, so strong was it.
‘I hereby pledge to every living soldier in the armies of the republic, whether they actively serve this season or have been settled in retirement after serving their time in these wars, the sum of five thousand denarii.’
There was a moment then of absolute silence. Fronto stared at the general. Five thousand? Where was such a sum to come from? How could Caesar have possibly amassed enough to cover such a fortune? Five thousand denarii represented more than any legionary could hope to earn in a lifetime. The stunned shock among the soldiers lasted for only moments before the cheering began, and this time it lasted so long that Caesar had to lower his aching arms. Finally, as the wave of noise subsided, the general gave the army a benevolent smile.
‘For the centurions, who made all of this possible, whose bravery knows no bounds, for they are ever at the front of an attack, trampling the enemies of Rome and giving heart to their men, I decree the sum of ten thousand denarii.’
This cheer was smaller, but just as heartfelt, for the centurions were fewer in number. Fronto shook his head. There were limits to largesse. This was ridiculous.
‘And to the tribunes and prefects who helped strategise a decade of wars, who held undefendable positions against powerful enemies with their men, who served with me, and who risked all for Rome, I vow the sum of twenty thousand denarii.’
The roar was astonishing. The money Caesar had just vowed would happily purchase a kingdom somewhere. The sum was simply staggering. The legionaries were no longer standing in neat lines, but had become a seething mass, cheering and pushing each other around, arms in the air. Yet it appeared that Caesar was not done. As the crowd realised this and slowly quietened once more, Caesar turned, away from the soldiers, to the great mob of Rome. Fronto frowned. The general had covered his donatives, crazy though they were, for all the officers and men who had served him. What was he up to now?
‘For the people of Rome, too, I have gifts.’
There was an odd silence now, and Fronto could feel the strange dissonance. The silence arising from the people of the great city was surprised, expectant, hopeful. That from the gathered soldiers carried a strange resentment. Fronto winced. The general was going to woo the people to his cause, but in doing so, he might slightly estrange the army he had so exalted just now.
‘To every man of Rome, be he high-born or low, I give one hundred denarii, to be accompanied by a double public ration of wheat and of oil for the period of three months.’
Fronto felt the tension rise to breaking point.
The crowd exploded with cheers and whistles. The mob of Rome was to be enriched by the general, and they would leap through flaming hoops for Caesar at that moment, which, of course, had been the point. But Fronto’s eyes were not on the exultant populace. They slid across to the soldiers.
‘Why?’
It was just one voice from somewhere in the middle of the crowd of soldiers, and yet Fronto was not the only one to hear it. Others around him focused on that collection of uniformed men, and Caesar, atop the hill, turned too.
‘Why them?’ the soldier demanded again, just one face in the crowd. ‘Your legions shed blood across deserts and swamps for you. We earned our bonus, time and again. We waited patiently when it didn’t come, and still we shed our blood. Why these people, though? How have the mob of Rome served you with their life to deserve a share?’
Caesar frowned. He’d clearly not been expecting something like this. Fronto found himself willing the general to do something, and quickly, before this got out of hand.
‘That’s our money,’ called another voice, close to the first, and Fronto clenched his teeth. There was a twang to the voice that suggested perhaps the owner had been partaking of badly-watered wine before today’s procession. Of course, half the soldiers here had been in their cups for much of the week. ‘We earned that gold,’ the man snapped, ‘with our blood. And you give it to the people who sat home in peace, eating their free bread and playing games while we fought?’
‘That’s enough,’ bellowed a centurion nearby, clearly thinking on his feet and seeing the potential trouble unfolding.
‘Oh I’m sure it is for you, mister twenty thousand denarii,’ snarled a slurred soldier.
‘You’re on a charge, that man. Report to me when this is over.’
‘Piss off.’
Fronto watched in horror as the centurion turned and began to wade through his men, vine stick raised to chastise the foolish soldier. Taking his eyes from the centurion, he looked up to Caesar, but the general was silent and wide eyed, staring down in shock at what was happening. Fronto turned back in time to see the centurion disappear under a mob of angry soldiers with a cry.
Small scuffles were now breaking out among the soldiers. Finally, the general was addressing them, saying something with a flat and dangerous expression, but no one could hear him. The Roman mob’s voice had risen in a wave of anger at the soldiers, while the army was roaring as men battered one another in the press. Fronto tensed. They were a single blow from disaster. Currently the citizens of Rome were shouting their derision, while the soldiers fought among themselves, a few angry idiots rising in violence while the majority tried to control the few. All it would take was one blow struck between the army and the people, and all that would change in an instant. Caesar would have a full-scale riot on his hands.
Fronto looked round. Masgava, Aurelius and Arcadios had moved forward, protectively, gathered behind Fronto and the two ladies. He waved to them. ‘Get them out of here. Somewhere safe. Home, for preference.’
For just a moment, Lucilia looked as though she might argue, but her eyes slid past Fronto to the unfolding disaster, and she nodded. ‘Stay safe and come home soon,’ she said, then turned and left in the protective huddle of the three warriors. Watching his wife and sister leave, Fronto took a deep breath and then turned back. Galronus had extricated himself from the army now and was cantering across to him, leading Bucephalus.
‘To the general or away?’ the Remi asked.
Fronto was about to reply when a new voice cut across the din, and his eyes slid past Galronus to the speaker. The Remi noble turned to follow his friend’s gaze. A man in a clean white toga, one of the senators who had been part of the procession, had descended from the Capitol and stood on the rostrum at head height, where he was addressing the shoving and arguing soldiers.
‘…the army of Rome, but remember the Mos Maiorum. If you cannot comport yourself with dignity and pride, then you are less than that, and less even than those civilians you chide. Be ashamed, soldiers of Rome. Have shame for your deeds.’
He continued to harangue the men, and Fronto could see a fresh disaster in the offing now. The anger the soldiers had been showing one another was gradually turning on the white toga’d speaker. Fronto peered, squinting, and realised that he recognised the man even now thrusting out accusing fingers at the legionaries.
‘Ah, shit.’
‘What?’ Galronus frowned. ‘Who is it?’
‘That’s Lucius Pinarius. One of Caesar’s great nephews. He thinks he’s doing his great uncle a favour, but if they touch him, this’ll get a lot worse really quickly.’
‘Come on, then,’ Galronus said, turning his horse. Fronto pulled himself up onto Bucephalus and joined his friend as the pair raced away from the mass of citizens and towards the rostrum, where Pinarius continued to shout haughtily and more and more soldiers were turning his way.
‘We’re not going to get to him,’ Galronus said, and Fronto could see the truth in that. There was no way they would reach Pinarius from here without riding down the soldiers between them.
‘Distraction,’ Fronto said.
‘What?’
‘This all started with the two noisy bastards over there,’ Fronto replied, pointing ahead.
He could see the two men who had voiced their anger over the gifts Caesar had offered. Like most rabble rousers, now that they had set this trouble in motion, the two had prudently stepped back out of the way of the danger they had caused. The majority of the soldiers present were still trying to contain their more troublesome friends, and a full-scale riot could still be avoided by the application of common sense. But just as one thrown missile between soldier and civilian would change it all, so would a single blow landing on Caesar’s great nephew. The only thing they could do was distract the army long enough for someone sensible to pull Pinarius away from danger, and an example might just help bring things back into order.
Galronus nodded, and the two men approached the press, slowing. Fronto spotted a centurion and leaned close as they neared. ‘May I borrow your vitis?’
The centurion looked doubtful for a moment. His vine stick was the symbol of his authority, but as he struggled, his innate sense of duty won out, facing a senior officer. He bowed his head and held the item up. Fronto grabbed the stick. No one here was armed, but the centurions’ vitis was a symbol, not a weapon of war, so they were all in evidence.
Armed now, Fronto started to push his way through the ranks, men panicking and shoving their way out of the path of the horse and its important rider. Somewhere in the path through the army, Galronus had similarly acquired a vitis, and as they neared those two soldiers, who were now on the steps of a temple, watching with a certain wary satisfaction, Fronto glanced back to make sure Pinarius was still intact. Caesar’s nephew had staggered back across the podium, now attired in a rich tunic, for his toga had been pulled away in the crowd. Salvius Cursor was hurrying down to reach Pinarius with two of his praetorians, that not-weapon-of-war huge kitchen knife in his hand. Pinarius would probably be alright now, as long as he didn’t do anything stupid.
Heaving his way out of the far side of the press of soldiers, Fronto fixed his gaze on the man who had very vocally claimed his right to all the money Caesar had offered the plebs, while Galronus made for his mouthy companion. Finally, the two men, drawing their attention from the swarming soldiers at the rostrum, noticed the riders coming for them, eyes widening, realisation dawning, and turned. They ran.
One raced around one side of the temple, his friend the other. The two riders veered off in pursuit, and Fronto lost sight of Galronus then. The panicked legionary before him was doomed. He was running, but there was nowhere to go where his pursuer could not catch him. Leaning out in the saddle, Fronto pulled alongside the running soldier and swiped with the vitis stick. The vine wood was extremely hard and unyielding, polished to a club-like state over years by its owner. The soldier caught Fronto’s blow on the back of his helmet, a strike that sounded like a bell in the open air.
The man went down like a sack of grain, tumbling to a heap on the ground, and Fronto reined in Bucephalus a few paces further on, then turned and walked the horse back to the fallen rioter. The man was out cold, and it took a few moments for Fronto to dismount and check him over. After four abortive attempts to lift the man up and throw him over the horse’s back, he was about to give up, puffing with the effort, when Galronus appeared around the back of the temple, leading his own horse with a struggling, cursing soldier tied over the back.
With the younger man’s help, Fronto heaved the unconscious soldier over his horse, and the two men turned and hurried back to the forum proper. The various struggles were ongoing, though fortunately it had yet to turn into anything worse. As they approached, side by side, slowly the gathered men became aware of them. First Caesar and the others on the hill spotted the two horsemen returning with their burdens, and then Salvius Cursor and his men, busy hauling Pinarius away from danger, laid eyes on Fronto. As they all turned to look, gradually the seething mass of soldiers followed suit, and the pushing and shoving slowly subsided as everyone realised what had happened.
As the potential riot gradually sank into wary and nervous stillness, silence fell upon the gathering, and the sound of the two horses’ hooves clopping across the paving echoed weirdly around the forum. Fronto led, with his friend at his heel, and they skirted the mob, with difficulty climbing the steps behind the rostrum and making for Salvius Cursor and Pinarius. As they reached the rostrum, Fronto none-too-gently shoved the unconscious rioter from the back of his horse, the man landing on the wooden platform with a thud. Galronus and he then lifted the second, struggling, man down.
‘This fiasco is over,’ Fronto bellowed across the gathered crowd of soldiers, using the vitis to gesture at the men. ‘Caesar’s largesse is his affair. He wishes to relieve the burdens of the people of Rome, and you and I are not the only ones who have suffered over years of civil war. These people are your families, and they need to be cared for. Be grateful that Caesar has been beyond generous to you with his gifts, and forget petty jealousy over a small excess.’
He paused. Silence reigned.
‘The next man,’ he announced, eyes narrowing dangerously, ‘who raises a fist or pushes another, will join these two, who are guilty of insurrection and inciting a riot.’
He let this sink in, and was relieved to see the men begin to separate and settle back. Similarly, the gathered civilians were calm now, no angry arms outstretched. The soldier with the bound hands on the rostrum, realising that he was now in real trouble, suddenly tried to make a break for it, staggering past them to throw himself from the platform.
He had not reckoned on Salvius Cursor. The head of Caesar’s personal guard stepped across to intercept him. Fronto saw a momentary flash of steel in the sunlight, and there was a cry of pain. The beleaguered rioter turned, and Fronto could see the blossom of dark blood below the man’s waist, torrents of crimson pouring down his left leg from where Cursor had stabbed him in the inner thigh.
The soldier fell. Fronto heaved a deep breath. He’d meant for this to be a peaceful arrest of two criminals, not an execution. Salvius Cursor, though, had never been a man to let sense get in the way of a good bloodbath. Fronto looked from the stricken legionary who now collapsed to his knees, keening gently, to Cursor, who was calmly wiping his knife on a rag, and then up to Caesar. The general’s countenance was stony. There would be no reprimand for Salvius Cursor, Fronto realised. The general had no intention of going easy on the two men who’d started this. As the mortally wounded soldier slumped to his side and sobbed hopelessly in the growing pool of his own blood, Caesar gestured to the remaining figures on the platform.
Fronto and Galronus reached down and grabbed the unconscious soldier by the shoulders, lifting him with difficulty. Caesar looked from them to the mob of soldiers and back.
‘Who are you to deny the people of Rome?’ the general asked, darkly. His eyes fell on the unconscious soldier who had almost started a riot, and then he turned back to young Octavian, who stood close by, still in his priestly regalia, head covered piously. ‘Is it not an ancient practise to appease Mars with blood?’
Octavian nodded sagely. ‘It is rarely invoked.’
Fronto nodded. He knew why. There was a fine line between executing prisoners and human sacrifice. One was an accepted practise, the other abhorrent and forbidden by Roman law. The rite of offering the blood of executed prisoners of war to the god to stave off further violence had long since fallen out of use for its dubious nature. It seemed it was to be revived today.
‘That man,’ Caesar said, pointing to the unconscious soldier, ‘broke his oath as a legionary, and that alone condemns him, but he also turned on the people of Rome, offering them violence. He is less than a mere criminal. Take him out of the city, to the Campus Martius, and strike off his head. Bring it back to the forum for display as a reminder that no man, no matter what he has suffered, can put himself above the people of Rome. Then dedicate the rest of the body to Mars.’
There was a grudging acknowledgement from the army, then. Two men had been sacrificed on the altar of peace, and while no one would like that, each soldier present knew how close this had come to something unstoppable, and each of them would be quietly grateful it wasn’t them being carried away.
The crowd of citizens suddenly began to cheer and to chant Caesar’s name. Their dictator had condemned his own men to save the people. It was mere moments before the army was beginning to cheer once more, albeit with a hint of humility and embarrassment in their tone.
Fronto looked to Galronus. ‘I am so looking forward to getting safely back to the war.’