Praetorian (54 page)

Even so, daily life in ancient Rome was no picnic. The streets were filled with refuse and sewage and the stench would have been unbearable to a modern nose. Poor sanitation was only one of the dangers. With no regular police force on the beat, the streets were ridden with crime. Cut-purses and roving gangs of thieves haunted the narrow alleys winding off the main thoroughfares. Even if you avoided that threat you still had to face the danger of a complete lack of building regulations. With such a huge population squeezed into a relatively small area, the value of building land was at a premium. Accordingly, a mass of cheaply constructed tenement
blocks rose up on Rome’s hills, and in the valleys between the hills. Many were as high as six storeys and all of them posed significant fire risks as well as being in danger of collapse, burying alive those unfortunate enough to dwell within, as well as any unlucky passers-by.

The vast majority of the population lived in grinding poverty in these high-piled, filthy, crime-ridden slums. Perhaps half the infants born in these slums survived beyond the age of five and did well to live to the ripe old age of fifty. As with all great cities, food had to be transported in from the countryside and therefore commanded relatively high prices which many could not afford. It had long been realised that a starving mob was not conducive to social stability and so the Senate and, later on the emperors, put in place a system of food subsidies and handouts. Having seen to the stomach of the mob, Rome’s rulers proceeded to occupy their minds with entertainments. Something like a third of the days in every year were given over to chariot races, gladiator spectacles and public festivals. It was by such means that the emperors kept the mob in check. It was, however, always a parlous mechanism for social control and vulnerable to the fluctuations in supply of grain depicted in
Praetorian
.

It was a different story for the rich, of course. Those who could afford it bought houses on the hills where breezes made the stench more tolerable and helped to clear away the brown smog that frequently cloaked the capital. Attended by slaves, they could live off the best and most exotic foods that were imported into the city. They enjoyed the best seats at the Great Circus and in the theatres, as well as the complete gamut of pleasures of the flesh.

This then was the Rome in which Cato and Macro arrived to carry out their undercover mission for Narcissus. Although they had fought on the frontiers of the empire, the presence of Rome was always in the back of their minds as the embodiment of all the values that they were fighting for. The city was very much the centre of the Roman world. Not only was it the seat of government, it was also home to the temples of the empire’s gods, and the hub of a vast economy that spanned the known world. In a race as hidebound by tradition as the Romans were, the fount of those
traditions would always be regarded as sacred and its soldiers would be willing to face any peril in defence of the honour of Rome and all that it stood for.

This makes the reality of life in the great city such an interesting contrast to the abstract principle for which men like Cato and Macro fought and died. The ideals on which Rome had been built had largely perished along with the Republic and by the mid-first century the authority of the emperors was absolute. Sure enough there were still people who professed a yearning for the old days but they were usually sensible enough to keep their political views to themselves. The Senate, once the scene of debates and deeds that shaped the known world, was reduced to little more than an exclusive club who rubber-stamped imperial edicts. The power that had once been theirs had been transferred to the coterie of advisers who surrounded the emperor. To rub salt in the wound, these advisers were frequently men from inferior social classes. In the palace itself, there were deep divisions between the emperor’s subordinates who jostled for influence over the emperor. Influence led to power and the chance to make vast fortunes, as the likes of Narcissus and Pallas duly did. If the stakes were high for the emperor’s advisors, they were higher still for members of his family. The casualty rate amongst those closest to the emperor made the dangers facing those soldiers guarding the frontiers rather mild by comparison. For a brilliantly racy portrait of the lethal nature of life in the imperial palace I’d heartily recommend reading Graves’s
I, Claudius
, or watch the excellent BBC television series.