Allan Massie - Nero_s Heirs

From this time some half a dozen of us met regularly to consider how Vespasian's cause might be best advanced. These meetings in his aunt's house gave me a further insight into my friend Domitian's unsettled state of mind, his febrile character. On the one hand he was ever eager for positive measures, even rash ones. He would sit picking at the skin of his thumb, and propose plans for fomenting a mutiny among the troops quartered in the city. On the other, he would start and grow pale at any alarm.

Vitellius, or rather his lieutenants, had reconstituted the Praetorian Guard, formerly distinguished by its loyalty to Otho, by drafting some 20,000 men indiscriminately from the legions and the cavalry.

'They have no esprit de corps,' Domitian insisted, flourishing the Greek term (though his knowledge of Greek was much inferior to mine and, at that stage in his life he could not converse freely in the language). They are,' he continued, 'a mere rag-bag assembly, open, I have no doubt, to the highest bidder.'

'And therefore useless,' said Rubrius Gallus, an officer of the city guard in whom Flavius Sabinus had long placed an absolute trust. 'In any case,' he said, 'attempts to suborn them could not be kept secret.'

'And in the third place,' I said, 'it is Vitellius, not we, who has charge of the imperial treasury and who can top any offer we make to them. He can produce gold now; we, only the promise of future gold.'

Domitian relapsed into a sulk, for, as you know, he could never thole any dissent from his opinions, nor argue his case in a rational manner.

Moreover, his eagerness for action was corrupted by his fear that even our conclaves were perilous.

'If anyone knew we were meeting like this…' he would mutter, and draw his forefinger across his throat.

He spoke truth, without necessity, for none of us doubted the danger that we ran.

Flavius Sabinus had however a soft spot for his nephew. He considered that Domitian had indeed been unfairly disregarded by Vespasian, and he more than once said to me that, at bottom, the boy was good and not without talent. So he now hastened to apply ointment to Domitian's wounded pride.

'What you say, nephew, is wise in general, misguided merely in particular. Few parties stand firm in a civil war, for everyone except those of outstanding virtue and those who have strong reason to be attached to one side or the other, stands loose in his allegiance. Since you have studied history, you will recall how L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, for example, deserted Mark Antony and crossed over to Octavian Caesar, the future Augustus, though he had received nothing but kindness from Antony, and was trusted by him implicitly. And Ahenobarbus was not an evil man. Treachery is contagious. I have no doubt that the new Praetorians will readily desert Vitellius, when the moment is ripe; but not now, while he is in a position to indulge them. There are others however whose desertion would be more useful, and may be more easily secured.'

He paused and drank wine, while we kept silent, hearing only the confused night-noise of the city. Someone passed below the house singing a bawdy song about Nero. Two days previously Vitellius had caused an altar to be raised in the Campus Martius, and there performed funeral rites in honour of that Emperor whom he had himself served with such ignoble zeal.

Flavius Sabinus said: Things are moving. Today Vitellius had word that the 3rd legion has repudiated him and sworn allegiance to Vespasian.' 'How did he receive the news?'

'First, I'm told, he staggered and had to be revived with wine. Then he said, "It is only a single legion after all. The others remain loyal.'" 'What effect did his words have?'

'His advisers were unsettled. They persuaded him that he must address the troops. Which, eventually, he did, declaring that vile rumours were being spread by the disbanded Praetorians, which no one should attach any importance to. He was careful not to mention Vespasian, and so gave the impression that he was faced with the mutiny of one legion, not with a challenge to his position. Then soldiers were dispersed through the city with orders to arrest anyone found spreading seditious rumours.'

'Which,' I said, 'is just the sort of measure to give the rumours life.' 'Indeed, yes, a good day for us,' Rubrius Callus said.

'It makes our immediate position all the more dangerous. Domitian is right there.' Flavius smiled at his nephew, as if approving his judgement. 'And he is right, too, in believing that our best course is to seek to detach some men of note from Vitellius. Now it so happens that I know what you may be ignorant of. You are all, of course, aware that Vitellius owes his present position not to his own efforts, which have been feeble and contemptible, but to his generals, Caecina and Valens. What you may not know is that they have come to detest and distrust each other. Caecina in particular is – shall we say? -disillusioned. His efforts have been equal to his colleague's. Yet he finds that Valens is in higher favour with Vitellius. I think we can play on his resentments.'

The prospect was attractive. I immediately offered to act as an intermediary between Flavius and Caecina.

Your enthusiasm does you credit,' Flavius said, 'but you will have sufficient nobility of soul not to resent my refusal. Rubrius here is the man for the job. He has served with Caecina in Germany, and earlier, too, in the wars against the Parthian Empire, in which Corbulo won that distinction which made him hateful to Nero. As an old comrade, able to share memories of happier days, he is better placed than you to work upon Caecina's resentments, fears and ambition.'

So it was decided. A day or two later I watched the German legions and auxiliaries march to the north. Their appearance was very different from that which they had presented in Vitellius' day of triumph. They were not the men they had been. Wasted by disease and enervated by unaccustomed luxury, they seemed a spiritless rabble rather than an army. Grumbles about the heat, the dust and the weight of their baggage rose from the line of march. They looked like men ready to mutiny; and my heart lifted.

Again I cannot sleep. I lay beside my woman, made perfunctory love to her, relief of the body if not the spirit, and then listened to her regular breathing while my own brain raced, irregularly.

I rose and, leaving the house, walked down to the river, to a point a few miles before it loses itself in the marshes, forming different streams which make their way severally to the sea. The night was luminous, for a full moon drifted behind thin clouds and, casting deep but wavering shadows, gave all things a new and unexpected shape. It seemed to me that ghostly figures rose out of the mists that clung around the water.

Near the end of the Jewish Wars, after Titus had taken Jerusalem, and destroyed their temple, which was like no other temple I have known, having no images of the god they worshipped within it, some of the fanatics among the enemy withdrew to a stronghold on a hill, by name Masada. This strange night allowed me to see that place again, though the landscape was so different, being desert, sand and rock, rather than river and marshland. So how this was, I know not; but the vagaries of mind, memory and imagination are incalculable. Perhaps it was not so strange, for the horror of Masada has never left me, and now I knew the need to speak of it.

So I returned to the house and woke the boy Balthus and, telling him to put on a jacket of sheepskin for the air was chill, brought him with me back down to the river. There was no sense in doing so, for, as I say, there was no similarity to be found between that place and this; and yet it was there that I could speak of that concerning which I had remained silent for so long. The boy sat on the rotted trunk of a fallen tree and listened to what I had to say. Nor had he made any complaint at being torn from sleep.