Posts Tagged ‘Rome’
The Four Emperors
Once in a blue moon, you come across a book, or series of books, that’s a game-changer. At the height of my reading, a few years ago, I was reading a novel a week. As time wore on, my writing commitments became heavier and heavier, and I was spending so much time looking at my own written words that, when it came to downing tools, the last thing I wanted to do to relax was look at more words, and so my reading dwindled, and dwindled to the point where I was not reading fiction at all. Oh, I was still reading tons, but it was all non-fiction research material for my own work. I hit reading rock-bottom, I guess.
Cue this summer. The family take a holiday every year to Wales and every year I do a little work while I’m there, because I’m so permanently busy. This year, I said ‘No.’ I would not work while we were away. I was going to actually relax. With a sort of half-hearted hope that I might rekindle something, I looked along my (extremely well-stocked) book shelves, searching for something that would whisk me away and drag me back into a love of reading. Of all the authors on there, my eyes fell on the copy of Palatine by L. J. Trafford.
For transparency, Linda Trafford has become a friend over the years. We both write Roman fiction and we both attend the Eboracum festival each summer, laughing and conversing over our book stalls. Years ago, while I was at Eboracum, I had bought her books and got my own signed copies, but then my reading ennui hit, and I never actually got round to reading them. They sat on the shelf in my office. Until this August. Palatine came with me to Wales. I began reading it the first day, and I was hooked by page 2. Totally unexpected for me. I write Rome, I research Rome, I travel Rome, and so to some extent the last thing I want is to indulge in more Rome. Yet the book dragged me in. By the time the hol was over, I had finished Palatine and was twitching to get to book 2. Since then, It’s been 2 months and I’ve read all four of L. J. Trafford’s Four Emperors series. That’s roughly a book a fortnight, something I’ve not done in years. I am now nervously trying to decide what to read next, as little could positively follow up on the series. So why is it so good? What’s it about?
In a nutshell, the series covers the infamous year of the four emperors (68-69 AD) from the time of Nero’s decadent last days, through the usurpers, wannabes, lunatics and generals who scrambled for power when the emperor died, right until the Flavian family settled on the throne and Vespasian brought things back to order. That’s the potted history. I’ve always been a little hazy on that year. I know the basics, but it’s a period I’ve avidly avoided thus far due to the sheer complexity. Too much happens too fast to untangle and portray, or so I thought. Perhaps I shouldn’t give you spoilers, but really this is old news for anyone interested in Rome, so here’s the potted version. Nero becomes too corrupt for some of his court. He is overthrown by the governor of Lusitania, Galba, and commits suicide. Galba arrives in Rome but quickly discovers that he’s completely mis-calculated what he needs to do, pissed everyone off, and ends up being deposed. The man who replaces him is Nero’s old friend, the notorious playboy Otho, but even before Galba’s body is cold, in Germany, the governor, Vitellius, is proclaimed emperor. Thus starts a small but utterly brutal war. Otho joins his predecessors, leaving Vitellius on the throne, but the big fat bastard can’t get comfortable, because the governor of Judea, Vespasian, has now been proclaimed emperor by his troops. Cue a secomd war, which rages right in the heart of Rome, and which finally leaves Vespasian in charge with no opposition, and the civil war is over. That’s the potted history. Very bullet point. There’s clearly a lot more to it than that.
There are four books in the series. Palatine tells the tale of Nero’s final days and the rise of Galba. Galba’s Men (not surprisingly) tells of the brief but very eventful reign of Galba and the plot of Otho to replace him. Otho’s Regret gives us the reign of the playboy emperor and the rise of the Vitellians in Germany. And finally, Vitellius’ Feast tells us of that emperor’s appalling reign and his demise along with the rise of the Flavian family. Very neat. But, I hear you ask, who is the protagonist in this tale? I mean, with five different emperors involved, who could possibly tell the whole story right the way through them all? That, of course, would have been my stumbling block. And that’s because I would have been looking among the great and the good for someone who could have witnessed it all. Linda Trafford, on the other hand, went an entirely different way, with stunning results.
Trafford’s cast of principle characters are uniformly slaves and freedmen of the palace. The fact that the first book is called Palatine makes immediate sense now. Her characters are a mix of historically attested people and fictional narrators, and the genius of her work makes it hard to tell what is given history and what is her own creation. There are other characters who come and go, such as emperors, praetorians and their commanders, young noblemen etc, but the main cast consists of the historically attested Epaphroditus, Nero’s secretary, who runs through the series, and more importantly and the prime point of view of the books, his own secretary, Philo, a freedman plucked from Trafford’s imagination. Then there is a flouncy catamite, an ambitious messenger, a self-obsessed announcer, a brutal slave overseer, the empress’s towel girl, and an ordinary family living on the Viminal hill who become more and more tied up in events as they proceed. The genius of this, which had never occurred to me, is that slaves and functionaries are ignored largely, by the great and the good. They witness everything, while rarely being part of it. As narrators it was a visionary stroke to choose these characters to tell the tale.
But why are they so good? Well that is born of several factors. The first, for me, is the humour. I find that in historical fiction, and particularly in Rome, there is a great tendency to be over serious. So many Roman books are all doom and gloom. That was what had made me love Ruth Downie’s Medicus novels. They had a gentle, human humour that was a breath of fresh air in the genre. So too Trafford’s characters. Oh don’t get me wrong. She does not shy from portraying brutality and wickedness. But despite that the books are filled with that same gentle, real humour that makes them so much more readable.
Secondly, there is the setting. Since writing these books, Trafford has gone on to move into non-fiction, with books on How to Survive in Ancient Rome, and Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome. Simply following her on Facebook will give you an idea of just how knowledgeable she is on the era. And that shows through in the books. They are humorous, exiting, and pacy, and yet consistently inflected with real colour and history. Every aspect, from toilet habits and the brutality of slavery, to food and the life of the Roman streets, is lovingly laid out around the tale. A student of Rome could learn much from this series, in a similar vein to Philip Matyzak’s 24 Hours in ancient Rome.
But for me, over and above all, the real value of these books is that for the first time, for me, the Year of the Four Emperors has been portrayed in detail, lovingly, from the very ground level up, in a way that unravels it and makes it intelligible. I understood every aspect, for when there was an unexplained motive for some act in that year, Trafford has carefully constructed a plausible narrative that explains it. In addition to this, her characters are fabulously realistic, and she has truly breathed life into some of the historical persons of the year, giving us a life-like portrait. I have long considered Nero a write-off, but I had never pondered on how he must have been seen in light of his successors. Galba was no surprise, but Otho? I had again always written Otho off as a playboy idiot friend of Nero’s who had about as much right and ability to rule as a chocolate orange. Trafford’s Otho has opened my eyes to one of history’s great might-have-beens. The character I take away from her books as my favourite is Otho. And I had similarly written off fat Vitellius, but I had always thought him merely useless, rather than the monster he is here. And as for the slaves and freedmen? Philo is a wonderful narrator. So much so that I’ve asked Trafford if he would be allowed a cameo in my own work. The others are all good, but one character that stands out from beginning to end is Nero’s fake-wife and eunuch catamite Sporus. He absolutely shines in every scene.
So while I peruse my shelves to see what might possibly follow on from that, I leave you with this imperial command: read L. J. Trafford’s books. You will not be disappointed.
Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t
(or Why I choose to write about the ‘damned’ emperors.)
Alright, you’re going to argue with me from square one, but in my opinion, if we can call Augustus an emperor, when he never acknowledged himself as one and assiduously kept republican characteristics, then we might as well apply the same to the somewhat infamously dictatorial Caesar, his great uncle.
I trust we need not delve too much into the history of this man. His life and death are fairly well known by even the least academically minded. Et tu, brute. Infamy, infamy… they’ve all got it infamy! And so on. So, yes, Caesar was not an official emperor, yet he bears all the hallmarks of it. By his death he held unshakable power in Rome, and the laws had been repeatedly bent or ignored entirely to allow him to continue his rule. It was rumoured that had he lived, he intended to move his centre of power away from Rome to Egypt, which was likely one of the contributing factors to his assassination.
Though Caesar never suffered the specific Damnatio Memoriae that later emperors enjoyed, his death was no murder by a power-hungry opponent or a personal beef settled with a blade. Caesar was stabbed 23 times, and each blade was wielded by the great and the good of Rome. After his death, Brutus addressed the crowd with the words ‘We are once again free.’ If this is not being damned by the senate of Rome, then I don’t know what is, so we’ll proceed with that justification and classify him as damned.
And it’s important that I do, because that’s where it all began. I came to write about Caesar through the eyes of one of his officers in the Marius’ Mules series, the first novel I ever wrote, back in 2003. Up to that point, I had viewed Caesar as a bold and heroic character. A genius and a general supreme. Essentially, history’s common view. And unlike most of my forays into the world of such characters since then, where I have had to look beyond later character assassination to redeem a human within, in Caesar’s case it is more a matter of finding fault with a man given to us as a perfect Roman, because the sources we have for Caesar generally praise him. Once the civil war that followed his death had settled, it was his own blood who controlled Rome for the next century, and the entire imperial system owed itself to Caesar and his direct successors, so while emperors may later have reviled some of their predecessors, Caesar remained on his pedestal throughout. As such, accounts of him were guaranteed to be positive. Perhaps most of all, the account we have of the high point of his career was written by the general himself. There may, therefore, have been something of a bias involved.
As such I spent my time throughout the series glimpsing tantalising images of a less perfect man, and tried to portray him as such. Caesar loses his temper a few times, yes, but he is always gracious and merciful, brave and powerful, shrewd and resourceful in his writings. Surprise, eh? But the first works to cover his campaigns that were not written by him were the “Alexandrian War” and the following “African War”, both of which were probably written by his deputy Aulus Hirtius. In those two works, Caesar’s actions often come across as rash, hasty and ill-thought out. In both cases he still wins the day, but unlike the earlier texts of Caesar himself, they portray a man who essentially ****s up the entire campaign and only survives through a combination of thinking outside the box and blind luck. Add to this the fact that Caesar had many lovers, possibly several love-children, and three wives, the last of whom was still his wife when he was messing around with Cleopatra, and the image that begins to form is of a rather less than perfect man for all his genius and glory.
This is why I loved to write about Caesar, and this is what has spurred my interest in other such cases. The sheer fascination of delving into a well-recorded character and trying to reassemble a real person from the caricatures of history.
Next up is Caligula. This was my first foray into truly studying a damned emperor. Most people will be aware of Caligula, at least as a raving lunatic, a murderer and a weird porn character played by Malcolm McDowell. There probably has not been an emperor damned after his death who became as famous as this man. He is given to us as the man who made his horse a consul, who fought a war against the sea god, who made his men gather shells and stones and bring them back to Rome as spoils of war, of an incestuous weirdo who slept with his sisters.
Alright, so that is what we’re told. Caligula ruled for four years and upon his assassination, he was the first emperor to suffer what we now call Damnatio Memoriae, in which his name was erased from everywhere, his statues smashed, his laws repealed, his coins defaced, his very name condemned, and he being denied the right to ascend to godhood. He was stabbed by members of his own Praetorian guard, who suspiciously found Claudius hiding nearby and proclaimed him emperor immediately. It might be noted that Claudius was Caligula’s uncle, who was undoubtedly rather put out for those four years that the imperial throne had completely bypassed him. He was not treated well by Caligula, and so a suspicious man might suggest that Claudius was behind the plot to murder his nephew. Otherwise it’s all a little too convenient.
And the odd thing, if we accept these stories at face value, is that Caligula seems to have been very popular with the majority of Rome. The army liked him. The masses liked him. The only people that didn’t like him were the senatorial crowd, who, you might note, were the ones who wrote all the stories of his madness after his death. Now, a suspicious man might be scratching his chin and wondering how much of what we know is actually complete garbage, and what the real Caligula (who’s true name, coincidentally, was Gaius Julius Caesar) was actually like.
Just to give a couple of examples of my research and conclusions on the real Caligula, we’ll first take his horse, Incitatus. There is no denying Caligula loved horses and the races and so, in fact, did many emperors. But what do we actually know of Incitatus? The horse is recorded in two sources. Suetonius tells us “Besides a stall of marble, a manger of ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he even gave this horse a house, a troop of slaves and furniture, for the more elegant entertainment of the guests invited in his name; and it is also said that he planned to make him consul.” Very well, he spoiled the animal for sure, if Suetonius can be trusted. But even Suetonius, who repeatedly condemns Caligula only gives us a vague rumour that he would have made his horse a consul. Cassius Dio gives us “One of the horses, which he named Incitatus, he used to invite to dinner, where he would offer him golden barley and drink his health in wine from golden goblets; he swore by the animal’s life and fortune and even promised to appoint him consul, a promise that he would certainly have carried out if he had lived longer.” More of the same, and this time only personal opinion that he would have done such a thing. One might remember that Suetonius was writing imperial biographies in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, some 80 years after Caligula’s death. His source material was already biased, for Suetonius was not born until 30 years after Caligula’s death. Similarly, we might view Dio with suspicion, for he was even later, writing nearly two centuries after Caligula’s death and basing his tale on a long-held tradition of madness. Thus, our main sources are the equivalent of me now putting together a biography of a Hanoverian monarch, only with much less to work from. Both of those writers were working with an imperial agenda in mind that necessitated the condemning of Caligula and the Julio-Claudians, and if these recorded events ever actually happened, a tempting suggestion is that the whole thing was a rather acidic joke on Caligula’s part aimed at humiliating the senators.
Similarly, the story of the chests of shells and pebbles the legions carried back as plunder can be seen very differently, when one realises that Caligula had gathered his legions for an invasion of Britain, where they seem to have revolted against him on the French coast. What better humiliating punishment for soldiers who have rebelled than making them carry chests of stones all the way back to Rome as the spoils of their war? Again, this reeks of Caligula’s very dry and potentially dangerous sense of humour. Not a sign of madness, but an indication of a man not afraid of dark humour aimed at those who defied him.
Essentially, when one looks deeper at Caligula, one can see a character greatly different from the one presented to us. Oh, he was no god, for sure. His sense of humour seems to have been cruel and acerbic and to have missed the mark repeatedly. He was suspicious (but then any man who had watched his entire family arrested and executed in his youth might be suspicious). But he also appears to have been glorious, beloved of his people, brave and wily. One thing he does not seem to be, if you pull apart the sources, is insane. This, then, is what I love about damned emperors.
Next up is Domitian. The second son of the renowned Vespasian and brother of glorious Titus, Domitian never expected, and was never expected, to rule. He was . History has presented us with a quiet and bookish, yet also wicked and brutal, character. Domitian ruled for a good 15 years, in the end falling to a conspiracy of the emperor’s own freedmen. His character has come down to us mainly through the writings of Tacitus and Suetonius, both of whom solidly condemn him, and yet one might note, both of whom are writing in the reigns of the emperors who only owed their existence to the fall of Domitian and the Flavian dynasty, and who naturally vilified their predecessor in order to justify their own power.
If, however, one looks at the scant evidence we have of contemporaries who were writing during the time of Domitian, such as Statius, we find the emperor being praised and portrayed as a glorious figure. One must always be aware of bias in both directions with ancient biographies.
I have yet to write a novel centring on Domitian, though it is already planned and very much in my sights. However, in my first foray into non-fiction, I have biographised the general Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, and a man who served during Domitian’s reign. In researching this, I repeatedly came up against Tacitus assassinating the emperor’s character largely in order to heighten the glory of his subject. But often in Tacitus, while he attributes to Domitian a truly abhorrent character, when he actually provides detail, it often doesn’t marry up with that image.
As examples, Tacitus tells us Domitian: “was by nature a man who plunged into violence“, of his “sinister intentions“, of “the emperor’s cruelty“. He tells us straight that Domitian resented Agricola’s success and popularity, and harboured a great hatred. And then in his text, he tells us also that for Agricola “Triumphal decorations, a public statue, and all the insignia that go with an honorary triumph were therefore decreed by the senate on the emperor’s command, coupled with a flattering speech.” For an emperor who had no trouble imposing imperial will, this seems rather at odds, as does the fact that when jealous opponents repeatedly accuse Agricola of crimes, the emperor throws out the cases. Most impressive of all, when Agricola fell ill in his last days, Tacitus tells us that Domitian sent court physicians and freedmen to attend him, and even that there were “more visits […] than is usual with emperors.” Though Tacitus tries to inflect all these events with sinister motives, it really does not add up, and what we are left with is the impression of an emperor who actually values and cares for his general.
I can’t wait to get my teeth into a full novel about this fascinating man who was so damned and despised after his death and yet who had been a secret agent, an overlooked second son, and who had inherited an empty treasury and left a wealthy Rome for his successors and a huge architectural legacy across Rome.
Ok, you may not have recognised him from the name, but I bet the pic jogs a few memories. Commodus, portrayed above by Joaquin Phoenix in the movie Gladiator, was my second foray into fictional biographies, with an eponymous novel. Commodus was my attempt to delve into the sources and tear apart the chaff to find the real character, as I’d done with Caligula.
Commodus is given to us mainly by Cassius Dio, Herodian and the Historia Augusta. While not portrayed as an insane and dangerous lunatic as was Caligula, he comes across as a megalomaniac and a man given to wild notions and flights of fancy, often cruelly at the expense of others. Once again, though, we must beware of the sources. We can say with some certainty that Commodus came to blows with the senate more than once, and that there was a gulf between the two that was filled with resentment and distrust. As such, one might expect senators to be somewhat damning of the emperor who had so defied and belittled them. Cassius Dio was one of those very senators Commodus hated. Herodian’s career is not fully known, but there is solid circumstantial evidence that he too was a senator at that time. The Historia Augusta’s section on Commodus is likely based on the works of Marius Maximus who, you guessed it, was of senatorial rank during the reign of Commodus. Thus our three main sources were all naturally hostile towards the emperor. Can we trust what we’re told? In this case less even than in other such works.
In some places, these biographies clearly delve into the fantastical and ridiculous. The HA gives us the laughable event: “he put a starling on the head of one man who, as he noticed, had a few white hairs, resembling worms, among the black, and caused his head to fester through the continual pecking of the bird’s beak — the bird, of course, imagining that it was pursuing worms.” Dio tells us of Commodus in the amphitheatre that “On the first day he killed a hundred bears all by himself“. Herodian, at least, steers largely clear of such fanciful notions, but even he dips occasionally into hyperbole.
Of the accusations of megalomania, several of his acts are cited, and yet once again, a lot of this is down to the angle one takes on them. He is known (confirmed in inscriptions) to have changed the names of the months to his own twelve names: Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, Pius. Mad? Really? When the month of Quintilis had been renamed after Julius Caesar two centuries earlier, and shortly after that, Sextilis had been renamed for Augustus – July and August as they now are? One might suggest this is a little over the top, yes, but there was a solid precedent for it, and that its usage is recorded even out in the Syrian desert suggests that it was not really considered unacceptable by provincials. And how crazed was it that he refounded Rome after a disastrous fire and named the restored metropolis Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana after himself? Mad, right? So why do we honour and celebrate Constantine for refounding Byzantium as Constantinopolis? Is that not the very same megalomania at work? Or perhaps we should worry about his identification with Hercules, for he dressed as the god at public events. Surely that’s properly barking mad? And yet a bust of a young Commodus portrayed as Hercules as a boy can only have been commissioned by his father, the great Marcus Aurelius, and so was Commodus perhaps merely continuing his father’s vision? Moreover, the identification of emperors with that god arose once more a century later during the tetrarchy, so really this is not an isolated thing, but an imperial trend.
In my research I came to the conclusion that Commodus was neither wicked nor insane, but rather suffered Bipolar disorder (previously known as Manic depression), which would fit his darker moods and periodic withdrawal from public life, as well as his somewhat over the top glorious notions. Certainly, Commodus cannot be the monster we are given.
Following the death of Commodus and the brief reigns of two successors, the next real power in Rome was Septimius Severus, but to secure his throne, he had to put down usurpations by Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus. Niger never managed to secure acceptance by the senate, and so was not truly an emperor, though Albinus was briefly legitimised by Severus.
I have yet to delve in depth into the lives of these two usurpers, though both have appeared in the Praetorian series, particularly Niger, in which they are portrayed simply as ambitious Roman noblemen. Let’s largely skip them for now and move onto more fertile ground.
For our last exploration, I’ve put the final two on my list together. Diocletian was the man who founded the tetrarchic system (splitting the empire in half and appointing a senior and junior emperor to each.) He ruled from 284 to 305 AD. Maxentius, one of several claimants to the western empire as the system collapsed again, reigned from 306 to 312. Both men are among the last to be damned, and their reputations have suffered in particular because of their opposition to Constantine. Their biographies come to us mostly through Christian writers who favoured their hero Constantine, and so any man Saint Constantine was set against is naturally vilified.
Of Diocletian, Eutropius says “He used his victory, indeed, cruelly, and distressed all Egypt with severe proscriptions and massacres. Yet at the same time he made many judicious arrangements and regulations, which continue to our own days,” gracing us with an unusually rounded image of a man both damnable and laudable in different ways. Cruel and dangerous, yet clever and an able administrator. Indeed, this juxtaposition is echoed throughout Eutropius: “He was willing to gratify his own disposition to cruelty in such a way as to throw the odium upon others; he was however a very active and able prince.”
Lactantius, on the other hand, not only gives us a very one-dimensional view of the emperor, but he also makes his bias very plain from the outset: “While Diocletian, that author of ill, and deviser of misery, was ruining all things, he could not withhold his insults, not even against God.” Thus, it is with extreme care that we have to consider anything Lactantius tells us. Diocletian was one of the greatest persecuters of Christians in history, and so the views of Christian writers are unlikely to be positive.
Actually, the evidence for Diocletian’s damnation is scant, for he retired and died naturally in a villa in Croatia, though an inscription found in Rome in which Diocletian’s name has been scratched out and replaced with that of Constantine hints that Diocletian’s reputation went the same way as his co-emperor Maximian, damned by Constantine even if he later rehabilitated the man’s memory. Diocletian is something of a bit part player in the Rise of Emperors series that I co-wrote with Gordon Doherty, an Emperor Palpatine to Galerius’s Darth Vader. In our work he is characterised as cruel and dangerous, possibly even mad. This may be a caricature, but given that even the more positive biographies of the man make him cruel, it seemed natural to follow the trend. Quite simply, even if you’re not a Christian, given that Diocletian presided over one of the most brutal and widespread persecutions in history, it is hard to see him as little more than a villain.
To the last of our emperors, then. Maxentius is the son of that very same Maximian mentioned above. Maxentius is my protagonist throughout the Rise of Emperors series, alongside Gordon’s Constantine, and with him I had to apply much the same system of research as with Caligula and Commodus. Maxentius has once again come down to us as the villain of the piece, a brutal and cruel usurper facing the sainted and wonderful Constantine. Our sources for Maxentius are universally Christian and therefore in Constantine’s pocket, and so it should come as no surprise that they damn Maxentius. The approach here, though, is different to those earlier emperors, for there is no accusation of madness among these biographies. Maxentius is simply wicked, dangerous, licentious and evil.
One might note from the outset that Maxentius had every bit the same claim to the Western Empire as Constantine. Both had been sons of emperors, and both had expected to be included in the succession. When they were not, both took matters into their own hands, Constantine proclaimed by his army in York, Maxentius proclaimed by the Praetorian Guard and the senate in Rome. There are, in fact, few lines in the sources at all on Maxentius. He is not well covered by contemporary writers.
Lactantius, one of Constantine’s great biographers, only deals peripherally with Maxentius, though he labels him from the outset “a man of bad and mischievous dispositions, […] proud and stubborn.” Though he treats the events of Maxentius’s reign only in snippets, even at the end, the demise of Maxentius is noted as “The hand of the Lord prevailed.” Thus is Maxentius presented to us as an agent of the devil, despite the fact that there is no real evidence of Maxentius’s cruelty towards Christians. Indeed, there is only actually one direct story of the man persecuting Christians.
The somewhat fanciful legend of Saint Catherine of Alexandria says that she went to Maxentius when he instituted persecutions. She argued her stance and managed to out argue 50 pagan philosophers summoned by the emperor. At this point he loses his temper and begins to imprison and torture he, eventually leading to her death, when her body oozed something like milk instead of blood. Quite apart from there being no evidence of a Maxentian persecution, the story holds less water than a cotton colander. And just to hammer a nail into that coffin, the Christians of Rome had been forbidden to elect a high priest (a pope) under Maximian, yet Maxentius saw the investiture of three popes. Hardly the actions of a persecutor of Christians.
Beyond Lactantius, various Panegyrics do Maxentius little service, though one of the other main sources is the 5th century historian Zosimus. Zosimus periodically has a stab at Max’s reputation here and there with phrases like “conducted himself with cruelty and licentiousness” and yet his treatment of the actual events is surprisingly neutral, and even tips in the direction of admiration occasionally with moments like “They would have destroyed the whole city, had not Maxentius soon appeased their rage.”
The simple fact is that whether the sources are entirely damning or just a little dubious, Maxentius is given to us as a hater of Christians, a bane to Rome and a dangerous and unacceptable usurper. No one has a good word to say about him, and yet we have to remember that all those writing do so under the aegis of his enemy and successor, Constantine. So if Maxentius the hater of Christians, the tyrant and the despot is a fiction of vilifying biographers, what do we know of Maxentius the real man?
Actually, the most telling thing about Maxentius comes from surviving archaeology and geography. While Galerius, Constantine, Licinius, Daia, and every other weasel barking during the tetrarchy, sought imperial power, each and every one imagined the seat of that power somewhere in the provinces. Serbia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany, each emperor ruled from a court somewhere in their heartland. Maxentius was something different. Though he had been born into a once humble family from the Balkans, it was Rome for which he stood and which became the heart of his domain. The only Roman imperial sceptres and regalia ever found have been attributed to him. At the very end, when facing Constantine, he consulted Rome’s most ancient scriptures and fought to protect Rome, even turning its walls into the impressive specimens we can see today. Logic and a little investigation suggest that despite his provincial origins, Maxentius was the only claimant of the era who represented Rome.
Furthermore, Rome had seen only a few eras of great public building in 300 years of emperors, and these projects were all attributed to great men. Augustus remodelled the forum and began to fill the Campus Martius with monuments. Vespasian and Titus extinguished the excesses of Nero and replaced them with magnificent public buildings. Trajan filled Rome with great works for the people. Other rulers constructed buildings in scattered numbers, but only the greatest of emperors embarked on city-changing projects of grand public works. And the last one to do so? The last emperor to embark on a plan of public buildings in Rome was Maxentius. And were the works mere self-aggrandizement? Alright he may have built a villa with the mausoleum of his son on the Via Appia and a new private bath on the Palatine. But he also built or reconstructed all of this:
If one looks at the archaeology and tries to ignore the worst of the propaganda, what comes out of it is the image of a traditionalist. In a world where emperors are trying to change the administration, the geography, the capital, even the religion of the empire, Maxentius stands for Rome, as an echo of the great emperors of the past. In a way, he is the last great pagan emperor of Rome. Indeed, he is the last emperor to rule from Rome, and the last emperor to reside on the Palatine. Maxentius is, to me, the last true Roman emperor.
So that’s it for now. I shall in time investigate and rehabilitate others, and certain names are already in my sights, but if you want to read about the emperors so far, here are the books. All are available through online stores such as Amazon and the iStore (except Agricola which is available as a pre-order only), and Caligula, Commodus and Sons of Rome are available in your local bookstore also. Happy reading and let’s reform the reputations of a few great men…
Rise of Emperors
The Rise of Emperors series charts the childhood, the rise, the rift, the struggle and the war between the later Roman emperors Constantine and Maxentius at the end of the 3rd/beginning of the 4th century. Many of you will already have read book one, but here is a run-down for anyone interested in our take on the end of the Tetrarchy.
The first book, Sons of Rome, is now out in digital and hardback formats in the UK and the USA (the paperback is released on 1st April in the UK). Sons of Rome follows the childhood and the friendship of the two emperors, from the time when they are but the children of powerful men, through to the fall of the Tetrarchy and the seizure of power by both men, each claiming the same empire as their own. Buy the book here.
The second book, Masters of Rome, follows their struggles to control and maintain their empire, and their attempts to hold together what is becoming an increasingly fragmentary friendship. Both men suffer tragedy, war and political and religious difficulties as each becomes aware of the fact that they are marching towards mutual destruction with no apparent escape clause. Masters of Rome is released in digital format today, in both the UK and USA. The Hardback will be released in the UK on May 13th, with the US Hardback following on in a few short months. Buy/pre-order the book here.
The finale of the trilogy, Gods of Rome, now has a release date, and the digital edition will hit e-shelves on September 2nd, with the hardback following in due course. Gods of Rome tells the crashing tale of the cataclysm that divides Rome and sets brother against brother in one of the most brutal civil wars in Roman history. Two men claim the imperial crown of the same empire, but only one can walk away from this conflict. Pre-order it here.
So there you have it: three books, telling a tale that is at the same time famous and yet not truly commonly understood. The passing away of one world and the birth of another. A true turning point in history. And to celebrate the release of Sons of Rome in the US (where it has been available now for 4 days), this Saturday the two authors, Gordon Doherty and myself, will spend an hour in conversation with the wonderful and world-renowned Kate Quinn (author of the Rose Code, released on the 18th – pre-order it here). The event will be posted on Youtube courtesy of our host, the fab Murder by the Book in Houston, Texas. Tickets are available from the store here and for US readers, signed hardback copies are available too. Get them while you can, as there are a limited number available. And do come drop by on Saturday to hear us tussle over our favourite emperors alongside our favourite writer of American historical thrillers.
Other podcasts, interviews and events are also coming up, Pleas visit the blogs on the list below and keep pace with our whirlwind tour.
Meanwhile, stay safe and read about people who don’t.
Lost Catterick
A short but very visual post for you here. There follow a series of photos that have never been seen before of a site that will never be seen again. In 1959/1959 the A1 (Great North Road) was altered to create the Catterick Bypass. The new road was driven straight through the site of Roman Cataractonium, with the road itself passing just east of the fort walls, but cutting straight through the bath house and a substantial portion of the town that had grown up outside the fort. A season of rescue archaeology revealed a great deal of the Roman remains before they were completely destroyed by the new road, and unearthed some astounding artifacts that are now held in the Yorkshire Museum and the Richmondshire Museum. As it happens, my grandfather was both a professional photographer and a keen history enthusiast in the area at the time, and managed to photograph some of the work. The quality is not wonderful as they have been kept in a cupboard as slides for sixty years and I have had to be careful in converting the images, but still, grainy as they are, they represent a rare image of Roman archaeology now completely lost to us, and give some indication of how impressive what we have lost truly was. Enjoy…
The Hunt – Chapter 1
(A RETURN TO LOCKDOWN STORIES BEGAN THIS WEEK, AND WE’RE BACK WITH TWO CHARACTERS FROM VENGEANCE, WITH NEW EPISODES EVERY WEEKDAY AND THIS COMPILATION EVERY WEEKEND. ENJOY.)
Valens shook the rain from his cloak as he stepped into the room behind Rigonorix, the warm glow of a golden fire welcoming after the torrential downpour that seemed to be the standard fare of the border regions.
The tavern held the usual collection of motley occupants they had seen in every dive north and east, ever since Derventio: a few off-duty auxiliaries, usually the worse for drink, a whore or two, each with a face like the back end of a cart ox, some fathead who was looking for men to fleece with dice, and half a dozen locals who hated everyone indiscriminately, but were far too sensible to do anything about it. A volley of unfriendly glares struck them as they stood in the doorway, a puddle growing around their feet.
‘Oh look, sell-swords,’ grunted a man in a chain shirt and a russet tunic by the door, his tone indicating a Hispanic origin.
‘Oh, look,’ Rigonorix replied calmly, ‘broken nose.’
Valens’s companion’s arm moved so fast that by the time he looked up, the warrior was walking on again unconcerned, leaving the soldier swearing and grunting, blood pouring down his face. As the soldier reeled, clutching his nose, and two others from his unit shot up from their table, chairs scraping back across the flagstones and cups of beer spilling across the rough-hewn boards, Valens sighed and held up his hands.
‘Despite appearances, we don’t want trouble. My friend here just doesn’t take criticism very well.’
The bloody-faced soldier lurched towards him, one hand going to the hilt of the long-sword at his side that marked him out as a cavalryman. Moving with a speed that surprised even him, Valens was suddenly in the man’s face, his boot pressing down on the bridge of the man’s foot agonisingly as his right hand shot out and grasped the man’s own, pressing down and keeping the blade in the sheath.
The soldier made angry, somewhat nasally-challenged noises, but Valens reached down with his left hand, fretting at the pouch on his belt, and with some difficulty produced a silver coin which he lifted slowly until it was before the man’s eyes, which went crossed trying to focus on it.
‘The very essence of negotiation, my Asturian friend. Take the coin in reparation for the nose and try not to say anything stupid until we leave and then I won’t have to explain to your superior officer why you were found lying in the mud with a boot wedged so far up your rectum you could lick it from the inside. Do we have an understanding?’
Perhaps it was something in Valens’s expression that made the man nod sourly and back down, though Valens didn’t think so. In lifting the left arm with the coin, his sleeve had fallen back, displaying the network of horrifying scars and puckered flesh marks that decorated his skin like a relief map of the Alpes. May the gods bless that miracle healer in Dervetio, he’d managed to save the arm, though there was clearly some permanent damage for Valens could only feel things as a sort of dull sensation, and he had to concentrate and push himself to do anything as complex as grip and lift a coin. Still, it was better than a charred stump. Visually, though, it left a great deal to be desired.
As Valens left the man with a last raised finger of warning against action, Rigonorix climbed onto a table at the centre of the bar.
‘Alright, you sour and ugly bunch, I want to know the whereabouts of one Aulus Pacunius, and the first person to give me anything useful gets enough coin to see him through the month.’
A dour and uncomfortable silence greeted Rigonorix’s announcement. The two men stood for a moment, one on the table, hands spread, circling slowly and encouraging the crowd, the other padding quietly through the room and keeping a wary eye on the occupants.
‘Pacunius the Corinthian?’ a hoarse voice called from near the fire. The two men looked over to the table there where a hooded figure sat, toying with an earthenware cup. Rigonorix dropped from the table and paced over to him as Valens, with a last look at the uppity soldier, moved to join him, well aware that Rigonorix could be unpredictable at the best of times.
‘You know him?’
‘Why do you want to meet Pacunius?’
‘Because there’s nobody north of Coria hiring for a job that pays more than a clipped as unless they’re recommended by the Corinthian. That’s why. You know him?’
The man at the table slowly pulled his hood back. He was pale and bearded, with a number of visible scars. A warrior, perhaps for Rome, perhaps against. He levelled a cold stare at the two men as Valens moved to stand next to his friend. ‘You come with… recommendations?’
‘Hatra at Luguvalium put us onto him.’
The man’s eyes narrowed for a moment, and there was a distinct drop in the temperature of the room. Valens found himself holding his breath and fought to keep a normal composure. A lot rode on this. Hatra had been in prison at Luguvalium when they’d dragged the Corinthian’s name from him. If that was already common knowledge then there could be a problem. Rigonorix slipped him a warning look. The Carvetian soldier had clearly noticed his uneasiness, which meant that perhaps the hooded man had too. Valens steadied himself.
Luguvalium, western end of the wall of Hadrian, was where they had picked up the job. The praepositus in command of supplies had been desperate enough to offer very good money, and Rigonorix had agreed before Valens had had a chance to consider the matter. It was seemingly simple: there was a bandit at work in the north, with considerable tribal backing, who had been picking off caravans, small military depots and the like, but had been increasing in boldness and aims recently. The two mercenaries stood to make a healthy remuneration if they could identify, and preferably stop, the bandit. Rigonorix had displayed something of his darker side in knowing immediately how to play the game. He’d taken the coin and agreed the deal, then pulled Valens into a doorway once they left the room. ‘All crime in the warzone is facilitated by maybe half a dozen slimy bastards, and there happens to be one in prison here in Luguvalium. A few well placed threats and offers and we could open a path straight to this bandit and make easy money.’
And so they had, though the money was looking increasingly less easy. Halfway along the old wall and halfway up the road to the new, they had reached Bremenium, a fort so remote that even the shitters were given spy holes so you could watch for native attacks while you crapped. Somewhere here, a former merchant-turned-‘facilitator’ had set up, and word was that if you wanted anything unofficial in the warzone, you asked Pacunius the Corinthian.
‘Sort out the troublesome fuck,’ muttered Rigonorix, sweeping up a mug and dropping it into Valens’s hand as the Carvetian stepped over to the hooded man. Valens turned to see the man who’d insulted them as they entered stomping towards them, hand on his sword again as blood continued to pour down his face. Valens sighed. Clearly this was destined to go sour.
Bracing, he flung the mug, striking the angry soldier directly on his broken nose and eliciting a shriek of pain as the man dropped to the floor clutching his face and howling.
‘Can we hurry this up, Rigonorix?’
The mood in the tavern was starting to look distinctly ugly. Far from having the desired effect of cowing the occupants, the two blows they had delivered the auxiliary at the door had instead spread a sense of anger and hatred among them, especially the other solders, who each had a hand on their weapon hilts now as they looked to one another, each waiting for another to make the first move. In response, his eyes continually on the soldiers, Valens backed over to Rigonorix, who was speaking in low tones to the hooded man.
‘If we don’t leave soon, we’re going to be facing three to one odds. And that’s before their friends hear the ruckus and come to investigate.’
Rigonorix snorted and turned to look over his shoulder. ‘When did you start having a problem facing crippling odds? Remember where we met?’
Valens simply grunted as the other two began to talk again. Twitching, he looked to the table of auxiliaries, who were resolved now and beginning to move, albeit slowly and warily, remembering the trouble their companion had suffered.
‘He was beaten because he insulted us,’ Valens said calmly. ‘All’s fair. Don’t start anything you’re not prepared to finish.’ And then, under his breath and over his shoulder: ‘are we done?’
Rigonorix was suddenly spinning round, grinning like a maniac. ‘I have everything I want, except the face of a Lingonian auxiliary on the sole of my foot.’
Valens shot the man a look loaded with incredulity. ‘What the shit are you doing?’
‘Come on, they were going to jump us the moment we got outside anyway. At least in here we fight in the warm. Come on, you Gallic pricks.’
With a roar, five men rose from the table and ran for them. Two were drawing swords, though the other three, incensed as they were, remained sensible enough to make fists with their hands and then come on unarmed. Anger was one thing. Being arrested by your unit for killing a civilian in a bar brawl was another. Indeed, one of the other two thought better of his chances as he ran, and returned his sword to his sheath.
Valens wished he’d brought his shield in with him rather than leaving it on the horse. His left arm was still not functioning at anywhere near full strength and mobility, but strapping a shield to it made it useful in a fight. He couldn’t kill any of these men. The local authorities would take a civilian murdering a soldier no better than the other way around. Resigned to fighting Rigonorix’s latest scuffle, he simply left his sword sheathed and pulled the whole thing, baldric included, over his head, brandishing it still in its leather scabbard. The enemy were limited by the space between tables and only two of them could approach at a time, which helped. As the lead pair came in Valens neatly twisted, letting the man’s intended punch fly through open air, and then smacked him around the back of the head with his sheathed sword hard enough to put him down. Before he turned to face the next figure, he just saw Rigonorix deal with the sword wielder, smacking the blade from his hand with a stool before smashing the same seat into his face.
‘Fun,’ laughed the Carvetian. Valens rolled his eyes. ‘I hate you, you know that?’
As Rigonorix set about the next man with his stool, Valens ducked a very professional right hook and smacked his sheathed sword across the second soldier’s shins, enough to bruise and cause damage, though not quite enough to break them. As his victim howled and fell, the fifth man stepped towards them, slowing, increasingly uncertain of his position in the absence of all his allies. Valens narrowed his eyes and turned to look at his companion. Rigonorix gave him a grin. ‘Last to drop him buys the beer for a month.’
‘Idiot.’
And yet as the soldier struggled to get out of the way of this pair of lunatics, Valens found that he was not entirely willing to let Rigonorix win, no matter how stupid the whole thing might be. As the Carvetian brought the stool up over his head ready for a downward strike, Valens weighed up his chances, shrugged, and smacked his friend on the back of the head with his sheathed sword. Rigonorix pitched forwards with a surprised squawk, stool clattering off to the side out of his grip, and as he floundered, the former optio leapt forwards. The Gallic auxiliary was backing away now. Valens grinned. They’d have ended the fight inside with the last man, but he had to stop the soldier getting outside to call for help. His roving eyes fell on the stool, which had bounced free, and he stooped to collect it. The soldier turned to run, and Valens was impressed at his turn of speed. The man made it halfway to the door before the stool smashed into the back of his head, sending him pitching over a table and into the corner of the room.
An obliging local kicked the door shut, more to keep the rain and cold out than to help, yet the effect was the same. Rigonorix stood carefully, rubbing his knees and hissing.
‘You tricky little bastard.’
‘You snooze, you lose. Next beers are on you, but for now we need to get out of here before this place is filled by Lingonii auxiliaries looking for a piece of us. Are you sure you got what we need?’
Rigonorix spun, looking back towards the fireplace. The hooded figure was gone. ‘Pretty sure.’
‘Come on, then.’
The two men barrelled out of the bar past the innkeeper, who was watching them with tense disapproval. The rear door led to a wide room with three exits, but a cold draft was coming from the middle one, along with the faint smell of horse manure, so they made their way through that. Outside, a stable square was slowly filling with unspeakable murk in the rain. A young slave with a face that spoke of half a decade of damp servitude was busy shovelling shit into a corner. Rigonorix and Valens ducked past him towards the open gate into the street, though the former optio found himself using his good hand to fish out another coin and flip it to the boy as they passed. Valens might be a grizzled old bastard with the sense of humour of a three day corpse, but his origins were sufficiently humble that he hated to see youth wasted so, and a single coin to the right figure was more meaningful than a king’s ransom to a rich bastard.
‘Where now?’
‘Edge of town. Big house near the circular tomb.’
The house was not hard to find, but then the Bremenium vicus was hardly a sprawling metropolis. In fact, it was little bigger than Mediobogdum, and that one had been an icy shit-hole clinging to the side of a mountain the middle of nowhere, while this was on the main route north. The entire region was a world of bogs, tufts of grass, bogs, scree slopes and bogs, the fort and its vicus crammed into one of the drier areas on raised ground. The buildings were of stone and timber, with tiles that looked to have been knocked off from a military supply, probably from Concangis or Vinovia. As the street they followed down the slope to the west from the inn gradually petered out to nothing, neither man could fail to be impressed with the large structure with the terraced gardens that rose above the river, pleasantly upstream of the baths.
It came as no surprise as they left the edge of the civil settlement and approached the palatial residence to see that the gate was guarded by two men. They bore a weird mix of Roman and Votadini in their look, in that their hair, beards and clothes were of native style, yet their armour and weapons had come from some Roman source. Looted or bartered from some dubious quartermaster, Valens wondered? The two men strolled through the constant drizzle up to the gate, where the guards moved to block their way, one of them taking the lead and holding up a hand.
‘Woyya wan?’
‘Charming,’ Valens smiled coldly through the rain. ‘We’re here to see the Corinthian.’
‘People come. People go,’ said the other in slightly better Latin and with a shrug.
‘Believe me, Pacunius is going to want to see us. We’ve come from Luguvalium, from Hatra.’
Rigonorix leaned in front of him. ‘Squinty in the village sent us.’
The two guards shared a look and then nodded and stepped back, opening the gate. A shambling hunchback waved at them from the path inside, then lurched back through the rain towards the main house, beckoning for them to follow. Valens cast a sidelong glance at his companion as they followed on and the gates were closed behind them.
‘Let me do the talking.’
‘I’m better at this sort of thing.’
‘No,’ Valens said patiently. ‘This is a delicate situation and doesn’t call for your particular brand of jumping in with both feet and a battle cry.’
Rigonorix said nothing, but his smile worried Valens. They passed two more half-Romanised guards at the door of the villa proper, where the hunchback passed them off to a tall and well-dressed local with a nose like a stork, down which he looked at them as though he’d just scraped them off the sole of his shoe. The man gave them a curt nod, beckoned, and then wandered off through what probably passed for an Atrium among the Votadini, and then through a small courtyard. A golden glow issued from a doorway into the failing afternoon light, and as they reached it, the stork-like servant stepped just inside and cleared his throat.
‘Two visitors, sir, who cited the factor at Luguvalium.’
Valens found himself wondering how the man knew that when nothing had been said since the taciturn idiots at the main gate, but then it was the job of a man like the Corinthian to be well-informed. At some unheard and unseen signal, the servant nodded and stepped aside, gesturing for them to enter. Valens took the lead, walking into a well-appointed office with maps of the region hanging on the wall, and a series of cabinets around the edge. At the desk sat a man, heavily-built and with the look of a Roman rather than a local, his tunic of a particularly fine cut. His beard was neatly trimmed and as he looked up there was a keen intelligence in his eyes. He was alone, but Valens couldn’t help but note a line of four weighted throwing knives on the desk near his hand, and a small bell near the other. Any attack would not last long, he suspected.
‘Pacunius the Corinthian, I presume,’ he said in a polite but neutral tone, and suddenly Rigonorix was at his shoulder, pushing past with a grin.
‘Numerius, you tricky shitbag. I should have known it was you,’ the Carvetian laughed.
Valens closed his eyes and counted to ten.
***
THAT’S IT FOR THIS WEEK, BUT IF YOU WANT TO CATCH UP ON THE ORIGINAL STORY FROM LAST YEAR’S LOCKDOWN, IT’S OUT NOW IN EBOOK AND PAPERBACK, AND ALL PROCEEDS FROM SALES GO TO THE BLOOD CANCER CHARITY MYELOMA UK. GET IT HERE AND HELP RAISE FUNDS. OVER £700 RAISED SO FAR, SO WELL DONE, FOLKS!
Deconstructing Jerusalem
My next Praetorian book will be released in early/mid 2021, and among the interesting places Rufinus will be finding himself wandering in book VI is the Holy City, the hub of the three Abrahamic religions. But the problem is that at the time the book is set, Jerusalem is a thing of the past… and but a dream of the future. In 193AD, on the site of that Jewish city is a Roman metropolis by the name of Aelia Capitolina.
What? Well here’s the thing. Once upon a time, during the days of the Jewish kings and the Roman republic and early empire, Jerusalem was the powerful capital city of the Jews. At its religious heart was the great Temple of Solomon, and the city had stout defensive walls that had been there for more than a millennium, with the impressive palace of Herod attached to the ramparts. The urban mass spread over three hills. Jerusalem was proud, strong, and one of the most important cities in the east.
The problem lies within that infamous inability of the Jews and the Romans to get along. One of the most basic tenets of the Jewish faith is that their god is the only god, and no Jew could bow to another. The Romans, unfortunately, had a series of emperors who had been deified, often while still alive, and the emperor being a god was somewhat central to Roman culture. Herein lies an unbreakable wall. The Romans could not accept citizens who defied a god, and the Jews could not recognise that god. Oops.
This trouble boiled over a number of times into violence. The first real world-changing event occurred late in Nero’s reign. A rising of the Jewish population brought down a strong Roman military response, and the future emperors Vespasian and Titus devastated the Jewish world, culminating in a siege of Jerusalem that ruined its walls, saw the city sacked, and resulted in the destruction and looting of the great temple.
Clearly, the following decades were ever more strained, and eventually it was guaranteed to boil over once more. This happened in the reign of Hadrian and sparked a second dreadful war in 132AD, known as the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Tradition tries to present us with a Hadrian that was a pleasant, intelligent, calm, thoughtful and peaceable emperor. Think again. The Hadrian that dealt with this Jewish revolt was brutal in his choices.
Once again the Jews were stamped upon and the city of Jerusalem occupied. This time, however, the emperor was leaving no chance of further trouble. His response was impressive in its savagery. The great temple was this time torn down completely. The only remnant was a single supporting wall which still survives and is now known as the Western, or ‘Wailing’ Wall. In its place went up a great Roman temple. The city walls were torn town and the Jewish city itself more or less flattened. Herod’s palace was destroyed, barring three towers which were left to house the Roman garrison, and the famed Antonia Fortress was destroyed. Even the city’s name was wiped clean, replaced with one that carried the emperor’s own name.
Jerusalem was gone. Aelia Capitolina was born. But this was more than a mere civic rebuild or even a ‘rebranding’. This was the systematic destruction of the heart of Judaism. The temple that was the centre of the Jewish world had been removed and replaced with one to Jupiter, the walls that had protected the Jews for untold generations were gone, leaving them defenceless the ancient city was flat and had been replaced with a Roman one including triumphal arches and fora and more. But the worst thing to happen was Hadrian’s edict. No Jew was to be allowed within the city limits except on one day of mourning, a brutal opportunity for them to remind themselves what they had lost with their revolutions. In fact, according to some sources, no Jew was even to be allowed close enough to see the city. Some of this may be sensationalist reporting, of course, in that the latter would be very hard to police, but the core of it was clearly law.
Sources tell us that the Roman temple complex occupied Temple Mount, the Roman city occupied the main former urban region of the northern hill, and the western hill had been cleared and became the camp of the Tenth Legion. In truth, the Tenth Fretensis would be spread out in vexillations across the region, and so few troops would be left in the city garrison that the hill would be too vast for such minor occupation. Likely less than a cohort remained to police the defenceless city. Moreover, no sign of Roman defences have ever been unearthed there, except in one corner where the Herodian fortress had once stood. In fact, it seems then that the Roman garrison occupied the three remaining towers of Herod’s fortress, while the hill remained unoccupied by Rome. It may be that the western hill became a shanty town of Jews who were not allowed to enter the Roman city, if the edict did not in truth prevent Jews from even looking at their city.
This, then, is the place into which I am about to throw Rufinus. A city that is Roman and sterile, anti-jew and forbidden. A city of gleaming Roman monuments, garrisoned by a cohort in the ancient palace of the kings, with not a Star of David/Seal of Solomon in sight, and a tent and shack city of ousted Jews clustered on a ruined hill, watching in dismay the site of their fallen capital.
In the future, Jerusalem would regain powerful walls, acquire the Dome of the Rock and many Christian churches, grow to far beyond those original hills, once more become the centre of the Abrahamic world and then eventually the centre of the Jewish world again. It would become a jewel fought over by crusading nations from Britain to Constantinople, from Algeria to Iran. But that is not the Jerusalem of the Antonines and Severans and not the Jerusalem of Praetorian VI. Rufinus is about to enter a city with an incredibly complex identity. Buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride…
Maxentius – the face of the damned
It is an inescapable fact that history is written by the victors, and this is rarely as clear as it is in the case of the conflict between Maxentius and Constantine at the turn of the 4th century (click the link just there for a post by Gordon Doherty on that character). Because of the clean sweep Constantine makes of the world he claims, from the reuniting of a divided empire, through the legitimization of Christianity, to the very creation of a New Rome that bore his own name, Constantine’s legacy is hard to ignore. It is all around us in the Church that owes its existence to him, and even in his images. Rome abounds with statues of the man, and his likenesses can be found from Africa to Britain, from Spain to Syria.
But what of his opponent, Maxentius? The simple fact is that during his reign, between 306 and 312 AD, there will have been many statues, busts and images of the emperor who ruled from Rome, yet in the way of things, the majority of those images will have been destroyed following his defeat and his damnation at the hands of the victor. So while we have a very good image of Constantine, derived from numerous surviving busts, we have to search a little harder for Maxentius.
I will not here dive into the unfortunate emperor’s legacy in terms of architecture, though that remains perhaps his greatest gift to us. The Temple of Venus and Rome in its final form, the Basilica of Maxentius, the Temple of Romulus, the great villa and circus on the Via Appia, the baths that were the last structure added to the complex of the Palatine, even much of what we can see of Rome’s walls… all the work of Maxentius.
But what of the man’s image? Few statues have survived. One intriguing possibility is the so called ‘Colossus’ of Constantine, which survives as impressive fragments in the Capitoline museum in Rome. The statue shows signs of having been reworked from a previous incarnation, and therefore it is highly likely to have previously been a likeness of Maxentius, or possibly the statue of his son Romulus that we are told was erected by the governor of Sardinia.
Other busts have survived the destruction of images, though they are few and sparsely spread. Only one full statue of the man has been found in the imperial sanctuary at Ostia Antica, and which is now in the museum there. Appropriately, given history’s viewpoint of the two men who contested the throne, and Constantine’s subsequent sainthood, Maxentius in this statue is portrayed in the very traditional Roman pose of Pontifex Maximus, or High Priest of the Gods of Rome. Fascinatingly, despite the many changes in general attire over the three centuries preceding this date, the garb Maxentius wears, and the way he wears it, over his head, has not changed since the days of the republic, and Augustus, the very first emperor, is shown in exactly the same form three hundred years previously.
Maxentius 
Augustus
Other busts of Maxentius survive, including examples from the Dresden museum, the Louvre, Museo Torlonia, Stockholm museum, and a relief from the Arch of Constantine. The overall impression they create, for me at least, is of a pensive, intelligent and soft man, compared with the powerful, imperious and forthright image in statues of Constantine.
Our only remaining evidence comes from coins, a surprising number of which have survived intact, given the Roman habit of defacing coins of damned emperors. Once again, the image they portray seems austere and thoughtful, packed with Romanitas and tradition.
Maxentius, then, is represented in just six confirmed statues and friezes worldwide, and on a number of coins. By comparison, Constantine is represented in more than six busts and statues in the Capitoline Museum of Rome alone, let alone worldwide. Yet despite the paucity of images of the man who lost to Constantine, it is surprisingly easy to build a mental image and to endow it with qualities. This, then, is the man we should remember, the last pagan emperor to rule from the city of Rome, and the last man to expand its palaces. Hail and farewell, Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius. But his story is just beginning in a new saga from the pens of myself and Gordon Doherty, and the hardback of book 1: Sons of Rome, is out today and you can buy it here.
Damned Emperors
I guess it’s slowly becoming my speciality. It all started with Marius’ Mules, written back in 2003, in which I portrayed (and continue to do so throughout the series) the great dictator Julius Caesar. History gives us a larger than life hero in Caesar, (and Caesar’s own writings do nothing to disabuse us of this notioin) though even the slightest reading between the lines shows us a man of more depth and considerably more ambition and callousness than that. But from Caesar I’ve explored so much further.
The next step came with Praetorian: The Great Game, in which I dared, against traditional opinion, to show a Commodus who was golden and glorious, and not at all a sadistic, wicked and megalomaniac emperor. Admittedly he was young then, and even the ancient sources tell us that he started well. But still…
Then, persuaded to it by my agent (an all-round genius) I moved on to a truly great villain: Caligula, and I was determined to try and find the real man amid the cruel legend, picking holes in the logic or veracity of sources and trying to distill a truth from their viciousness. I think I succeeded, not in finding a nice man, for I don’t think that is true, but a man driven to cruelty by his experiences, not at all insane, and more a victim than a lunatic. This was followed up by re-examining Commodus once more, this time in great depth for his own novel, and from an angle that considered the possibility that he was actually bipolar. This opened up a wealth of possibility in terms of what could have been the truth. I have signed on to write two more fictionalised and rehabilitative biographies of damned emperors for Canelo in the coming years. Watch out for more rehabilitation…
Now, with the release of Sons of Rome, I’ve managed to get my claws into another maligned emperor: the enemy of Christians everywhere: Maxentius. Of course, once again, the meagre evidence gives us a very different picture to recognised history. This is a man accused of persecuting the Christians and yet who allowed them to elect a pope? Hmmm. I shall leave you to read the book to see what I mean.
What is it, though? What actually is a damned emperor?
Those emperors who suffered what we now call Damnatio Memoriae were surprisingly common when one looks down the list, and do not always tally with what we see as a villain in history. To take an objective point of view, let us say that it matters not how an emperor lived, but more how he died, as to whether he was damned or praised. There are plenty of emperors who started so well but ended corrupt and wicked (Tiberius) or who did the most appalling things but are remembered as great men (Hadrian), so I don’t think we can safely say that being a good man was a ticket to herohood, while being a bad one would label someone a villain for history.
Essentially, when an emperor, for good or ill, ended up at odds with the senate, or a powerful family member, or often his own bodyguard, and eventually the knife came in the dark (Caligula), or in the toilet (Caracalla), or in the groin (Domitian) or poison was given (Claudius), or sometimes they were just openly hacked to pieces (Didius Julianus), their fate beyond death was decided. Of the 81 emperors, or successful usurpers, who ruled Rome from the foundation of the Principate to the fall of the city in 410, up to 35 may have suffered damnatio memoriae!
If they were popular, even if they had been assassinated and their assassin seized the throne, they might well be granted apotheosis, and be given rites and said to have risen to sit among the gods. They would be given their own cult, they would be remembered in festivals, have priests assigned to them and be generally godly from then on. If they were unpopular, or their enemies were powerful enough to insist upon a course of action in the face of public opinion, the opposite would happen, and they would be officially damned. For the record there were odd occasions that buck the trend. Tiberius was neither damned nor ascended, while damnation for Caracalla was popularly sought, but not granted.
What happened, then, when an unpopular emperor was damned? Well it was pretty thorough as evidence, or lack thereof, clarifies. Firstly their statues and busts were torn down and destroyed, as well as other images. A famous painting of the Severan family has the face of Geta scratched out after his brother first murdered, then damned, him. Many damned emperors have left remarkably few statues for their incumbency.
My latest investigation, Maxentius, has left half a dozen statues at most. Why? Not just because they were smashed. After all, marble was expensive. Bronze statues of an emperor could be melted down and recast, but with marble that was more troublesome. The great colossus of Nero that stood next to the Flavian amphitheatre in Rome (and gave it its eternal name) was changed to a statue of Sol Invictus after his death, and then into one of Commodus in the late 2nd century before being changed again after that. One of the most famous statues in the Roman world is the colossal Constantine that survives as fragments in the Capitoline museum in Rome.
The interesting thing is that an examination of the head shows that it is unrealistically shaped, much wider than it is deep. This is a clear indication that the statue was not originally Constantine and has been cut back to change the face. Originally, it was almost certainly either his opponent Maxentius, or possibly his son Romulus who had a giant statue voted to him by the governor of Sardinia. The reworking of statues is an incredibly common theme in imperial imagery, and not as troublesome as you might think. After all, the statues of rich ladies were occasionally tooled to allow for separate hairstyles that could be changed depending upon the fashion of the time. For reference, the only surviving full body statue identified as Maxentius is now in the museum in Ostia. Not a single statue or bust remains in Rome.
So does it stop there with the image? No it does not. The unfortunate’s name also gets scratched out of public inscriptions and even things like milestones. There is a wonderful milestone in the Tullie House Museum in Carlisle (RIB 2291) which has been changed three times. The first inscription is now illegible but then, after that was defaced, a new one to Carausius (a usurper emperor who ruled Britain for a while) was added. When Constantine’s time came, the milestone was upended and that end was planted in the ground, a new inscription worked into the other. Another nice example of this practice is to be found in the museum in Alba Iulia in Romania, where Geta’s name has been erased from a monument.
Is there more to it? So far a damned emperor is lucky to have his face come down to us for posterity, and his name has been removed from most things but the rather damning accounts of later vicious biographers telling what must usually be apocryphal stories. Often the defacing goes so far that coins are deliberately mutilated. Remember that at this time, a coin’s value lies in its inherent metallic content, so defacing it does not necessarily decrease its value. And wait… there’s more.
Often decrees, laws and declarations made by an emperor would be repealed. A prime example is Commodus’s renaming of everything but the family cat in line with his own appellation. Clearly the city remained Rome, and not Colonia Commodiana (though an altar found in Syria confirms that the changes had been accepted readily before his death.) Tellingly, Gaius (Caligula) was in absolute power over the empire for four years and we know from contemporary accounts that he had made reaching changes to seating organisation in theatres, amphitheatres and circuses. We know that he made huge changes in laws to allow his sisters precedence. Yet there are no new laws or statutes surviving from his reign. That he might play with the social order but not alter laws and statutes seems unfeasible, which tells us that after his fall his opponents repealed everything he had put into place.
To some extent then, since usually any remaining family were executed alongside the emperor, they were by and large removed from history entirely, other than the defaming carried out by later biographers. As time went on, and Christianity became more powerful and rooted, the damning of emperors takes on a new angle. Nero is also now remembered as an aspect of the Antichrist in the Catholic Church, Julian was not damned politically as of old, but was demonised and damned by the Church. And my personal favourite, Maxentius, was turned into a vicious hater of Christians by Constantine’s pet Christian writers.
But to those of us who like to study such things, the challenge presented by damned emperors is too much to resist. We are given men portrayed as monsters, with little in the way of evidence, yet there are tantalising hints throughout that there is more to their story than we are told, that they were more rounded and human than history tells us.
I won’t stop investigating them and writing about them, as the damned emperors fascinate me. I hope you find them as interesting.
An Imperial Miscellany
Most of us know a few of the Roman emperors. Many of us can recall important facts about the better known ones. What occurred to me as a fascinating question was whether it was possible to say something short but interesting about each of them drawn from their contemporary sources, and so I decided to try. I’ve used here only classical sources and gone from the first acknowledged emperor (Augustus) to the last emperor of a unified empire (Constantine), and so a period of just over 3 centuries, for a total of 53 rulers (not counting most co-emperors or usurpers). Of course, these ‘facts’ are only as accurate as the ancient writers who recorded them for posterity. Fake news is nothing new….
Augustus – The first emperor, famed for enacting numerous morality laws, yet was accustomed ‘to lie among twelve catamites and an equal number of girls.’ Let’s hope he had a king-sized bed eh?
Tiberius – Narrowly escaped being crushed by a rockfall in the grotto of his villa near Tarracina. Shame it missed, really…
Caligula – Bridged the Bay of Naples from Baiae to Puteoli, held a triumph across it and claimed to have conquered Neptune. Neptune may have thought otherwise.
Claudius – Had knives fashioned from the swords of two gladiators who felled one another simultaneously.
Nero – Sent his mum down the Tiber on a ship designed to collapse, yet she survived the shipwreck and he got so frustrated he just sent a centurion to kill her instead.
Galba – Claimed descent from Jupiter on his father’s side and from the wife of King Minos on his mother’s. Talk about connected….
Otho – ‘Splay-footed and bandy-legged’ and ‘almost feminine in his care of his person.’ Clearly he was no oil painting.
Vitellius – Banished astrologers from Rome. Well done, Vitellius!
Vespasian – Imposed a tax on public urinals and it was so unpopular that they soon became known as Vespasiani!
Titus – In the arena he had a battle between cranes! While I love to picture this as Roman scrapheap challenge, I think it means birds, though that raises its own questions….
Domitian – He prided himself that he didn’t bury perfidious Vestals alive as was custom. He just had them executed in other ways. Ah well, that’s alright then…
Nerva – Always had to ‘vomit up his food’! I’ve seen his beak-like nose. Maybe he was trying to feed the fledglings.
Trajan – Brought pantomime back to theatres, an artform periodically banned, since it often led to riots! Pantomime riots? Who knew?
Hadrian – It is because he lost a cloak that emperors thenceforth never wore such a garment in civilian public.
Antoninus Pius – Swarms of bees settled upon his statues all over Etrutria!
Marcus Aurelius – The famed philosopher king was fond of boxing and wrestling. Not bad for a sickly child…
Lucius Verus – Out in Syria he became so fond of restaurants that when he came home he had one built and staffed in his villa. A McVerus Happy Meal, please…
Commodus – Put a starling on the head of a man with thinning white hair so that it pecked at his skull, thinking they were worms. Strange behaviour, but stupid bird!
Pertinax – At meals he would serve nine pounds of meat in three courses, no matter how many were eating.
Didius Julianus – On the other hand (see above) made a hare last for three days!
Septimius Severus – Was charged with adultery in his youth, but acquitted. He wasn’t, however, charged with youthery in his adulthood.
Geta – Never gave presents.
Caracalla – Was busy having a whizz when he was killed by a knife blow to the side at the urinal.
Macrinus – Gave himself the nickname ‘Felix’ – lucky. Ironic, really, given he reigned for only a year and was decapitated.
Elagabalus – Had himself completely waxed or plucked regularly. Mmmmm… smoooooth.
Severus Alexander – Was born on the same day that Alexander the Great died.
Maximinus Thrax – Punched a horse and knocked out its teeth.
Gordian I – Owned a house once owned by Pompey the Great.
Gordian II – Had 22 concubines, with 3 or 4 children from each. Playaaahhhhh!
Maximus & Balbinus – Maximus thought Balbinus was weak, while Balbinus though Maximus was too low class. A partnership made in heaven…
Gordian III – When he was proclaimed emperor there was a solar eclipse.
Philip the Arab – May have been the first emperor to convert to Christianity.
Decius – Disappeared in a swamp.
Trebonianus Gallus – Exiled not one, but two Popes…
Valerian – Was captured in battle by Shapur of Persia and lived out his days used as a human stool when the Persian king mounted a horse. So he was sort of… a stool sample?
Gallienus – Planned a colossal statue of himself that was never quite finished.
Claudius Gothicus – Had two gold statues set up by the senate
Aurelian – This emperor was one of three Aurelians around at the time, and so this particularly martial one was nicknamed ‘Sword in Hand’ to distinguish him from the others.
Tacitus – Forbade the wearing of purely silk garments
Probus – Cultivated viticulture in Western Europe. He is the man responsible for French and Spanish wine! All hail Probus, Lord of vino!
Carus – May, or may not, have been struck by lightning. Crispy…
Carinus – Appointed a hobo to sign documents for him!
Numerian – Was killed in secret in his litter on campaign, and then still carried around until the stench alerted his soldiers, and the killer was attacked.
Diocletian – The only emperor who successfully retired, Diocletian grew the most astounding cabbages, or at least, according to him. He refused to return to power in case his horticulture suffered.
Maximian – Built a palace near Sirmium on the spot where his parents had once been ordinary tradespeople.
Galerius – Died as the result of a ‘malignant ulcer’ in his ‘secret parts’!!!
Constantius – The nickname ‘Chlorus’ he later acquired means yellowy-green and may point to a long-term illness he suffered
Severus – Called a dancer and habitual drunkard by Galerius, who was one of his better friends!
Licinius – His ‘boundless ignorance’ made him ‘hostile towards literature’
Maximinus Daia – Suffered an illness so painful that he went mad and began to eat handfuls of dirt
Maxentius – The last emperor to have a Praetorian Guard, and the last to be appointed by them.
Constantine – Through the marriage of sisters of Maxentius, he was both the brother-in-law, and nephew of his opponent! Duelling banjos, anyone?
And thus ends our exploration into the world of imperial miscellany. Hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Oh… alright then 😉
What has that Roman ever done for us?
Yes, I’m talking about what one Roman in particular did for us. As you may know if you’ve been following my social media recently, I have a new book coming out imminently (14th October in ebook, 10th December in hardback), written alongside the redoubtable Gordon Doherty, a fabulous author and a good friend.
Sons of Rome is the first volume in the Rise of Emperors trilogy, and deals with the early days of the emperors Constantine and Maxentius in the late 3rd and early 4th century. Most people will be familiar with the world-famous Constantine, I’m sure, though I expect fewer of you know much about our other protagonist.
Of course, history is written by the victor, and so Constantine has become both a saint and a household name, his image still visible all over the Roman world and his reputation impressive, while Maxentius has been resigned to barely-remembered footnotes and piecemeal wicked legend.
But the fact remains that though Constantine has left us a few monuments, it is actually Maxentius who has bequeathed to posterity a large spread of monuments that can still be seen and visited. Constantine’s main architectural legacy remains the impressive palace, basilica and baths in Trier (Augusta Treverorum), while the towers often attributed to him in York are now believed to be Trajanic, and the arch erected to celebrate him beside the Colosseum is largely pieces of much older imperial arches that have been stolen and rebuilt for the new hero.
As we shall see, Constantine actually appropriated many of his opponent’s works in his own name, and the main monument in Rome that could be said to be definitively his (a bath house on the Quirinal) has left no visible traces above ground. So what of the other contender. What has Maxentius left us? Well there are still a few monuments in Rome that bear his name, and others that might be a surprise for you. Let’s have a look at them.
This grand structure, just one remaining aisle of what would have been one of the world’s most impressive basilicas, is still mostly known as the Basilica of Maxentius, though some sources do refer to it as the Basilica of Constantine, which is satisfying evidence that while the victor attempted to take credit for everything, it did not always work. Lying within the forum, on the far side to the Palatine Hill, the building remains an iconic monument in Rome. It was most certainly begun by Maxentius, some time after 308 AD, but was probably finished and consecrated by Constantine after 312.
The Palatine Hill was the main city residence of the emperors from the time of Augustus far into the 3rd century. Only by the late 3rd did emperors put more stock in foreign locations, and the Palatine complex declined. Maxentius was the last of Rome’s emperors to have definitely resided upon the Palatine, and he has left his mark in a small way, for atop the Severan Arcades overlooking the Circus Maximus a visitor can find the remnants of a small but ornate private bath house built by Maxentius during his short time ruling the city.
A short distance from the urban sprawl, along the Via Appia Antica (a beautiful walk on a sunny day), lie the remains of several structures that if you are lucky will be open when you pass. The most obvious one is the remains of a chariot-racing stadium, constructed by Maxentius as part of his suburban villa. It remains one of the better preserved stadia in the western world and is impressive in scale.
Attached to the complex I just mentioned, and close to the stadium, lies a great brick box of high walls, surrounding a drum-shaped structure. This is the mausoleum of Romulus, Maxentius’s son, and abuts the road itself, where generations of Roman greats had been interred in mausolea. Despite that this is quite late for Rome, the form of this tomb echoes the great mausolea of Augustus and Hadrian, giving some clue as to how rooted in tradition this emperor of Rome was.
And the last part of that great complex on the Via Appia is the villa itself, Maxentius’s home away from the bustle of the city. There is some suggestion that this villa is a rebuild of a much earlier villa that belonged to the famous Herodes Atticus. Now little remains of the villa above ground, barring a cistern nearby, and the attached mausoleum and stadium, but the importance of this site cannot be overestimated.
Back to the city now, and you might have seen this one in the forum. It is a temple known as the Temple of the Divine Romulus. Though it was possibly an earlier structure dedicated to another divinity, this building was renovated by Maxentius, and seems to have been dedicated to the memory of his son. It forms the rear end of the Church of Saints Cosmo and Damiano. Impressively, the bronze doors are original!
You might now be sputtering angrily, and telling me that the Temple of Venus and Rome at the end of the forum and overlooking the Colosseum is nothing to do with Maxentius. Alright, the temple is definitely far older, yet Maxentius had a hand in it. By the time he reigned in the city, this temple had seen much better days and was in much need of work. What we can now see is largely the result of Maxentius’s reconstruction. So there you go!
What? But the walls of Rome are Servian and Aurelianic, are they not? The great stretch that surrounds the city are most definitely attributed to Aurelian and Probus, decades earlier than Maxentius. But what you might not know is that they were considerably lower and less defensive in their original form. It is thanks to Maxentius’s rebuilding of the walls that they remain the impressive specimen they are. Maxentius raised the height of the walls, added buttresses and hole storeys to the gates, added an archer’s gallery to large stretches of the circuit, and essentially turned them from ‘good’ to ‘formidable’.
My penultimate offering will now have Constantine’s fans spitting feathers. This, clearly, is the famous ‘colossus of Constantine, or the remaining pieces of it in the Capitoline museum on the Campidoglio, Well, yes it is, but the thing is that Roman emperors had this nasty tendency of tearing down the statues of their predecessors if they were unpopular or opposed and vanquished, and having them re-carved to resemble themselves. The simple fact is that this iconic statue shows all the signs of having been reworked from an earlier one (the head is a weird flat shape where the original face has been chiselled off.) The fact is that this was quite possibly a grand statue of Maxentius. But the more enticing fact is that it might just be of his son Romulus. The governor of Sardinia paid for a massive statue of Romulus, and it is more than possible – likely even – that this image of Constantine once bore the image of his opponent’s son.
The rarest thing of all to finish. This is something Maxentius bequeathed to us that is utterly unique. In the national museum in Rome sit these pieces. Discovered just over a decade ago under some stairs in a structure below the Palatine hill, they are the only known Imperial regalia ever found. The sceptres and wands of office of a Roman emperor, probably buried by Maxentius’s men after his demise. They are fabulous and one of a kind, and a reason alone to remember this most obscure of men.
Maxentius is one of those emperors who have suffered Damnatio Memoriae, their memory damned and cursed, their images destroyed, coins defaced, inscriptions scratched out and laws repealed. But while Constantine’s favoured bishops might have done their best to wipe the record of his reign from history, the monumental record speaks for itself. Here was a man who was a traditional Roman, in the mould of the oldest emperors. Thank you, Maxentius, for your gifts to us.
Read about Maxentius and Constantine in Sons of Rome, out tomorrow! Buy it here…
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