Authors: Robert Fabbri
Vespasian frowned. ‘But one day you’ll push someone too far.’
‘Will I? I don’t think so. If someone did manage to kill me, which would be very difficult, they would themselves die. Who here would do that and lose all his property, thereby
making his family destitute? Would you?’
Neither Vespasian nor Sabinus answered.
Caligula sneered and got up. ‘You see, you wouldn’t, would you? You’re both as bad as the rest of them; and I’ll prove it to you.’ He walked over to Corvinus who
stood by one of the doors; Clemens was next to him still looking devastated. Music continued to rise from the players nearby. ‘Corvinus, if you please?’
‘A pleasure, Divine Gaius,’ Corvinus said, opening the door and disappearing through it; there was a brief cry before he emerged leading a naked woman roughly by the arm.
‘Clementina!’ Sabinus shouted, leaping up from his couch.
Vespasian slammed a restraining arm across his brother’s chest as he tried to go forward. ‘No!’ he hissed. ‘Caligula’s right, you’ll die and your property
would be forfeit; Clementina and the children would be destitute.’
‘Doesn’t that look delicious,’ Caligula said slowly and with palpable relish. ‘Corvinus took it upon himself to fetch her from wherever you’d hidden her, Sabinus,
without me even asking him to. Wasn’t that kind of him, Clemens?’
Clemens closed his eyes and breathed deeply, shaking with suppressed fury. Behind the ugly scene the pipes and lyres blended their notes in delicate harmony.
Vespasian held onto Sabinus who still struggled and was now heaving with sobs.
Caligula grabbed Clementina’s wrist. ‘Your husband was only now wondering how he could thank me; how fortunate he is to have found a way so quickly.’ He gave the brothers a
malicious, questioning look. ‘Sheep?’
Time seemed to slow; sound became muffled and indistinct as Vespasian suppressed his horror. With his feelings wiped from his face, he held Caligula’s gaze for a moment and knew then that
the Emperor had been wrong: he would be killed and his death would be soon; how could it not be so?
But who would stand in his place?
Vespasian turned and stared, his face still impassive, at Claudius, the only direct adult heir of the Julio-Claudian line, twitching and drooling in lust at the sight of Clementina’s body
while unconciously cupping Messalina’s breast. He saw Messalina and her brother, Corvinus, both staring at Clemens and then share a brief, satisfied look of ambition. Vespasian understood
what Corvinus had knowingly set in motion when he had seized Clementina, the sister of the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and brought her here for his master to defile – Corvinus knew that
Messalina could ultimately benefit, for what choice as emperor was there other than her future husband?
Vespasian looked past Messalina to Caligula’s sister, Agrippina, who was staring with loathing at her while holding her carrot-topped infant – another male heir but far too young.
His eyes moved on to Caesonia Milonia, swelling with Caligula’s seed, looking haughtily down her long nose at the other two women, and he knew that the fruit of her belly could not be allowed
to survive the Emperor’s death. It would be Claudius, he thought, certain now. He looked back at the malformed man whose erection protruded shamelessly from under his tunic. This would be the
best that Caesar’s line could offer. For how long could that be tolerated?
The wavering note of a pipe pierced his consciousness and from that germ the song of the Phoenix filled the silence within his head. Thrasyllus’ prophecy came unbidden behind it and, as
his gaze lingered on the heirs of Caesar, Vespasian knew for an instant the question that would one day take him back to the Temple of Amun at Siwa. It disappeared as quickly as it had come as
sound flooded back into his ears and time ground back up to its unrelenting pace.
Clementina looked first at her husband and then her brother, her eyes pleading, but they could do nothing as the arbitrator of life and death dragged her out of the dining room.
The door closed; Clementina screamed; Clemens walked over to the brothers and whispered into Sabinus’ ear: ‘Not here, not now, but at a time and place of my choosing,
together.’
Sabinus gave the faintest of nods as tears streamed down his face and, for the first time in his life, Vespasian feared for his brother: the man whose sense of honour would be strong enough to
overrule his judgement.
And then he began to fear for himself; he knew that when Sabinus next returned to Rome it would be with death in his heart and he, Vespasian, would be forced to make the choice between turning
his back on the sacred bonds of blood or aiding his brother in assassinating an emperor.
This historical fiction is based on the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio, Josephus and Philo.
The events surrounding the crucifixion of Yeshua are, to say the least, opaque. To my mind motivations and timelines seem to be very confused; no doubt due to ancient writers trying to construct
a story piecemeal to suit the agenda of the newly conceived Pauline Christianity. My version of the story is set down with no claims to scholarship; it is purely constructed to have Sabinus witness
the birth of a man-made religion that will become an important strand of the story as the series progresses.
I am grateful to A. N. Wilson in his
Paul: The Mind of the Apostle
for his suggestion of Paulus’ full name and for his intriguing idea that he may have been the Temple guard who had
his ear chopped off by Peter and also that he may well have witnessed the crucifixion itself.
There is no evidence that Paulus went to Creta and Cyrenaica in his persecution of Yeshua’s followers. Vespasian was quaestor there in AD 34 or soon after if we follow the dating in
Barbara Levick’s excellent biography
Vespasian
. I chose AD 34 because that was the year, according to Tacitus, that the Phoenix was again reborn – Cassius Dio puts it in AD 36.
Tacitus clearly believes in the Phoenix and spends more than half a page describing it.
Silphium was dying out at this time and that would have put quite a strain on the Cyrenaican economy. Nero was said to have been presented with the last plant in existence twenty years
later.
I have probably done the Marmaridae a disservice by portraying them as ruthless slavers, for which I apologise.
The Oracle of Amun was in Siwa and Alexander did travel there and was spoken to; he never revealed what he had been told.
Caligula did have a long affair with Macro’s wife, Ennia, and did swear to make her his empress and Macro prefect of Egypt before ordering their suicide for adultery and pandering.
Vespasian’s part in the suicide is, of course, fiction.
Poppaeus died a natural death in AD 35 and Tacitus wrote of him that he was up to the task and no more. There is nothing to suggest that he had anything to do with Pomponius’ suicide the
year before; that seems to have been Tiberius’ doing.
The Parthian mission did come to Rome at this time and Tiberius backed the claim of Phraates, sparking off two years of Roman intervention in the East under the generalship of Lucius Vitellius,
the Governor of Syria. It is my fiction to have Herod Agrippa involved in it, as indeed it was having him in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion and also conspiring with Macro and Poppaeus to
grab the eastern provinces.
Sabinus being the aedile in charge of grain is also my invention but he would have achieved that rank at about this time. Tiberius did give a lot of money towards rebuilding the Aventine after a
fire in the last months of his reign. Tacitus records that Macro did smother him and Cassius Dio says that Caligula had the Senate overturn his will on the grounds of insanity, which was
self-evident because he had named a mere boy as his co-heir.
We get a pleasing clue as to how Vespasian survived Caligula’s reign from Suetonius: he records that Vespasian stood up in the Senate and made a speech thanking the Emperor for inviting
him to dinner the previous evening, showing us that he was considered a friend by Caligula and also he realised that abject sycophancy was, indeed, a life-saving fault.
As to Caligula’s excesses: they were many and varied if we are to believe the historians and I have no reason not to, although I am happy to accept that they may have exaggerated. All of
the acts that he commits in the book are reported or alluded to by either Suetonius or Cassius Dio – Tacitus’ account being unfortunately lost. I have only exaggerated two points:
firstly the extent of his public sex with Drusilla; I can find no record of his building a theatre for these shows, but it has been suggested by some of the more imaginative modern writers on the
subject and I liked the idea so I borrowed it. If someone could show me where it is historically documented, I would be only too pleased to learn that it was true! Secondly: Caligula forcing his
two other sisters to have sex with the urban poor in the palace is also from similar sources; I included this because it seemed like a good way to combine both his turning the palace into a brothel
and also his prostituting his sisters to his friends, both of which are in Suetonius.
Caligula’s illness is mysterious and there have been several theories as to what it was. What is for certain is that he was never the same after. I have shamelessly borrowed Robert
Graves’ idea that he thought himself metamorphosed into a god after his recovery, because it was such fun. My thanks to the shade of one of the greatest writers of historical fiction.
Vespasian was the aedile responsible for Rome’s streets during Caligula’s reign. Suetonius makes much out of Caligula, disgusted at the state of the streets, ordering filth to be
piled into Vespasian’s toga fold; he claims that it was a sign that Rome would one day fall into Vespasian’s lap. Personally I think that it was a sign that Vespasian did not really
care for the job.
Valerius Catullus claimed to have worn himself out buggering Caligula, not Clemens; but it was a nice detail that I wanted to get in.
Antonia was driven to suicide by Caligula’s behaviour and more than likely freed Caenis in her will, as she would have been thirty by then.
Vespasian’s part in fetching Alexander’s breastplate from Alexandria is again my fiction; however, someone had to go and get it, so why not our man? It also puts him in Alexandria
for the Jewish riots of AD 38. The riots and Herod Agrippa’s humiliation I based on Josephus’ and Philo’s accounts as well as the excellent
Alexandrian Riots of 38 CE and the
Persecution of the Jews
by Sandra Gambetti. Paulus being there at the time is my fiction, but if he did live for three years in the desert after his Damascene conversion, he would have been
reappearing in about AD 38, though probably not in Alexandria.
My favourite comment on the riots comes from Philo, brother of the Alabarch, Alexander, whose main cause for outrage was not so much the killing but the fact that high-status Jews were whipped
like common Egyptian peasants in the fields, rather than given the rod as befitted their rank; and then, to compound it all, those whipping them were Greeks of the very lowest class.
Disgraceful!
Vespasian must have met Flavia Domitilla during the time span of the book. She was the mistress of Statilius Capella from Sabratha and the daughter of Flavius Liberalis, a quaestor’s clerk
who became an equestrian.
Caligula’s bridge over the Bay of Naples must have been a wonderful sight; it did, however, cause a massive food shortage in Italy. The events described are all taken from historical
sources; I have only changed it in that it all happens on one day rather than two. Corbulo probably had nothing to do with the building of the road across it, but he did complain about the state of
the roads in the Senate and was made road-czar by Caligula for his trouble – perhaps as a joke?
Caligula’s rape of Clementina at the end is fictional but very much in character.
My thanks again to my agent, Ian Drury at Sheil Land Associates, and also to Gaia Banks and Virginia Ascione for their hard work on my behalf in the foreign rights department.
Thanks to Sara O’Keefe and Toby Mundy at Corvus/Atlantic for believing in the Vespasian series and continuing to publish it.
Once again it has been a pleasure to work with my editor, Richenda Todd, who has, as always, made the book much better than I could have done by myself.
And finally, thank you, Anja, for listening to my day’s work every evening.
Vespasian’s story continues in Germania and Britannia in
Rome’s Fallen Eagle.