passengers, over the rough ground to an inevitably calamitous conclusion.
‘I’m over here, sirs,’ Magnus’ voice eventually shouted over the din.
Vespasian, Sabinus and Gaius followed the voice and were relieved to see Magnus in the driving seat of a covered carriage drawn by four sturdy-looking mules; next to him sat Aenor and another young German slave boy. A horse each for Vespasian and Sabinus were tethered to the carriage’s rear.
‘Magnus, gods be praised,’ Gaius shouted back, breaking into a fast waddle, as the two slave boys dismounted to see to their master’s needs. ‘I didn’t think we’d ever find you in this madness.’
As they reached the safety of their carriage Caligula appeared in his chariot, lashing at a group of elderly and bewildered senators running alongside him. ‘Why do the old always slow down the young?’ he bellowed at them, giving the rearmost of his quarry a furious beating on the back, sending him tumbling to the ground with a scream to disappear beneath the hoofs of the following turma. ‘Useless old shit,’ he called out with a grin as he caught sight of Vespasian and Sabinus and brought his chariot to a skilful halt, letting the rest of the senators run on. ‘His family have probably only been in the Senate for a generation or two; no breeding, you see, dulls the memory. He probably couldn’t even remember where his arsehole was; it’s no wonder that he was having such trouble finding his carriage.’
‘I’m sure that you’re right, Divine Gaius,’ Vespasian agreed, not wishing to point out that he too was only a second-generation senator.
Caligula beamed at him. ‘At least you all managed to be ready on time; you’ll join me at the front of the procession as we near the bay. I’m looking forward to seeing the wonder on your faces when you first see my bridge.’ His eyes opened even wider with pleasure. ‘And you Sabinus, I’m especially looking forward to seeing yours; I’ve got a lovely surprise for you.’ With a crack of his whip over his teams’ withers he accelerated away with the turma following, leaving the crumpled and bloody body of the old senator for his family to reclaim.
Gaius shook with suppressed fury. ‘This is going too far; riding down senators and leaving them in the dirt as if they were fleeing savages rather than men who have served Rome all their lives. It’s an outrage!’
‘Uncle,’ Vespasian said, putting a calming hand on his shoulder, ‘remember your own good advice to me.’
Gaius took a breath and got himself back under control. ‘You’re right, dear boy: stay alive and don’t let your sense of honour overrule your judgement. Let it be someone else that he pushes over the edge; with behaviour like that it won’t take long.’
‘At least with behaviour like that you can see it coming,’ Magnus pointed out. ‘You know what to expect, and can accept it before it even happens; it makes it easier to control yourself. It’s when things take you by surprise that you lose your judgement.’ He stared darkly at Sabinus who was looking pleased with himself, having been singled out for favour so conspicuously by the Emperor. ‘And if there’s one thing I wouldn’t like it would be Caligula preparing a surprise for me, if you take my meaning?’
The procession south along the Via Appia, however, was far from surprising: it was long, hot and very uncomfortable. Caligula had impetuously decided to start out the day after Vespasian had brought him the breastplate. There had been no time to consider the complex logistical problems of moving so many people through a region already suffering from the privations caused by Caligula’s impounding of every ship entering Italian waters. By the fifth day the Praetorian Guardsmen’s marching rations had run out and any food that the senatorial party had brought along was either finished or had gone off in the baking heat of high summer.
By the sixth day the progress had not even reached the halfway point due to Caligula taking a sudden interest in the civic doings of every town they passed. He would halt the mile-long column as his litter passed through the Forum, and from beneath the shade of his swan-down canopy dispense justice — as he saw it — and decree new civic laws while his quartermasters stripped the community bare not only of their new harvest but also of their livestock and winter stores. The column would then move on an hour or so later, leaving a handful of decapitated, crucified or maimed criminals, new laws concerning the sacrifice of peacocks or suchlike to their emperor deity, and a community unable to feed itself for the coming months, but in possession of an imperial promissory note for such an eye-watering amount of money that the civic fathers knew it would never be honoured.
In the evenings Caligula would order the Praetorians to build a full marching camp with ditch and palisade as if they were on campaign in hostile territory — which indeed, after his activities during the day and the felling of trees for miles around, they generally were. Unless they were one of the few to have had the foresight to bring their own tent, the senators and their wives were obliged to sleep in their sweltering carriages parked tightly together in one corner of the camp with no hope of any seclusion. The one consolation of this arrangement for the women was being able to take advantage of the limited privacy of the latrines built especially for them. Their husbands, who had generally all served under the eagles, had, like any soldier, no problems relieving themselves in the open during a rest halt. For the women, however, this was an ignominy too hideous to bear, and consequently their pained expressions and very short tempers by the end of each day were the product of more than just being jolted around in their carriages for the past few hours.
Vespasian and his companions tried to remain unobtrusive, anxious to have as little to do with Caligula’s entertainments as possible. Those senators who suffered the misfortune of being summoned to his huge pavilion in the evenings inevitably came back with tales of mutilation, sodomy and rape, as well as other excesses that they and their mostly hysterical wives refused to — or were simply unable to — find words for.
Their success in avoiding Caligula’s notice and invitations, perversely, gave rise to another worry: why had he not invited them? The Emperor counted Vespasian and Sabinus among his closest friends and, by the time they were just one day away from their destination, not to have been asked to share one of his lavish dinners, however distasteful the entertainment, had started to play on Sabinus’ mind.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it, dear boy,’ Gaius boomed from the relative comfort of his cushion-infested carriage, ‘he seemed pleased enough with you the last time you saw him outside Rome.’
‘But that’s just it, Uncle,’ Sabinus replied, riding alongside. ‘He knows that we’re here, he’s under the unfortunate misapprehension that we’re his friends and yet he’s ignored us for fifteen days now; what have we done to offend him?’
‘You’ll get a summons to join him for the final day later this evening, as he promised.’
‘But why has he waited this long?’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t want to ruin the surprise that he has waiting for you,’ Vespasian ventured, enjoying a gust of cooling wind blowing in off the calm Tyrrhenian Sea just a hundred paces to their right.
‘Very funny, you little shit.’
‘I thought so,’ Magnus agreed.
Sabinus scowled at him and then turned back to his brother. ‘The point is: I would rather have the dubious security of knowing that I’m in Caligula’s favour rather than worrying that I’ve done something to displease him and live in fear of being executed at any moment.’
Vespasian grinned. ‘At least that might get me a dinner invitation.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Clemens told me that a couple of months ago Caligula ordered a father to attend his son’s execution; the father naturally tried to get out of it by claiming ill-health so he sent a litter for him. Afterwards he invited the poor man to dinner and spent the evening trying to cheer him up by telling jokes. Perhaps he’ll extend the same courtesy to a brother.’
‘If he does, I’m sure that you’d have no problems laughing at his jokes having watched my blood flow.’
A long rumble of Praetorian cornu signalled the end of the penultimate day’s march, the column halted and the business of making camp commenced. As the Flavian party waited in the shade of their carriage a horseman made his way down the crowded road towards them. In just a tunic and wearing the wide-brimmed floppy sunhat that the cavalry auxiliaries had favoured in Cyrenaica he was evidently not a Praetorian. As he passed he glanced in the brothers’ direction and suddenly pulled his horse around.
‘Sabinus, the Emperor sent me to find you,’ the rider announced, taking off his hat. ‘He wishes for you and your party to present yourselves to him in the morning.’
Vespasian stared at the rider in shocked recognition.
‘Thank you, Corvinus,’ Sabinus replied, stepping forward to grasp the proffered forearm. ‘We’ll be there at dawn. I haven’t seen you on the progress, where have you been hiding?’
‘I’ve only just caught up with it; I had some business to attend to.’
Sabinus turned and indicated to Vespasian. ‘Do you know my brother, Titus Flavius Vespasianus?’
