do.’
‘It’s as bad as that here, is it?’ Magnus raised a wry eyebrow as the slave boy began fanning Vespasian with a broad, woven palm-frond fan on a long stick.
‘It’s terrible: the indigenous Libu spend all their time robbing the wealthy Greek farmers; the Greeks amuse themselves by levelling false accusations of fraud or theft against the Jewish merchants; the Jews never stop protesting about sacrilegious statues or some perceived religious outrage involving a pig, and then the Roman merchants passing through do nothing but complain about being swindled by the Jews, Greeks and Libu, in that order. On top of that everyone lives in fear of slave-gathering raids by either the Garamantes from the south or the nomadic Marmaridae to the east, between here and Egypt. It’s a boiling pot of ethnic hatred and the only thing that they hate more than each other is us, but that doesn’t stop individuals throwing money at me to rule in their favour in court cases.’
‘And you take it, I hope?’
‘I didn’t at first but I do now. I remember being shocked when my uncle told me that he took bribes while he was Governor of Aquitania, but now I understand the system better and realise that it’s expected of me. And anyway, most of the wealthy locals are so unpleasant it’s a pleasure to take their money.’
‘Sounds much like Judaea judging by Sabinus’ descriptions of it,’ Magnus mused as they passed into a crowded agora surrounded by dilapidated ancient temples dedicated to the Greek gods and overlooked by civic buildings cut into the hill above.
‘It’s worse, believe me,’ Vespasian replied, recalling his conversations with his brother upon his return from the East, concerning the utter ungovernability of the Jews. They had overlapped for two days in Rome before he had sailed for Creta at the end of March. ‘There you only had to deal with the Jews; they could be kept in line by their priests and by offering them small concessions. But here if you were to offer a concession to one group, then every bastard would want one until you’d find your-self giving the whole province away and hauled up in front of the Senate, or worse, on your return to Rome. That’s why I give nothing away to any of them unless I’m well paid for it; that way the other factions can’t complain that I’ve showed any favouritism because they know that I was bribed. Surprisingly, that seems to make it all right for them.’
‘I’ll bet that you wish you were back in Thracia,’ Magnus said, admiring the exertions of the slave boy who was managing to keep a constant flow of air moving around his master and maintain his footing despite the bad state of repair of the paving stones; the city had seen better days.
‘At least we had some decent troops to threaten the locals with. Here all we’ve got is one cohort of local auxiliary infantry, made up of men who are too stupid to earn their living by thieving; then there’s the city militia, which comprises men too stupid to be an auxiliary; and finally an
‘What’s a camel?’
‘It’s like a big, brown goat with a long neck and a hump on its back; horses hate the smell of them.’
‘Oh, I saw some of them at the circus once; they made people laugh but they didn’t put up much of a fight.’
‘They don’t need to — according to the cavalry prefect, Corvinus, they can run all day across the desert; our cavalry hardly ever get near them.’
They passed through the city’s gates, guarded by marble lions to either side, and started the gentle eight- mile ascent to the city of Cyrene, set on the limestone plateau above. Vespasian sank back into a maudlin silence, contemplating the futility of his position in this part of the combined province of Creta and Cyrenaica. During the seven months he had been there he had achieved nothing, mainly because there was hardly any money to achieve anything with. For centuries the wealth of Cyrenaica had been in silphium, a bulbous-headed plant with a long stalk, whose resin was much prized as a rich seasoning and as a cure for throat maladies and fever; the meat from animals that grazed on it was also sold at a premium. It grew along the dry coastal plain — the Cyrenian plateau being more conducive to the cultivation of orchards and vegetables. However, in recent years the crop had mysteriously begun to fail to the point where it was no longer fed to livestock, thus killing off the meat industry; and over the last couple of years the quality of each crop had deteriorated no matter how intensively it was farmed.
Vespasian had tried to persuade the local farmers to produce other crops, but the thin nature of the soil and the paucity of rain on the plain, combined with the farmers’ fervent belief that if enough gods were sacrificed to on a regular basis the silphium would return to health, had thwarted him. Consequently the tax revenues were drying up as those with money hid it away and spent very little buying goods from those with even less. With very little money in circulation, grain, imported from the more fertile neighbouring provinces of Egypt and Africa, had reached sky-high prices as a consequence of greedy speculation by the merchants who controlled the trade. They had all denied it, when he had called them into his presence to explain themselves, and had put the blame squarely on the reduced amount of grain being received from Egypt in the past year; yet there had been no mention of a failure of the Egyptian harvest. The result was that the poor, whether Greek, Jewish or Libu, were always on the verge of starving and civil unrest was a constant threat.
Without sufficient troops to quash an uprising among the almost half a million population of Cyrenaica’s seven major cities, and without the authority to act in his own name, Vespasian had felt impotent and frustrated throughout his tenure of office. This feeling was now compounded by the Emperor Tiberius’ refusal to grant him an entry permit to the imperial province of Egypt, a province so rich that senators were allowed to visit it only with express permission from the Emperor himself; to do so without would be a capital offence.
Chiding himself for falling into a self-pitying reverie, he turned back to his companion trotting along beside him. ‘Did Sabinus finally manage to get himself elected as an aedile?’
‘Yes, just,’ Magnus replied. ‘But as your brother always says: just is good enough. Although he was relieved that he wasn’t contesting the praetor elections until next year — all those positions were filled by the sons of Macro’s cronies.’
‘So we’re back to having a Praetorian prefect who interferes with politics, are we? You would have thought Macro would have learnt a lesson from his predecessor’s untimely demise. I can’t imagine that’s endeared him much to Antonia: she believes that meddling in politics is the prerogative of the imperial family and, specifically, herself.’
Magnus indicated to the litter-bearers.
‘Don’t worry about them, they don’t speak Latin,’ Vespasian informed him, ‘and the boy’s a deaf mute.’
‘Fair enough. Well, since you left in March some strange things have been happening; Antonia’s getting quite concerned.’
‘I thought that she didn’t tell you anything other than what to do.’
‘No, I get most of the inside gossip from your uncle, Senator Pollo; although she does occasionally let things slip, afterwards, if you take my meaning?’
‘You old goat!’ Vespasian smiled for what felt like the first time since he had arrived in Cyrenaica, enjoying the unlikely and unequal sexual relationship between his old friend and the most formidable woman in Rome, his patron Antonia, sister-in-law to the Emperor Tiberius.
‘Yeah, well, that doesn’t happen so much these days, I’m pleased to say; she’s getting on a bit, you know, sagging somewhat. Anyway, she’s concerned about Caligula’s relationship with Macro, or more precisely Caligula’s new relationship with Macro’s wife, Ennia, which Macro seems to be encouraging.’
Vespasian smiled and waved a hand dismissively. ‘Caligula’s had his eye on her for some time; he’ll no doubt tire of her, he’s notoriously insatiable. Macro’s just being sensible about it; he’s well aware that if he makes a fuss about it now he’ll be in a very precarious position if and when Caligula becomes emperor.’
‘Perhaps, but your uncle thinks that there’s more to Macro’s behaviour than just being polite, he reckons that he’s trying to ingratiate himself with Caligula because he wants something from him if he does become emperor.’
‘As Praetorian prefect he’s the most powerful person in Rome outside the imperial family; what more can he want short of becoming his heir? Caligula may be a lot of things but he’s not stupid.’
‘That’s what’s worrying Antonia, she doesn’t understand what he’s aiming for; and what she doesn’t understand, she can’t control, which pisses her off considerably.’
‘I can imagine, but I wouldn’t call that very strange.’
‘No, the strange bit is the other person who Macro’s cultivating,’ Magnus said with a conspiratorial look in his
