The slave just looked at him; with a father like Lucius Falerius, to state the immediacy of the summons would be superfluous.
‘Ignore him, Marcellus,’ cried the acting Hannibal. ‘If you go now the Carthaginians will win.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Just tell your father this fellow forgot to call you.’
‘What a thing to say, Gaius. How can you make a suggestion like that and call yourself Roman?’
Trebonius stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry. ‘Right now I’m a Carthaginian.’
‘I don’t think even they would sink so low as to inflict punishment on an innocent slave.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Marcellus,’ said another boy. ‘Who cares about slaves?’
Marcellus just fixed him with an icy stare, and adopting what he thought was a proper Roman posture, a pose that they had named his Horatius look, he followed the slave towards the back door of his house.
‘Look at him,’ snorted one of the Calvinus twins. ‘You’d think he had a broomstick shoved up his arse.’
‘Louder,’ said Gaius Trebonius, since the other boy had made sure that Marcellus would not hear him.
‘No fear. Let’s get on with the fight. I’ll be Africanus now.’
The boy took his place at the head of his small band of troops and issued his first command. ‘On guard. Open ranks and prepare to receive elephants.’
Marcellus stood before the parental desk. Just turned nine, he was, even at that tender age, expected to confer with his father about all his recent decisions and come to a conclusion that pleased him, which Lucius never tired of telling his son was part of his training. His father was enlightening on the history of Rome, in a way that no Greek tutor could match, so it was not always a trial. He had been a power in the Senate, or close to it, for so long that he was steeped in knowledge of the leading personalities of the Republic, all the way back to the Tarquin kings. Such knowledge provided Lucius with his two guiding concepts; the first being that Rome should never again fall under the tyranny of a monarchy, with the caveat that he was no Athenian democrat, being equally opposed to sharing power with all and sundry. To his way of thinking, only those of the right class had the foresight, combined with the lack of avarice, to rule wisely. That was his second, and seemingly stronger, principle, one, as a patrician himself, he was prepared to sacrifice even his life to maintain.
As a dutiful son, far too young for independent thoughts, Marcellus shared his father’s prejudices, so he too thought that the corn dole had made matters worse instead of better, dragging more people into Rome than the city could comfortably accommodate. He would scoff, just as derisively as Lucius, if anyone suggested that Rome’s Italian allies should be allowed citizenship, or to plead in the courts against what they saw as the rapacity of her senators. The Republic was not greedy, merely victorious, a power more beneficial to the world than any that had existed before, something for which the conquered should be grateful. Because of Rome, these inhabitants of Italy enjoyed peace and prosperity while that unique and august body, the supreme forum of magistrates, better by far than any king, embodied in themselves the law that made Rome work.
Lucius sat back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach, and smiled at his son. ‘Now, boy. We have a problem in Illyricum. I believe I told you of it the other day.’
‘Yes, father.’
‘Never mind the “yes, father”,’ Lucius replied. ‘Tell me about it.’
Marcellus tilted his head back and spoke like a soldier delivering a report, a pleasing pose. It took no great leap of parental imagination to see the boy a little older, talking in the same voice, and in the same posture, to a military superior.
‘Following the outbreak of a rebellion a consular army of two legions, plus auxiliaries, has been in the province for four years. In that time it has engaged in no proper battle. Despatches from the commander Vegetius Flaminus state that the war is of a scattered nature and that the rebellious provincials will not congregate in enough strength to offer an opportunity to our troops.’
Marcellus looked down at his father, who merely said, ‘Go on, boy.’
‘He further stated that he wished to avoid exposing the legions to piecemeal engagements since this was more likely to reduce his forces than those of the rebels. Other letters from the province include numerous requests from the citizenry for something to be done, since their crops, cattle and mining concessions are under constant attack from marauding bands. They also hinted at certain irregular activities on the part of the governor.’
‘I think you’ve forgotten something,’ said Lucius, as Marcellus paused again.
‘Forgive me, father.’
Lucius sat forward, fixing his son with a steely look. ‘You really must pay more attention, Marcellus. If you miss such important points as the one you’ve so conspicuously left out of your report, you cannot hope for success in public life. In every case to be examined or pleaded there are salient points. Remember those, elaborate on them, and the rest becomes easy.’
‘Yes, father.’
‘None of this, or the conclusion we reached the other day, makes any sense, if you don’t include the fact that the Dacian tribes are raiding across the border, in strength, and fighting alongside the Illyrian rebels. Why does not the governor move to intercept them? What steps has he taken to gather intelligence that would allow him to do so? Without Dacian support, it should be easy to contain a few bands of Illyrian malcontents, should it not?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And what did we conclude?’
‘You were of the opinion that Vegetius was sitting doing nothing, lining his pockets with bribes, content to avoid an engagement of any sort, especially one that may result in a check to his ambitions here at home. That forceful and swift action would have crushed the rebellion long ago.’
His father replied patiently. ‘What I said was this. That Vegetius was unwilling to fight, more interested in using his proconsular powers to amass a fortune. Once he’d achieved that, he would come back to Rome intent on using that fortune to advance his political career. Since he is neither a friend nor a political ally of mine, that is not an outcome I welcome. So the nub of the problem is not what he is doing in Illyricum, so much as how his inactivity will one day impact here in Rome. You see the point?’
With Marcellus nodding, Lucius was wondering what someone like his son would make of a man like Vegetius Flaminus, a flabby individual, carefully barbered, and with an insatiable love of money. He had the reputation of being a bully and like all of that breed would lord it over the weak while wilting before anyone of strength; altogether a poor specimen. The house of Flaminus was an ancient one, but with the male line faltering adoption had been necessary to keep the name alive; common enough, and in some cases it had been spectacularly successful, but to Lucius it was a chancy business. It carried the risk that a noble family would bring into its protective fold someone like Vegetius, bred originally into a clan with an old Roman name, but no money to maintain their patrician status.
The reports told him that most of Vegetius’s junior officers hated him for both his indolence and his peculations, but more for the man’s utter lack of any trace of a backbone. He was a poor general who had let his legions go to seed, an administrator who sold his prerogatives rather than undertaking them, a man whose sole concern seemed to be for the comfort of his person and his belly. But he had friends, which was why he had been gifted the prized sinecure of Illyricum after Aulus Cornelius relinquished the post. It was a measure of the limits of Lucius’s power that other factions in the Senate had to be accommodated, and having previously so favoured his own candidate, it had been politic to pacify those who opposed him by allowing their man the succession. Lucius sighed inwardly, saddened by the fact that all the good work Aulus had done was now in pieces. People who wondered why he toiled so long and hard had only to look at a man like Vegetius Flaminus, the nature of his appointment and the result, to see just how much still had to be done to protect the Republic. Not all Rome’s enemies were external ones.
‘Now, Marcellus,’ he said, dragging himself back to the subject at hand. ‘Having all this information at your disposal, you rise in the Senate to suggest a course of action, knowing his friends will speak on his behalf and that anything extreme could be voted down. What do you say?’
Marcellus, who loved the more relaxed atmosphere when his father talked of Roman history, hated these sessions, for he could never get them wholly right. ‘Something must be done to either make Vegetius pursue the war, or he must be relieved.’
‘That’s obvious, boy. What I want is the means to achieve it.’ Lucius waited for the youngster to speak. Marcellus stared at a point above his father’s head, knowing that in his anxiety his mind had gone blank. ‘My patience is not inexhaustible.’
