Allan Massie - Nero_s Heirs

Domitian did not share my regard for his uncle. In later years I have heard him say that if his advice had been followed Vitellius would never have gone free after signing his act of abdication; and that the battle on the Capitol, from which he had by his own account escaped only with difficulty, meeting great danger with audacity and ingenuity, was the consequence of his uncle's cowardice and unpardonable folly. Actually Domitian's escape, unlike my own, was ignominious. Yet, though I had fought my way out, and might be judged to have had nothing with which to reproach myself, I experienced shame, like a stabbing knife, when I learned of what had befallen Flavius Sabinus. I felt like a deserter.

And indeed for three days following, I skulked like a deserter in Sybilla's bed while, as in nightmare, I heard the mob surging through the city, seeking out those they judged disloyal to Vitellius, and slaying them indiscriminately. There was no reason in their madness. Had they been capable of reflection they must have judged that Vitellius could not remain Emperor above a week. It was as if with the burning of the Temple of Jupiter, Rome was deprived of reason, virtue, and whatever separates civilised man from barbarism. The she-wolfs children had made themselves into wolves.

On the third day, my mother, disdaining to keep the house as I had instructed her, was assaulted by a German auxiliary, dragged to the river-bank, and raped. Domitian had not dared to leave the house to act as her guard. She returned to the apartment, said nothing either to him or to his sister, retired to her chamber, wrote with unwavering hand a letter informing me of what had happened, and cut her wrists. Domatilla found her lying on blood-soaked sheets, her face calm as the Goddess Minerva to whom Domitian pretended such devotion. I can say nothing of this to Tacitus.

Nor to the boy Balthus, though I have formed the habit of reading the chapters I send to Tacitus to him. He hears them as one might hear stories from the Underworld.

'I am no longer surprised, master,' he said to me yesterday, 'that you choose now to live so far from Rome. However desolate you find these regions, they must seem as paradise compared to the inferno of that accursed city. Do you Romans not know the meaning of peace?'

'Peace?' I said. 'My dear boy, we make a desert, and that is peace. It is all the peace we ever achieve. Yet there were afternoons, by the seaside…' I paused, and shook my head.

'Come,' I said, 'let us take the hounds and hunt hares in the hill pastures.'

You will know, Tacitus, that in a last desperate effort to save himself Vitellius sent envoys to the commander of the Flavian forces, Antonius Primus, seeking terms, or at least a truce. But it was too late; fighting had already broken out in the suburbs, among gardens, farmyards and twisting alleys or lanes. Even so, Vitellius seemed not to abandon hope, which, as is often the case, survived the departure of his sense of reality. The virgin priestesses of Vesta were now recruited to obtain for him a few more hours of life and mimic Empire. They approached Antonius and urged him to grant a single day of truce, in which time all might be peacefully arranged. By that it was presumed they intended that a means of transferring power without further bloodshed might be secured. It was all in vain. Antonius, properly, replied that with the assault on the Capitol, all the normal courtesies of war had been broken off; and no man could trust Vitellius' word. All this I learned later from Antonius himself.

Then he prepared the assault on the city. He advanced in three divisions, one directly along the Via Flaminia, the second following the bank of the Tiber, while the third made for the Colline Gate by the Via Salaria. Vitellius' troops, outnumbered, gave way at every point.

By noon I had ventured on to the roof of Hippolyta's apartment block, hoping to be able to follow the progress of the battle, and so choose the moment when I could best join myself to my friends. But I could catch only glimpses. They were enough to persuade me that the Vitellianists were yielding ground, but that, desperate, and with no possibility of escape, they were caught in that dance of death which extremity provokes. And so, embracing Sybilla and thanking Hippolyta, who was not displeased to see me make ready to depart, I took my leave, assuring them that, whatever the outcome of the day, I would see them safe and prosperous. And I am glad to say that I kept that promise. Tacitus: I never wish to see again such degradation as met my eyes that day. It was macabre. Bands of soldiers engaged in hand to hand battle through the narrow streets. There was neither order nor command, for in street-fighting it becomes a matter of every man for himself. Yet the mass of the citizens were as spectators. You would see a handful of men standing by a tavern door, with mugs of wine clutched in their fists, while, within a few feet of them, soldiers panted, sweated, shrieked, and stabbed. When a maul forced its way, by no act of will, into one of the city squares, citizens hung from their windows, shouting out encouragement or curses, as if they were fans in the Circus, and the legionaries gladiators doomed to death. Such, indeed, was the theatre of the encounter that the strangest and most degraded cries, such as 'Long live Death!', were heard, and odds were shouted as to the outcome of individual contests. In one alley I saw a small child, not above three years old, stagger from a doorway, dressed only in a vest, its bum bare and mud-streaked, and then totter, with unconcerned appearance, between two soldiers swinging and stabbing at each other. The child put its arm round the brawny leg of one of the warriors, and clung to it, while blood trickled from a thigh-wound and mingled in its curly hair. The soldier, either unable to shake the child off or even unaware of its presence, swung at his adversary and, over-balancing, exposed his throat to a riposte. He crumpled to the ground, the child tumbling over him and, suddenly affrighted, yelling for its mother. The victor advanced over the body of his victim, disregarding the infant and, beginning to run, sought out new enemies, and disappeared round the corner at the end of the lane. Only then did the child's mother – or perhaps some other woman – emerge from the house, pick up the infant, dust it down, and seek to quieten it.

The battle was fiercest in the Campus Martius. I attached myself to a legionary cohort, or what remained of it. The senior centurion, blood dripping from a gash over his eye, recognised me; he had fought bravely for Otho a few months before. 'They're fighting to the last man,' he said. 'The gods alone know why.' 'Bet they don't,' muttered a soldier.

'It'll be worse at the Praetorian camp,' the centurion said. Then, lifting his bloody sword, he cried out, 'Come on, lads, one more charge.'

For a moment it was like a regular battle. Space appeared between the opposing forces. Men were howled or hauled into line. Order was made out of chaos. Then we advanced, first at a steady march, and then, on the orders of the old centurion, the line broke into a trot. It cannot have lasted more than ten or a dozen paces, but it gave us a momentum. Swords clashed against shield. I drove mine to the right, the shield followed the probing blade, and with a turn of the wrist, I passed the shield on the body side, and drove the point into the neck just above the breastplate. My opponent sagged at the knees, blood gushed from his mouth, and I wrenched the blade free as he slumped to the paving-stones.

The enemy line broke, several of them – they were German auxiliaries – throwing their weapons away to free themselves for faster flight. The old centurion yelled to us to halt. Most obeyed. Some on the flanks, who may not have heard his call, continued to give chase, fast enough to kill a few more of our now defeated enemy.