Roma Eterna Read online

  “Very well,” said Apollinaris. “How far do you intend to carry this, though?”

  “As far as the situation demands,” Torquatus said.

  The month of Julius gave way to the month of Augustus, and the worst summer in Roma’s long history went grinding on, intolerable heat, choking humidity, low ominous clouds hiding the sun, lightning in the hills but never any rain, tensions rising, tempers snapping everywhere as the daily procession of carts bearing the latest batches of the condemned rolled onward toward the executioner’s block. Great throngs came to watch each day, commoners and patricians alike, looking toward the headsman and his victims in the fascinated way one stares at a weaving serpent making ready to strike. The spectacle of horror was terrifying but no one could stay away. The reek of blood hung over Roma. With each passing day the city grew more pure, and much more frightened, paralyzed by fear and suspicion.

  “Five weeks now,” said Lactantius Rufus, who was the presiding magistrate of the Senate, “and the killing has spread into our own House itself.”

  “Pactumeius Pollio, tried and found guilty,” Julius Papinio said. He stood closest to Rufus among the little group of men on the portico of the Senate this sizzling, steamy morning.

  “Likewise Marcus Florianus,” said the rotund Terentius Figulus.

  “And Macrinus,” said Flavius Lollianus.

  “And Fulpianus.”

  “That’s it, I think. Four all together.”

  “Four Senators, yes,” said Lactantius Rufus. “So far. But who’s next, I ask you? You? Me? Where does it stop? Death is king in Roma these days. This whole House is endangered, my friends.” He was a great sickle of a man, enormously tall, stoop-shouldered, his back curving in a wide arc, his face in profile a jagged blade of angular features. For more than thirty years he had been a prominent member of the Senate: a confidant of the late Emperor Lodovicus, a close adviser to the present Emperor Demetrius, a three-time holder of the Consulship. “We must find a way of protecting ourselves.”

  “What do you suggest?” Papinio asked. “Shall we call upon the Emperor to remove the Consuls?”

  It was said in a halfhearted way. Papinio and all the others knew how ludicrous a suggestion that was. “Let me remind you,” Lactantius said anyway, “that the Emperor is a prisoner himself.”

  “So he is,” Papinio conceded. “All power lies with the Consuls now.”

  “Quite true,” Rufus said. “And therefore our task must be to drive a wedge between them. We should go, three or four of us, or perhaps five, as a delegation to Apollinaris. He’s a reasonable man. Surely he sees the damage Torquatus is doing, the risk that these purges, if they continue, will get out of hand and run through Roma like a wildfire. We ask him to remove Torquatus from office and name a new colleague.”

  “To remove Torquatus from office—!” said Terentius Figulus, astounded. “You make it sound so easy! But could he do it?”

  “Apollinaris has just reconquered four or five whole provinces without any serious difficulty. Why would he have any trouble overcoming one man?”

  “What if he doesn’t want to?” Papinio asked. “What if he approves of what Torquatus has been doing?”

  “Then we remove them both,” replied Rufus. “But let’s keep that for a last resort. Which of you will come with me to Apollinaris?”

  “I,” said Papinio immediately. But no one else spoke out.

  Rufus looked about at the others. “Well?” he said. “Figulus? Lollianus? What about you, Priscus? Salvius Julianus?”

  In the end Rufus managed to collect just two companions for his mission, the ever-ambitious Julius Papinio and another Senator named Gaius Lucius Frontinus, a younger man whose family had enormous wine-producing properties in southern Italia. Though these were busy times in the Consular office—the Consuls’ days were consumed by the task of purification, making out arrest orders, attending trials, authorizing the executions of those found guilty, which was nearly everyone placed on trial—they had surprisingly little difficulty gaining an audience with the Consul Valerian Apollinaris. But winning his support was not quite so easy.

  “What you’re asking is treasonous, as you surely must know,” said Apollinaris calmly. He had remained seated behind his desk; the others stood before him. “By suggesting that one constitutionally appointed Consul should depose his colleague, you’re inviting me to join the conspiracy that you apparently have formed to overthrow the legitimate government of the Empire. That in itself is a capital offense. I could have you whisked off to prison this very minute. Before the end of the week you’d be staring at the headsman’s axe. Eh, Rufus? Papinio? Frontinus?”

  It was impossible to tell whether he meant it as a threat or as a joke. Lactantius Rufus, steadfastly meeting the Consul’s coolly appraising gaze, said, “You’d probably follow us there in the next week or two, Count Apollinaris. Certainly you, of all people, must understand how dangerous Torquatus is to everybody’s welfare, certainly to ours and yours, perhaps even to his own.”

  “Dangerous to yours, yes. But why to mine? I’ve backed Torquatus in all of his actions, haven’t I? So why would my respected Consular colleague turn against me?”

  “Because the way things are going,” said Rufus, “the removal of Emperor Demetrius will become a political necessity somewhere down the line, more likely sooner than later. And the Emperor has no sons. The heir to the throne is his addlepated and utterly incapable brother Marius, who sits quietly giggling to himself in his palace on Capreae. He can never reign. You and Torquatus are the only plausible successors to Demetrius in sight. But you can’t both become Emperor. Do you see my logic, Apollinaris?”

  “Of course I do. But I have no intention of having the Emperor killed, and I doubt that Torquatus does either, or he’d have done it already.”

  Rufus sighed. “Unless he’s simply biding his time. But let that be as it may: perhaps you don’t feel that you’re in any danger, dear Apollinaris, but we certainly do. Four members of the Senate are dead already. Others are probably on the proscribed list. Torquatus is drunk with power, killing people as quickly as he can, scores of them. Some of them very much deserved their fate. In other cases Torquatus is simply settling old personal accounts. To claim that the Senator Pactumeius Pollio was an enemy of the realm—or Marcus Florianus—”

  “To save your skins, then, you want me to lift my hand against my colleague in violation of my oaths. And if I refuse?”

  “The Senate, with the Emperor indisposed, has the power to strip you and Torquatus both of your Consulships.”

  “Do you think so? And if you can manage to bring it off, who will our replacements be? You, Rufus? Young Frontinus here? And would the people ever accept you as their leaders? You know perfectly well that Torquatus and I are the only men left in this rotting Empire who have the strength to keep things from falling apart.” Apollinaris smiled and shook his head. “No, Rufus. You’re just bluffing. You have no candidates to take our places.”

  “Agreed,” Rufus said, without any hesitation. “This is certainly so. But if you refuse us, you’ll leave us no choice but to try to strike Torquatus down ourselves, and we may very well fail, which will plunge everything into disorder and turmoil as he takes his revenge. You and you alone can save Roma from him. You must remove him and take sole command, and make an end to this reign of terror before a river of Senatorial blood runs in the streets.”

  “You want me to be Emperor, then?”

  This time Rufus, taken by surprise, did hesitate before replying. “Do you want to be?”

  “No. Never. If I take sole command, though, I would be acting essentially as an Emperor. Before long, as you correctly foresee, I would be Emperor. But the throne has no appeal for me. The most I want is to be Consul.”

  “Be Consul, then. Get rid of Torquatus and appoint some congenial partner, anyone you like. But you have to stop him before he devours us all. Yourself included, I warn you, Apollinaris.”

  When the three Sena
tors had left his office Apollinaris sat quietly for a time, replaying the discussion in his mind. There was no denying the truth of anything Rufus had said.

  Rufus was grasping and manipulative, of course, as anyone of his great wealth and long occupation of a position close to the centers of Imperial power could be expected to be. But he was not really evil, as powerful men went, and he was certainly no fool. He saw very clearly, and Apollinaris saw it as well, how unlikely it was that there would be any end to Torquatus’s frenzied purification of the realm, that not only were prominent Senators like Lactantius Rufus in obvious danger but that it would go on and on until the list of victims included Count Valerian Apollinaris himself.

  That was inevitable. Apollinaris, though he had approved from the start of the need to call a halt to the Emperor Demetrius’s excesses and purge the court of its parasites, had seen Torquatus’s zealousness growing day by day. And he was far from comfortable with the extreme nature of Torquatus’s methods—midnight arrests, secret trials, verdict within an hour, execution the next day.

  Now that Torquatus had succeeded in establishing death as a valid penalty for undermining the moral fiber of the Empire, the list of potential victims of the purge had become almost infinite, too. Demetrius’s clump of odious hangers-on, some of them truly vicious and some mere witless buffoons, was gone now. So were dozens of the most corrupt members of the bureaucracy and four of their facilitators in the Senate. And, yes, just as Rufus had guessed, many more indictments were pending. Torquatus’s concentration was focused now on the unrest in the Subura, where the ordinary theft and vandalism had given way to rioting and anarchic outcries against the government. Soon Torquatus would be executing plebeians, too. If left unchecked he would purge Roma from top to bottom.

  That a cleansing of the commonwealth had been in order was something that Apollinaris did not question. Despite his reservations he had made no attempt to interfere in what Torquatus had been doing these five weeks past. But it was clear to him now that Torquatus had begun ruling almost as a dictator, a murderous one at that, and that as Torquatus’s Consular colleague he was expected to continue to join him in that role, or else face the possibility of becoming a victim of Torquatus’s zeal himself. For a time would come—if it was not already at hand—when it would be necessary to say to Torquatus, “Things have gone far enough, now. This is where we should stop the killings.” And what if Torquatus disagreed?

  Very likely the name of Valerian Apollinaris would be the next one added to the roster of the condemned, in that case. And, though Apollinaris had never been greatly concerned about his personal safety, he saw now that in the present situation he must preserve his life for the sake of the Empire. There was no other bulwark but him against the encroaching chaos.

  Best to face the issue immediately, Apollinaris decided.

  He went to see Torquatus.

  “The Senate is growing very uneasy,” he said. “These four executions—”

  “They were traitors,” Torquatus said sharply. Sweat was rolling down his fleshy face in the dense, humid atmosphere of the room, but for some reason unfathomable to Apollinaris the man was wearing a heavy winter toga. “They wallowed in Demetrius’s iniquities to their own enormous profit.”

  “No doubt they did. But we need the Senate’s continued support if we’re to carry through our program.”

  “Do we? The Senate’s just an antiquarian vestige, something left over from the ancient Republic. Just as the Consuls were, before you and I revived the office. Emperors functioned perfectly well for at least a thousand years without sharing any power at all with the Senate or the Consuls. We can get along without the Senate, too. Who’s been talking to you? Lactantius Rufus? Julius Papinio? I know who the malcontents are. And I’ll take them down, one by one, until—”

  “I beg you, Torquatus.” Apollinaris wondered whether he had ever uttered those words before in his life. “Show some moderation, man. What we’re trying to achieve is a very difficult thing. We can’t simply dispense with the backing of the Senate.”

  “Of course we can. The axe awaits anyone who stands in our way, and they all know it. What was Caligula’s famous line? ‘Oh, that these annoying Romans had only a single neck’—something like that. That’s how I feel about the Senate.”

  “Caligula is not, I think, the philosopher you ought to be quoting just now,” said Apollinaris. “I urge you again, Torquatus, let us be more moderate from here on. Otherwise, what I fear is that you and I are lighting a fire in Roma that may prove to be extremely difficult to put out, a fire that may easily consume you and me as well before it’s over.”

  “I’m not convinced that moderation is what we need at this point,” said Torquatus. “And if you fear for your life, my friend, you have the option of resigning your Consulship.” His gaze now was cold and uncompromising. “I know that you’ve often spoken of returning to private life, your studies, your country estate. Perhaps the time has come for you to do just that.”

  Apollinaris summoned the most pleasant smile he could find. “Not just yet, I think. Despite the objections I’ve just put to you, I still share your belief that there’s much work for us to do in Roma, and I intend to stand with you while it’s being carried out. You and I are colleagues in this to the end, Marcus Larcius. We may have disagreements along the way, but they’ll never be permitted to come between us in any serious way.”

  “You mean that, do you, Apollinaris?”

  “Of course I do.”

  A look of enormous relief appeared on Torquatus’s heavy-featured, deeply furrowed face. “I embrace you, colleague!”

  “And I you,” said Apollinaris, standing and offering his hand to the bigger man, but making no move to let the talk of embraces be anything more than metaphorical.

  He returned quickly to his headquarters on the floor below and called Tiberius Charax to him.

  “Take ten armed men—no, a dozen,” he told the aide-de-camp, “and get yourself upstairs to Marcus Larcius’s office. Tell his bodyguards, if you encounter any, that you’re there at my orders, that a matter concerning the Consul Torquatus’s security has come up and I have instructed you to place these men at the Consul’s disposal at once. I doubt that they’ll try to stop you. If they do, kill them. Then grab Torquatus, tell him that he’s under arrest on a charge of high treason, bundle him out of the building as fast as you can, and place him under tight guard in the Capitoline dungeons, where no one is to be allowed to see him or send messages to him.”

  It was to Charax’s great credit, Apollinaris thought, that not the slightest evidence of surprise could be detected on his face.

  The problem now was choosing a new co-Consul, who would aid him in the continuing work of reconstruction and reform without in any way presenting serious opposition to his programs. Apollinaris was adamant in his desire not to rule by sole command. He lacked the temperament of an Emperor and he disliked the idea of trying to reign dictatorially, as a kind of modern-day Sulla. Even after twenty centuries the memory of Sulla was not beloved by Romans. So a cooperative colleague was needed, quickly. There was no question in Apollinaris’s mind that the task that he and Torquatus had begun needed to be seen through to completion, and that at this moment it was very far from being complete.

  He hoped it could be done without many more executions, though. Certainly Torquatus in his Old Roman rigor had allowed the process of purgation to go too far. The first spate had been sufficient to eliminate the worst of the ones Torquatus had referred to, rightly, as the caterpillars of the commonwealth. But then he had begun his cleansing of the Senate, and by now everyone of any consequence in the realm seemed to be denouncing everybody else. The prisons were filling up; the headsman’s arm was growing weary. Apollinaris meant to check the frantic pace of the killings, and eventually to halt them altogether.

  He was pondering how he was going to reach that goal, three days after Torquatus had been taken into custody, when Lactantius Rufus came to him and said,
“Well, Apollinaris, I hope your soul is at peace and your will is up to date. We are scheduled to be assassinated the day after tomorrow, you and I, and some fifty of the other Senators, and Torquatus also, and the Emperor too, for that matter. The whole regime swept away in one grand sweep, in other words.”

  Apollinaris shot a look of bleak displeasure at the wily old Senator. “This is no time for jokes, Rufus.”

  “So you see me as a comedian, do you? The joke will be on you, then. Here: look at these papers. The entire plot’s spelled out for you in them. It’s Julius Papinio’s work.”

  Rufus handed a sheaf of documents across the desk. Apollinaris riffled hastily through them: lists of names, diagrammatic maps of the governmental buildings, a step-by-step outline of the planned sequence of events. It had occurred to Apollinaris that Rufus’s purpose in coming to him with these charges was simply to get rid of an annoyingly ambitious young rival, but no, no, this was all too thorough in its detail to be anything but authentic.

  He considered what little he knew of this Papinio. A red-haired, red-faced man, old-line Senatorial family. Young, greedy, shifty-eyed, quick to take offense. Apollinaris had never seen much to admire in him.

  Rufus said, “Papinio wants to restore the Republic. With himself as Consul, of course. I suspect he thinks he’s the reincarnation of Junius Lucius Brutus.”

  Apollinaris smiled grimly. He knew the reference: a probably mythical figure out of the very distant past, the man who had expelled the last of the tyrannical kings who had ruled Roma in its earliest days. It was this Brutus, supposedly, who had founded the Republic and established the system of Consuls. Marcus Junius Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar, had claimed him as an ancestor.