"I ask no more than to spend them for Caesar."
Crassus had interpreted this short dialogue. He now turned to the
Emperor.
"If he is indeed to be always at your call, Caesar, it would be well to
give the poor Barbarian some name which your lips can frame. Theckla is
as uncouth and craggy a word as one of his native rocks."
The Emperor pondered for a moment. "If I am to have the naming of him,"
said he, "then surely I shall call him Maximus, for there is not such a
giant upon earth."
"Hark you," said the Prefect. "The Emperor has deigned to give you a
Roman name, since you have come into his service. Henceforth you are no
longer Theckla, but you are Maximus. Can you say it after me?"
"Maximin," repeated the Barbarian, trying to catch the Roman word.
The Emperor laughed at the mincing accent. "Yes, yes, Maximin let it be.
To all the world you are Maximin, the body-guard of Severus. When we
have reached Rome, we will soon see that your dress shall correspond
with your office. Meanwhile march with the guard until you have my
further orders."
* * * * *
So it came about that as the Roman army resumed its march next day, and
left behind it the fair valley of the Harpessus, a huge recruit, clad in
brown leather, with a rude sheep-skin floating from his shoulders,
marched beside the Imperial troop. But far away in the wooden farmhouse
of a distant Macedonian valley two old country folk wept salt tears, and
prayed to the gods for the safety of their boy who had turned his face
to Rome.
II: THE RISE OF GIANT MAXIMIN
Exactly twenty-five years had passed since the day that Theckla the huge
Thracian peasant had turned into Maximin the Roman guardsman. They had
not been good years for Rome. Gone for ever were the great Imperial days
of the Hadrians and the Trajans. Gone also the golden age of the two
Antonines, when the highest were for once the most worthy and most
wise. It had been an epoch of weak and cruel men. Severus, the swarthy
African, a stark grim man had died in far away York, after fighting all
the winter with the Caledonian Highlanders--a race who have ever since
worn the martial garb of the Romans. His son, known only by his
slighting nickname of Caracalla, had reigned during six years of insane
lust and cruelty, before the knife of an angry soldier avenged the
dignity of the Roman name. The nonentity Macrinus had filled the
dangerous throne for a single year before he also met a bloody end, and
made room for the most grotesque of all monarchs, the unspeakable
Heliogabalus with his foul mind and his painted face. He in turn was cut
to pieces by the soldiers; and Severus Alexander, a gentle youth, scarce
seventeen years of age, had been thrust into his place. For thirteen
years now he had ruled, striving with some success to put some virtue
and stability into the rotting Empire, but raising many fierce enemies
as he did so--enemies whom he had not the strength nor the wit to hold
in check.
And Giant Maximin--what of him? He had carried his eight feet of manhood
through the lowlands of Scotland and the passes of the Grampians. He
had seen Severus pass away, and had soldiered with his son. He had
fought in Armenia, in Dacia, and in Germany. They had made him a
centurion upon the field when with his hands he plucked out one by one
the stockades of a northern village, and so cleared a path for the
stormers. His strength had been the jest and the admiration of the
soldiers. Legends about him had spread through the army, and were the
common gossip round the camp fires--of his duel with the German axe-man
on the Island of the Rhine, and of the blow with his fist that broke the
leg of a Scythian's horse. Gradually he had won his way upwards, until
now, after quarter of a century's service, he was tribune of the fourth
legion and superintendent of recruits for the whole army. The young
soldier who had come under the glare of Maximin's eyes, or had been
lifted up with one huge hand while he was cuffed by the other, had his
first lesson from him in the discipline of the service.
It was nightfall in the camp of the fourth legion upon the Gallic shore
of the Rhine. Across the moonlit water, amid the thick forests which
stretched away to the dim horizon, lay the wild untamed German tribes.
Down on the river bank the light gleamed upon the helmets of the Roman
sentinels who kept guard along the river. Far away a red point rose and
fell in the darkness--a watch-fire of the enemy upon the further shore.
Outside his tent, beside some smouldering logs, Giant Maximin was
seated, a dozen of his officers around him. He had changed much since
the day when we first met him in the Valley of the Harpessus. His huge
frame was as erect as ever, and there was no sign of diminution of his
strength. But he had aged none the less. The yellow tangle of hair was
gone, worn down by the ever-pressing helmet. The fresh young face was
drawn and hardened, with austere lines wrought by trouble and privation.
The nose was more hawk-like, the eyes more cunning, the expression more
cynical and more sinister. In his youth, a child would have run to his
arms. Now it would shrink screaming from his gaze. That was what
twenty-five years with the eagles had done for Theckla the Thracian
peasant.
He was listening now--for he was a man of few words--to the chatter of
his centurions. One of them, Balbus the Sicilian, had been to the main
camp at Mainz, only four miles away, and had seen the Emperor Alexander
arrive that very day from Rome. The rest were eager at the news, for it
was a time of unrest, and the rumour of great changes was in the air.
"How many had he with him?" asked Labienus, a black-browed veteran from
the south of Gaul. "I'll wager a month's pay that he was not so trustful
as to come alone among his faithful legions."
"He had no great force," replied Balbus. "Ten or twelve cohorts of the
Praetorians and a handful of horse."
"Then indeed his head is in the lion's mouth," cried Sulpicius, a
hot-headed youth from the African Pentapolis. "How was he received?"
"Coldly enough. There was scarce a shout as he came down the line."
"They are ripe for mischief," said Labienus. "And who can wonder, when
it is we soldiers who uphold the Empire upon our spears, while the lazy
citizens at Rome reap all of our sowing. Why cannot a soldier have what
the soldier gains? So long as they throw us our denarius a day, they
think that they have done with us."
"Aye," croaked a grumbling old greybeard. "Our limbs, our blood, our
lives--what do they care so long as the Barbarians are held off, and
they are left in peace to their feastings and their circus? Free bread,
free wine, free games--everything for the loafer at Rome. For us the
frontier guard and a soldier's fare."
Maximin gave a deep laugh. "Old Plancus talks like that," said he; "but
we know that for all the world he would not change his steel plate for a
citizen's gown. You've earned the kennel, old hound, if you wish it. Go
and gnaw your bone and growl in peace."
"Nay, I am too old for change. I will follow the eagle till I die. And
yet I had rather die in serving a soldier master than a long-gowned
Syrian who comes of a stock where the women are men and the men are
women."
There was a laugh from the circle of soldiers, for sedition and mutiny
were rife in the camp, and even the old centurion's outbreak could not
draw a protest. Maximin raised his great mastiff head and looked at
Balbus.
"Was any name in the mouths of the soldiers?" he asked in a meaning
voice.
There was a hush for the answer. The sigh of the wind among the pines
and the low lapping of the river swelled out louder in the silence.
Balbus looked hard at his commander.
"Two names were whispered from rank to rank," said he. "One was Ascenius
Pollio, the General. The other was----"
The fiery Sulpicius sprang to his feet waving a glowing brand above his
head.
"Maximinus!" he yelled. "Imperator Maximinus Augustus!"
Who could tell how it came about? No one had thought of it an hour
before. And now it sprang in an instant to full accomplishment. The
shout of the frenzied young African had scarcely rung through the
darkness when from the tents, from the watch-fires, from the sentries,
the answer came pealing back: "Ave Maximinus! Ave Maximinus Augustus!"
From all sides men came rushing, half-clad, wild-eyed, their eyes
staring, their mouths agape, flaming wisps of straw or flaring torches
above their heads. The giant was caught up by scores of hands, and sat
enthroned upon the bull-necks of the legionaries. "To the camp!" they
yelled. "To the camp! Hail! Hail to the soldier Caesar!"
That same night Severus Alexander, the young Syrian Emperor, walked
outside his Praetorian camp, accompanied by his friend Licinius Probus,
the Captain of the Guard. They were talking gravely of the gloomy faces
and seditious bearing of the soldiers. A great foreboding of evil
weighed heavily upon the Emperor's heart, and it was reflected upon the
stern bearded face of his companion.
"I like it not," said he. "It is my counsel, Caesar, that with the first
light of morning we make our way south once more."
"But surely," the Emperor answered, "I could not for shame turn my back
upon the danger. What have they against me? How have I harmed them that
they should forget their vows and rise upon me?"
"They are like children who ask always for something new. You heard the
murmur as you rode along the ranks. Nay, Caesar, fly to-morrow, and your
Praetorians will see that you are not pursued. There may be some loyal
cohorts among the legions, and if we join forces----"
A distant shout broke in upon their conversation--a low continued roar,
like the swelling tumult of a sweeping wave. Far down the road upon
which they stood there twinkled many moving lights, tossing and sinking
as they rapidly advanced, whilst the hoarse tumultuous bellowing broke
into articulate words, the same tremendous words, a thousand-fold
repeated. Licinius seized the Emperor by the wrist and dragged him under
the cover of some bushes.
"Be still, Caesar! For your life be still!" he whispered. "One word and
we are lost!"
Crouching in the darkness, they saw that wild procession pass, the
rushing, screaming figures, the tossing arms, the bearded, distorted
faces, now scarlet and now grey, as the brandished torches waxed or
waned. They heard the rush of many feet, the clamour of hoarse voices,
the clang of metal upon metal. And then suddenly, above them all, they
saw a vision of a monstrous man, a huge bowed back, a savage face, grim
hawk eyes, that looked out over the swaying shields. It was seen for an
instant in a smoke-fringed circle of fire, and then it had swept on into
the night.
"Who is he?" stammered the Emperor, clutching at his guardsman's sleeve.
"They call him Caesar."
"It is surely Maximin the Thracian peasant." In the darkness the
Praetorian officer looked with strange eyes at his master.
"It is all over, Caesar. Let us fly together to your tent."
But even as they went a second shout had broken forth tenfold louder
than the first. If the one had been the roar of the oncoming wave, the
other was the full turmoil of the tempest. Twenty thousand voices from
the camp had broken into one wild shout which echoed through the night,
until the distant Germans round their watch-fires listened in wonder and
alarm.
"Ave!" cried the voices. "Ave Maximinus Augustus!"
High upon their bucklers stood the giant, and looked round him at the
great floor of up-turned faces below. His own savage soul was stirred by
the clamour, but only his gleaming eyes spoke of the fire within. He
waved his hand to the shouting soldiers as the huntsman waves to the
leaping pack. They passed him up a coronet of oak leaves, and clashed
their swords in homage as he placed it on his head. And then there came
a swirl in the crowd before him, a little space was cleared, and there
knelt an officer in the Praetorian garb, blood upon his face, blood upon
his bared forearm, blood upon his naked sword. Licinius too had gone
with the tide.
"Hail, Caesar, hail!" he cried, as he bowed his head before the giant. "I
come from Alexander. He will trouble you no more."
III: THE FALL OF GIANT MAXIMIN
For three years the soldier Emperor had been upon the throne. His palace
had been his tent, and his people had been the legionaries. With them he
was supreme; away from them he was nothing. He had gone with them from
one frontier to the other. He had fought against Dacians, Sarmatians,
and once again against the Germans. But Rome knew nothing of him, and
all her turbulence rose against a master who cared so little for her or
her opinion that he never deigned to set foot within her walls. There
were cabals and conspiracies against the absent Caesar. Then his heavy
hand fell upon them, and they were cuffed, even as the young soldiers
had been who passed under his discipline. He knew nothing, and cared as
much for consuls, senates, and civil laws. His own will and the power of
the sword were the only forces which he could understand. Of commerce
and the arts he was as ignorant as when he left his Thracian home. The
whole vast Empire was to him a huge machine for producing the money by
which the legions were to be rewarded. Should he fail to get that money,
his fellow soldiers would bear him a grudge. To watch their interests
they had raised him upon their shields that night. If city funds had to
be plundered or temples desecrated, still the money must be got. Such
was the point of view of Giant Maximin.
But there came resistance, and all the fierce energy of the man, all the
hardness which had given him the leadership of hard men, sprang forth to
quell it. From his youth he had lived amidst slaughter. Life and death
were cheap things to him. He struck savagely at all who stood up to
him, and when they hit back, he struck more savagely still. His giant
shadow lay black across the Empire from Britain to Syria. A strange
subtle vindictiveness became also apparent in him. Omnipotence ripened
every fault and swelled it into crime. In the old days he had been
rebuked for his roughness. Now a sullen, dangerous anger rose against
those who had rebuked him. He sat by the hour with his craggy chin
between his hands, and his elbows resting on his knees, while he
recalled all the misadventures, all the vexations of his early youth,
when Roman wits had shot their little satires upon his bulk and his
ignorance. He could not write, but his son Verus placed the names upon
his tablets, and they were sent to the Governor of Rome. Men who had
long forgotten their offence were called suddenly to make most bloody
reparation.
A rebellion broke out in Africa, but was quelled by his lieutenant. But
the mere rumour of it set Rome in a turmoil. The Senate found something
of its ancient spirit. So did the Italian people. They would not be for
ever bullied by the legions. As Maximin approached from the frontier,
with the sack of rebellious Rome in his mind, he was faced with every
sign of a national resistance. The country-side was deserted, the farms
abandoned, the fields cleared of crops and cattle. Before him lay the
walled town of Aquileia. He flung himself fiercely upon it, but was met
by as fierce a resistance. The walls could not be forced, and yet there
was no food in the country round for his legions. The men were starving
and dissatisfied. What did it matter to them who was Emperor? Maximin
was no better than themselves. Why should they call down the curse of
the whole Empire upon their heads by upholding him? He saw their sullen
faces and their averted eyes, and he knew that the end had come.
That night he sat with his son Verus in his tent, and he spoke softly
and gently as the youth had never heard him speak before. He had spoken
thus in old days with Paullina, the boy's mother; but she had been dead
these many years, and all that was soft and gentle in the big man had
passed away with her. Now her spirit seemed very near him, and his own
was tempered by its presence.
"I would have you go back to the Thracian mountains," he said. "I have
tried both, boy, and I can tell you that there is no pleasure which
power can bring which can equal the breath of the wind and the smell of
the kine upon a summer morning. Against you they have no quarrel. Why
should they mishandle you? Keep far from Rome and the Romans. Old
Eudoxus has money, and to spare. He awaits you with two horses outside
the camp. Make for the valley of the Harpessus, lad. It was thence that
your father came, and there you will find his kin. Buy and stock a
homestead, and keep yourself far from the paths of greatness and of
danger. God keep you, Verus, and send you safe to Thrace."
When his son had kissed his hand and had left him, the Emperor drew his
robe around him and sat long in thought. In his slow brain he revolved
the past--his early peaceful days, his years with Severus, his memories
of Britain, his long campaigns, his strivings and battlings, all leading
to that mad night by the Rhine. His fellow soldiers had loved him then.
And now he had read death in their eyes. How had he failed them? Others
he might have wronged, but they at least had no complaint against him.
If he had his time again, he would think less of them and more of his
people, he would try to win love instead of fear, he would live for
peace and not for war. If he had his time again! But there were
shuffling steps, furtive whispers, and the low rattle of arms outside
his tent. A bearded face looked in at him, a swarthy African face that
he knew well. He laughed, and baring his arm, he took his sword from the
table beside him.
"It is you, Sulpicius," said he. "You have not come to cry 'Ave
Imperator Maximin!' as once by the camp fire. You are tired of me, and
by the gods I am tired of you, and glad to be at the end of it. Come and
have done with it, for I am minded to see how many of you I can take
with me when I go."
They clustered at the door of the tent, peeping over each other's
shoulders, and none wishing to be the first to close with that laughing,
mocking giant. But something was pushed forward upon a spear point, and
as he saw it, Maximin groaned and his sword sank to the earth.
"You might have spared the boy," he sobbed. "He would not have hurt
you. Have done with it then, for I will gladly follow him."
So they closed upon him and cut and stabbed and thrust, until his knees
gave way beneath him and he dropped upon the floor.
"The tyrant is dead!" they cried. "The tyrant is dead," and from all the
camp beneath them and from the walls of the beleaguered city the joyous
cry came echoing back, "He is dead, Maximin is dead!"
* * * * *
I sit in my study, and upon the table before me lies a denarius of
Maximin, as fresh as when the triumvir of the Temple of Juno Moneta sent
it from the mint. Around it are recorded his resounding
titles--Imperator Maximinus, Pontifex Maximus, Tribunitia potestate, and
the rest. In the centre is the impress of a great craggy head, a massive
jaw, a rude fighting face, a contracted forehead. For all the pompous
roll of titles it is a peasant's face, and I see him not as the Emperor
of Rome, but as the great Thracian boor who strode down the hill-side on
that far-distant summer day when first the eagles beckoned him to Rome.
IX
THE RED STAR
The house of Theodosius, the famous eastern merchant, was in the best
part of Constantinople at the Sea Point which is near the church of
Saint Demetrius. Here he would entertain in so princely a fashion that
even the Emperor Maurice had been known to come privately from the
neighbouring Bucoleon palace in order to join in the revelry. On the
night in question, however, which was the fourth of November in the year
of our Lord 630, his numerous guests had retired early, and there
remained only two intimates, both of them successful merchants like
himself, who sat with him over their wine on the marble verandah of his
house, whence on the one side they could see the lights of the shipping
in the Sea of Marmora, and on the other the beacons which marked out the
course of the Bosphorus. Immediately at their feet lay a narrow strait
of water, with the low, dark loom of the Asiatic hills beyond. A thin
haze hid the heavens, but away to the south a single great red star
burned sullenly in the darkness.
The night was cool, the light was soothing, and the three men talked
freely, letting their minds drift back into the earlier days when they
had staked their capital, and often their lives, on the ventures which
had built up their present fortunes. The host spoke of his long journeys
in North Africa, the land of the Moors; how he had travelled, keeping
the blue sea ever upon his right, until he had passed the ruins of
Carthage, and so on and ever on until a great tidal ocean beat upon a
yellow strand before him, while on the right he could see the high rock
across the waves which marked the Pillars of Hercules. His talk was of
dark-skinned bearded men, of lions, and of monstrous serpents. Then
Demetrius, the Cilician, an austere man of sixty, told how he also had
built up his mighty wealth. He spoke of a journey over the Danube and
through the country of the fierce Huns, until he and his friends had
found themselves in the mighty forest of Germany, on the shores of the
great river which is called the Elbe. His stories were of huge men,
sluggish of mind, but murderous in their cups, of sudden midnight broils
and nocturnal flights, of villages buried in dense woods, of bloody
heathen sacrifices, and of the bears and wolves who haunted the forest
paths. So the two elder men capped each other's stories and awoke each
other's memories, while Manuel Ducas, the young merchant of gold and
ostrich feathers, whose name was already known all over the Levant, sat
in silence and listened to their talk. At last, however, they called
upon him also for an anecdote, and leaning his cheek upon his elbow,
with his eyes fixed upon the great red star which burned in the south,
the younger man began to speak.
"It is the sight of that star which brings a story into my mind," said
he. "I do not know its name. Old Lascaris the astronomer would tell me
if I asked, but I have no desire to know. Yet at this time of the year I
always look out for it, and I never fail to see it burning in the same
place. But it seems to me that it is redder and larger than it was.
"It was some ten years ago that I made an expedition into Abyssinia,
where I traded to such good effect that I set forth on my return with
more than a hundred camel-loads of skins, ivory, gold, spices, and other
African produce. I brought them to the sea-coast at Arsinoe, and carried
them up the Arabian Gulf in five of the small boats of the country.
Finally, I landed near Saba, which is a starting-point for caravans,
and, having assembled my camels and hired a guard of forty men from the
wandering Arabs, I set forth for Macoraba. From this point, which is the
sacred city of the idolaters of those parts, one can always join the
large caravans which go north twice a year to Jerusalem and the
sea-coast of Syria.
"Our route was a long and weary one. On our left hand was the Arabian
Gulf, lying like a pool of molten metal under the glare of day, but
changing to blood-red as the sun sank each evening behind the distant
African coast. On our right was a monstrous desert which extends, so far
as I know, across the whole of Arabia and away to the distant kingdom of
the Persians. For many days we saw no sign of life save our own long,
straggling line of laden camels with their tattered, swarthy guardians.
In these deserts the soft sand deadens the footfall of the animals, so
that their silent progress day after day through a scene which never
changes, and which is itself noiseless, becomes at last like a strange
dream. Often as I rode behind my caravan, and gazed at the grotesque
figures which bore my wares in front of me, I found it hard to believe
that it was indeed reality, and that it was I, I, Manuel Ducas, who
lived near the Theodosian Gate of Constantinople, and shouted for the
Green at the hippodrome every Sunday afternoon, who was there in so
strange a land and with such singular comrades.