False God of Rome

by Robert Fabbri

Overview

Rome, AD 34: Vespasian is serving as a military officer on the outskirts of the Empire. But political events in Rome - Tiberius's increasing debauchery, the escalating grain crisis - draw him back to the city. When Caligula becomes Emperor, Vespasian believes that things will improve. Instead, the young emperor deteriorates from Rome's shining star to a blood-crazed, incestuous, all-powerful madman.
Caligula's most extravagant project is to bridge the bay of Neapolis and ride over it wearing Alexander's breastplate. And it falls to Vespasian to travel to Alexandria and steal it from Alexander's mausoleum. Vespasian's mission will lead to violence, mayhem and theft - and in the end, to a betrayal so great it will echo through the ages.
THE THIRD INSTALMENT IN THE VESPASIAN SERIES
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Don't miss Robert Fabbri's epic new series Alexander's Legacy

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857899767
Publisher:	Atlantic Books
Publication date:	06/01/2014
Series:	Vespasian , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	433,809
File size:	660 KB

About the Author

Robert Fabbri read Drama and Theatre at London University and worked in film and TV for twenty-five years. He has a life-long passion for ancient history, which inspired him to write the bestselling Vespasian series and the Alexander's Legacy series. He lives in London and Berlin.
Hornblower, Hellraiser, Patriot Games and Billy Elliot. His life-long passion for ancient history - especially the Roman Empire - inspired the birth of the Vespasian series. He lives in London and Berlin.

Read an Excerpt

False God of Rome

Vespasian III

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By Robert Fabbri

Atlantic Books Ltd

Copyright © 2013 Robert Fabbri
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85789-976-7

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CHAPTER 1

'Have you got it?' Vespasian asked as Magnus walked down the gangplank of a large merchant ship newly arrived in the port of Appolonia.

'No, sir, I'm afraid not,' Magnus replied, shouldering his bag, 'the Emperor is refusing all entry permits to Egypt at the moment.'

'Why?'

Magnus took his friend's proffered forearm. 'According to Caligula it's on the advice of Tiberius' astrologer, Thrasyllus; not even Antonia could get him to change his mind.'

'Why did you bother coming, then?'

'Now that ain't a very nice way to greet a friend who's travelled fuck knows how many hundreds of miles in that rotting tub at a time of year when most sailors are tucked up in bed with each other.'

'I'm sorry, Magnus. I was counting on Antonia getting me the permit; it's been four years since Ataphanes died and we promised to get his gold back to his family in Parthia.'

'Well then, another couple of years or so ain't going to make much difference, are they?'

'That's not the point. Egypt is the neighbouring province; I could have made a short diversion to Alexandria on my way home in March, found the Alabarch, given him Ataphanes' box and made the arrangements for the money to be transferred to his family in Ctesiphon and still be back in Rome before next May.'

'You'll just have to do it some other time.'

'Yes, but it'll take much longer going from Rome. I may not have the time; I've got the estate to run and I plan to get elected as an aedile the year after next.'

'Then you shouldn't go making promises that you can't keep.'

'He served my family loyally for many years; I owe it to him.'

'Then don't begrudge him your time.'

Vespasian grunted and turned to make his way back along the bustling quayside through the mass of dock-workers unloading the newly docked trading fleet. His senatorial toga acted as an intimidating display of his rank, ensuring that a path was cleared for him through the crowd, making the hundred-pace journey along the quay to his waiting, one-man litter an easy affair.

Magnus followed in his wake enjoying the deference shown to his young friend by the local populace. 'I didn't think quaestors were normally treated with this much respect in the provinces,' he observed as one of the four litter-bearers unnecessarily helped Vespasian onto his seat.

'It's because the Governors always hate it here and rightly so, it's like living in a baker's oven but without the nice smell. They tend to spend all their time in the provincial capital, Gortyn over in Creta, and send their quaestors here to administer Cyrenaica in their name.'

Magnus chuckled. 'Ah, that'll always help people to respect you, the power of life and death.'

'Not really, as a quaestor I don't have Imperium, no power of my own. I have to have all my decisions ratified by the Governor, which takes forever,' Vespasian said gloomily, 'but I do have the power to procure horses,' he added with a grin as a dusky young slave boy led a saddled horse up to Magnus.

Magnus took the animal gratefully and threw his bag over its rump before mounting. 'How did you know that I'd be arriving today?'

'I didn't, I just hoped that you would be,' Vespasian replied as his litter moved forward, passing a theatre looking out over the sea. 'When the fleet was sighted this morning I decided to come down on the off-chance, as it's probably the last one of the season to arrive from Rome. Anyway, it's not as if I had anything else worthwhile to do.'

'It's as bad as that here, is it?' Magnus raised a wry eyebrow as the slave boy began fanning Vespasian with a broad, woven palm-frond fan on a long stick.

'It's terrible: the indigenous Libu spend all their time robbing the wealthy Greek farmers; the Greeks amuse themselves by levelling false accusations of fraud or theft against the Jewish merchants; the Jews never stop protesting about sacrilegious statues or some perceived religious outrage involving a pig, and then the Roman merchants passing through do nothing but complain about being swindled by the Jews, Greeks and Libu, in that order. On top of that everyone lives in fear of slave-gathering raids by either the Garamantes from the south or the nomadic Marmaridae to the east, between here and Egypt. It's a boiling pot of ethnic hatred and the only thing that they hate more than each other is us, but that doesn't stop individuals throwing money at me to rule in their favour in court cases.'

'And you take it, I hope?'

'I didn't at first but I do now. I remember being shocked when my uncle told me that he took bribes while he was Governor of Aquitania, but now I understand the system better and realise that it's expected of me. And anyway, most of the wealthy locals are so unpleasant it's a pleasure to take their money.'

'Sounds much like Judaea judging by Sabinus' descriptions of it,' Magnus mused as they passed into a crowded agora surrounded by dilapidated ancient temples dedicated to the Greek gods and overlooked by civic buildings cut into the hill above.

'It's worse, believe me,' Vespasian replied, recalling his conversations with his brother upon his return from the East, concerning the utter ungovernability of the Jews. They had overlapped for two days in Rome before he had sailed for Creta at the end of March. 'There you only had to deal with the Jews; they could be kept in line by their priests and by offering them small concessions. But here if you were to offer a concession to one group, then every bastard would want one until you'd find your-self giving the whole province away and hauled up in front of the Senate, or worse, on your return to Rome. That's why I give nothing away to any of them unless I'm well paid for it; that way the other factions can't complain that I've showed any favouritism because they know that I was bribed. Surprisingly, that seems to make it all right for them.'

'I'll bet that you wish you were back in Thracia,' Magnus said, admiring the exertions of the slave boy who was managing to keep a constant flow of air moving around his master and maintain his footing despite the bad state of repair of the paving stones; the city had seen better days.

'At least we had some decent troops to threaten the locals with. Here all we've got is one cohort of local auxiliary infantry, made up of men who are too stupid to earn their living by thieving; then there's the city militia, which comprises men too stupid to be an auxiliary; and finally an ala of local auxiliary cavalry, who are meant to protect us from the nomads, which is a joke because most of them have camels.'

'What's a camel?'

'It's like a big, brown goat with a long neck and a hump on its back; horses hate the smell of them.'

'Oh, I saw some of them at the circus once; they made people laugh but they didn't put up much of a fight.'

'They don't need to – according to the cavalry prefect, Corvinus, they can run all day across the desert; our cavalry hardly ever get near them.'

They passed through the city's gates, guarded by marble lions to either side, and started the gentle eight-mile ascent to the city of Cyrene, set on the limestone plateau above. Vespasian sank back into a maudlin silence, contemplating the futility of his position in this part of the combined province of Creta and Cyrenaica. During the seven months he had been there he had achieved nothing, mainly because there was hardly any money to achieve anything with. For centuries the wealth of Cyrenaica had been in silphium, a bulbous-headed plant with a long stalk, whose resin was much prized as a rich seasoning and as a cure for throat maladies and fever; the meat from animals that grazed on it was also sold at a premium. It grew along the dry coastal plain – the Cyrenian plateau being more conducive to the cultivation of orchards and vegetables. However, in recent years the crop had mysteriously begun to fail to the point where it was no longer fed to livestock, thus killing off the meat industry; and over the last couple of years the quality of each crop had deteriorated no matter how intensively it was farmed.

Vespasian had tried to persuade the local farmers to produce other crops, but the thin nature of the soil and the paucity of rain on the plain, combined with the farmers' fervent belief that if enough gods were sacrificed to on a regular basis the silphium would return to health, had thwarted him. Consequently the tax revenues were drying up as those with money hid it away and spent very little buying goods from those with even less. With very little money in circulation, grain, imported from the more fertile neighbouring provinces of Egypt and Africa, had reached sky-high prices as a consequence of greedy speculation by the merchants who controlled the trade. They had all denied it, when he had called them into his presence to explain themselves, and had put the blame squarely on the reduced amount of grain being received from Egypt in the past year; yet there had been no mention of a failure of the Egyptian harvest. The result was that the poor, whether Greek, Jewish or Libu, were always on the verge of starving and civil unrest was a constant threat.

Without sufficient troops to quash an uprising among the almost half a million population of Cyrenaica's seven major cities, and without the authority to act in his own name, Vespasian had felt impotent and frustrated throughout his tenure of office. This feeling was now compounded by the Emperor Tiberius' refusal to grant him an entry permit to the imperial province of Egypt, a province so rich that senators were allowed to visit it only with express permission from the Emperor himself; to do so without would be a capital offence.

Chiding himself for falling into a self-pitying reverie, he turned back to his companion trotting along beside him. 'Did Sabinus finally manage to get himself elected as an aedile?'

'Yes, just,' Magnus replied. 'But as your brother always says: just is good enough. Although he was relieved that he wasn't contesting the praetor elections until next year – all those positions were filled by the sons of Macro's cronies.'

'So we're back to having a Praetorian prefect who interferes with politics, are we? You would have thought Macro would have learnt a lesson from his predecessor's untimely demise. I can't imagine that's endeared him much to Antonia: she believes that meddling in politics is the prerogative of the imperial family and, specifically, herself.'

Magnus indicated to the litter-bearers.

'Don't worry about them, they don't speak Latin,' Vespasian informed him, 'and the boy's a deaf mute.'

'Fair enough. Well, since you left in March some strange things have been happening; Antonia's getting quite concerned.'

'I thought that she didn't tell you anything other than what to do.'

'No, I get most of the inside gossip from your uncle, Senator Pollo; although she does occasionally let things slip, afterwards, if you take my meaning?'

'You old goat!' Vespasian smiled for what felt like the first time since he had arrived in Cyrenaica, enjoying the unlikely and unequal sexual relationship between his old friend and the most formidable woman in Rome, his patron Antonia, sister-in-law to the Emperor Tiberius.

'Yeah, well, that doesn't happen so much these days, I'm pleased to say; she's getting on a bit, you know, sagging somewhat. Anyway, she's concerned about Caligula's relationship with Macro, or more precisely Caligula's new relationship with Macro's wife, Ennia, which Macro seems to be encouraging.'

Vespasian smiled and waved a hand dismissively. 'Caligula's had his eye on her for some time; he'll no doubt tire of her, he's notoriously insatiable. Macro's just being sensible about it; he's well aware that if he makes a fuss about it now he'll be in a very precarious position if and when Caligula becomes emperor.'

'Perhaps, but your uncle thinks that there's more to Macro's behaviour than just being polite, he reckons that he's trying to ingratiate himself with Caligula because he wants something from him if he does become emperor.'

'As Praetorian prefect he's the most powerful person in Rome outside the imperial family; what more can he want short of becoming his heir? Caligula may be a lot of things but he's not stupid.'

'That's what's worrying Antonia, she doesn't understand what he's aiming for; and what she doesn't understand, she can't control, which pisses her off considerably.'

'I can imagine, but I wouldn't call that very strange.'

'No, the strange bit is the other person who Macro's cultivating,' Magnus said with a conspiratorial look in his eye. 'Herod Agrippa. He used to be a friend of Antonia's and used to borrow money off her but he never paid her back, thinking that because he was a favourite of Tiberius and a good friend of his son Drusus – they were educated together – he was owed a living. However, when Drusus died he fled Rome and his debts and went back to his homeland, Iudemaea.'

'Where's that?'

'Fuck knows, but close to Judaea, I should think, as he's Jewish. Anyway, he soon had to leave there, debts again, and then spent his time pissing off every petty king and tetrarch in the East demanding a position of power or a loan just because he's the grandson of Herod the Great. A couple of months ago he returned to Rome and managed to wheedle his way back into Tiberius' favour. According to your uncle he's organised an embassy of Parthian rebel noblemen to come to Rome next year; they want Tiberius to help them depose their king. As a reward Tiberius has made Herod Agrippa tutor to his grandson Tiberius Gemmelus.'

'So what makes it strange that Macro and he should be friends?'

'Because while Macro is trying to ingratiate himself with Caligula, he's at the same time snuggling up to Herod, the person who has the most influence over another possible heir, Gemmelus.'

'So he's backing both chariots?'

Magnus grinned and shook his head. 'No, sir, it would seem that he's backing all three. Herod Agrippa has another contact, a very good childhood friend of his who was educated alongside him and Drusus: the third possible heir from the imperial family, Antonia's son Claudius.'

The sun was beginning to dip in the west and the sea sparkled bronze below as Vespasian and Magnus passed under Cyrene's principal gate into the lower city. The litter-bearers had to force their way through scores of beggars – refugees from the failed silphium farms hoping to receive alms from newly arrived merchants before they tired of being importuned by the countless destitute now obliged to rely on charity.

'I'm getting to really hate this place,' Vespasian commented as he pushed away supplicating hands. 'It just rubs my face in the fact that my family's standing in the Senate is very low; only the most insignificant quaestors get sent here.'

'You drew it by lot.'

'Yes, but only the insignificant quaestors go to the ballot; the ones from the great families get the plum jobs in Rome. Sabinus was lucky to draw Syria last year.'

Magnus kicked away an overly persistent old crone. 'I've got a letter from Caenis in my bag, hopefully that'll cheer you up; you certainly seem to need it.'

'It'll help,' Vespasian shouted back over the torrent of abuse that Magnus was receiving from the floored crone, 'but I don't think that I'll feel cheerful until after the sailing season starts again in March and my replacement arrives. I need to get back to Rome, I need to feel that I'm making progress rather than festering in this arsehole of the Empire.'

'Well, we've got four months to kill, I'll keep you company. To tell you the truth, when Antonia failed to get your Egypt travel warrant I told her that I'd still come anyway to bring the bad news. Things are a little too hot for me at the moment in Rome; your uncle is going to smooth it all over while I'm away.'

'What did you do?'

'Nothing, just a bit of business looking after the interests of my Crossroads Brotherhood; I've left my second, Servius, in command, he'll look after things.'

Vespasian knew not to pry into Magnus' underworld life as the leader of the South Quirinal Crossroads Brotherhood; protection and extortion were the primary business of all the Brotherhoods. 'You're welcome to stay but there isn't much to do.'

'What about the hunting; what's that like here?'

'It's not up to much close to the city, but apparently if you go south for a couple of days you might find some lions in the foothills of the plateau.'

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from False God of Rome by Robert Fabbri. Copyright © 2013 Robert Fabbri. Excerpted by permission of Atlantic Books Ltd.
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