‘Hippothous!’
With precision, the Gothic warrior chopped a leg from under the wounded man. Once the watch man was on all fours, two heavy blows to the back of the head sufficed.
The other six combatants, out of the corner of their eyes, watched as if the gruesome tragedy of a saga were being acted out.
The Goth flicked the blood from his sword, turned inwards. Without words, Calgacus, Maximus and Ballista stepped back, rearranging themselves in a half-circle, back against the high base of the monument.
The Goth jerked around, swinging his sword up the hill. Too late. It was smashed out of his grip; went ringing against the far wall. Another blow and he reeled back, clutching his right shoulder. Hippothous lunged. The Goth leapt back. His feet slipped on the blood-slick stones. He went down, hard. On his arse, boots finding little purchase, he scrabbled towards his comrades.
Hippothous came forward. Calgacus, Maximus and Ballista fanned out to join him. The line was re- established; the road blocked again.
‘You were right, Tharuaro. The dance should end.’ Ballista spoke quietly. ‘You said you have no particular desire to kill me or my men. You and your Tervingi came for treasures, for women. There are many of both in the street behind you. Take them. There are many more in the civic agora behind us. In a little while, we will be gone, the way open to you.’
‘The Borani will be glad we have not killed you, Angle.’ Tharuaro looked at the gudja, as if seeking his approval for words not yet spoken. ‘There is no bloodfeud between the Tervingi and you. It is not a matter of honour. Go now – quickly.’
Ballista told Calgacus to lead the familia. When they were moving, Ballista, Maximus and Hippothous turned and began to trudge up the hill.
The Goths watched them go, hard eyed, their thoughts unknowable.
VI
Gallienus walked out into the walled garden. Even here, in the wilds of Thrace, well to the north-west of Byzantium, the plants seemed to apprehend that spring was approaching. Gallienus yawned, stretched and took in the view. The sun was warm on his back. It was a rare luxury for an emperor to be alone. It had been a tiring time.
The imperial comitatus had remained in Byzantium for three days after the city had surrendered. It had been three hectic days of smoothing the return of the city to imperial allegiance, of reassuring the surviving councillors that there would be no further reprisals, of convincing the leading men, Cleodamus and Athenaeus, that their industry in the defence of the town and their loyalty to the Macriani, terribly misguided though it had been, would bring them not punishment but advancement.
The confiscation of the estates of the twenty executed councillors had also demanded close attention. The influx of wealth had proved timely. Two days before the comitatus left, news had come of the earthquake that had hit Ephesus. An emperor was nothing if he was not open-handed. The property of the condemned was sold, the proceeds to be sent to the devastated city. As ever, the emperor took with one hand and gave with the other.
There had been a disquieting rumour of an unusual concentration of Gothic pirates in the Aegean, but it could not be helped. Far more pressing issues called for the presence of the emperor in the west.
The comitatus, consisting of just high officials and the cavalry of the guard, had made good time. They had spent the second night in the city of Perinthus. From there, they had struck inland, riding fast through the rich farmland of the campus serenus. On the fourth evening, they had reached the small town of Bergoule and Gallienus had called for a day’s halt to rest the horses.
This morning, the one before the ides of March, had brought Gallienus no respite. First, at dawn, there had been a solemn sacrifice to celebrate this day forty years before, when the divine Aurelius Alexander Severus had been named Augustus and accepted the titles of Pater Patriae and Pontifex Maximus: to the divine Alexander an ox. Gallienus half remembered Alexander Severus. Although Gallienus had still been a child, had not yet been given the toga virilis, by the end of that reign he had already been at the imperial court, a hostage for the good behaviour of his father. In his memories, Alexander was a weak-looking young man, too reliant on both the senate and his mother. It was said that when the mutineers, led by Maximinus Thrax, had burst into the imperial pavilion, Alexander had died sobbing, blaming his mother, clinging to her skirts. Not a good role model for an emperor such as Gallienus sought to be but, officially, Alexander was a god, and as such had to be honoured.
After the duties of religion, the mundanities of the imperial office. Wherever an emperor went, embassies appeared. Two had been from local communities, each requesting protection from unlawful exactions for the cursus publicus. Abuse by officials and soldiers of the diplomata which authorized them to requisition men, animals and carts for the imperial posting service had always been endemic. Palfurius Sura, the ab Epistulis, had drafted the looked-for imperial pronouncements, weighty and full of warnings. Gallienus had signed them in purple ink. Doubtless, the communities would inscribe these responses in stone, set them up where all could see. Once the emperor was no longer in the vicinity, Gallienus wondered how much good that would do.
Three further embassies had been seen. Two, one from Achaea, the other from North Africa, had both been granted their petitions for tax relief: five years each. Neither community was particularly large or prosperous, so imperial munificence could be advertised loudly, while the fiscus lost little.
The final deputation had been more diverting. The people of an isolated village high in the Rhodope mountains had found a satyr sleeping in their fields. They had stoned the creature to death. As was always the way with the wondrous, they had brought the remains to the emperor. It was a pity the skin had not been better preserved. But the emperor and his comites had studied it closely. Although it resembled a man, the tail and hooves were still to be distinguished. Gallienus thanked the peasants graciously: it would form a fitting addition to the miraculous menagerie – the dead tritons and centaurs, the skeletons of heroes, the feathers of the phoenix, and the living dwarfs and giants, human and animal – exhibited at Rome in the palace and stored in its cellars. The rustics left rewarded with more coins than they had ever seen in their lives. Roman government had to be personal, and it had to be bountiful.
Now it was late morning and, the negotium of political audiences over, the stately schedule of the imperial day moved to otium and the pursuit of culture. Rather than reading, Gallienus had felt moved to philosophic discourse. As a Studiis, Zeno had been dispatched to find a philosopher. Even in a town such as Bergoule, in the middle of nowhere, it should not prove too difficult. As someone had said, these days it was easier to fall over in a boat without landing on a plank than look around without seeing a philosopher. The question was: would Zeno find one of any worth?
Philosophers did not travel, at least not at the behest of authority. Longinus could not be persuaded to leave Athens, nor Plotinus Rome. In fact, when Gallienus was in Rome with his wife Salonina, it was the imperial couple who had traversed the eternal city, not the lover of wisdom. Freedom of speech and self-sufficiency were keystones of the soul of a philosopher of any sect. Parresia and autarkeia, as well as a suitable contempt for the moral irrelevancies of wealth and fame, were well demonstrated by a philosopher declining an imperial summons. In a sense, if a philosopher did come running when an emperor called, it might be thought to demonstrate that he was not a philosopher at all. It remained to be seen what sort of creature Zeno would unearth.
The garden was pleasant. Gallienus inspected the budding fruit trees. Zeno had not brought up again the matter of Ballista. Gallienus had made inquiries with Rufinus. The head of the frumentarii did not think Zeno and Ballista had ever met. The former had been governor of Cilicia at the time of the revolt of the Macriani. But he had left the province before Ballista arrived. If the men had never met, it was unlikely there was personal animosity between them. In which case Zeno most likely had taken a bribe to raise the issue of Ballista.
Despite that, Zeno was right: something must be decided. A man who had worn the purple attracted conspirators like rotten fruit did wasps. If a man had once been thought capable of ruling the empire, he might well be considered so again: once capax imperii, always capax imperii, as Tacitus might have said.
Gallienus was unsure. Ballista was an old friend. Gallienus freely admitted, in the silence of his heart, that he owed much to the big northerner. Yet Ballista, at the very least, had to be watched. The emperor’s thoughts were running towards exile. He would have liked to impose the lesser form: relegatio from Italy and native province, with
