The man they were accusing was an unctuous-looking Procurator who ran the estate. Clad in a toga with the narrow purple stripe of an equestrian, he was doing his best to appear unconcerned, as if their accusations were beneath him, barely worth answering.
The man they were accusing was an unctuous-looking Procurator who ran the estate. Clad in a toga with the narrow purple stripe of an equestrian, he was doing his best to appear unconcerned, as if their accusations were beneath him, barely worth answering.
The tenants seemed overawed, their spokesman as much as any. Nevertheless, when the water-clock was turned, he managed to get underway.
We are simple men, workers in the fields. We were born and raised on the Emperors estate, and we ask, in the name of the most sacred Emperor, that you succour us.
As he realized that he would be given a hearing, he gained in confidence.
In accordance with the laws of the divine Hadrian, we owe the home farm not more than six days of work each year, two ploughing, two cultivating and two harvesting. This we have always done, with joy in our hearts, as our fathers did before us, and their fathers before them.
The Procurator gave up inspecting his nails and, delicately, with one finger, adjusted his hair.
In the past more has been demanded of us by false reckoning. But last year the Procurator dragged us off so often that our own fields went untended. Our crops went unharvested and rotted ungathered. When I complained, he had soldiers seize me. On his command, they stripped and beat me, as if I were a slave and not a Roman citizen. Marcus and Titus here suffered the same shameful treatment.
The others in the deputation murmured their agreement.
The Procurator shot them a look of contempt, tinged with menace.
The speaker, his blood up now, ignored him and moved on to detail many more instances of ill treatment and brutality.
Gordians thoughts drifted off to the festivals. The Cerialia, with its meagre offerings of spelt and salt, its priggish emphasis on purity and its fasting until a sparse meal at star rise, had never held much appeal. And the strange ritual on the final day was thoroughly uncongenial. He was always saddened watching the fox run and twist in its doomed attempt to escape the burning torch tied to its tail. On the other hand, he was looking forward to the Ludi Florales. Six days and nights of fine clothes and lights, drinking and love. The prostitutes slowly, teasingly, revealing their charms for all to see in the theatre. He remembered how Parthenope and Chione had welcomed him back from the victory at the oasis; their dark hair and dark eyes, their olive skin sliding against him, against each other, their fingers and tongues pleasuring each other, stroking and opening, pulling him into them.
Epicurus had said that if you take away the chance to see and talk and spend time with the object of your passion, the desire for sex is dissolved. But he also held that no pleasure is a bad thing in itself. Some desires are natural and necessary. Gordian could not imagine anything more natural and necessary than the pleasures of the bed, especially if you owned two girls like Parthenope and Chione.
The Procurator took the floor.
Gordian had no desire to listen to the string of denials that would follow. No doubt, respectable-seeming witnesses would be produced to appear in support. The side with better connections and greater money always produced more of them. Gordian was already reasonably sure the Procurator was guilty.
What was he doing here? Live out of the public eye, the sage had said. An Epicurean should not engage in public business, unless something intervened. All his life, something had intervened. Gordian looked at his father. The elder Gordians ambitions for his son, his love for his father: both had been constants. Now his father was old and was governing a major province. If Gordian did not take some of the burden, he would be tormented with guilt. To help his father was also to help himself. It was the right thing to do. Gordian bent his mind to the proceedings.
The Procurator opened his defence with a flourish. All men of education were brought up knowing bucolic poetry.
That was a conceit, Gordian thought, which neatly excluded the rustic plaintiffs and was intended to forge some link between the defendant and those on the tribunal. He looked at his father and the other assessors. Their faces gave away no more than did his own.
The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil showed a world of innocence and honesty, the Procurator said. Old men of antique virtue were bent and gnarled by their life-long labours. Young shepherds played the pipes as they chastely wooed virginal shepherdesses. The visitor found homespun hospitality and wisdom on offer at every humble hearth.
So far, so good the Procurator appeared to be enjoying his own performance but men who combined an active life with that of culture, men who accepted their duties towards their estates and towards the Res Publica, men who actually ventured into the countryside, knew different. There they found rough, uncouth accents and manners. Worse, they found squalid indolence and base superstition. Unguided by philosophy or any higher culture, the hairy locals learnt to lie as they took their mothers milk. Untrammelled by compassion, they regarded violence and force as the ultimate argument. Who had not heard the saying Make your will before you venture down a country lane?
After the Procurators litany of rustic iniquity ended, three witnesses swore to his innocence. Finally, the elder Gordian ordered the principals to withdraw and asked the advice of his assessors.
Mauricius launched into an extempore oration of his own. His family was as old as any in Africa, descended both from local landowners and Roman colonists. For generations they had bred too many children. Equal inheritance had reduced them to poverty. He himself had been left just one small field by his father. At first he had worked it with his own hands. He had rented other fields, hired men. Gradually, by backbreaking labour, and the favour of the gods, he had rebuilt his family fortunes. Now he owned wide estates and sat on the city councils at Thysdrus and here at Hadrumetum. He offered his own life as evidence that poverty did not have to drive out honesty and virtue.
More relevant to the case in hand, Menophilus pointed out that the tenants had much to lose by bringing the case. If they lost, they had laid themselves open to the reprisals of the Procurator and his friends. All they were asking for was what the law should already give them.
One by one, Gordian included, the assessors agreed this was true.
Those involved were brought back into the court.
In the name of our sacred Emperor Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus, and by the powers vested in me as Proconsul of Africa, I find the complaint upheld. Let the plaintiffs erect an inscription on stone setting out this judgement and the laws of the divine Hadrian. Let no one in future demand more of them than the laws allow, and let no one offer them violence or oppression.
The Procurator bridled. These rustics are liars. Avoiding the duties they owe to the Emperor is tantamount to treason. Supporting them runs the risk of the same charge. As part of my duties, I am in regular correspondence with the sacred court.
There was a silence in the courtroom.
You think the Emperor would value your word above mine? There was no tremor in the elder Gordians voice.
On an instant, the Procurator capitulated. No, no, nothing of the sort. Indeed he was sure the noble Proconsul was right. Some of his own agents may have been over-zealous in the interests of the sacred Maximinus. He would see it never happened again.
In the interests of the sacred Maximinus. The irony of the phrase struck Gordian. They had fought the battle of Ad Palmam in the name of Alexander, not knowing that the Emperor was already dead and mutilated. One Emperor died; another took the throne. The governance of the empire continued. It was unlikely this Maximinus would affect them much out here in Africa.
CHAPTER 9
The Northern Frontier
A Camp outside Mogontiacum,
Eleven Days before the Kalends of May, AD235
When they had spread the food and blankets, Timesitheus sent the servants away. No ones loyalty was infinite.
They reclined in the shade of an apple tree: Timesitheus, his wife, Tranquillina, and the two disaffected Senators. Eleven days before the kalends of May, and even here, at long last, spring had arrived. The sun shone, and the first blossom was on the boughs above their heads. They ate and talked, ostensibly at their ease. Of course, there was no ignoring the activity down at the river. And, Timesitheus thought, the Senators must have been wondering why they had been invited to this outdoor midday meal. His own wheel was very much in the ascendant; theirs on a downward turn.
The noise rolled up the slope: shouts of encouragement, jeers and catcalls, the squeal of wood on wood, the rhythmic ring of hammer on anvil, the deeper thump of a pile-driver and, intermittently over it all, stentorian voices of authority. Down there, all was movement and bustle. Teams of horses dragged big baulks of timber down to the riverbank. Mobile sawmills cut and trimmed them. Gangs of men unloaded huge cables from wagons. Smoke curled up from the forges. Out on the water, the sixth boat was being manoeuvred towards the pontoon bridge. It was guided from a rowing skiff upstream; the men let it drift down. When it reached the right place, a big pyramid-shaped bag of stones was heaved over its prow to act as an anchor. At the same instant ropes snaked out, and in moments the new addition was lashed in place at just the correct interval. Timbers already connected the next one into the rest of the bridge. On those closer to the land, these beams had been decked over, and screens erected on either side.
About twenty yards upstream from the bridge the first breakwater showed above the surface. It consisted of three stout stakes. Iron clamps held it together, making an arrowhead facing into the flow of the water. The raft bearing the pile-driver was moored where the second breakwater would stand. Timesitheus let his gaze linger on the men working the pulleys. Inch by inch, the massive plug of iron was pulled up its curved wooden runner. The order to halt carried clearly to his ears. Another command, a lever thrown, and oddly noiseless at that distance the weight fell. The sound of the impact lagged behind its viewing. As the men bent to their task and the lump of shaped metal began another ascent, the great stake it had hit could be seen to have been driven at least three feet further down into the muddy bed of the Rhine.