He replaced the obverses and studied the reverse dies he had cut. For practical reasons, as well as the greater variety of messages they carried, there always had to be more of them. Taking a greater strain in the minting process, they wore out quicker. Menophilus had issued general, but clear guidelines: traditional values, the mos maiorum, the centrality of Rome, nothing foreign or outlandish, the political experience and the unity of the Emperors. So far the die-cutter had produced Romae Aeternae, Providentia, and Concordia. He wondered how things would be under the Gordiani. They had been appointed by Alexander, and that Emperor and his mother had been gracious to some of the brethren. Better still, three of the freedmen in the Domus Rostrata, the great house of the Gordiani on the Esquiline, belonged to the Gathering. If Gaudianus, Reverendus and Montanus had influence, all should be well.
But the war was still to be won. The die-cutter shuffled through the papyri on his desk until he found his sketches: personifications of Victoria, Securitas, and Virtus Exercituum, the latter an innovation of his own, suitable for the circumstances. He took from his bag and unwrapped the three different drills, the burin and graver, the tongs and pincers, the cutters and files, the compass and pouch of powdered corundum. Taking a disc of bronze, he fixed it in a vice. He would start with the Virtue of the Armies.
But the war was still to be won. The die-cutter shuffled through the papyri on his desk until he found his sketches: personifications of Victoria, Securitas, and Virtus Exercituum, the latter an innovation of his own, suitable for the circumstances. He took from his bag and unwrapped the three different drills, the burin and graver, the tongs and pincers, the cutters and files, the compass and pouch of powdered corundum. Taking a disc of bronze, he fixed it in a vice. He would start with the Virtue of the Armies.
Virtue meant different things to different men. Whatever the definition, the die-cutter knew he was far from it. For four years he had been an apprentice, not a full member of the Gathering. The usual time was two years, three at most. Four years of being watched, his behaviour scrutinized. And for all of them the watched and the watchers there was the constant fear of betrayal. As he had heard Pontianus put it, they must consider their closest friends, their own relatives as worse than their enemies, in fear that they would denounce them. The informer could be anyone. It could be Castricius or Caenis.
The die-cutter tried to put away his doubts. This life was good, but the life he longed for better. His own sins had prolonged his apprenticeship. Twice he had been demoted to the status of a Hearer, reduced to standing by the doors of the Gathering. The offence both times had been fornication. Soon he would have to go to his instructor Africanus and admit to the fight in the street. If he expressed true contrition, his punishment might be light.
And he knew in his heart, he deserved much worse. He had been there in the street when the soldiers came for Pontianus. As the mob surged around him, three times he had denied knowing Pontianus. When they howled for blood, rather than attract their anger, he had joined in their chants. Throw him to the beasts! To the lions! Should he confess, no amount of remorse would serve. In sackcloth and ashes, he would be led into the midst of the brethren and prostrated, an object of disgrace and horror. Before the elders and the widows, before them all, he would have to grovel, begging for their forgiveness, clasping their knees, licking their very footprints.
Chapter 13
Rome
The Forum of Augustus,
Six Days before the Ides of March, AD238
Be a man. Without moving his lips, Menophilus repeated the words Be a man. He was sure that Sabinus, the Prefect of the City, should have arrived by now. The outcome of this clandestine meeting depended on timing. He could go outside, and check the sun, but that might be seen as irresolute. He continued his solitary wait for Maximinus supporter, pacing, back and forth, back and forth.
The room oppressed him. It was the height, not the floor space. Panels and bands of marble Numidian yellow, Phrygian purple, white from Greece, the smoky red and black they called Lucullan revetted all the way up to the coffered slabs of the ceiling, fifty foot or more. A gigantic statue of Augustus, five or six times larger than life, crowded the space. The whole effect was like being at the bottom of a quarry or mine shaft under the gaze of a singularly impassive deity.
Menophilus stopped in front of one of the two paintings by Apelles. From a triumphal chariot, Augustus looked down on a bound prisoner, a personification. The Emperor had vanquished war itself. The transience of human endeavour weighed heavily on Menophilus. Augustus should have known better. War could not be conquered. The folly and ignorance of mankind ensured war was eternal.
If there was war now in the city of Rome, the Gordiani would lose. Sabinus had quartered three thousand of the Urban Cohorts in the Porticus Vipsania on the Campus Martius, commanding the west of the city. The other three thousand remained in their usual barracks in the Praetorian camp at the north of Rome. The thousand Praetorians left in their camp also followed his orders. The majority of the seven thousand men of the Watch were still at their stations throughout the city, although their Prefect Potens, said to be nervous by nature, had gathered some two thousand across the Tiber, dominating the bridge. The proximity of their camp on the other side of the river, had ensured the detachment of a thousand men from the Ravenna fleet had remained loyal to Maximinus.
To put against those forces, Menophilus had won the oaths of the men stationed in the east of the city; a thousand from the fleet at Misenum in their camp near the Baths of Trajan, the two hundred cavalrymen and the less-than-a-hundred frumentarii left in their bases on the Caelian, and the couple of hundred Praetorians who had been on duty on the Palatine when he killed Vitalianus. He had sent Serapamum, an equestrian client of the house of the Gordiani, to try to secure the adherence of the Second Parthian Legion at their base in the Alban Hills. Yet, even if the mission was successful, only a thousand swords had remained when the legion had marched off to the wars in the North, and the camp was twelve miles distant from the city. If it came to a fight now odds of ten to one against the Gordiani would be massacred. Other approaches were necessary. Distasteful as it was, this meeting with Sabinus was inevitable.
Still, one thing had played into Menophilus hands. The messenger from Maximinus had sought the office of the Praetorian Prefect on the Palatine. He had found not Vitalianus, but an officer called Felicio. The day before, Menophilus had appointed this Felicio, another equestrian indebted to the patronage of the Gordiani, to command their vestigial Guard. Among the imperial despatches from beyond the northern frontier detailed stages of march, dispositions of troops, intelligence regarding the Sarmatians had been the order for the arrest of Timesitheus.
Menophilus had admired the self-control of Timesitheus, as he read his own purple-sealed death warrant. Unsurprisingly, the Graeculus had been quick to pledge his allegiance to the new imperial dynasty. There was much to recommend the little Greek. He was intelligent and personable, good-looking in a restrained way. He had governed provinces in the North and East with distinction. His handling of the logistics of the northern campaign had been exemplary. As Praefectus Annonae he controlled the grain supply of Rome. One of his closest friends had charge of the Ludus Magnus and the largest troop of gladiators in the capitol. His links with those in the Subura who could get the plebs out on the streets might prove invaluable.
Yet, on the reverse of the coin, Timesitheus was not to be trusted. He had informed against Magnus, and his fellow would-be tyrannicides in Germania, and against harmless, old Valerius Apollinaris in Asia. He had enemies here in Rome men the Gordiani would need. None were more fervent than Apollinaris son Valerius Priscillianus, but the Greek also was embroiled in a protracted and vitriolic dispute over an inheritance with Armenius Peregrinus.
And then there were the schemes Timesitheus had proposed to further the cause he had so recently joined. Unethical was far too mild a word. A courtier around the throne of an Oriental despot would have found them disgraceful. The hypocrisy of his own thinking turned Menophilus on his heel, drove him out of the room into the Forum. He ignored the two soldiers he had posted outside the curtains; the others were out of sight. He sat on the plinth of a statue, trying to rein in his thoughts, master himself.
A fountain played at the foot of the steps of the temple. He heard the sound of another fountain, the sound of approaching footsteps. Sicilia on the Palatine. His boot on Vitalianus chest, his sword at his throat. The doomed man looking up at him. The last request. Spare my daughters. At least Menophilus had sent his ashes back to his widow in Etruria. He doubted his letter assuring the family they were free from any further reprisals had afforded much comfort.
In politics the things you most desire were the things you should most fear. In the last few days frequently Menophilus had wished he had never left his native Apulia. Now there was no going back to the quiet life of an equestrian in the country. The Stoicism he aspired to held that retirement was justifiable if the state was irremediably corrupt. The empire was a monarchy. If the ruler was a tyrant, mad or bad beyond cure or redemption, he could be killed and replaced. Maximinus was both, that much seemed clear. Yet what of the others who stood in the way of pulling the tyrant from his throne? Gordian had sanctioned the killing of Vitalianus, but had the Prefect deserved to die? What of his other supporters?