Attila:The Scourge of God

or subject to fleecing by corrupt officials. ‘Which unit?’ he asked.

‘African Horse,’ replied the other proudly, ‘and before that the Twentieth Legion — the old “Valeria Victrix”, stationed at Castra Deva² in Britain for nigh on four hundred years in all.’ He indicated his leg, which had been severed above the knee. ‘Doctors took it off after the recent battle with the Vandals. A right shambles that was, I can tell you.’

Interest displacing his concern for the lateness of the hour, Titus pressed the man for details. Perhaps he might learn something.

‘We were doing well against the Vandals, until they launched a surprise attack on our flank. Then our commander, Count Boniface, seemed to freeze up. With no orders telling anyone what to do, there was chaos. In the end we broke, and what began as a rout became a massacre. Myself, I wasn’t that surprised. Boniface, poor devil, lost his grip the moment the Vandals invaded — blamed himself for asking them to come over from Spain to help him. Ah, but you should have seen him in the old days, sir. What a soldier! Suevi, Goths, Moors — take your pick; he’d thrash the living daylights out of any of them.’

‘You say he asked for Vandal help. Against whom?’

The veteran shook his head in disbelief. ‘What empire have you been living in, sir? Against the imperial Roman army, of course — thought everyone knew that. But it wasn’t Boniface’s fault, not really. It was that General Aetius who turned the Empress against him. Sent a summons, she did, recalling him from Africa, but he wouldn’t go. Can’t say I blame him, either.’

Titus’ head whirled. Court gossip he had largely learnt to discount; usually about nine-tenths of it was mischievous froth. But among soldiers it was different. Perhaps because it bore on basic realities like pay, provisions, hardship, and death, it usually contained a nub of truth. Proximo’s account, crude and simplistic as it was, he was inclined to believe.

Titus felt in his purse for a donation. He still had a third of the funds Aetius had given him to cover expenses for his African mission. When he had tried to return the surplus, Aetius had responded, with careless generosity, ‘For God’s sake keep it. You’re too honest, Titus. Know the first rule of being in the army or the civil service: “Always double your claims, and never give back anything you’re not entitled to.”’ But Titus, uneasy about spending money he hadn’t earned, had kept by the remainder unused. Now he felt justified in giving a little of it away.

‘God bless you sir. A few nummi would have done,’ said an astonished Proximo, when Titus handed him a solidus — two months’ income for a small artisan.

‘You’re welcome, Proximo,’ replied Titus. ‘You’ve helped me more than you know.’ He bade him farewell, and plunged into a narrow alley, a shortcut to the Aurean Gate.

Passing a doorway, he suddenly felt something whip round his neck from behind, jerking him back into the darkness. The ligature tightened, choking off his breath; a roaring filled his head and his vision darkened. He struggled helplessly, hands clawing at the cord throttling him, all his skill in self-defence of no avail. ‘I’m a dead man,’ he thought, in panic and despair, ‘a dead man walking.’

All at once, he became aware of a swirl of violent movement beside him, then the pressure on his throat relaxed. Drawing in great whooping gasps of air, Titus looked around, saw Proximo leaning on the wall beside him, and between them on the ground a crumpled figure in a dark cloak. A thread of blood trickled from a crater in the man’s temple.

‘Dead, sir.’ Proximo waved his crutch, which he held by its base. ‘Swung properly, it’s like a sledgehammer. Lucky I watched you come down here. When you vanished suddenly, I got suspicious and decided to check.’

‘Thank God you did,’ said Titus shakily, massaging his throat. He’d live.

‘Sneak-thief after your purse, probably. Can’t be too careful these days.’

But Titus knew it was no thief. Placidia, burning to avenge her son’s humiliation, had set one of her creatures on his trail, with orders to dispatch him. Without Aetius to protect him, vigilance would have to be his watchword.

They weighted the corpse with prised-up cobblestones, then, making sure they were unobserved, slipped it into one of Ravenna’s many canals. Titus solved the problem of what to do with the balance of his African funds by giving it to his rescuer. The old soldier need beg no more; there was enough for him to set himself up in a small business. ‘A small enough return for saving my life,’ he said, cutting short Proximo’s stammered thanks.

He reached the gate just before it shut. As he cantered back towards Aetius’ villa, two things struck him with the force of revelation. Was it chance or destiny that had brought about his meeting with Proximo, a meeting which had confirmed his suspicions regarding Aetius, and resulted in his deliverance from assassination? And the man’s old legion was ‘Valeria Victrix’. Valeria — Valerius: the name of his father’s gens.³ Could it be that he was meant to seek his father’s advice as to what he should now do? The weight of centuries of his family’s pagan tradition — in reality a polite scepticism underpinned by Stoic principles — seemed to press down on him, urging rejection of such irrational thoughts. But part of him, the new Christian part, insisted that his meeting with Proximo might have been more than blind chance.

Perhaps, after all, his prayers in the cathedral had not gone unanswered, and he had been vouchsafed a sign?

¹ 31 August 431.

² Chester.

³ Clan.

TEN

Your [Rome’s] power is felt even to the farthest edge of the world

Rutilius Namatianus, On His Return, 416

Written at the Villa Fortunata, Province of Aemilia, Diocese of Italia, in the year of the consuls Bassus and Antiochus, Kalendas Sept.¹ C. Valerius Rufinus, formerly commander of the Primani Legion, ex- decurion of Tremeratae; to his friend Magnus Anicius Felix, former tribune in the Primani Legion, senator, greetings.

Magnus, my dear old friend, having lost touch with you many years ago, I rejoice to hear (from a mutual acquaintance) that you are in good health and living in your ancestral homeland of Aquitania — now, alas, allotted to the Visigoths. My commiserations on your plight: having to share your province with stinking, skin-clad brutes can’t be pleasant. You must come and visit me, although I fear you will find my hospitality a touch threadbare, my circumstances being somewhat straitened at this present. I will not bore you with the details; suffice to say that the authorities do not quite see eye to eye with myself over certain matters, as a result of which I am now persona non grata in their eyes. However, my cellar is not entirely empty yet; it would be good to re-fight old campaigns together, with a cup or two of Falernum to stimulate the memory.

Do you remember that August evening thirty-seven years ago when we waited, in the valley of the Frigidus, to hear if Theodosius had decided to withdraw?’

Moving among his legionaries, giving a word of encouragement here, a gesture of sympathy to a wounded soldier there, Gaius Valerius Rufinus, commander of the Primani Legion, watched, as, further down the valley, Arbogast’s troops pitched camp for the night. Along the northern horizon rolled a range of low hills, outriders of the Julian Alpes, pierced by the white ribbon of the road from Aquincum.² From either host, details were digging long trenches to receive the dead, stacked in piles like so much cordwood. On Theodosius’ side, the slain were mainly Alaric’s Visigoths — bearing out the Goths’ complaint that, when it came to fighting, the Romans preferred to spend the blood of their barbarian federate allies, rather than their own.

Arbogast, the Frankish Master of Soldiers, had treacherously murdered the young Western Emperor Valentinian II, and set up his own puppet, Eugenius, on the vacant throne. Just the latest in the seemingly endless