CHAPTER XXI

MISADVENTURES

As we left the Circus I heard in the crowd near us, along with fierce

denunciations of the Crimsons and Golds, execrated by all the commonality

as merely rich men's companies, the most enthusiastic laudations of Palus

and expressions of hopes that the Blues, Greens, Reds or Whites, according

to the preference of the speaker, might yet win him over and benefit by

his prowess.

Colgius, although the Reds had won but five races, was in a high good

humor and insisted on the whole party coming in to a family dinner. The

three wives occupied the middle sofa, while Agathemer and I had the upper

all to ourselves. The fare was abundant and good, with plenty of the

cheaper relishes to begin with; roast sucking-pig, cold sliced roast pork,

baked ham, and veal stew for the principal dishes, with cabbage, beans and

lentils; the wine was passable, and there was plenty of olives, figs,

apples, honey and quince marmalade.

The women talked among themselves and the men, with us putting in a word

now and then, of Palus. They argued a long time as to just what he did in

the fourteenth race and how he had saved himself at the critical moment.

As to his victory in the last race, all three of them were loud in their

praises. Colgius said:

"Nothing like that has ever happened before. The chariot which Palus drove

had the shortest axle I ever saw or anybody else. No other chariot but

that could have passed between the two wrecked chariots; any other would

have crashed its two wheels against the wrecked chariot-bodies and would

have smashed to bits. His chariot was so narrow that its wheels passed

between the two chariot-bodies, clear.

"Even so any other chariot would have stopped dead when its wheels hit the

axles of the stalled chariots, for it was plain that his wheels

interlocked with the wheels of the stalled chariots and hit the axles. But

his chariot had the longest spokes ever seen in Rome, or, I believe,

anywhere else, and so had the tallest wheels ever seen and had its axle

higher above the sand than any other chariot; so its wheels engaged the

stalled axles well below their hub-level and so the team pulled them right

over the axles and on."

"Yes," said Uttius, "but that never would have happened but for Palus'

instantaneous grasp of the situation and lightning decision. Any other

charioteer would have reined in or tried to swing round to the right; he

lashed his team and guided them so perfectly that, with not a hand's-

breadth to spare anywhere, the two wheels passed precisely where there was

the only chance of their passing, and he guided his horses so perfectly

that the yoke-mates shot between the stalled wheels without jostling them

or each other. No man has ever displayed such skill as Palus."

"Nor had such luck," Ramnius cut in. "No man could have guided the yoke-

mates as he did and, at the same time, exerted any influence whatever on

the trace-mates. They showed their breed. Each saw the stalled wheel in

front of him, neither tried to dodge. Each went straight at that wheel,

reared at it, and leapt it clean. As they leapt they were not helping to

pull the chariot, the yoke-mates pulled it over the stalled axles. But the

momentary check as the chariot hit the axles and leapt up gave the leaping

trace-mates just the instant of time they needed to find their feet and

regain their stride. The whole thing was a miracle; of training, of skill

and of luck."

"But don't forget," said Colgius, "that the skill and judgment Palus

displayed counted for more than the breed of his team and his luck. Do not

forget the perfect form he showed: not an awkward pose, not a sign of

effort, not a hint of anxiety; self-possession, courage, self-confidence

all through and the most perfect grace of movement, ease, and suggestion

of reserve strength. He is a prodigy."

After Agathemer and I were alone in the dark on our cots we whispered to

each other a long time.

"Do you really believe," I said, "that Commodus is so insane about horse-

racing as to be willing to put Furfur on his throne in his robes so that

he can degrade himself under the name of Palus?"

"I do," said Agathemer. "No other conjecture fits what we saw. The man on

the throne was certainly the image of Commodus, but had not his elegance

of port and grace of movement. Palus has all the inimitable gracefulness

which Commodus displayed when driving teams in the Palace Stadium."

"He is incredibly stupid in undervaluing and failing to prize his

privileges as Emperor," I said, "and amazingly reckless in allowing anyone

else to occupy his throne, wearing his robes."

"He is yet more reckless to race as he does," Agathemer commented, "and I

should not be astonished if we have seen his last public appearance as a

charioteer."

"Why?" I queried startled.

"Because," said Agathemer, "he must be incredibly stupid not to perceive,

now, what opportunities the Circus offers for getting rid of an Emperor

posing as a charioteer.

"A stupider man than Commodus can possibly be should be able to comprehend

that there must have been a very carefully planned plot in the Blue

Company, a plot which must have cost a mountain of gold to carry so far

towards success, a plot which never would have been laid for a mere

jockey, however much his rivalry threatened the Company's winnings and

prestige. Only a coterie of very wealthy men could have devised and pushed

it. It cost money to induce charioteers to come so close to almost certain

death in order to compass the destruction of another charioteer. It cost

money to sacrifice a company's teams in that fashion. Such a plot was

never laid to get rid of Palus the jockey; it was aimed at ridding the

nobility of an Emperor they fear and hate, however popular he may be with

the commonality.

"I miss my guess if there is not a violent upheaval in the Blue Company,

and if there is not an investigation scrutinizing the behavior and loyalty

of every man affiliated with them, from their board of managers down to

the stall-cleaners. I prophesy that the informers, spies and secret-

service men will have fat pickings off the Blues for many a day to come.

I'll bet the guilty men are putting their affairs in order now and hunting

safe hiding-places. Commodus may be insane about horse-racing and fool

enough to put a dummy Emperor in his place, so he can be free to enjoy

jockeying, but he is no fool when it comes to attempts at assassination.

He'll run down the guilty or exterminate them among a shoal of innocents."

I agreed.

But I added:

"What is the world coming to when the Prince of the Republic prizes his

privileges so little that he neglects state business for horse-jockeying,

when he is so crazy over charioteering that he lets another man wear his

robes and occupy his throne? It is a mad world."

Next morning we were early on Orontides' ship and once more Agathemer

charmed a crew with his flageolet.

At Ostia Orontides found he must lay over for some valuable packages

consigned to a jeweler at Antioch for the conveyance of which he was

highly paid. He suggested that, as the day was hot for so late in the

year, we go ashore and see the sights which, indeed, we found well worth

seeing, for Ostia has some buildings outmatching anything to be found

outside of Rome. We took his hint, but he warned us:

"I have some sailors I don't trust. Don't leave anything aboard. Take your

wallets with you."

We passed a pleasant, idle day, lunching and taking our siesta at an inn

outside the Rome Gate. We had planned to dine at an inn near the harbor-

front, on the west side of the town, not far from the Sea Gate: there we

had barely sat down and begun tasting the relishes, when in came Clitellus

and Summanus. They seemed surprised and pleased to recognize us, greeted

us as if we had been old friends and close intimates, appeared to assume

that we were as glad to see them as they were to see us, and, as a matter

of course, joined us at dinner, telling the waiter-boy to bring them

whatever we had ordered, only doubling the quantity of every order.

They talked of the races we had seen, of Palus, of his driving; of the

smash-ups, of Posilla, of Colgius and of everything and anything. They

announced that they would accompany us to our ship and see us safe aboard.

Both Agathemer and I more than suspected that they had associates in

waiting to follow them and, at a signal, fall on us and seize us. I felt

all that and Agathemer whispered to me a word or two in Greek which

advised me of his suspicions.

We prolonged our meal all we could, but there was no shaking them off.

Agathemer ordered more wine, Falernian, and had it mixed with only one

measure of water. Watching his opportunity he threw at me, in a whisper,

two Greek words which advised me, since they were the first in a well-

known quotation from Menander, that our only hope was to drink our

tormentors dead drunk.

It turned out to be a question whether we would drink them drunk or they

us. Certainly they showed no hesitation about pouring down the wine as

fast as it was mixed and served, nor did either of them appear to notice

that we drank less than they; they seemed able to hold any amount and stay

sober and keep on drinking. As dusk deepened and the waiter-boys lit the

inn lamps, I found myself perilously near sliding off my chair to the

floor and very doubtful whether, if I did, I should be able to get up

again or to resist my tendency to go to sleep then and there.

I was, in fact, just about to give up any attempt to resist my impulse to

collapse when Summanus collapsed, slid to the floor, rolled over, spread

out and snored.

Clitellus thickly objurgated his comrade and all weak-heads, worthless

fellows who could not drink a few goblets without getting drunk. To prove

his vast superiority and his prowess, he poured more wine down his throat,

spilling some down into his tunic.

Agathemer winked at me and fingered the strap of his wallet. I groped for

mine and fumbled at it.

Clitellus, with a hiccough, slid to the floor beside Summanus.

I was for trying to rise.

"Let us be sure," said Agathemer in Greek, "perhaps they are pretending to

be drunk, just to catch us."

But, after a brief contemplation of the precious pair, we concluded that

no acting could be as perfect as this reality. They were drunk at last and

safely asleep.

Agathemer paid the whole amount, for all four of us, adjured the waiter-

boy to be good to Clitellus and Summanus, gave him an extra coin, and

signalled me to rise. I lurched to my feet, swaying, almost as drunk as

our victims and beholding Agathemer swaying before me, not only because of

my blurred eyesight, but also because of his unsteadiness on his feet.

We almost fell, but not quite. Somehow we staggered to the door, where,

once outside, the cool night air made us feel almost sobered, though still

too nearly drunk to be sure of our location or direction.

More by luck than anything else we took the right turn and found the

harbor front before the night was entirely black. In the half gloom we

tried to find the pier from which we had come that morning. As we explored

we heard a cheerful hail.

"Is that you, Orontides?"

Agathemer called.

"Aye, Aye!" came back the cheery answer. "Come aboard!"

And we were met and assisted up the gang-plank and down over the bulwarks.

"I was afraid you boys were lost," the shipmaster said, "and I am to sail

at dawn, after all; everything is aboard. I'm glad to see you. You've

dined pretty liberally. Come over here and get to sleep."

And he led us to where we found something soft to sleep on.

I was asleep almost as soon as I lay down.

I awoke with a terrific headache and an annoying buzzing in my ears, awoke

only partially, not knowing where I was or why and without any distinct

recollections of recent events. My first sensation was discomfort, not

only from the pain of my headache, but also from the heat of the sunrays

beating on me, and that despite the fact that I could feel a strong cool

breeze ruffling my hair and beard.

I sat up and looked about me. Agathemer was snoring. The sun was not low;

in fact, at that time of the year, it was near its highest. I had slept

till noon!

Then, all of a sudden I realized that the ship was wholly strange to me

and that it was headed not southeast, but northwest. That realization

shocked me broad awake. At the same instant I saw the shipmaster

approaching. He was not Orontides, nor was he at all like him. He had

small feet, was knock-kneed, tall, lean, had a hatchet-face and red hair.

"Awake at last!" he commented. "You lads must have dined gloriously last

night. You don't look half yourselves, yet."

He stared at me, and at Agathemer, who had waked, into much the same sort

of daze in which I had been at first.

"Neptune's trident!" the shipmaster exclaimed. "You two aren't the two

lads I was to convoy! Who are you and how did you get here?"

"We were hunting for our ship after dark," Agathemer said, "and somebody

hailed us. We asked whether it was Orontides and the answer that came back

was: 'Aye, Aye!' We were pretty thoroughly drunk and were glad to be

helped aboard and shown our beds. That's all I know."

"Kingdom of Pluto!" the shipmaster cried, "my name's Gerontides, not

Orontides. I heard your question, but you were so drunk I never knew the

difference: probably I shouldn't have known the difference if you had been

sober. I was on the lookout for two lads much like you two who had part

paid me to carry them to Genoa. They'll be in a fix."

"'Bout ship," said Agathemer, "and put back to Ostia. You can't be far on

your way yet. We'll pay you what you ask to set us ashore at Ostia."

"I wouldn't 'bout ship," said Gerontides, "for twenty gold pieces."

"We'll pay you thirty," said Agathemer.

"Don't bid any higher, son," Gerontides laughed. "If you were made of

gold, to Genoa you go. I've a bigger stake in a quick landing at Genoa

than any sum you could name would overbalance. Best be content!"

And content we had to be, no arguments, no entreaties, nothing would move

him.

"I'll be fair with you," he said. "The lads I took you for had paid me all

I had asked them except one gold piece each on landing at Genoa. That's

all you'll have to pay me."

Nothing would budge him from his resolution. Agathemer in despair drowned

his misery in flageolet playing. It seemed to comfort him and certainly

comforted me. The crew were delighted. After a voyage as easy and pleasant

as our cruise with Maganno, we landed on the eighth day before the Ides of

September, at Genoa, paid our two gold pieces and set about getting out of

that city as quickly as might be. We avoided, of course, the posting-

station where we had changed horses while in couriers' trappings. But

there was a posting-station at each gate of Genoa and we, having talked

over all possibilities in the intervals of flageolet playing, were for

Dertona. We had little trouble in buying a used travelling-carriage.

Horses we did not have to wait long for, as hiring teams were luckily

plentiful that day and Imperial agents scarce. Off we set for Milan.

We were in haste but there was no hurrying postillions on those mountain

roads. We nooned at some nameless change-house and were glad to make the

thirty-six miles to Libarium by dusk. The next day was consumed in

covering the thirty-five miles to Dertona. From there on we travelled, in

general down hill, and so quicker, but not much quicker, so that a third

day entire was needed for making the fifty-one miles to Placentia.

Placentia, a second time, was unlucky for us. It might have been worse,

for we did not again encounter Gratillus, or anyone else who might have

recognized me. But I made a fool of myself. I am not going to tell what

happened; Agathemer never reproached me for my folly, not even in our

bitterest misery; but I reproached myself daily for nearly three years; I

am still ashamed of myself and I do not want to set down my idiotic

behavior.

Let it suffice, that, through no fault of Agathemer's, but wholly through

my fault, we were suspected, interrogated, arrested, stripped, our brand-

marks and scourge-scars observed and ourselves haled before a magistrate.

To him Agathemer told the same tale he had told to Tarrutenus Spinellus.

It might have served had we been dealing with a man of like temper, for

travellers from Aneona for Aquileia regularly passed through Placentia

turning there from northwest along the road from Aneona to northeast along

the road to Aquileia.

But Stabilius Norbanus was a very different kind of man.

"Your story may be true," he said, "but it impresses me as an ingenious

lie. If I believed it I'd not send men like you, with their records

written in welts on their backs, with any convoy, no matter how strict, on

the long journey to Aquileia, on which you'd have countless opportunities

of escape. I do not believe your tale. Yet I'll pay this much attention to

it: I'll write to Vedius Aquileiensis and ask him if he owned two slaves

answering your descriptions and lost them through unexplained

disappearance or known crimping by Dalmatian pirates at about the time you

indicate.

"Meantime I'll commit you to an _ergastulum_ [Footnote: See Note H.] where

you'll be herded with your kind, all safely chained, so that no escape is

possible, and all doing some good to the state by some sort of productive

labor. A winter at the flour-mills will do you two good."

Our winter at the mills may have benefited us, but it was certainly, with

its successor at similar mills, one of the two most wretched winters of my

life. And Agathemer, I think, suffered every bit as acutely as I. We were

not chained, except for a few days and about twice as many more nights; as

soon as the manager of the _ergastulum_ felt that he knew us he let us go

unchained like the rest of his charges.

This was because of the structure of the _ergastulum_. It was located in

the cellars of one of the six or more granaries of Placentia, which has,

near each city gate, an extensive public store-house. The granary under

which we were immured was that near the Cremona gate. Above ground it was

a series of rectangles about courtyards each just big enough to

accommodate four carts, all unloading or loading at once. It was

everywhere of four stories of bin-rooms, all built of coarse hard-faced

rubble concrete. The cellars were very extensive, and not all on one

level, being cunningly planned to be everywhere about the same depth

underground. Where their floor-levels altered the two were joined by short

flights of three, four or five stone steps, under a vaulted doorway, in

the thick partition walls.

Each cellar-floor was about four yards below the ground level so that a

tall man, standing on a tall man's shoulders, could barely reach with his

outstretched fingers the tip of the sill of one of the low windows. These

windows, each about a yard high and two yards broad, were heavily barred

with gratings of round iron bars as thick as a man's wrist, set too close

together for a boy's head to pass between them, and each two bars hot-

welded at each intersection, so that each grating was practically one

piece of wrought iron, made before the granary was built and with the ends

of each bar set deep in the flinty old rubble concrete. The inmates need

not be chained, as no escape was possible through the windows, though raw

night air, rain, snow at times and the icy winter blasts came in on us

through them.

Similarly no escape was possible up the one entrance to the cellars, which

was through an inner courtyard, from which led down a stone stair with

four sets of heavy doors; one at the bottom, one at each end of a landing

lighted by a heavily barred window, and one at the top. Between the inner

and outer courtyard were two sets of heavier doors and two equally heavy

were at the street entrance of the outer courtyard. On the stair-landing

was the chained-up porter-accountant seated under the window on a backless

stool by a small, heavy accountant's table on which stood a tall

_clepsydra_ by his big account-book. Checking the hours by the

_clepsydra_, he entered the name of every human being passing, up or down

that stair, even the name of the manager every time he came in or went

out. By him always stood a wild Scythian, armed with a spear, girt with a

sabre, and with a short bow and a quiver of short arrows hanging over his

back. Similar Scythians guarded the doorways, a pair of them to each door.

The slide by which the grain was lowered into the _ergastulum_, the other

slide by which the flour, coarse siftings and bran were hauled up, were

similarly guarded. Escape was made so difficult by these precautions that,

while I was there, no one escaped out of the three hundred wretches

confined in the _ergastulum_.

There we suffered sleepless nights in our hard bunks, under worn and

tattered quilts, tormented by every sort of vermin. Swarming with vermin

we toiled through the days, from the first hint of light to its last

glimmer, shivering in our ragged tunics, our bare feet numb on the chilly

pavements. We were cold, hungry, underfed on horribly revolting food,

reviled, abused, beaten and always smarting from old welts or new weals of

the whip-lashes.

It was all a nightmare: the toil, the lashings, if our monotonous walk

around our mill, eight men to a mill, two to each bar, did not suit the

notions of the room-overseer; the dampness, the cold, the vermin, the pain

of our unhealed bruises, the scanty food and its disgusting uneatableness.

The food seemed the worst feature of our misery. So, in fact, it appears

to have seemed to our despicable companions. Certainly, of the food they

complained more than of the toil, the cold, the vermin, the malignity of

the overseers or even of the barbarity of the Scythian guards. Anyhow

their fury at the quality of their food brought to me and Agathemer an

alleviation of our misery. For some hotheaded wretches, goaded beyond

endurance, jerked the bars of their mill from their sockets and with them

felled, beat to death and even brained the cook and his two assistants.

After their corpses had been removed, the floor swabbed up and the

murderers turned over to the gloating Scythians to be done to death by

impalement, Scythian fashion, with all the tortures Scythian ferocity

could devise, the manager went from cellar to cellar, all through the

_ergastulum_, enquiring if any prisoner could cook. No one volunteered,

and, when he questioned more than a few, everyone denied any knowledge of

cookery.

A second time he made the tour of his domain, promising any cook a warm

tunic, a bunk with a thick mattress and two heavy quilts, all the food he

could eat and two helpers; the helpers to have similar indulgences. On

this second round, in our cellar, a Lydian, nearer to being fat than any

prisoner in the _ergastulum_, admitted that he could make and bake bread,

but vowed that he could not do anything else connected with cooking.

Spurred on by his confession and tempted by the offers of better clothing

and bedding and more food, also by the memories of Agathemer's cookery the

winter before, I blurted out that Agathemer could not make bread, but

could do everything else needed in cookery. Agathemer, after one

reproachful glance at me, admitted that he was a cook of a sort, but

declared that he was almost as bad a cook as the wretch just murdered. The

overseer bade him go to the kitchen and told him he might select a helper;

the baker would have been the other helper. As helper Agathemer,

naturally, selected me.

After that we suffered less. The slaves acclaimed Agathemer's cooking;

for, if their rations were still scanty by order of the watchful manager,

at least their food was edible. Far from being ultimately killed, like our

predecessors, and continually threatened and reviled, we were blessed by

our fellow-slaves. We slept better, in spite of the vermin, on our grass-

stuffed mattresses, under our foul quilts, we shivered less in our thicker

tunics. We were not too tired to discuss, at times, the oddities of our

vicissitudes, to congratulate each other on being, at least, alive, on my

not being suspected of being what I actually was, and, above all, on the

safety of our old, blackened, greasy, worthless-looking, amulet-bags, with

their precious contents. To be reduced to carrying food to three hundred

of the vilest rascals alive was a horrible fate for a man who had, two

years before, been a wealthy nobleman, but it was far better than death as

a suspected conspirator. And Agathemer was hopeful of our future, of

survival, of escape, of comfort somewhere after he had sold another

emerald, ruby, or opal. Nothing could, for any length of time, dim or

cloud the light of Agathemer's buoyancy of disposition.

BOOK III

DIVERSITIES

CHAPTER XXII

THE MUTINEERS

Our promotion from the mills to the kitchen took place early in March of

the year when Manius Acilius Glabrio, after an interval of thirty-four

years since his first consulship, was consul for the second time and had

as nominal associate Commodus, preening himself, for the fifth time, on

the highest office in the Republic, which he had done little to deserve,

and while he held it, did less to justify himself in possessing, since he

left most of the duties of the consulship to Glabrio, as he left most of

the Principate to Perennis, his Prefect of the Praetorium. All of this, of

course, we learnt later in the year; for, inside our prison, we knew

nothing of what went on in Placentia, let alone of what went on in Italy

and in Rome itself.

We had been cooking for more than three months, when, about the middle of

June, our attention in the cellars was distracted from doling out food, as

that of the wretches we served was distracted from eating their scanty

rations, by an unusual uproar in the street outside of our windows. We

could descry, in the morning sunlight, military trappings, tattered

cloaks, ragged tunics, dingy kilt-straps, sheenless helmets, unkempt

beards, and brawny arms in the crowds which packed the narrow streets. The

mob seemed made up of rough frontier soldiery, and we marvelled at the

presence of such men in Italy.

The uproar increased and we heard it not only from the streets but from

the courtyards; we could not make out any words, but the tone of the

tumultuous growls was menacing and imperative. After no long interval the

doors at the foot of the one stair burst open and there entered to us

three centurions, indubitably from distant frontier garrisons, accompanied

by six or seven _optiones_ [Footnote: See Note F.] and a dozen or more

legionaries. The privates and corporals stood silent while one of the

three sergeants addressed us:

"No one shall be compelled to join us. Every man of you shall have his

unforced choice. All who join us shall be free. Such as prefer to remain

where they are sit down! All who select to join us stand up!"

If any man sat down I did not see him. Through the door we flowed without

jostling or crowding, for at the first appearance of a tendency to push

forward the sergeant's big voice bellowed a warning and order reigned. Up

the stair we poured, passing on the landing the mute, motionless porter-

accountant and his Scythian guard, cowed immobile between two burly

frontier centurions; out into the courtyard we streamed, more and more

following till the courtyard was packed. The whole movement was made in

silence, without a cheer or yell, for, like the porter and the Scythians,

the most unconscionable villains in our _ergastulum_ quailed before the

truculence of the frontier sergeants.

In the outer court, at the suggestion of one of those same centurions,

every man of us drank his fill at the well-curb, pairs of the legionaries

taking turns at hauling up the buckets and watering us, much as if we had

been thirsty workhorses. After they had made sure that none had missed a

chance to quench his thirst, they roughly marshalled us into some

semblance of order and out into the street we trooped, where we found

ourselves between two detachments of frontier soldiers, one filling the

street ahead of us from house-wall to house-wall, the other similarly

blocking the street behind us. Between them we were marched to the market-

square, where we had plenty of room, for we had it all to ourselves, the

soldiery having cleared it and a squad of them blocking the entrance of

each street leading into it, so that the townsfolk were kept out and we

herded among the frontier soldiery.

Their centurions, to the number of eighteen, stood together on the stone

platform from which orators were accustomed to address or harangue such

crowds as might assemble in the market-square. Before it we packed

ourselves as closely as we could, eager to hear. About us idled the

soldiery not occupied in guarding the approach to the square.

One of the sergeants made a speech to us, explaining our liberation and

their presence in Placentia. He called us "comrades" and began his

harangue with a long and virulent denunciation of Perennis, the Prefect of

the Palace. Perennis, he declared, had been a slave of the vilest origin

and had won his freedom and the favor of the Palace authorities and of the

Emperor not by merit but by rank favoritism. He maintained that Perennis,

as Prefect of the Palace, had gained such an ascendancy over Commodus that

besides his proper duties as guardian of the Emperor's personal safety,

surely a charge sufficiently heavy to burden any one man and sufficiently

honorable to satisfy any reasonable man, his master had been enticed into

entrusting to Perennis the management of the entire Empire, so that he

alone controlled promotions in and appointments to the navy, army and

treasury services. In this capacity, as sole minister and representative

of the sovereign, Perennis had enriched himself by taking bribes from all

from whom he could extort bribes. By his venality he had gone far towards

ruining the navy and army, which were by now more than half officered by

hopeless incompetents who had bought their appointments. As a result the

legionaries garrisoning the lines along the Euphrates, the Carpathians,

the Danube, the Rhine and the Wall, since they were badly led, had

suffered undeserved mishandling from the barbarians attacking them; and

even the garrisons of mountain districts like Armenia, Pisidia, and

Lusitania had been mauled by the bands of outlaws. He instanced the

rebellion of Maternus as a result of the incompetence and venality of

Perennis.

Worse than this, he said, Perennis was plotting the Emperor's

assassination and the elevation to the Principate of one of his two sons.

This project of his, which he was furthering by astute secret

machinations, had come to the knowledge of a loyal member of the Emperor's

retinue. He had written of it to a brother of his, Centurion [Footnote:

See Note D.] of the Thirteenth Legion, entitled "Victorious" and quartered

on the Wall, along the northern frontier of Britain, towards the

Caledonian Highlands. This letter had reached the quarters of the

Thirteenth Legion late in September. Its recipient had at once

communicated to his fellow-sergeants the horrible intimation which it

contained. They had resolved to do all in their power to save their Prince

by forestalling and foiling the treacherous Perennis. They had called a

meeting of their garrison and disclosed their information to their men.

The legionaries acclaimed their decision. Deputations set out east and

west along the Wall and roused the other cohorts of the Thirteenth Legion

and those of the Twenty-Seventh. From the Wall messengers galloped south

to the garrisons throughout Britain. In an incredibly short time, despite

the approach and onset of winter, they apprised every garrison in the

island. Messengers from every garrison reached every garrison. So rapidly

was mutual comprehension and unanimity established, so secretly did they

operate, that on the Nones of January all the garrisons in Britain

simultaneously mutinied, overpowered their unsuspecting officers,

disclosed to them the reasons for their sedition, and invited them to join

them. Of all the officers on the island only two hesitated to agree with

their men. These, after some expostulation, were killed. The rest resumed

their duties, if competent, or were relegated to civilian life, if

adjudged incompetent.

The three most prominent legions in Britain, the Sixth, Thirteenth and

Twentieth, each entitled, because of prowess displayed in past campaigns,

to the appellation of "Victorious," selected the equivalent of a cohort

apiece to unite into a deputation representing the soldiery of Britain

collectively, to proceed to Rome, reveal to the Emperor his danger, save

him, foil Perennis, and see to it that he was put to death. In pursuance

of this plan the six centuries chosen by the Thirteenth Legion, about five

hundred men, had set out southward from the Wall on the day before the

Ides of January. Accomplishing the march of a hundred and thirty-five

miles to Eburacum, in spite of deep snow and heavy snow-storms, in

fourteen days, there they foregathered with the main body of the Sixth

Legion and were joined by their six selected centuries. The twelve, some

thousand picked men, accomplished the march of eighty-five miles to Deva

in nine days, though hampered by terrible weather. There they were joined

by the delegates of the Twentieth Legion. Together the fifteen hundred

deputies made the march of two hundred and eighty miles to Ritupis by way

of Londinium, in twenty-eight days. At Ritupis they took part in the

festival of Isis, by which navigation was declared open for the year and

navigation blessed. Next day, on the day before the Nones of March, they

had sailed for Gaul and made the crossing in ten hours, without any

hindrance from headwinds or bad weather.

From Gessoriacum they had tramped across Gaul, inducing to join them such

kindred spirits as they encountered among the squads of recent levies

being drilled at each large town preparatory to being forwarded to

reinforce the frontier garrisons. These inexperienced recruits they had

organized into centuries under sergeants elected by the recruits

themselves from among themselves, which elective centurions had handily

learnt their novel duties from instructions given by one or two veterans

detailed to aid in drilling each new century. Before they reached Vapincum

they had associated with them fresh comrades equalling themselves in

number, equipped from town arsenals. With these they had crossed into

Italy through the Cottian Alps.

At Segusio they had been told that, under the misrule of Perennis, the

_ergastula_ of Italy were filled, not half with runaway slaves, petty

thieves, rascals, ruffians and outlaws, but mainly with honest fellows who

had committed no crime, but had been secretly arrested and consigned to

their prisons merely because they had incurred the displeasure of Perennis

or of one of his henchmen, or had been suspected, however vaguely, of

actions, words or even of unspoken opinions distasteful to him or to

anyone powerful through him. Acting on that information they had been

setting free the inmates of _ergastula_ in cities through which they had

passed, such as Turin and Milan, and had formed from these victims two

fresh centuries. They proposed that we join them and march with them to

Rome to inform and rescue our Emperor and foil and kill Perennis.

Of course the liberated riffraff accepted this suggestion with enthusiasm

and without a dissenting voice. We were divided into squads of convenient

size and marched off to the near-by bathing establishments. In that to

which Agathemer and I were led, we, with the rest of our squad, were told

by the sergeant superintending us to strip. Our worn, tattered and lousy

garments were turned over to the bath-attendants to be steamed and then

disposed of as they might. We were thoroughly steamed and scrubbed, so

that every man of us was freed from every sort of vermin. During our bath

the centurion, in charge of us unobtrusively inspected us individually and

collectively. In the dressing-room of the bathing establishments, after we

had been steamed, scrubbed, baked, and dried, we were clad in military

tunics fetched from the town arsenal or its store-houses. Also we were

provided with military boots of the coarsest and cheapest materials, made

after the pattern usual for frontier regiments.

Outside the bath the watchful sergeant divided us into two squads, a

larger and a smaller, the smaller made up of those who, like Agathemer and

me, bore brands, and scourge-marks. In the market-square we were again

herded together, surrounded by the British legionaries and now ourselves

divided into those like me and Agathemer, who were marked as runaway

slaves and the larger number who showed no marks of scourge or brand. From

among the unmarked the frontier centurions picked out thirty whom they

judged likely material for sergeants like themselves. These thirty they

bade select from among themselves three. Then they set the three, an

Umbrian and a Ligurian outlaw, and a Dalmatian pirate, along the front of

the stone platform and asked us whether we would accept those three as our

centurions. Two speakers, one a Venetian and the other an Insubrian Gaul,

objected to the pirate. In his place we were bidden to choose some other

from the twenty-seven already selected by the sergeants. A second Umbrian

outlaw was selected.

Then the centurions bade the newly-elected three to choose each one man in

rotation, until they had made up for each the nucleus of a century from

the unmarked men.

After the three new centuries were thus constituted, they asked them to

decide whether they would accept as comrades and associates the residue of

the inmates of our _ergastulum_ who were marked plainly as runaway slaves.

They voted overwhelmingly to accept us. Then the three new sergeants

proceeded to choose us also into their centuries. The choosing was

interrupted by a Ravenna Gaul, who called the attention of the assembly to

the fact that Agathemer had been cook to the _ergastulum_ and I his

helper; similarly to the baker and his assistant. After some discussion it

was unanimously voted that the baker and his helper be treated as any

others of the liberated rascals, that the three new centurions draw lots

which should have Agathemer for cook to his century and me for his helper,

and that the other two centuries appoint cooks by lot unless cooks and

helpers volunteered. Four of the brand-marked rabble at once volunteered.

After the last man had been selected and the British centurions had

marshalled, inspected and approved the three new centuries thus

constituted, we were marched off to the town arsenal and there equipped

with corselets, strap-kilts, greaves; cloaks, helmets, shields, swords and

spears; only Agathemer, I, and the four other cooks and helpers, were

given no spears, shields, helmets or body-armour, only swords, jackets and

caps.

Then, full-fledged tumultary legionaries, we were marshalled as well as

greenhorns could be ranked and we marched from the market-place the length

of the street leading to the Fidentia Gate. Outside it we found the

semblance of a camping-ground and tents ready for us to set up. Up we set

them, we new recruits, clumsily, under the jeers of the old-timers, to the

tune of taunts and curses from the disgusted veteran centurions.

When the camp was set up a fire was made for each century and we cooks and

helpers fell to our duties, with a squad of privates to cut wood, feed the

fires, fetch water and do any other rough preparatory work, such as

butchering a sheep or a goat, killing, picking and cleaning fowls, and

what not. For this welcome, if clumsy, assistance we had to thank one of

the British centurions, who admonished our newly-elected Umbrian sergeant

that camp-cookery called for any needed number of assistant helpers to the

chief cook if the men were to be fed properly and promptly.

The town officials had sent out to the camp a generous provision of wheat,

barley, lentils, pulse, sheep, goats, fowls, cheese, oil, salt and wine. I

did not learn how the volunteer cooks fared, but the barley-stew, seasoned

with minced fowls, which Agathemer concocted, was acclaimed by our

century.

That night, in our tent, Agathemer and I, talking Greek and whispering,

discussed our situation. After two fulfillments, the prophesy of the

Aemilian Sibyl seemed in a fair way to be fulfilled a third time; we were

headed for Rome.

To Rome we went. We had, in that first consultation, in many similar

consultations later, planned to escape and hoped to escape. But we were

too carefully watched. Whether we were suspected because of our scourge-

marks and brand-marks, or were prized as cooks, or whether there was some

other reason, we could not conjecture. Certainly we were sedulously

guarded on all marches, and kept strictly within, each camp, though we

were free to wander about each camp as we pleased.

We had planned to escape in or near Parma, Mutina, Bononia, or Faventia,

any of which towns Agathemer judged a favorable locality for marketing a

gem from our amulet-bags. But in these, as everywhere else, our guards

gave us no chance of escape.

When not busy cooking I found myself greatly interested in the amazing

company among which I was cast. In my rambles about our camp, when all

were full-fed and groups sat or lay chatting about the slackening camp-

fires, I became acquainted with most of the eighteen centurions from

the legions quartered in Britain, and had talks, sometimes even long

talks, with more than half of them. These bluff, burly frontier sergeants,

like their corporals and men, treated all their volunteer associates as

welcome comrades, even welted and branded runaway slaves acting as cooks.

From them I heard again and again the story of discontent, conspiracy,

mutiny, insurrection and attempt at protest about rectification of the

evils they believed to exist, which tale we had all heard outlined by the

sergeant-orator in the Forum of Placentia.

Among the eighteen centurions there was no sergeant-major nor any

centurion of the upper rank. The highest in army rank was Sextius Baculus

of Isca, a native of Britain and lineally descended, through an original

colonist of Isca, from the celebrated sergeant-major of the Divine Julius.

He had been twelfth in rank in the Sixth Legion, being second centurion of

its second cohort. Not one of his seventeen associates had ranked so high:

the next highest being Publius Cordatus, of Lindum, who had been second

sergeant of the fourth cohort in the Twentieth Legion.

The totality of my mental impressions of what I heard from these two and

other members of this incredible deputation of insurgent mutineers and of

what I saw of the doings of the whole deputation, was vague and confused.

From the confusion emerged a predominating sense of their many

inconsistencies and of the haphazard irresponsibility and inconsequence of

their states of mind and actions. They were, indeed, entirely consistent

in one respect. Unlike Maternus and his men, not one of them blamed

Commodus for anything, not even for having appointed Perennis to his high

office and then having permitted him to arrogate to himself all the

functions of the government of the Republic and Empire. One and all they

excused the Emperor and expressed for him enthusiastic loyalty: one and

all they blamed not only the Prefect's mismanagement but also his own

appointment on Perennis. Consistent as they were in holding these opinions

or in having such feelings, the notions were inconsistent in themselves.

So likewise was their often expressed and manifestly sincere intention to

forestall the consummation of the alleged conspiracy and save the Emperor

inconsistent with their slow progress from Britain towards Rome. Never

having been in Britain and knowing little of it from such reports as I had

heard, I could not controvert their assertion that the state of the roads

and weather there had made impossible greater speed than they had achieved

from their quarters to their port, yet I suspected that men really

systematically in earnest might have accomplished in twenty days marches

which had occupied them for fifty-one days. I was certain that it was

nothing short of ridiculous for legionaries in hard fighting condition and

well fed to consume one hundred and one days in marching from their

landing-port on the coast of Gaul to Placentia: ten miles a day was

despicable marching even for lazy and soft-muscled recruits; any

legionaries should make fifteen, miles at day under any conditions,

earnest men keyed up to hurry should have made twenty and might often

march twenty-five miles between camps. These blatherskites were on fire

with high resolve, by their talk, yet had loafed along for a thousand

miles, camping early, sleeping long after sunrise, resting at midday and

gorging themselves at leisurely meals. All this was amazing.

Equally astonishing was the condition of supineness, of all governmental

officials in Gaul, local and Imperial, as their tale revealed it. Neither

the Prefect of the Rhine, nor any one of the Procurators of Gaul, had, as

far as their story indicated, made any effort to arrest them, turn them

back, stop them, check them, hinder them or even have them expostulated

with. As far as I could infer from all I heard neither had the governing

body of any city or town. For all they were interfered with by any

official they might have been full-time veterans, honorably discharged,

marching homeward under accredited officers provided with diplomas

properly made out, signed, sealed and stamped. Everywhere they had been

fed at public expense, lodged free or provided with camping-grounds and

tents; their pack-animals had been replaced if worn out, and everything

they needed had been provided on their asking for it or even before they

made any request. I could only infer that they had inspired fear by their

numbers and truculence and that each town or district had striven to keep

them in a good humor and to get rid of them as soon as possible by

entertaining them lavishly and speeding them along their chosen way.

As they told of their own behavior there had been no consistency or system

or method in their additions to their company. By their own account they

had enticed men to join them or had ignored likely recruits in the most

haphazard fashion, purely as the humor struck them. The like was true of

their emptyings of _ergastula_ in Italy. At Turin, as well as I could

gather from my chats with this or that centurion or soldier or liberated

slave, they had set free the inmates of the _ergastulum_ by the Segusio

Gate and had then turned aside to that by the Vercellae Gate, but had

ignored the larger _ergastulum_ by the Milan Gate; though they had marched

out of Turin, necessarily, by that gate. Similarly at Milan, they had

emptied two _ergastula_ and ignored the rest; as at Placentia, where they

had expended all their time and energy on the first _ergastulum_ they

happened on inside the Milan Gate and on ours, and then had ignored or

forgotten the four or five others, equally large and equally well filled.

On our progress to Rome I saw similar inconsistencies in their behavior.

They never so much as entered Fidentia, but marched round it, acquiescent

to the gentle suggestion of a trembling and incoherent alderman, quaking

with fear and barely able to enunciate some disjointed sentences. At Parma

they emptied two _ergastula_ and never so much as approached the others,

repeating this inconsistency at Mutina and Bononia. Outside of Faventia

something, I never learned what, enraged a knot of the veterans, so that

their fury communicated itself to all the soldiery from Britain and

inflamed their associates, Gallic and Italian. Whereupon we burst the

Bononia Gate of Faventia, flocked into the town, sacked some of the shops,

left a score of corpses in the market-place and some in the streets near

it, set fire to a block of buildings, and burst out of the Ariminum Gate,

tumultuous and excited, but without so much as trying the outer doors of

any _ergastulum_.

Yet, after this riotous performance, we did no damage at Ariminum, not

even entering the town, not even enquiring if it had an _ergastulum_, as

it must have had.

Similarly at Pisaurum, at Fanum Fortunae, at Forum Sempronii, though these

were small towns and could not have resisted us, we camped outside,

accepted gracefully the tents and food provided for us and made no move to

maltreat anyone or do any looting. But at Nuceria, at Spolitum and at

Narnia we entered the towns and liberated the inmates of two of the

_ergastula_, in each, though we never so much as threatened Interamnia.

Looking back over these proceedings I explain them to myself approximately

as follows: the eighteen centurions from Britain treated each other as if

they all felt on terms of complete mutual equality, none ever assumed any

rights of superiority, seniority, precedence, or authority, none was ever

invested with any right of permanent or temporary leadership. If some whim

prompted any one of the eighteen to take the lead in emptying an

_ergastulum_ or breaking in a town gate, or sacking a shop, not one of his

fellow-sergeants demurred or expostulated or opposed him; they all

concurred in any suggestion of any one of them. And the soldiers followed

their centurions with, apparently, implicit confidence in them, or a blind

instinct of deference. So of submission to the request of any town

decurion, that they stay outside: mostly, they were acquiescent. But if

something irritated a sergeant, or even a soldier, the entire deputation

flamed into fury and burst gates, sacked shops and even fired buildings

until their rage spent itself, after which they were civil and kindly to

all townsmen, whether officials, citizens, slaves or women and children. I

never could detect any reason for any action or inaction of theirs.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE EMPEROR

The liberations of public slaves from _ergastula_ in Turin, Milan,

Placentia, Parma, Mutina, Bononia, Nuceria, Spolitum and Narnia resulted

in the formation of eighteen tumultuary centuries, which, between Narnia

and Ocriculum, during a long noon-halt, were formed into the semblance of

three cohorts, thus we approached Rome as nine cohorts: three of the

deputies from Britain; three more of the recruits from Gaul, presumably

like the British legionaries, loyal patriots, bent on foiling Perennis,

and saving their beloved Emperor; and three more composed of the contents

of a dozen or more _ergastula_, opened as the whim took the veteran

sergeants, and assumed to contain not pilferers, runaways or evil-doers,

but innocent victims of the malignity of the understrappers of that

unspeakable Perennis.

As we drew near Rome Agathemer and I discussed our situation and prospects

with increasing alarm. After we left Narnia the watch on us was not so

close and we might have escaped. But we had seen a score of attempts at

escape, by various rascals, foiled and ending in the butchery of the

would-be fugitives. While escape was possible the risk was very great.

Also, Agathemer argued, we were too near to Rome to be safe if we got

clear away. Between dread of death if caught and fear of we knew not what

if we escaped, we stuck to our cookery. Mixed with our projects for

bettering our prospects we talked much of our amazement at the treatment

which the deputation and its associates had met in Italy. Manifestly the

townsfolk and their officials were not only overawed, but helpless. If

there had been no Rome, no Republic, no Praetorians, no Prefect of the

Palace, no central authority whatever we could not have been more

completely free from hindrance, coercion or question, Yet Agathemer and I

could not but conjecture that the Senate, Perennis and Commodus had been

promptly and minutely informed of all our doings, of our progress, of our

approach; and had taken measures to deal with us and our instigators. We

felt panicky.

Spouting long tirades about their loyalty to the Emperor, their hatred of

Perennis and their eagerness to foil one and save the other, our

irresponsible frontier centurions let their men and us loiter southward

through Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria as they had loitered on the other side

of the Alps, seldom marching more than ten miles a day. So that we left

Ocriculum on the tenth day before the Kalends of August and stopped

overnight at each change-station.

We had had fair weather all the way from Placentia, except a heavy rain at

Ariminum and showers in the mountains between Forum Sempronii and Nuceria.

When day dawned on us at Rostrata Villa, on the eighth day before the

Kalends of August, it dawned cloudy, but not threatening. After the usual

camp breakfast of porridge and wine, we fell in, by now fairly decent

marchers, and set off for Rubrae. But before we had marched a mile, the

low clouds soaked us with such a downpour as I had seldom seen of a July

morning near Rome. So heavy and so unrelenting was the rain that we were

glad to halt at the change-house at the twentieth mile-stone, where the

road from Capena to Veii crosses the Flaminian Highway and where there is

a prosperous village as large as many a small town. There we found

quarters and food ready for us and were well entertained. Ad Vicesimum, as

the place is called, is only four miles nearer Rome than Villa Rostrata.

It was about midway of that four-mile march in the pouring rain that I saw

by the roadside three immobile horsemen, their forms swathed in horsemen's

rain-cloaks, their faces hidden under broad-brimmed rain-hats, lined up

with their horses' noses barely a horse-length from the roadway, watching

from a little knoll our column as it passed. The middle horseman of the

three looked familiar. I glanced back at him and met his eyes, intensely

watching me from under his dripping hat brim, as I trudged on the edge of

the trudging rabble. A hot qualm surged through me. It was, it certainly

was, the very same man I had seen in the very same guise on the road

below Villa Andivia as Tanno and I passed by on our way to our fatal brawl

at Vediamnum; the very man who had peered in at me and Capito during his

fatal conference with me in Nemestronia's water-garden, the man whom Tanno

had asserted that he knew for an Imperial spy. I felt recognition in his

gaze; felt that he knew me for my very self. And his nose was hooked.

At our halting place, when Agathemer and I were alone, I asked him in

Greek if he had noticed the three stationary horsemen. He at once, without

my mentioning my suspicions, declared that he also had recognized the

middle horseman precisely as I had. What his presence there might forbode,

what his apparent recognition of me might portend, we could not

conjecture. We agreed that, although both of us had been on the lookout

for Imperial emissaries all the way from Placentia, and alertly watching

from Ariminum southwards, this was the first time we had set eyes on any

man whom we could take for a secret-service man. That so much time had

elapsed since the authorities must have been warned of our approach, that

we should have advanced so near Rome and yet that this should be the first

visible indication of espionage upon us, amazed both me and Agathemer.

Next day, a cloudy but rainless day, we marched only to Rubrae, the

change-station nearest Rome. There, as at every previous halt, we found

the authorities apprised of our approach and prepared to lodge and feed

us. And, as always since we left Nuceria, we were comfortably sheltered in

a camp all ready for our occupancy and lavishly provided with varied food

and passable wine.

Next day, the sixth day before the Kalends of August, dawned exquisitely

fair and bright, with a soft steady breeze; a perfect July day, mild but

not too warm. Our elected sergeants, now quite habituated to their duties

and authority as centurions, routed us up early and, after a leisurely

camp-breakfast, we fell in and set off on the last stage of this amazing

unopposed march of fifteen hundred insurgent mutineers for nineteen

hundred miles, in making which they had so loitered that they had consumed

on the road more than half a year and along which they had added to their

company casual associates twice as numerous as themselves. We left Rubrae

an excited horde, for the veterans were keyed up to a tense pitch of

expectancy by their anticipation of they knew not what culmination to

their insane adventure and their accidental recruits were aquiver with

uneasiness and apprehension.

The Mulvian Bridge over the Tiber is not more than four miles from Rubrae

along the winding Flaminian Highway and we were crossing it before the

third hour of the day was past. Marching with the first of the three

centuries formed at Placentia I had about five-sixths of our column ahead

of me. So I did not see, did not even glimpse, did not, from far towards

the rear, so much as guess what was happening. I knew only that, as I was

more than half way across the Mulvian Bridge, a wave of cheers started far

forward in our column and ran back to my century and all the way to the

rearmost men. What had occurred we did not know, but we broke ranks and

flowed out of the road to left and right, as did the men ahead of us,

becoming almost a mob, despite the remonstrances and orders of our

disgusted sergeants. They restrained us to some extent, but we were kept

back more by the fact that the foremost men blocked the highway, the men

who had been marching next them blocked the fields to right and left of

the highway and the rest of us were checked behind them, like water above

a dam.

As we stood there, packed together, with hardly a semblance of ranks kept

anywhere, craning to see over the heads of the men in front of us and to

try to see past and between the many big and tall tombs and mausoleums

which flanked the road on either side, a period of tense silence or

blurred murmurings was ended by a second great surge of cheers from front

to rear. We all cheered till we were hoarse. Again we peered and listened

and questioned each other, again came a roar of cheering like a sea

billow. Again and again alternated the half silence and the uproar. Before

we learned what was happening or had happened word came from mouth to

mouth that we were going on. The press in front of us gradually melted

away, we were able to sidle into the roadway, reform ranks and tramp on

Romewards.

After a very brief march we turned aside to our right into a meadow on the

west of the road and its flanking rows of tombs, between the Highway and

the Tiber, about half way from Mulvian Bridge to the Flaminian Gate of

Rome; that is, about half a mile from each. There we found a meticulously

laid-out and perfectly appointed camp, precisely suited to the forty-five

hundred of us and our requisitioned mules, wagons and what not. It

contained some four hundred and fifty tents, set on clipped grass along

rolled and gravelled streets as straight as bricklayers' guide-boards; all

about a paved square of ample size, on the rear of which was set up a

gorgeous commander's tent of the whitest canvas, striped with red almost

as deep, rich and glowing as the Imperial crimson, and manifestly meant to

imitate it as closely as such a dyestuff could. On either side of this

Praetorium were a dozen tents, smaller indeed than the Praetorium, but

much larger than tents set up for us, presumably for the commanders'

aides. In front of the Praetorium, between it and the square, was a wide,

broad and high platform of new brickwork, paved on top, railed with solid,

low, carved railings set in short carved oak posts. The corner posts, and

two others dividing the front and back of the platform equally, were tall

and supported an awning of striped canvas like that of the commander's

tent.

Goggling with curiosity we, as we deployed to our quarters, stared hard at

the magnificent tent and sumptuous platform with its gorgeous awning. Once

at our quarters, I and Agathemer, of course, must cook and serve food to

our century. Only after all were fed did we, in common with all the middle

and rear of our road-column, learn what had occurred.

While we ate, our sergeants, while they also ate somehow, held a

centurions' council, at which those of the fifty-four who had not been far

enough forward on the Highway to see and hear were informed, by those who

had, of what had happened. When our sergeant returned from this council he

told us, in a jumbled and mumbled attempt at an address.

From what he told me and from what I heard later I gather that, as the

column debouched from the bridge, its head was met and checked by a body

of mounted Praetorian Guards. Their tribune, in the name of the Emperor,

ordered the column to halt and bade its centurions deploy their men right

and left and mass them in a largish space free of big tombs. As they

deployed the Praetorians also deployed to left and right of the Highway

and the foremost mutineers descried on the roadway the splendid horses and

gorgeous trappings of the Emperor's personal staff, among whom, from the

statues, busts and painted panel-portraits of him which they had seen

daily in their own quarters and countless times on their road to Rome, the

more alert of them recognized their liege.

Then rose that unexpected wave of cheering which had first apprized us in

the rear that something unusual was toward. Commodus, as I heard from

Publius Cordatus himself, after our nap and before the Emperor's return,

was mounted on a tall sorrel such as his father had always preferred on

his frontier campaigns. Also he was garbed not only as his father had

habitually been when on frontier expeditions, but seemingly, in one of his

old outfits. For not only Cordatus, but a dozen more, declared that his

helmet, corselet and the plates of his kilt-straps, were of ungilded,

unchased, plain steel, not even bright with polishing, but tarnished, all

but rusty, with exposure to rain, mist and sun; his plume and cloak rain-

faded and sun-faded till their crimson showed almost brown; his scabbard

plain, dingy leather; his saddle of similar cheap, durable leather, his

saddle-cloth of a crimson faded as brown as his cloak and plume. This was

precisely the Spartan simplicity which Aurelius, as more than half a

Stoic, had always affected, partly from an innate tendency towards self-

restraint and modesty, partly that his example might, at first, offset the

sumptuosity of Verus and, after his death, might inculcate, by example,

economy in his lavish and self-indulgent retinue.

Whatever the motive, by this semi-histrionic effort at self-effacement the

Emperor made himself tenfold conspicuous among his staff-officers, whose

plumes, cloaks, kilts, and saddle-cloths blazed with crimson, green and

gold, blue and silver and even crimson and gold.

Commodus, in any gear, was not only a tall, well-knit, impressive figure

of a man, but, in his most negligent moods, he had something about him

dominating, masterful, princely and Imperial. The sight of him cowed all

who could then see him. Steadily he eyed them as they finished their

tumultuary deployment and pressed forward to see and hear. When they were

packed as closely as possible till no more could get within earshot he

spoke:

"Fellow soldiers, what does this mean?"

All were too awed at the sight of their venerated Caesar for any man to

speak up at once and the Emperor repeated:

"Fellow-soldiers, what does this mean? Tell me, I am your fellow-soldier."

Then Sextius Baculus himself replied, choking and hesitating, quailing

before his lord:

"We are your loyal soldiers from Britain; a deputation come afoot and

afloat almost two thousand miles to warn you of what no man in Rome, for

fear of you more than of your treacherous Prefect, dares to warn you.

Perennis is no fit guardian of your safety; in fact he is of all men most

unfit. For more than two years now he has been laying his plans to have

you assassinated, and to make Emperor in your place his eldest son, the

darling of the Illyrian legionaries. We have come to save you, foil him

and see him and his dead."

"Fellow-soldiers," the Emperor spoke at once, loudly and clearly, "I

acclaim your purpose and welcome your good intentions. But I mean to prove

to you that I am in fact as well as in title Tribune and Prince of the

Republic, Emperor of its armies, Augustus and Caesar. Your solicitude I

applaud, but I feel better able to take care of myself than can any other

man save myself. I fear no man and appoint no man I distrust. I distrust

few men after appointment. You lodge a grave charge against a man I have

trusted, appointed and then trusted. I condemn few men unheard. As your

Imperator I command you to camp where my legates indicate, to eat a hearty

noon meal, to sleep, or at least rest in your tents, two full hours. About

the tenth hour of the day I shall return, my trusty guards about me and

Perennis himself in my retinue. From the platform of your camp, as a chief

commander should, I will harangue you, and from that platform, after he

has heard from me your accusation, my Prefect of the Praetorium shall make

to you his defense. After he has spoken you shall hear me deliver just and

impartial judgment, a judgment no man of you can but accept as fair and

righteous.

"And now farewell, until the tenth hour."

At which word he had reined up, wheeled and spurred his mettlesome mount

and thereupon vanished with his staff in a cloud of dust, at full gallop.

According to the Emperor's behest we rested in our tents after the

centurions had each harangued his men. But if any slept, it was a marvel.

All were too excited to sleep and every tent, as far as I could learn,

talked without cessation. By the tenth hour, when the sun was visibly

declining and the warmth of the midday abating, we were all assembled in

the camp-square, the men helmeted and with their swords at their sides,

but without shields or spears.

It was perfectly in keeping with the inconsistency of the mutineers that

the crowd of men in the camp-square, instead of being marshalled by

centuries under their sergeants, was allowed to assemble mob-fashion as

each man came and pushed. Thus Agathemer and I, who should have been

preparing to cook our company's evening meal, were not only in the throng,

but well forward among the men and, in fact, pressed legs and chests

against the legs and backs of two veterans not far from the rearmost

centurions of the gathering of sergeants, not sixty feet from the

platform, and nearly opposite its middle, though a little to the left. Few

veteran privates heard and saw better than we.

When the Imperial cortege arrived and the platform began to fill, we two,

like the men around us and like, I feel sure, the entire gathering, were

amazed to see among the men four women, and Agathemer and I were doubly

amazed to recognize one as Marcia. Agathemer, who knew the former slaves

and present freedwomen of the Palace far better than I, whispered that the

others were the sister and wife of Perennis and the wife of Cleander, like

him a former slave and pampered freedman, and for long his rival.

The platform, of course, was lined and partly filled with aides, lictors,

equerries, pages, and other Imperial satellites before the Emperor rode

up, dismounted and appeared among his retinue. He strode springily to the

front and seated himself on the crimson cushion of the ivory curule seat

which a lictor placed for him. Marcia, to my tenfold amazement, then

seated herself on a not dissimilar maple folding-seat, spread for her by a

page. She was placed at the very front of the platform, next him on his

right. Next her was Cleander's wife, also, to my still greater amazement,

similarly seated, as were the two almost as ornately clad ladies with

Perennis, who sat on his left, he standing to the left of the Emperor, who

was set only a short yard in advance of the row of officials and intimates

who lined the front of the platform.

Until all who had a right to places on the platform had mounted it and

each had stationed himself in his proper position, the Emperor sat quietly

regarding the mob of men facing him, eyeing us keenly and steadily. An

equerry leaned over and whispered to him and he stood up. I could feel the

men thrill, even more positively than they had thrilled when he appeared

from among his retinue. I conjectured, instantly, that he had felt, if not

an actual dread of the mutineers, at least a doubt as to his ability to

quell them and a need for all possible adventitious aids. Thus I explained

to myself his having donned, that morning, trappings such as his father

had worn on frontier campaigns, apparently with the purpose of eliciting

the sympathies of the men.

He now wore a gilded helmet, elaborately chased, and its crest a carved

Chimaera spouting golden flames, which golden spout of flames, with the

Chimaera's wings, formed the support from which waved his crimson plume,

all of brilliantly dyed ostrich feathers. His corselet was similarly

gilded or, perhaps, like the helmet, even of pure gold hammered and

chased, adorned with depictions of the battles of the gods and giants

above, and below with Trajan's victories over the Parthians. His kilt-

straps were of crimson leather, plated with gilt or gold overlapping

scales. His cloak was of the newest and most brilliant Imperial crimson.

The platform was so high that I could clearly see his shapely calves and

the gold eagles embroidered on the sky-blue soft leather of his half-

boots. In his hand, he held a short baton or truncheon, such as all field-

commanders carry as an emblem of independent command, such as I had seen

at Tegulata in the hand of Pescennius Niger. It was gilded or gold-plated

and its ends were chased pine-cones. Manifestly every detail of his

habiting had been meticulously considered and the total effect carefully

calculated. Certainly he was not only handsome and winsome, but dignified

and imposing, truly a princely and Imperial figure. Evidently he had

calculatingly arrayed himself so as to appear at one and the same time as

Emperor and as a field-commander. The effect on the men, if I could judge,

was all he had wished, all he could have hoped for. He dominated the mob

of men as he dominated the platform.

There was no need of his wave of the arm enjoining silence. The silence,

from his first movement as he rose, was as complete as possible.

"Fellow-soldiers," he said, and he spoke as well as the most practiced

orator, audibly to all, smoothly and charmingly, "you have come from

Britain across the sea, across Gaul, across the Alps, and half the length

of Italy, with the best intentions, with the sincerest hearts, to apprize

me of danger to me in my own Palace, danger unsuspected by me, as you

believe. Your loyalty, your good intentions, your sincerity I realize and

rejoice over. But I find it hard to believe that any soldiers in distant

frontier garrisons can be better informed than the Prince himself of what

goes on in Italy, in Rome, in the very Palace. You have lodged the gravest

accusations against one of my most important and most trusted officials. I

shall now state your charges, that the accused man may hear them now for

the first time from my own lips and may here and now make his defence to

you and to me."

He paused. My eyes had been on Commodus and now shifted to Perennis.

Perennis was a handsome man, but in spite of, rather than because of, his

build and features. Even through the splendid trappings of Prefect of the

Praetorium he appeared too tall and too thin, his neck was too long, his

face too long, his ears too big, his long nose overhung his upper lip. He

was impressive and capable looking but appeared too crafty, too foxy. I

felt sure that he had not the least suspicion of what was coming. He

looked all vanity, self-satisfaction and vainglorious self-sufficiency.

"Fellow-soldiers," the Emperor went on, "you charge that my Prefect of the

Praetorium is not loyal, but is most treacherous; that he has been, for

more than two years, plotting my death and the elevation to the

Principiate of his eldest son, now Procurator of Illyricum. As he has now

heard the charge, so you shall now hear the defense of my Prefect of the

Praetorium."

I must say that Perennis, though manifestly thunderstruck, kept his

senses, kept his self-command and, after a brief instant in which he

paled, swayed and seemed utterly dazed, rose to the occasion. For that

brief instant he appeared as overcome as his horrified wife and sister,

who all but fainted on their seats; as his horrified sons, who stood,

agape, dead-pale, one by his white-faced mother, and the other by his

incredulous aunt.

Perennis, certainly, gathered himself together promptly, got himself under

full control, had all his wits about him and made a perfectly conceived,

finely delivered, coherent, logical, telling speech in his own defence. It

was long, but nowhere diffuse, and it held the attention manifestly, not

only of the mutineers, but of the Emperor himself, and of all his retinue,

even the most vacuous of the mere courtiers. As he ended it, it was plain

that Perennis believed he had cleared himself completely and had not only

vindicated himself before his master, but had convinced the mutineers of

his guiltlessness and loyalty. His expression of face, as he wound up his

eloquent peroration, was that of a man who, unexpectedly to himself,

transmounts insuperable difficulties and triumphs.

Confidently he turned to Commodus; smiling and at ease, he awaited his

decision. The Emperor stood up, more dominating, if possible, than before.

"Fellow-soldiers," he said, "watch me closely and listen carefully. What I

do shall be as significant as what I say. I have pondered your charges

since you made them this morning. In my mind I have run over all that I

knew of this man's doings and sayings since I made him the guardian of my

personal safety. I have let him hear your charges from my own lips and,

like you, I have listened patiently to his brilliant and able speech in

his own defence. I am Prince of the Republic and Emperor of its armies, to

favor no man, to do and speak impartial justice to all men alike.

"You know what happens to the shirker who sleeps on his post when on

sentry-duty about a camp at night in the face of the enemy. If guilty of

what you charge any Prefect of the Praetorium deserves not otherwise than

such a traitor. I have heard all this man has to say. I did not believe

you this morning. I do not disbelieve you now. I do not believe this man,

I believe he has been treacherous and that in his dexterous defence just

now he lied. Watch me! I turn him over to you."

And, with a really magnificent gesture, he stepped half a pace away from

Perennis, stretched out his left arm, the golden baton in his hand, and,

with that fatal truncheon, touched him on the shoulder.

The roar that rose was the roar of wild beasts ravening for their prey.

The men, packed as they were, somehow surged forward. On the shoulders of

their fellow-centurions, a sort of billow of the foremost sergeants rose

like surf against a rock; like surf breaking against a rock a sort of foam

of them overflowed the front of the platform. For the twinkling of an eye

I beheld above this rising tide of executioners the imperious dignity of

the Emperor, master of the scene, self-confident and certain that all men

would approve of his decision, magnificent in his military trappings; the

incredulous amazement of Perennis, his pale, watery blue eyes bleared in

his lead-colored, bloodless face, as he stood dazed and numb; the horror

of his bedizened wife and sister, both fleshy women, dark-skinned and

normally red-cheeked, now gray with despair, like the two wretched lads

beside them; the cruelly feminine relish, as upon the successful fruition

of long and tortuous intrigues, blazoned on the faces of Marcia and of

Cleander's wife, a very showy woman with golden hair, violet eyes and a

delicately pink and white complexion: a similar expression of relished

triumph on the broad, fat, ruddy face of her big husband, who looked just

what he had been; a man who had started life as a slave; whose master had

thought him likely to be most profitably employed as a street porter, in

which capacity he had for years carried packs, crates, bales, chests,

rafters and such like immensely heavy loads long distances and had thriven

on his exertions; who, whatever brains he had since displayed, however

much character and merit had contributed to his dazzling rise in life, had

retained and still possessed a hearty appetite, a perfect digestion,

mighty muscles, hard and solid, all over his hulking frame, and the vast

strength of his early prime; all these chief actors framed against a

background of gaudily caparisoned officers and courtiers.

In scarcely more than the twinkling of an eye Perennis. was seized by four

brawny frontier sergeants and hurled down among the men, among whom he

vanished like a lynx under a pack of dogs. I caught no afterglimpse of him

nor of his frayed corpse; I descried only a sort of whirlpool of active

men about the spot where he had, as it were, sunk into their vortex.

When the flailing arms ceased flailing and the panting executioners stood

quiet, the Emperor stretched out his right hand for silence; the rumbling

snarls and growls of the mob abated till silence reigned. Into it he

spoke:

"You know the custom of our fathers since Numa. The family of a traitor is

abolished with him."

There came a second roar of the ravening, ferocious men, a second surge of

the foremost up the face of the platform, and, instantly, the sons, wife

and sister of Perennis were pushed from it, cast down among the mob, and

never reappeared. After the mob quieted a second time Commodus again

raised his hand for silence. Quicker than before the men were still. He

spoke loud and clear: "You have saved me from a treacherous Prefect of

the Praetorium. I have meditated whom to appoint to his vacant post. I

have considered well. I now present him to you; my faithful henchman,

Cleander of Mazaca, who, by his own deserts, has won citizenship in the

Republic, equestrian rank and my favor and gratitude."

The mob cheered.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MASSACRE

Retrospectively, Cleander is talked of, if at all, chiefly as having been

brutish, dull, stupid, venal, avaricious and cruel. Cruel and avaricious

he certainly became; venal and brutish he certainly seemed; but dull or

stupid I cannot admit that he ever was. Indubitably, at the time of his

appointment to be Prefect of the Praetorium, he possessed some qualities

fitting him, as he later was, to be entrusted by his self-indulgent master

with the administration of the whole Empire. Certainly he was quick-

thinking, prompt, ingenious, incredibly persuasive, resolute and ruthless,

which qualities go far towards equipping a ruler. Without these

characteristics he could not have conceived or adopted the plan which he

successfully executed.

Commodus caught Cleander's eye, nodded to him and sat down. Confident and

smiling, Oleander stepped forward to the platform's railing and addressed

us.

"As Prefect of the Praetorium, I am charged with the care of the personal

safety of our Prince in his Palace, in the City and wherever he may be.

Among measures for his personal safety I rate high the maintenance of

discipline and loyalty among his frontier garrisons or their

reëstablishment if impaired. By his command you are to return speedily

whence you came and tell your fellows of the complete success of your

mission. I must be sure that your report will satisfy them, that you set

out on your return fully satisfied yourselves. Are you satisfied? I ask

your senior sergeant to act as spokesman. After he has spoken I shall give

all who desire it the opportunity to speak."

Sextius Baculus at once replied that they were not satisfied while the

post of Procurator of Illyricum was held by the eldest son of Perennis, or

while he held any office, or, in fact, while he was alive.

Cleander, in a loud, far-carrying voice, apprized the entire assemblage of

what Baculus had said, and replied to him:

"From now on I am in charge of all matters pertaining to the personal

safety of Caesar, including the apprehension and execution of all traitors

and potential traitors. You may rely implicitly on me without suggestions

from anyone to take all measures which may be necessary in all such cases.

In this case you may feel assured that I have already initiated measures

which will infallibly lead to the traitor's return to Italy, without any

unsettlement of the loyalty of the Illyrian garrisons, to his being

quietly arrested and as quietly executed. Are you satisfied?"

The answer was a roar of cheers, roar after roar. When the cheering

subsided Cleander, three separate times, urged anyone who wished to speak

up. No man spoke. Then he said:

"I am commissioned by Caesar to repeat to you explicitly what he has

himself partly expressed to you twice today: his appreciation of your

fealty and good intentions, his thanks for your good order on your march

from Britain and for your having saved him from unsuspected peril, and his

gratitude. But please take note and remember that Caesar specially

commissions me to say to you that no similar deputation from Britain or

from anywhere else will ever be permitted to reach Rome, to enter Italy or

even to set out from the posts assigned to its members. Any attempt at

such a deputation will be treated, not as well-meant effort to help our

Sovereign, but as sacrilegious rebellion against him.

"Also please note that, whereas he has accepted your advice and acted upon

it, any further expression of advice from any of you or any future attempt

of any legionaries to advise the Emperor will be regarded as an unbearable

act of insolence and presumption and dealt with as such. Caesar commands

you to be silent and obey.

"Through me he notifies you that your stay at Rome is to be short, that

you are, within a few days, under officers appointed by him, to set out on

your return march to your Gallic port, there to reëmbark for Britain,

there to guard the frontier or keep order in the provinces. As a

preparation, for your return march he bids you rest and feast; and, that

all may feast, he has lavishly provided food and wine, which you will find

ready at your quarters, and with that provision an ample force of cooks

and servitors to prepare and distribute your banquet. Caesar now goes to

dine and bids you disperse to dine. I have spoken for Caesar. Obey!"

Less heartily, perhaps, but universally, this haughty speech was responded

to by loud, tumultuous and long-lasting cheers. More cheers saluted the

Emperor when he stood up and followed him till he had vanished with his

retinue, at full gallop. The men even continued to cheer until Cleander's

wife and Marcia had entered their gilded carriages and been driven off in

the wake of the Imperial cortege.

Our evening meal was truly, as Cleander had called it, a feast and a

banquet. When we reached our quarters the food was ready and just ready

and our repast began at once. It was calculated, in every particular, to

induce gluttonous gorging and guzzling. Before our hunger was really

satisfied, before we had more than barely begun to drink the temptingly

excellent wine, Agathemer whispered in Greek:

"This banquet is an attempt to make all of us sleep far too soundly. Every

man of us will be surfeited with food and fuddled with wine. You and I

must be exceptions. Be sure to eat less than you want and to make a mere

show of drinking. We must keep awake."

We did, and, in our tent, discussed in whispers our situation.

"North of Nuceria," Agathemer said, "I judged that we should be safer by

ourselves than with these fools and rabble, but they kept such close watch

on us that the risks of escape were too great. South of Narnia I have

judged us better off where we were than if wandering alone. Now whatever

the risks of an attempt to escape, whatever the perils we may encounter if

we escape, try to escape we must. I have an intuition that this camp is,

tonight, the most dangerous spot in all Italy."

We peered out of the tent at intervals; without hindrance or danger, for

our tent-mates were utterly asleep. The night was windless and warm. A

moon, more than half full, rose about midnight and, as it climbed the sky,

shed a pearly light through a veil of mist which deepened and thickened.

Near the ground the mist was so thick that it made escape easy, though

blundering likely.

We tried to judge our time so as to start a full hour before the first

streak of dawn. We traversed unhindered a camp sunk in sleep, where we

heard no sound but crapulous snorings. Northward, towards the Mulvian

Bridge, we sneaked out into the tomb-lined meadows. Through or above the

dense fog we could spy the pinnacles of several vast and ambitious

mausoleums glittering in the moon-rays.

We were not a hundred yards from the camp when I dimly perceived ahead of

us through the fog something like a wall or stockade about two yards high.

A step or two further, at the same moment at which I made out that it was

a serried rank of helmetted men, a challenge rang out, sharp and

peremptory.

Instantaneously we dropped on our hands and knees and crawled back to

camp.

"I told you I had a suspicion that this was a dangerous locality,"

Agathemer whispered when we had stood up and gotten our breath. "Those

were regular infantry of some sort. We can only hope that they are on that

side only. Let's try towards Rome."

There, at about the same distance we were similarly challenged.

In camp again Agathemer said:

"Those were Praetorian infantrymen, and they were standing shoulder to

shoulder. This looks bad. But I believe in taking every possible chance.

Let's try towards the road."

Eastwards also we encountered the like obstacle.

Back we crawled unpursued. As we skurried through the snoring camp,

unperceived by the sodden sleepers, Agathemer said, aloud:

"This looks increasingly bad. The Praetorians are standing with

interlocked elbows; they look unpleasantly like samples of a complete

cordon round the camp. The mounted Praetorians are behind them not two

horse-lengths and less than that apart. I divined some sort of troops

massed behind the cavalrymen. I feel frightened."

Out we raced towards the broad Tiber, towards it we crept through fog

across the meadow. Again we were challenged. The cordon was, apparently,

complete.

As we regained the camp Agathemer said:

"If we are to escape alive we need all our craft, and we must be quick."

We sprinted, not to our quarters, but to those of the British veterans.

Into each tent we peered.

Every tent was empty!

Agathemer, plainly, felt in a desperate hurry, yet he took time to glance

into the most of the hundred and fifty tents, tearing along past the lines

of them. He also took time, after our brief inspection was finished, to

pause, get his breath and say:

"This looks worse than bad. I miss my guess if many of these slumberers

wake alive. Strip!"

We stripped of everything except our amulet bags.

Then, at full run, stark naked, our unsheathed sheath-knives in our hands,

we raced through the fog, now glimmering with the first forehint of coming

dawn, along the inner edge of the veterans' tents, till we were opposite

the quarters of the tumultuary century formed from the outpourings of the

_ergastulum_, at Nuceria.

Into one of the veterans' tents we went.

"Knife in teeth!" said Agathemer.

The tents were lavishly provided with unsoldierly comforts, a double

allowance of blankets and mattresses stuffed with dried reeds or sedge.

Motioning me to help, Agathemer doubled a mattress and pressed on it till

it lay so. Then he doubled another and set it so that the two were about a

yard apart, with their folds towards each other. Another pair he set

similarly so that the interval between the folds was over two yards long.

Then we roofed the interval, so to speak, with two mattresses laid flat,

and laid two more on each of these. Not yet satisfied Agathemer led me out

four times to drag in, from the near-by tents, mattresses, two of which we

laid lengthwise over the triple mattress-roof, the others we heaped over

the end of the roofed tunnel furthest from the opening of the tent.

Then we went outside yet again and cut the ropes of the two adjacent tents

and of the one above the pile of mattresses. We threw our knives far away

and bunched up the collapsed canvas of that tent so that it formed a sort

of continuation of the mattress-roofed tunnel. Then we crawled, feet

first, into the tunnel, taking with us two full water-bottles which

Agathemer had found in one of the tents and a quarter loaf of bread, left

over from the banquet. It smelt appetizing.

We wriggled into the tunnel side by side, until our heads were well under

the mattress-roof. We could see out under the huddled, crumpled canvas.

Full in our limited view lay, in the middle of the camp street, a fat

Nucerian, the outline of his big chest and prominent paunch dimly visible

in the increasing light. His gurgling snores were plainly audible.

Agathemer broke off two fragments of the bread and we munched

ruminatively.

We had hardly swallowed three mouthfuls when Agathemer exclaimed:

"Just in time! I can hear the arrows already! Listen!"

We listened. I could hear a sound as of hail on roofs. And, just above us,

I could hear the arrows plunge into our protecting mound with a swishing,

rending thud.

"We ought to be safe," Agathemer whispered. "But we may get skewered even

as we are. Volleyed arrows drive deep."

I heard many a volley and, after the first, since I was listening for it,

I heard faintly before each volley the deep boom of thousands of powerful

bows, twanging all at the same instant.

As the light increased I could see the drunken Nucerian with his hummocky

outline emphasized by five feathered arrows planted in his body. He must

have been killed by any of the five.

When we saw living men pass across our outlook, their legs looked like

those of some sort of foreign auxiliaries. I made the conjecture, from

their movements, that they were killing the merely wounded. Certainly, one

of them drove his long sword through the prostrate, arrow-skewered

Nucerian; and, sometime later, another, with quite a different type of

leg-coverings, did the like.

After daylight we saw pass by the legs of many Praetorian infantrymen and

of some cavalrymen. From the second hour we saw only legs of some novel

sort of regular soldiery whose trappings neither of us could recognize.

It grew hot in our hiding place. We talked in whispers; while talking we

seemed more indifferent to the heat.

Agathemer said:

"All this must have been planned beforehand and carefully and very

skillfully carried out. It took ingenuity, minutely detailed arrangements

and great skill to arrange that banquet so as to get all the tumultuary

additions to the deputation surfeited and dead drunk and yet keep the

veteran legionaries near enough to being sober to be waked up, marshalled

and marched out. And it took amazing eloquence to wheedle their centurions

into abandoning their invited associates. The whole thing is a miracle. I

can't see through it."

I may interpolate here, what I learned more than four years later, after

Cleander's downfall and death and after my return from Africa, that

Agathemer's conjectures, as we talked the matter over in our nook, were

correct. Perennis had formulated the plan and had prepared for it and

given the preliminary orders. His was the policy of allowing the mutineers

to march all the way to Rome unhindered. He, without consulting the

Emperor and with every care to prevent him from suspecting what was afoot,

imported a thousand archers from Crete, and as many mounted bowmen from

Numidia, from Mauretania and from Gaetulia. He planned the banquet-feast,

he made arrangements for the cordon of Praetorians. The massacre was his

idea.

Cleander must have known of all this; he could not, like Commodus, be kept

in ignorance. Either before he came to our camp, or, perhaps, in his

elation at his rival's ruin and his own success, he adopted the ready

plan. Most likely the separation from their fellows of the veteran

mutineers was all his own idea; Perennis was not the man to carry out so

bold a stroke nor so much as to conceive of it. Indubitably, after dark,

the eighteen veteran sergeants were secretly called to a meeting with

Cleander. The fellow must have possessed superhuman powers of persuasion.

Certainly he made a long speech in which he convinced the leaders of the

mutineers that their having associated with themselves tumultuary recruits

in Gaul and the liberated inmates of _ergastula_ in Italy was inconsistent

with their expressed loyalty to Caesar and the Commonwealth; that by such

action, they had gravely imperilled the very existence of the Republic and

the safety of their Emperor. He won them over so completely that they

acceded, without hesitation, to his dictum that they ought to do all in

their power to repair the ill effects of their error of judgment; that the

only way was to abandon their associates, to leave them for him to deal

with and to march with all speed back to Britain to reassure their fellow-

insurgents and reclaim Britain to effective loyalty.

So completely were they under his spell that they returned to their camp,

roused their men without waking any of their tumultuary associates, and

marched the whole body of veterans, in the night, across the Mulvian

Bridge and on all day to a prepared camp near Careiae, where they spent

the night. From there they marched in two days the forty-six miles to

Cosa; whence they followed the Aurelian road to Marseilles, as we had

ridden it, and from there marched across Gaul to Gessoriacum and shipped

for Britain, all in half the time in which they had come.

Agathemer and I spent the whole day in our hiding place, suffering

terribly from the heat, for the day was hot, muggy and breezeless, so that

the still sultry air was stifling. We spared our water-bottles and made

their contents last. Our bread we munched relishingly after noon.

Before sunset we were discovered and unearthed by some of the infantry

whose trappings were unknown to us. We found out later that they belonged

to the newly-enlisted Viarii, cohorts created from picked young men judged

agile, alert, intelligent and loyal, to act as a special road-constabulary

to deal with robbers and especially with the bands obeying the King of the

Highwaymen and with him.

Our captors did not treat us roughly, though they bound our hands behind

us effectually. They laughed over our device for escaping the arrows and

commented on our cleverness. Our amulet-bags they ignored, being more

interested in our brand-marks and scourge-scars. Their sergeant asked us

where we were from.

"Do you think it likely," Agathemer laughed, "that we would tell you;

can't you read on our backs that, wherever we came from it is the last

place on earth we want to go back to?"

The sergeant laughed genially.

"Mark 'em 'unidentified'," he ordered.

They clothed us in tunics innocent of any blood-stains, but which, we felt

sure, had been taken from the corpses of our late associates.

"Put 'em with the rest," the sergeant ordered.

With the rest, some three hundred survivors out of more than three

thousand tumultuaries, we were herded inside a convoy of constabulary and

marched in the dusk and dark to our former camp at Rubrae. There we were

liberally fed on what was, apparently, the leavings from the entertainment

afforded the mutineers there on their down-march.

Next morning we were lined up and inspected by a superior officer with two

orderlies and two secretaries. As he passed down the rank in which

Agathemer and I stood he eyed us keenly. After a time he returned and

said:

"These two rascals are trying to keep together. Separate them!"

Thereafter I saw no more of Agathemer for over four years.

I do not wish to dwell on my wretchedness, after we were parted. Alone

among riffraff, I was very miserable. I mourned for the faithful fellow

and knew he mourned for me. I longed for him as keenly as if he had been

my twin-brother.

I and my fellows were marched on under close convoy, up the Flaminian

Highway and the batch among which I was, was cast into the _ergastulum_ at

Nuceria.

There I passed a miserable winter. Our prison was not unlike the

_ergastulum_ at Placentia; ill-designed, damp, cold, filthy, swarming with

vermin and crowded with wretches like myself. I was despondent in my

loneliness and found harder to bear my shiverings, my fitful half-sleep in

my foul infested bunk, the horrible food, the grinding labor, the stripes

and blows and insults of the guards and overseers and the jeers of my

inhuman fellow-sufferers. This time I had no chance of becoming cook's-

helper or of easing my circumstances in any other manner. I spent the

entire winter haggard for sleep, underclad, underfed, overworked,

shivering, beaten and abused.

Conditions in that _ergastulum_ were more than amazing. It was so utterly

mismanaged that, in fact, very little effective work was done, though the

inmates were roused early, set to their tasks before they could really

see, lashed all day, given but a very brief rest at noon and released only

after dusk. Half the prisoners judiciously directed could have ground

twice as much grain. As it was, the superintendent and overseers had far

less real authority than a sort of dictator elected or selected or

tolerated by the rabble. He had a sort of senate of the six most ruffianly

of the prisoners. These seven ruled the _ergastulum_ and their power was

effective for overworking and underfeeding, even more than the generality,

those whom they disliked, and for diminishing the labors and increasing

the rations of their favorites. The existence of this secret government

among the rabble was in itself astonishing, its methods yet more so.

Unlike the _ergastulum_ at Placentia the watch at the _ergastulum_ at

Nuceria was very lax and haphazard. It was effective at keeping us in;

there were but three escapes all winter. But communication with the

outside world was fairly easy and was kept up unceasingly. Many of the

inmates had friends among the slaves of Nuceria. The gate-guards were so

remiss that, daily, one or more outsiders entered our prison and left when

they pleased. The henchmen of the dictator even managed to slip out and

spend an hour or more where they pleased in the city. This, however, was

possible only if they returned soon, for the superintendent was keen on

calling us over three times a day.

Through the activities of those inmates who arranged to get out and

return, and of their friends who entered and left, since the weighers of

the grain and flour were careless and their inspectors negligent, the

dictator and his friends drove a regular and profitable trade in stolen

flour, which they exchanged for wine, oil, dainties, stolen clothing and

such other articles as they desired; they even sold much of it for cash,

and not only the dictator but each of the six senators had a hoard of

coins, not merely coppers, but broad silver pieces.

In this traffic and its advantages I had no share. In fact, of all his

fellows, I think the dictator hated me most; certainly he bullied me, made

my lot harder in countless petty ways, and abused and insulted me

constantly.

After mid-winter I became aware of a traffic not only in dainties and

wine, but in implements and weapons. Many daggers and knives were smuggled

into the _ergastulum_, not a few files. The senators had a small arsenal

of old swords, regular infantry swords, rusty but dangerous. Gradually I

heard whispers of a plot. The conspirators were to file through the bars

of more than one window, plastering up the filed places with filth and

earth to conceal the filing, leaving a thread of metal to hold the filed

bars in place. Then, when all was ready, they planned to murder the

guards, overseers and superintendent, break out, sack the town-arsenal,

loot shops and mansions, and then, well-clad and fully armed, take to the

mountains and join the bands of the King of the Highwaymen. Two of the

senators claimed to have been men of his before their incarceration and

promised to lead the rest to the haunts of his brigands.

The date set for their attempt was the fourteenth day before the Kalends

of April, a few days before the Vernal Equinox. My gorge rose at the idea

of the burning and sacking of Nuceria, even at the slaughter of our cruel

guards, overseers and superintendent. The more I thought the matter over

the less I liked the prospect. I had every reason to hate the dictator and

senators. I saw no likelihood of betterment for myself if I were carried

off with these riffraff as one of a band of looters, murderers and

outlaws, loose in the forests.

I contrived to disclose the plot to the prison authorities. As a result

the _ergastulum_ was entered by the town guards, rigorously searched by

the aldermen and their apparitors, under the aldermen's eyes, all the sawn

bars, files, knives, daggers and swords discovered, the suspected men

tortured till the ring-leaders were identified, the dictator and his

senators flogged and manacled, and the management of the _ergastulum_

renovated.

I was conducted from the prison, given a bath, clothed in a clean, warm

tunic and cloak, provided with good shoes, abundantly fed and put to sleep

in a clean bed in the house of a freedman who watched closely that I did

not escape, but did everything to make me comfortable.

The next day the chief alderman of Nuceria interrogated me at the town

hall, praised me, declared that I had saved the town many horrors and much

damage and loss, and asked me what reward I craved.

I answered, boldly, that what I craved was what all slaves craved:

freedom.

He replied that, in his opinion, I had merited manumission; but that I was

not the property of the municipality of Nuceria, but of the _fiscus_;

[Footnote: See Note B.] I was, in short, part of the personal property of

the Emperor and could be manumitted only by the Emperor, or by one of his

legal representatives. Such a manumission would be difficult to arrange

and its arrangement would take a long time. He would set to work to try to

arrange for it. Meantime, could I not ask some reward within their power

to grant?

I at once replied that I desired above all things never to be returned to

that _ergastulum_.

This he promised immediately, saying that recommitment there would be

equivalent to a sentence of torture and death, since my late associates,

infuriated at my treachery, as they named it, would certainly inflict on

me all the torments their malignity could suggest and keep on till I died.

He added that he and the other aldermen had never meant to recommit me;

deliverance from that _ergastulum_. they considered part of my reward and

that the least part of it. What else did I desire?

"If," said I, "I must remain a slave and, remaining the property of

Caesar, must be employed as the administration of the _fiscus_ direct, at

least try to arrange that I be employed out of doors far from any town, on

a slave farm, or at herding or wood-cutting or charcoal-burning. I have

heard that many of Caesar's slave-gangs are busy afield, on farms, or

pasture-lands or in the forests."

"That," said the alderman, "will be easy. Afield you shall go--even far

afield. Do you like horses? Can you manage horses?"

"I love all animals," I said, "and most particularly horses."

"Then," said the alderman, "I have already in mind the very place for you,

where none of your rancorous late associates can ever find you, on an

Imperial stock-farm or breeding-ranch in the uplands, among the forested

mountains. Would you consider it a reward, would you consider it the

fulfillment of your wish to be transferred from our town _ergastulum_,

where you were as an Imperial slave rented out to our city, to such an

Imperial estate, where you will be directly under the employees of the

_fiscus_?"

"I certainly should feel rewarded," I said, "by such a transfer."

"In addition," he concluded, "we shall present you with a new tunic and

cloak and new shoes, also an extra tunic, and with a purse containing ten

silver pieces."

CHAPTER XXV

THE OPEN COUNTRY

After some days of rest, abundant food and leisurely hot-baths in the

freedman's house, I left Nuceria under convoy of three genial road-

constables and journeyed deliberately northward along the Flaminian

Highway to the Imperial estate which was to be my abode. I am not going to

locate it precisely nor to name the villages nearest it nor the

neighboring towns. It will be quite sufficient to set down that it was

near the Flaminian Highway and approximately half way between Nuceria and

Forum Sempronii.

My reasons for vagueness are mandatory, to my mind. Feuds in the Umbrian

mountains differ greatly from feuds in the Sabine hills; but, like

Sabinum, Umbria is afflicted with feuds. Now I anticipate that this book

will not only be widely read among our nobility and gentry and much

discussed by them, but also that it will be talked of by more than half

Rome and that copies of it and talk about it will spread all over Italy

and even into the provinces. Talk of it may trickle into the Umbrian

mountains. Umbrian mountaineers live long. Some of those who loved me and

befriended me or loved and befriended those who loved and befriended me,

may still be alive and hearty and likely to live many years yet. So also

may be some of those who hated me. I do not want anyone holding a grudge,

or nursing the grudge of a dead kinsman or friend, to learn through me of

any secret kindness to me which he might regard as treachery to his kin

and so feel impelled to avenge on those who befriended me or their

children or grandchildren. Umbrian enmities ramify incredibly and endure

from generation to generation. I remember with gratitude many Umbrians who

were kind to me; I would not, however, indirectly cause any trouble to

them in their old age, or to their descendants.

The Imperial estate was large and I learned its history. It was made up of

three adjacent properties confiscated at different periods by different

Emperors. One had fallen to the _fiscus_ under Nero, a second under

Domitian, and a third under Trajan, each as the result of its owner being

implicated in a conspiracy against the Emperor. The administration of the

resultant large estate was a perfect sample of the excellent management in

detail and stupid misjudgment in general so common under the _fiscus_. The

estate was hilly, some of it mountainous, and quite unfitted for horse-

breeding, which is best engaged in, as everybody knows, on estates

composed chiefly of wide-spreading plains or gently rolling country with

broad, flat meadows. Good judgment would have put this estate chiefly in

forest, with a few cattle, some sheep and more goats, but no horses. As I

found it, it had, to be sure, many goats, but almost as many sheep and

cattle, and horses almost as numerous as the cattle and far more

important, for to their breeding most of the efforts of the overseer were

directed.

The overseer's house was the best of the three original villas. About it

were ample, commodious and scrupulously clean quarters for slaves like me.

Also it had yards for fowls, ducks, geese, guinea-fowls, and peacocks,

arranged before the confiscation and allowed since to run down, but still

productive and fairly well-filled with birds, as were the big dovecotes.

Besides, there were fish ponds and a rabbit-warren, left from the former

villa. There were extensive stables, cattle-sheds and pens, sheep-folds,

goat-runs and pig-sties adjoining the house. In the quarters I found a

goodly company of hearty, healthy, contented slaves, sty-wards, goatherds,

shepherds, cowmen and horse-wranglers. These were friendly from my first

arrival among them, seemed to look me over deliberately and appraise me,

and appeared to like me.

I was first sent out as one of two assistants to an experienced herder in

charge of a rather large herd of beef-steers. We drove them up the

mountains to a grassy glade and, when they had eaten down the grass there,

to another. Our duties were light, as the steers were not very wild or

fierce and were easy to keep together, to keep in motion by day and to

keep stationary by night. Each night two of us slept by a smouldering fire

and the third circled about the herd as the steers lay sleeping or chewing

their cuds. The circling was done at the horse's slowest walk. Our horses

were good, our food good, and my two companions genial, though reticent.

Only once did any of our charges bolt. Then, when we missed three steers,

our senior asked me:

"Do you think you could find them and fetch them back?"

On my affirming confidence that I could he smiled doubtfully, and shook

his head, but drawled:

"I'll give you the chance, just to try you out."

I found the runaways with no trouble whatever, for their trail was nowhere

faint, turned them easily and brought them back, manifestly, much sooner

than he had hoped. He appeared pleased, but merely grunted.

Yet he must have spoken well of me to the superintendent, for after a

day's rest in the slave-quarters I was assigned the sole care of a small

bunch of young cows with their first calves. It seemed to be assumed that

I would make no attempt to escape. As I had been given a good horse and a

serviceable rain-cloak, I had thoroughly enjoyed my life from the start.

The landscape was charming, the climate agreeable, spring was approaching,

I was out in the open air, camping at night by a fire wherever my charges

lay down to sleep, eating what I chose of the ample supply of good food

which I carried in my saddle-bags. I was happy, thoroughly happy, and I

throve from my arrival. I still mourned for Agathemer, but I did not miss

him as acutely as I had in the _ergastulum_.

After about ten days in the woodland glades I brought my charges back to

the villa for inspection, according to orders. The inspector was pleased

with their condition and commended me. Some of the fellow-herdsmen, off

duty, stood or sat about and they seemed to approve.

One of them asked:

"Have much trouble, Greenhorn?"

"Not a bit," I answered.

"How'd you like to try to milk one of those cows?" another enquired.

"I can milk any one of them," I replied. "I have milked most of them. I've

been drinking all the milk I could hold all the while I was out with

them."

"That's the silliest lie I ever heard," they chorused. "Why, if you tried

to handle any one of those cows she'd gore you to death. You couldn't get

near enough to the udder of any one of them to get your hand on her teats.

Invent a lie we can swallow, or quit bragging. You can't fool us."

I kept my temper, scaled the enclosure of the cow-pen, being careful not

to make any sudden movement, strolled to the nearest cow, stroked her

nose, pulled her ears, walked down her flank, patting her as I went and

handled her udder.

"What have you to say now?" I called to the gaping yokels.

"Try that on another," they shouted back.

I did the like with two more.

They were dumb.

"Hand me a crock," I called, "and I'll get a quart or so of milk, if the

calves have left any."

When, one handed me a small _olla_ I milked it more than half-full from a

dozen cows. I exhibited the milk, offered it to them, and, on their

laughingly replying that they were no milk-sops, they preferred wine, I

drank most of it. Then I went to the nearest calf, gentled it, picked it

up, lifted it onto my back, its legs sticking out in front of me across my

shoulders, and paced back and forth along the inside of the fence, the

mother following me, licking the calf and lowing, but mild and with no

show of anger, let alone any threat of attack on me.

Before I put the calf down the superintendent came along.

"What's all this?" he queried.

"Felix here," he was answered, "is a sort of wizard. He can gentle these

cows, he can milk them, and he has been showing off how one will let him

carry her calf and yet not get excited."

"Can you do as well with bulls, too?" the _Villicus_ enquired.

"I think so," I replied. I had put down the calf and climbed out of the

cow-pen.

"Come along!" the _Villicus_ commanded.

We trooped off to a pen where there was a fine breeding-bull all alone.

"Get inside, lad!" said the _Villicus_; "that is, if you dare. But be sure

you are ready to vault out again, and entirely able to clear the pen."

I climbed into the pen and stood. The bull gazed at me, but made no

threatening movement and his demeanor was placid. I walked up to him, a

pace at a time, patted his nose, pulled his ears, walked round him,

stroking him, took hold of the ring in his nose and led him over toward

the awestruck gapers:

When I climbed out of the pen one man said:

"Try him on old Scrofa."

We trooped off to the hog-pens and there was a six or eight-year-old sow

with a young litter. She was a huge beast, as ugly a sow as ever I saw. I

got into her pen, miring half to my knees in its filth, but keeping my

feet. She made no move to attack me, but grunted enquiringly. I picked up

one of her pigs, it hardly squealed and she grunted scarcely more than she

had already. I dangled the piglet before her, and she only smelt it and

kept on grunting, with no sign of wrath.

"Come out, Felix," the _Villicus_ drawled, "you are sow-proof. But how do

you do it?"

"I don't know," I replied, "but I have always been able to gentle fierce

animals of any kind. No animal ever attacks me."

Thereupon he tried me with three rams famous for butting, two he-goats of

even worse reputation and half a score of watch-dogs. I came unscathed

from close companionship with the goats and rams, and the dogs behaved as

if they had been my pets from their puppyhood.

"Can you do as well with horses?" the _Villicus_ enquired.

"I believe so," I replied; "give me a chance."

"I shall," he asserted. "I'll round up all our colts fit for breaking and

try you on them. I'll get in most of the boys to watch the fun. It'll take

about ten days to get ready. Meanwhile you can take out another bunch of

heifers with new calves. It seems to suit you and the calves and the

heifers."

When I returned from my third outing, hard and fit and happy, the

_Villicus_ asked me how soon I would be ready for colt-breaking.

"Tomorrow," I said.

The next day was made a sort of festival, with all the horse-herders at

the villa paddocks.

First of all four experienced horse-wranglers roped a filly, threw her,

bitted and bridled her while one sat on her head, let her get on her feet,

hobbled her, held her so while two more saddled her and then held her

while one mounted her. When they let her go she reared, bucked, dashed

about, bucked again and again, and continued till exhaustion forced her to

quiet down and obey her rider, who had kept his seat from the first.