I am sorry, Father. If I had let the Chain kill Mauricius, we would have been next.
His father had been calm. I would have done the same, if I was still young.
Gordian had been compelled to explain, to try to win his fathers approval. A life of fear, without ease of mind, is not worth living. To live as a coward can not be endured. Once the Chain was dead, there was no choice but open revolt, the proclamation of a new Emperor. When a tyrant threatens your friends and family, your own equanimity, the very Res Publica itself, a man can not continue to live quietly out of the public eye. A wise man will not engage in politics, unless something intervenes.
Although I do not share your Epicureanism, you are right. A long life had armoured the self-control of his father. We are wealthy. The Domus Rostrata in Rome, the great villa on the Via Praenestina, confiscated by the imperial treasury, they alone would fund a legion for the northern wars. Since your sisters husband was condemned for treason last year, we are marked down for destruction. You did the right thing. Your mother would have been proud of you, as I am.
But I have endangered us all.
There is no time now for regrets. You must act swiftly. Seize Rome. Rally the eastern armies to our cause. I am old and tired. All depends on you.
It may end in disaster.
His father had smiled. At my age death holds no terrors. Perhaps it would be no mean thing to end my days on the throne of the Caesars. Let me at least not die without a struggle, inglorious, but do some big thing first, that men to come shall know of it.
A flamboyant gesture by the orator brought Gordian out of his memories. Slowly, for imperial majesty precluded sudden movements, and out of the corners of his eyes, he studied those who stood behind the thrones. Brennus, his fathers silent bodyguard, as ever was at hand. The persistent rumour that Brennus was an illegitimate child of Gordian the Elder was fuelled by the striking resemblance between his legitimate son and the bodyguard, although the old man laughed the story off.
Gordian took in the rest of the party. Arrian and Sabinianus, the two legates, stood together, as close as the Cercopes, the mischievous twins of myth. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, some hint of patrician amusement could be detected in their faces. Serenus Sammonicus, his old tutor, was the same age as his father, but appeared older and very far from well. Aemilius Severinus, the commander of the speculatores, was not young. He must be in his sixties. But he looked tough and fit. Phillyrio, as his scouts called Severinus for some long-forgotten reason, had been scoured and tanned like leather by a lifetime patrolling the desert frontier. At the end was Mauricius, the local landowner whose persecution had been the catalyst. Few enough to support a revolution, none of them, apart from the legates, of any great rank, but loyalty ever counted for more than mere numbers.
On his fathers side he traces his descent from the house of the Gracchi, on his mothers from the Emperor Trajan. The oration had moved to the origins of Gordian Senior, another safe topic for fulsome exploration. His own father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, his wifes father and grandfather, and likewise another of his wifes grand-fathers and two of her great-great-grandfathers, were Consuls.
The offices, deeds and virtues of every one of these individuals would be recalled, exaggerated, or invented. Gordian seemed to have been listening forever, to have been Emperor for eternity.
Gordian had been busy beyond measure. That first day, before the citizens of Thysdrus could swear their oaths of allegiance, majestic regalia had had to be created. It had been easy enough to find both a small, portable altar for the sacred fire and rods to bind around axes to make the fasces. As governor his father had curule chairs which could serve as imperial thrones. A purple cloak already had been taken from the sanctuary of Caelestis, from the shoulders of the goddess, and draped around his father. Another, most likely of similar provenance, was produced for himself. An imperial seal had been more problematic. But the town gaol had contained a forger as long as there were coins, there would be counterfeiters and, once pardoned and reunited with the tools of his illicit trade, it had taken him no time to create a simulacrum; in metal not precious stone, but the impression it made had seemed adequate.
From the ceremonial Gordian had turned to the practical. After his father had retired to his chamber, he had worked through the night. Many, many letters had been dictated and signed; to all the leading communities in the Province of Africa, to the commanders of the eight small military units stationed there. More thought had been devoted to those destined for the more than forty governors of other provinces across the imperium. Yet the most care of all had gone into the sentiments and wording of those that were to go to the capital, both those that bore Gordians signature and those that carried a false subscript. Menophilus and Valerian, accompanied by his equestrian kinsman Maecius, had left for Rome at dawn.
From the ceremonial Gordian had turned to the practical. After his father had retired to his chamber, he had worked through the night. Many, many letters had been dictated and signed; to all the leading communities in the Province of Africa, to the commanders of the eight small military units stationed there. More thought had been devoted to those destined for the more than forty governors of other provinces across the imperium. Yet the most care of all had gone into the sentiments and wording of those that were to go to the capital, both those that bore Gordians signature and those that carried a false subscript. Menophilus and Valerian, accompanied by his equestrian kinsman Maecius, had left for Rome at dawn.
The imperial party had remained at Thysdrus for just two more days. Long enough to find recruits to bring the horse guards up to two hundred swords. Renamed the Equites Singulares Augusti, Mauricius had been given their command. A makeshift Praetorian Guard, five hundred strong, had been formed out of the local youth association. The Iuvenes might not be seasoned soldiers, but they had a modicum of military training, and neither their appearance nor enthusiasm could be faulted.
The new Emperors, with escort and entourage, had gone to Hadrumetum, then up the coast road to Horrea Caelia and Pupput, before turning north-west to Ad Aquas, to skirt the gulf of Utica, and so to Carthage. Six days hard travelling, Gordian in the saddle, his father going in a fast carriage before mounting a horse for the entry into the city. The speed of their journey meant that only those communities through which they had passed had yet acknowledged them. But professions of fealty had come from Fuscinus, Prefect of the 15th Cohort of Emesenes based at Ammaedara, and similar messages had been waiting for them at Ad Aquas from the commanders of the Urban Cohort and the detachment of the 3rd Legion Augusta stationed in Carthage. So far things could not have gone better. Gordian was proud of what he had accomplished. Like Mark Antony, he could rouse himself from his pleasures when necessity demanded.
As Horatius held the bridge, Gordian stood alone amidst the slaughter and held the gate at Ad Palmam. Never tiring, his man-killing hands struck down the foe, threw back the barbarian horde.
Gordian had been half aware of the flow of the oration: the excellent omens in fact they had been appalling, for those who believed in such things the long distant martial exploits of his father. But now it had reached his own triumphs, he was all ears.
As Alexander scaled the Sogdian Rock, so our young Emperor climbed the sheer cliff at Esuba. Many was the companion he caught as they slipped, saved from a certain death. When he attained the summit, the brigands discovered neither their remoteness nor their inaccessibility provided any defence against the old-fashioned Roman courage of our Augustus.
All too soon a new theme was introduced. Justice is a portion of his humanity: for when victorious, the Emperor did not repay the aggressors in kind, but divided his actions in just proportion between punishment and humanity.
Gordian stopped listening. Not a dog had been left alive in the lair of the bandit Canartha. His thoughts scouted ahead. They would not stay long in Carthage. Leaving Sabinianus as the new governor of Africa, as soon as word came from Menophilus, they would sail for Rome. There they would muster the military forces in the city: the Urban Cohorts, the men of the Watch, those Praetorians and the soldiers of the 2nd Legion who were not away in the North, the detachments of sailors, and however many frumentarii were in their camp on the Caelian. They should raise new troops, perhaps recruit some from the gladiatorial schools. Once they had secured the allegiance of the two great fleets at Misenum and Ravenna, they could hold Italy, and wait for the governors across the empire to declare themselves.
Just as the sons of Asclepius rescue the sick, just as fugitives obtain security in the inviolate precincts of divine power
Agitated, despite himself, Gordian could find no meaning in the words. Had the gods existed, Gordian would have prayed for news. Events were beyond his control. Everything now depended on what was happening elsewhere; in Rome, in governors palaces across the empire, and with the army in the distant North. At least three governors were closely bound to the house of the Gordians. Claudius Julianus of Dalmatia, Fidus of Thrace, and Egnatius Lollianus of Bithynia-Pontus had no legions, but their example might sway the undecided. And in Rome the plebs urbana would be well disposed. Some time ago, his father had distributed a hundred Sicilian and a hundred Cappadocian racehorses among the Circus factions. And he had endeared himself across Italy by giving four days of stage-plays and Juvenalia in the cities of Campania, Etruria, Umbria, Flaminia, and Picenum, all at his own expense.
Because of our Emperors, marriages are chaste, fathers have legitimate offspring, spectacles, festivals, and competitions are conducted with proper splendour and due modera-tion. People choose a style of life like that which they observe in the Emperors. Piety to the gods is increased, the earth is tilled in peace, the sea sailed without danger.