PART TWO
Ubique Pax (The West, Cisalpine Gaul, south of the city of Mediolanum, Summer AD260)
'O Zeus, what pitiable suffering, what bloody trial approaches that drives you onward, man of sorrows?'
The emperor Gallienus reined in his horse. Its trappings gleamed purple and gold. Well-schooled, it stood quietly, waiting for the ritual to start again.
This time, unexpectedly, a soldier called out from the ranks of the closest unit. 'A coin for a shave, Dominus.'
Gallienus smiled and held his hand out to his a Memoria. Achilleus placed a coin in the emperor's palm. Gallienus flicked it through the air. 'Good luck.'
'May the gods grant you victory, Dominus.'
Another soldier called out. 'Me too, Imperator.'
Gallienus slowly studied the man. 'After due consideration, commilitio, and with the best will in the world, a face like yours is better hidden by a beard.' The soldier himself joined in the laughter as he caught the coin that was thrown in any case.
Gallienus unlaced his helmet and hung it on one of the rear horns of his saddle. He ran his hand through his sweat-dampened, dyed-blond hair. It was hot on the north Italian plain in the summer.
There could never be complete silence in any unit of the Roman army. There was always the clink of metal on metal, the creak of leather, the occasional cough. When it was as quiet as it was going to get, Gallienus raised himself by the front horns of the saddle and began to make his pre-battle speech yet again.
'We have waited a long time and marched a long way for this day. Finally, we have these barbarians where we want them — on an open field, cut off from the mountains and any hope of safety. There are a lot of them.' Not deigning to look, Gallienus languidly gestured over his shoulder to the south. 'It will do them no good. They will merely get in each other's way. They have no disciplina.'
The soldiers banged their spears on their shields.
'These Germans call themselves the Alamanni. They think themselves All Man. We know better. They are all cinaedi. These hairy bum-boys reached Rome. The eternal city is unwalled. They ran from a rabble of plebs and slaves led by a few delicate old senators.'
Gallienus waited for the laughter to subside. 'The quickest and bravest of them have already crossed the Alps. And you all know what happened to them on the other side. The acting governor of Raetia, with just a handful of regular troops and some local peasants, cut them to pieces.'
'We know it. We know it,' chanted the soldiers in their rough northern accents.
Gallienus raised his voice. 'Today we will free Italy from the barbarians. Today we will free our fellow citizens whom they have cruelly enslaved. Today we will take back the Germans' booty and share it among ourselves. By tonight there will not be a poor man in our army!'
As one, the soldiers roared their approval.
'Are you ready for war?'
'Ready!'
As the third repetition of the ritual response was still ringing out, Gallienus looked at Achilleus and his standard bearer. He winked at the two men and nodded forwards. Then, suddenly grabbing his helmet, he kicked his heels into the flanks of his horse. It leapt ahead, closely pursued by those of the other two.
Behind the emperor, his senatorial entourage was caught unawares. They milled in confusion, their horses bumping into each other as they hastened to follow. The soldiers loved it. As he sped away, Gallienus heard them mocking their social superiors before the unit battle cry boomed forth: 'Io Cantab! Io Cantab!'
Gallienus turned into a gap between two of the units and galloped north towards where the reserve of Horse Guards and the rest of his entourage waited.
An emperor never travels alone. As they drew near, the emperor indicated his permission for his a Memoria Achilleus to draw off to one side, where the other heads of his imperial bureaucracy waited. He smiled at their incongruously civilian aspect. There was Quirinius, the a Rationibus, who oversaw his treasury; Palfurius Sura, the ab Epistulis, who handled his correspondence; and Hermianus, his ab Admissionibus. They were all powerful, important men. The imperium could not function without them. But far away from their desks in the imperial chancery, they looked lost.
Holding their horses' heads under the Horse Guards' flag — a red Pegasus on a white banner — the military high command were very different. Three stood out in front: Volusianus, the Italian former trooper, now Praetorian Prefect; Heraclian, once a Danubian peasant, now the commander of the Equites Singulares; and Aureolus, the one-time Getan shepherd promoted to Prefect of Cavalry. Behind them were the other protectores — part bodyguards, part staff officers: three more Danubians — Tacitus, Claudius and Aurelian; two more Italians of plebeian origin — Celer Venerianus and Domitianus; and finally, the Egyptian brothers Theodotus and Camsisoleus, and Memor the African. At the sight of these tough, loyal men, Gallienus's heart lifted.
The emperor dismounted and called for his battle charger. As it was led forward, the senators came up all in a bunch. They radiated hurt dignity. These were the men of Gallienus's father. The emperor Valerian trusted them. He had grown up with several among them; he was one of them. Men like old Felix, who had been consul no less than twenty-three years earlier. He was in his late sixties, but Valerian had trusted him with the defence of Byzantium from the Goths just three years ago. Then there was the yet more elderly and more polyonomous Gaius Julius Aquilius Aspasius Paternus, who had governed Africa in the year of Felix's consulship and had himself held that office at some even more remote date.
For a moment, Gallienus thought he should not have wounded their dignitas to get an easy laugh from the soldiers. To be fair, the Goths had not taken Byzantium, and no harm had come to Africa. But the senators' race was run. In the golden age, when the imperium was conquering all it surveyed — even in the silver age, when it was easily holding its own — its armies could be commanded by elderly landed amateurs, more at home designing an exotic fish-pond than sweating on the march. But this was a new age. A harsh age of iron and rust. It called for a hard, new sort of man. It called for Gallienus's recently formed protectores.
Even in an age of iron and rust, the previous year had been a bad one. Late in the campaigning season, when the leaves in the north had already turned, the Alamanni had burst across the border between the headwaters of the Rhine and the Danube. The governor of Raetia had been cut down in battle, his army routed. The Alamanni had swarmed on and crossed the Alps. Unarmed Italy had been at their mercy. Gallienus had cut short his campaign in the far north near the ocean and desperately given chase, just getting over the mountains before the snow shut the passes. As soon as he and his field army had departed, another confederation of Germans, the Franks, had crossed the Rhine. There had not been enough Roman troops to oppose them, or even to chase them.
Thank Hercules, thought Gallienus, that his second son, the Caesar Saloninus, had been safe with Silvanus the Dux of the Rhine frontier behind the strong walls of Colonia Agrippinensis. Silvanus was a good man. He would see no harm came to the imperial prince. Gallienus pushed away the thought of his eldest son, the beautiful and dead Valerian the Younger. It had been just two years since the boy had died on the Danube. Foul rumours had sought to implicate Ingenuus the governor of Pannonia. But it could not be. Ingenuus was a sound man, loyal through and through to the imperial house. The gods had willed the darling boy die. It just had to be accepted. Take what comfort you could from philosophy, it just had to be accepted.
Gallienus had not caught up with the Alamanni last autumn. They had wintered in Italy, the Franks in Gaul. The barbarians had scoured the land around their quarters. It had been a cruel winter: iron and rust.
As the gods would have it, this year had started better for the Romans. First, in the spring, news had come to Gallienus at Aquileia that yet another northern barbarian invasion had been thwarted. Thousands of Sarmatian horsemen had crossed the Danube into Pannonia but had been resoundingly defeated by Ingenuus. Then had come