Harry Sidebottom - King of Kings

In the silence that followed the praetorian prefect resuming his seat, all eyes turned to the emperor. Seated high above his councillors, Publius Licinius Valerianus remained immobile. He stared over the heads of all, into the distance. Eventually the heavy head nodded, the golden wreath rustling in the unnatural quiet. The emperor spoke.

'We are renowned for our clemency. But clementia must not be confused with weakness. It is a stern virtue. Severitas is its other face. We Romans did not win our empire by weakness. We have not held our empire for over a thousand years by weakness. In the beginning, the gods themselves charged us to spare the humbled but also to crush the proud.'

The emperor paused to let his words sink in. The heads of the councillors nodded approvingly at the echo — the so very apt echo, they might have said — of the Roman imperial epic, the Aeneid of Virgil.

'The unbearable superbia, arrogance, of Shapur the Sassanid threatens war. This is not a moment to show weakness. The wickedness of these malcontents, if not inspired by Shapur himself, would at the very least bring him joy, confirm him in his arrogance, were it not punished. An example must be made.'

Again Valerian paused. Again his councillors nodded. Belatedly Ballista thought it best to join in.

'We Romans are the children of the wolf. We are a hard race. When our soldiers betray cowardice we decimate them; one man in ten is beaten to death by his comrades. Justice demands that we must not be harder on our own men than our enemies. The prisoners of high status will be beheaded in the hippodrome, the scene of their depravity, and their heads exhibited on pikes across the river in the suburbs. Of the rest, some will be crucified outside the various gates of the city, some burnt alive in the agora, and some reserved for the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. The praetorian prefect will see to the arrangements. This is our judgement, against which there can be no appeal.'

Bastard, thought Ballista. You callous old bastard. You want to play the stern old Roman, the man merely following the ways of your ancestors, following the mos maiorum, yet surely somewhere in over a thousand years of Roman history there must be an example to follow which would allow you to spare at least the women and children.

The praetorian prefect got back to his feet, saluted and intoned the standard army response: 'We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.'

Successianus remained on his feet. He had a broad, flat face like a shovel. It was the face of the simple peasant turned soldier he had been a long time ago. No one on the consilium would consider that Successianus' face was a clear window on to his soul. The praetorian prefect cleared his throat and spoke again.

'There is something else that we must discuss. Yesterday, a messenger arrived from Aelius Spartianus, the tribune commanding Roman forces in Circesium. On the tenth of October, six days before the ides of the month, Sassanid cavalry appeared before the city.'

Ballista felt the air thickening around him. Whether they were looking directly at him or not, for every one of the other fifteen men in the imperial council, he was suddenly the centre of attention. To his discomfort, the northerner realized that this included the emperor himself. Make that sixteen men.

Ballista looked straight ahead across the chamber. The Count of the Sacred Largess, Macrianus, was impassive, but half-smiles seemed to play on the faces of his sons Macrianus the Younger and Quietus and, behind his carefully shaped beard, the young patrician Acilius Glabrio was openly exulting. It was all too easy for Ballista to imagine what thoughts were lighting up those smiles — Circesium is three days' march up the Euphrates from Arete. The Sassanids are before the walls of Circesium; they can set Mesopotamia ablaze, because a barbarian upstart like you could not even hold the well-fortified city of Arete. With this news your luck has run out. Today the imperial favour that you have inexplicably enjoyed will end.

There was nothing else for it: Ballista sat upright and set his face into immobility. He sensed a slight movement to his left. A hand touched his arm. The tough, close-cropped head of the young Danubian general Aurelian did not turn, but he patted Ballista's arm again, reassuringly. Ballista felt better to know that he was not without allies, was not totally alone in the consilium. And, across the room, did the long face of Cledonius momentarily betray a wink?

'Spartianus' report states that the Sassanids were not led by Shapur in person and did not appear to have siege equipment with them. He believes that it is not the main Persian field army but that, even so, it is a dangerous force of about ten thousand men.'

The praetorian prefect paused, choosing his words. 'All… ah… internal reports indicate that Spartianus is a reliable officer. In this case, his information is partly corroborated by another… external report that states that Shapur is journeying back south down the Euphrates to winter in his own territories.'

Internal reports, thought Ballista, a delicate way of referring to the activities of the frumentarii, the imperial secret police that swarmed around all men of office. One or two of them might be good men. They might even be necessary. But, in essence, they were an instrument of oppression, causing nothing but fear, inertia or trouble. By contrast, the spy in Shapur's camp who had provided the external report, even if a paid traitor to his own people, seemed positively heroic.

'The question before us is simple: what shall we do about this new menace? The emperor wishes his amici, his friends, to give him their advice. He commands you to speak freely.'

The opportunity to be the first to obey an imperial command, even one issued indirectly, such as this, was irresistible to an ambitious courtier. With a graceful speed that contained no hint of haste, Gaius Acilius Glabrio was on his feet. Ballista grudgingly admired both the young patrician's quick thinking and his supreme confidence. The northerner himself was still pondering the possible implications of the words of the praetorian prefect when Acilius Glabrio started talking.

'It is an outrage. A terrible outrage to the maiestas, majesty, of the Roman people. And it could not be more dangerous. Let no one mistake that. We all know what barbarians are like.' For the first time, Acilius Glabrio's eyes left the emperor and looked round the consilium. They lingered just that bit too long on Ballista before returning to Valerian.

'Superbia, overweening arrogance, is ever the mark of the barbarian — whether he is a slippery, decadent little easterner or a big, stupid northerner.' Again the eyes flicked to Ballista. 'If the superbia of a barbarian is not crushed when it first rears up, it will grow uncontrollably. Already the superbia of the Sassanid ruler grows after his triumph at Arete. Let it go unpunished again, and it will know no bounds. Will he be satisfied with Mesopotamia? With Syria, Egypt, Asia — Greece itself? Never. His irrationality allows no limit to his desires. Let Shapur flout the imperium, and every other barbarian will think that he can do the same, along the Danube and the Rhine, across the Black Sea and the Atlas Mountains. I see the Tiber flowing with blood. Our very homes, our wives, our children, the temples of our ancestral gods — all are at risk. We must act now, and act decisively.'

Carried aloft by his own rhetoric, the young nobleman glared around the room, every inch the stern patriot of the old Republic.

'What can avert this danger, kill this eastern reptile? Only old-fashioned Roman virtus. And where can we find such antique virtue? Here in this very room. After our noble emperor, who could exhibit old-style Roman virtus more clearly than…' Acilius Glabrio paused, motionless, for dramatic effect, then turned and thrust out his arm towards an elderly, rather portly senator.