Carthage.
How much trouble, throughout the history of our great empire, could one city be? This great African metropolis had been a thorn in Rome’s side countless times over the centuries. From the days of Hannibal and Scipio and the wars that crossed the sea and ravaged the world for decades, down through the fated Gordian usurpers’ last stand there, to my late autumn campaign, Carthage seems to attract trouble of the worst sort.
I think that to some extent we swept in and stole Zenas’ glory. I know I had ranted again and again over the months about the Christian officer’s apparent inability to put the African revolt to rest, but in fairness, by the time Volusianus and I crossed from Sicilia with our force of Praetorians, my young general had settled most of Africa, driving back Domitius Alexander and his scant remaining forces, penning them in the cities of Carthage and Utica. The revolt would have ended by winter even without our intervention and, despite his deference, I could see how truly irritated Zenas was that we had come to interfere in his campaign just as he had been about to conclude it successfully.
Four cohorts remained loyal to Alexander in proud Utica some twenty miles north-west of us, and Zenas was there now, pressing on the walls and forcing them into an ignominious surrender. The arc of coastline that surrounded the city there would be battered constantly by siege engines mounted aboard the fleet, and I had little doubt that they had more than a day or two of resistance left in them. Zenas had taken the lesser siege, I think, just to prove he could still achieve a victory on his own. That left Volusianus and myself with Carthage, where Alexander remained with six cohorts. Volusianus was doing the actual commanding, of course. This was his world. He knew Africa and its people. He knew Carthage down to even its tiniest alleyway. And he felt the need to win back for me what he had once given me entire.
But the forces we led here were still mostly those who had fought for a year and a half under Zenas, and they remained loyal to him and rather unsure of us. I had solved the issue by taking on Zenas’ right-hand man, Miltiades, as a senior officer in support of Volusianus and myself. Miltiades was a Christian like Zenas and tremendously popular with the forces, and he served as the perfect cushion between the new commanders and the extant army. In fact, over the best part of a month as Zenas pressed on Utica and we slowly squeezed the life out of Carthage, I had come to truly appreciate Miltiades. He seemed odd as a military man, and not because of his adhering to that odd, insular cult. He was a gentle man and a humorous one, given to expansive gestures, almost unreasonable clemency and an unshakable belief that everything would work out for the best. Such traits in a commander should realistically sound the death knell for an army, but somehow in Miltiades these ingredients just meshed perfectly and created a popular and talented officer.
Even now, as Volusianus and I watched the rosy fingers of dawn clawing at the tops of the hills of the Carpis Peninsula to the east, preparing for what would be the last day of the African revolt, I knew that Miltiades was on the far side of the city with half a legion, busily moving his siege towers and ladders into position to make his move where the great aqueduct touched the city walls. And I had no doubt that he would acquit himself well in the coming hours, too. Miltiades would move to breach the city there, at the high point. He wouldn’t , of course. No one could. The triple land walls of Carthage were infamous and impregnable. Since the days of Scipio they had never been breached. And even with the paltry defences Alexander could call on, it would take a force ten times the size of Miltiades’ even to attempt it. But that was not the point of his assault. Miltiades had a very specific remit: attack Carthage with great noise and violence and pomp… but try not to actually lose many men. For the real attack would come the only sensible way: by sea.
My trireme bobbed and lifted on the gentle waves, sitting amid a fleet of more than twenty warships, between them carrying a full legion’s worth of the very best men in Africa, cohorts drawn from the Praetorians and the Third Augusta, and numerous centuries from other less prestigious units. Miltiades had assured us that it would work. He would draw the defenders to the triple walls facing the isthmus while we sailed from our hidden anchorage and made directly for the port, which presented an open access to the city as long as it was not adequately defended.
Our ships had moved into position during the night and anchored to the south of the Taenia peninsula, which had been occupied by the great general Censorinus during the first great siege of the city four and a half centuries ago. There we had lurked throughout the hours of darkness, praying to Neptune and any god we could name that we would not be spotted by some wandering shepherd. We would be visible from the city the moment we moved out of hiding, so we had to make sure our timing was right. We prayed again also that Miltiades could persuade Alexander’s men that his was a true push to take the city.
I glanced off to the north. Somewhere around that headland lay Carthage.
‘When we enter the city, do not get caught up in the fighting,’ Volusianus murmured next to me. ‘Domine ,’ he added, with an afterthought of etiquette.
‘I have no intention of doing battle directly. But you are a senior commander and too valuable to lose, Volusianus, so I might pass back the same advice to you.’
My prefect turned a hard face to me. ‘Respectfully, Domine, I do not intend to get myself killed, but I have a score to settle with Alexander, and I will rip his head off with my bare hands before this day is out.’
I was about to reply, but my words would have been drowned out by the sudden blast of a cornu from the ship’s rear. The call was taken up by the other ships in the fleet and I glanced once more to the east. The eye-watering globe of the autumn sun had put in an appearance, its white arc bulging up over the hills behind Carpis across the bay. The ships were suddenly moving with impressive efficiency, gaining speed within moments as they rounded the headland and began to race up the coast for the city whose harbour entrance lay a single mile north of us. As the fleet thundered on, the auletes aboard each vessel piping their tune to keep the oars rising and dipping in time, I prayed. I prayed to Neptune and to Mars and to Jove and to Hercules. I prayed to Sol of the Syrian east and to Minerva and Mithras , and even the Christian Christ, that Miltiades had made enough noise to pull Alexander’s army to the land walls. Because while the ports represented a ready access to the city, the Carthaginians had been far from stupid, and with adequate manpower on the defences, the run into those ports would be suicide, facing the artillery on the tower tops.
Closer and closer we surged. I watched the wide-stretched arms of the sea walls – a single line of fortifications unlike those triple monstrosities on the land side – spread wide, urging us into the bosom of Carthage. I was keenly aware that those heavy towers that rose up on the walls each bore ship-killing artillery, and that six of them were within range to pound the life out of anything passing through that entrance. And then there was the long, wide commercial harbour, bounded to the east by another wall, punctuated with identical armed towers. And at the far end lay the military port, which would be a horrendous proposition, for it might hold as many triremes as we had in our fleet, and we had no idea about the size of the naval power in the city. We would heave to in the mercantile port and not run the risk of pushing into the military one.
I could see small figures now atop the towers. They were waving frantically. A huge, deep, booming horn call went up. Warning spread throughout the city. Good. If they were sending out the warning now, then that meant they were not already prepared for us. Still, I winced and clenched my teeth as the first ships closed on the harbour mouth, and I almost exploded with the release of pressure as they slipped between the towers and into the unprotected quay. Moments later the fleet was flooding the port of Carthage, each ship expertly manoeuvring to a berth. The boarding ramps were run out even before the ships were secured, and the men of our most elite forces pounded down the timbers to the dock side.
Each unit formed up under their commander in a matter of heartbeats and as soon as they were ready moved off into the city. I had no idea how they knew what they were doing, but the specific goals and directions had been set by Volusianus, who had governed the province from this city for years and knew exactly where to send his forces to secure Carthage. I stood with the prefect as the men of my loyal army saturated the city, brushing aside any civilian stupid enough to get in their way. They were under strict instructions not to kill the population, although I was personally not above a little ruination and salting of the earth, given the fact that this city had thrown its support behind my enemy. Still, great Caesar himself had gone far through magnanimity, and I would emulate him if I could, though hopefully not to the same conclusion.
Our ship docked swiftly, somewhere in the middle of the fleet, and the century of Praetorians on board filed out onto the dock and awaited their commanders. Volusianus gestured and our horses were led down to the flagged stonework. We followed and mounted, and then took to the streets at the heels of my loyal guardsmen. A commotion was now rising throughout the city. Alexander’s men had clearly discovered that they had been duped and were rushing back in bulk to face the threat that was already in the streets. The port had mustered some manpower from somewhere – probably naval personnel – and the artillery on the towers were starting to find range, aiming for the ships invading their city. They would be too late now. Most of the troops were in the streets and half a cohort was already moving like a swarm of ants up the sea walls, securing towers and gates.
Fighting in the streets is a dirty and abhorrent business, and I consider myself fortunate that we were not with those units that met Alexander’s rebel cohorts in the narrow ways and alleys of the city. It would have been a bloody business and even with the best will in the world, civilians would be killed. But Volusianus and I had different goals. Our century of men moved from the port and made directly for the Byrsa – the hilltop acropolis that dominated the city from its very centre. For though the citadel walls and been gone since the time of Scipio, the Byrsa was still where the governor’s palace stood, and my Praetorian Prefect felt certain that Domitius Alexander would be found there, cowering and fretting, and not with his men at the city walls.
The Byrsa is a high place, and the journey to it from the port is an arduous, strength-sapping climb. The palace of the governor – the palace of the traitor and rebel – stood at the very crest and was a grand affair, as befitted a man with such power. It was a three-storey structure with a great colonnaded front.
And it was defended. Alexander had kept back at least a century of men, and they were now formed up in a shield wall, preparing to hold the building against their rightful emperor. The sight annoyed me. It perhaps made me arrogant and reckless. As the Praetorian centurion bellowed for his men to charge, I drew my own blade. Somehow I couldn’t sit back and just let this happen – I had to be part of it. Volusianus was in no position to argue me down, since he had also drawn his sword and begun to move forward.
I would like to say that I was heroic and dashing, that I rode in with my men and played my part in the end of the revolt. Certainly my very presence heartened the men, so that is true in a manner. But the simple fact is that my Praetorians were better trained, better equipped and enjoyed much higher morale than the enemy. The attacking force, even wearied from the climb, fell upon the defenders like wolves upon lambs, tearing into them. Blood flowed across the flagstones in a growing pool. I did manage to put blade to flesh somewhere in the melee, for my sword was running with crimson once it was over. As the Praetorians moved among the rebel legionaries, dispatching the wounded, I stood and shuddered. Blood had sprayed up each of the columns along the building’s front, giving it an eerie, otherworldly look. Volusianus was on the move a moment later, the centurion pulling together the remaining men of his unit as we stomped into the palace.
Lucius Domitius Alexander was not hard to find. A heavy-set man of middle age with a curly beard and short, almost severe haircut, he stood in the centre of the peristyle garden, his toga of white and purple looking suspiciously imperial to me. He had a spatha – a long cavalry blade – in his hand. If he’d had any remaining guards with him either they had fled or he had sent them away. I could see slaves and servants cowering in the corners of the garden, but Alexander stood proud and unrepentant.
‘Domine.’ He nodded at me as I entered. Volusianus’ knuckles were white on his sword hilt and I could see his eyes narrowing.
‘Domitius Alexander,’ I replied quietly. ‘What did I do to you that you would rebel and take Africa from me?’
I had not meant to ask such a question. It just somehow slipped out.
Alexander shrugged. ‘Nothing personal, Majesty. A man cannot serve two masters and while they say you are a good man, good men are unimportant. Strong men matter.’
‘Strong men like Galerius?’ Volusianus snarled, crossing to a low marble bench and table upon which sat a few wax tablets, a stylus and a fine leather purse. As though he knew already what he would find, my prefect used his free hand to sweep up the purse and loosen the strings before tipping its contents to the table. I wandered across, frowning, fascinated. As I had thought when I saw them tumble, they were eastern gold aurei, bearing the image of that bloated sack of worms Galerius.
Alexander shrugged again. ‘I was appointed by Constantius, but he is dead and I have served Galerius faithfully for a lifetime. Should I overturn decades of loyalty for an upstart, just because he’s a good man? My conscience is clear, son of Maximian.’
‘You intend to fall on your sword?’ Volusianus snarled. ‘Hard with such a long blade. Or will you fight me?’
Alexander looked down in surprise, as though he’d forgotten he was holding the sword. With an odd smile, he threw it casually across the lawn. Volusianus, his eyes flashing, stepped forward and brought up his own sword, swinging it wide with impressive strength. In that instant, Alexander screwed his eyes shut and waited for his end. Yet the prefect twisted the blade as he swung, so that the flat steel connected with Alexander’s skull, rather than the edge biting into it. The rebel governor fell to the ground, groaning, and Volusianus, his teeth bared in a feral expression, gestured to the centurion.
‘Bind his hands.’
‘I don’t want a prisoner,’ I said quietly.
‘I’m not taking him prisoner, Domine,’ Volusianus grunted. The centurion produced a long piece of leather thonging from somewhere and wrapped it around Alexander’s wrists, yanking it so taut that it bit deep into the flesh, binding his hands together tight enough that the flesh began to turn purple immediately.
‘You stinking piece of Galerian filth,’ Volusianus snarled, then spat a wad of phlegm into Alexander’s face. As the groggy captive swayed, recovering his wits from the head blow, Volusianus bellowed, ‘Rope!’
A soldier quickly produced a length of rope, which he and Volusianus formed into a simple slip-knotted noose. Alexander suddenly seemed to be coming to his senses and realised what was happening. His eyes widened in panic. ‘No!’
‘Hold still, you shit,’ snapped Volusianus, dropping the noose over the rebel’s head and pulling it taut. He handed the rope to the guardsman and pointed up to a fine piece of decorative stonework, which included a set of holes through the pediment above the columns. Two soldiers held the struggling Alexander, while the Praetorian threaded the rope through the hole with some difficulty. Then four men grasped the cord and, at Volusianus’ command, hauled on it.
Lucius Domitius Alexander rose jerkily from the ground, shaking and gasping, clawing at the rope that was already tearing into the flesh of his throat. He rose in bounces and jerks until his feet were at chest height, where he stopped, as the Praetorians tied off the rope. We all watched the rebel who had cost us a year and a half of peace in Africa dance the dance of strangulation. He bounced and thrashed and shook and swung, clawing, his eyes bulging as though they might burst from his head, his tongue, purple and swollen, emerging from fat lips as he slowly gave way to the final journey, though with no coin beneath his tongue that journey would not be across the Styx.
There was a strange crackly noise and then a sigh, and the smell of freshly voided bowels as a steady stream of urine trickled down to the paving beneath him. The foot kicked and twitched, and finally fell still.
Africa was ours once more.
I could have stopped the brutal execution. Perhaps I should have. The man had only done what he thought was his duty, and what could be more Roman than that? But somehow I just didn’t want to. He thought I was a good man. I wasn’t that good.
‘Now I have to decide whether to burn the city to the ground,’ I hissed, still angry, despite myself, my eyes sliding to those Galerian coins.
*
Two days later I was sitting in that same palace when two pieces of news reached my ears, one welcome and one that shifted the world beneath my feet.
Firstly, Zenas brought us the news that Utica had fallen. The revolt was truly over. Zenas had approached me nervously, as though expecting to be upbraided or reprimanded for his failures. But I was in the oddest of moods, and I embraced the young officer like a lost brother, whereupon he almost wept with gratitude. I chuckled as I saw Miltiades in the corner of the room nodding his approval at the gesture.
A strange mood for sure. I was elated, for we had retaken Africa. But I was also uncertain. I had seen the faces of the people in the city since it fell. Though they had not thus far suffered my wrath for their support of Alexander, I could see they resented my very presence and that they had been returned to the fold of my imperium. I could quite imagine that within a month of our departure for Rome, another rebel would rouse Africa against me.
And the optimism I had felt since that morning when we decided to mount this campaign had faded, consumed by the knowledge that I would soon be returning home. Rome was my heartland and the home of my soul, and yet these days it was just a city of dead children, cold wives and unreasonable cults.
‘I am all in favour of razing the entire city in the same manner as Scipio,’ I grumbled. ‘And transferring the seat of government to somewhere else. Perhaps Thysdrus or Hadrumetum. The citizens here seek only to do me ill. And Carthage’s history is not illustrious. Hannibal. Gaius Annius. Now Alexander. It attracts enemies and lunatics, clearly.’
Volusianus cleared his throat. ‘We have found huge amounts of Galerius’ gold in the coffers of leading men in Carthage and among the African military. Your enemy more or less bought Africa from under you. The people here have grown wealthy and fat on Galerius’ beneficence. They will eventually come to realise that the animal was just using them, and they will come to see you as a liberator. But give people time. Blood still runs in the streets and the memory of a year and a half of warfare is all too fresh.’
Zenas nodded. ‘It will take time, Domine, but Africa will settle again.’
‘We don’t have time,’ I rumbled. ‘We devoted huge numbers of men to the suppression of this revolt and we have been more than lucky that my opponents to north and east have been too busy to take advantage of the situation and push into Italia. But we cannot expect Licinius to be held on the Danubius forever, and Constantine…’
I trailed off as I once more saw in my mind’s eye my old friend. ‘I still cannot believe that he will come against me, but we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to take the troops home and move them north where they will be required in due course. And that means leaving Africa unwatched. Can we afford to do that at a time when further revolt is not an impossibility? And while burning Carthage to the ground might remove the bulk of the rebel spirit, and would certainly make me feel better, it could equally spark a whole new rebellion.’
‘Domine, might I make a suggestion?’ Miltiades stepped out of the shadowy corner of the room and approached the dais upon which I sat. I pursed my lips and nodded. ‘Well, Domine, the people of Africa are resentful as they can only see as far as their purses. They remember the gold that flooded in from the East and know that Galerius will now send them no more because of you.’
‘I am aware of this,’ I hissed, but without real anger. There was something about Miltiades’ face that soothed me. Perhaps it was the warm colour – he was descended of the Berber tribesmen local to the region, and the glowing tone made his white smile and bright eyes seem all the more warm and pleasant.
‘They cleave to the memory of Alexander and of Galerius’ gold,’ he went on. ‘If you wish to truly settle them, you need to change those memories. You need to remind them that Alexander was not a champion for them, but a servant of Galerius and his Tetrarchy, as was Gaius Annius in his time. And you need to remind them what Galerius’ gold actually means .’
‘Which is what?’ I had no idea what the man was driving at.
‘Africa has the largest population of Christians in the West. My people are everywhere in this province – in the army, in the government, traders, nobles, sailors and even spies. And while the world watched in horror what the emperors did to my people in Nicomedia and in Rome and the north, few people outside Africa seem to realise that the persecutions were worse here than in most provinces. This land was brutalised . Utterly. And who was it that ravaged the Christians of Africa? The very man who now pays them to make war on an emperor who has levied no such violent decree. You want a way to win the population, Domine? Remind them that Galerius burned and tortured them. Ask them if their blood money is worth that ?’
I blinked. Was it that simple? I knew that the Christians were numerous here, more so than in Italia or the north. But I had not ere considered them influential enough that they might turn the tide of imperial power. I smiled at Miltiades. Astoundingly, after two years of finding the Christians nothing but trouble with their endless infighting, it seemed as though they had handed me the means of recapturing Africa’s heart.
‘Miltiades, you are wasted with the Third.’
And he was. I had decided there and then that this new advisor would come back to Rome with us, where he could be much more use. Some of my lost positivity began to return then, only to be punched out of me a heartbeat later. I heard the shuffling of feet and looked to the door, where a prefect of unknown name stood, travel-worn, sweating and with the bleakest of expressions.
The hairs standing on the back of my neck in anticipation, I threw a question at the man with my eyes.
‘Domine,’ the officer said, his voice croaky and dry, ‘I bring unhappy news.’
Well I’d already anticipated that much. I waved him on with a finger.
‘Reports have come in, Domine, from Ancharius Pansa of the frumentarii. Your noble father, the former emperor, has perished.’
Perished? An odd choice of word. Not ‘died’, as one might announce a fat old drunk’s body finally giving way to his habits, or an older man passing in his sleep. ‘Perished’ carried an edge of menace. Of violence. I felt a strange swirl of emotions wash through me. Oddly, the first was the urge to cheer for the freedom my family and I would finally feel. But that swiftly gave way to regret for the way my father and I had parted, to horror for the realisation that I was now the pater familias of an entire imperial line, to hollow acceptance of the inevitable and to cold uncertainty of what had truly happened. He had been at Constantine’s court, along with his daughter, my sister. One emotion had been noticeably absent from my torrent of torment, though that would not last for long.
‘How, perished?’
The officer glanced at his feet, readying himself. I could picture him and the other men tossing dice to decide who would carry these tidings, and this man’s face as he lost.
‘Domine, according to our reports, your father sought to heal the division in the West by taking Constantine’s realm from him and uniting it with your own.’
‘Laudable,’ I said quietly. ‘Uncharacteristically laudable. Go on.’
Another braced pause. ‘He held Massilia against Constantine, Majesty. But the pretender’s armies were too strong. They overran him and he was captured in flight. He was imprisoned, Domine, in a dank cell. The… Constantine visited him, it is said, and gave him a sword, commanding him to take his life.’
I slumped back.
Commanded? By a man who, like me, had claimed the purple against the will of the Tetrarchy? How could a usurper justify commanding one of the few true reigning emperors of Rome to kill himself? The very idea of my old friend passing a sword to the man who had ruled so long alongside Diocletian and telling him to fall on it was insane. He had no right. No authority…
And there it was. Anger. I had parted with my father in it, but it seems he had sought to solve my problem for me. We could have ruled the West together as father and son, perhaps. But no longer. He had been condemned like a cur, for all his death might have happened by his own hand, by a man who claimed to be noble. Noble! I would show my old friend. My father might have died like an animal, but he would be remembered like an emperor! I snarled, feeling purpose filling my veins once more. I would announce a permanent end to persecution in Africa, denigrating Galerius in the process, shower the province with largesse, and then return to my city, where I would deify my father to spite the man who’d murdered him.
Rome was calling once more, and suddenly I felt a little more able to handle her.