Give Me Back My Legions(52)

Aristocles might have dispraised freedom, but he blossomed like these German flowers in springtime when Varus affirmed he would gain it. “Your Excellency is very kind - very kind!” he said in Greek. Falling into his native tongue was often a sign he’d been touched. “I thank you so much!”

“You are welcome,” Varus answered, also in Greek. As far as grammar went, Varus spoke it perfectly. But his accent still proclaimed him a foreigner.

Romans reckoned everyone but themselves and Greeks barbarians. As far as Aristocles was concerned, Varus was as much a barbarian as Arminius or Segestes. The pedisequus probably wouldn’t say that out loud - his sense of self-preservation worked. Varus had talked with plenty of other Greeks - free men - though. He knew what they thought, even if respect for Rome’s might made them mind their manners.

“Things are different for you and the Germans,” Varus said. “You understand freedom. You know what it really means. The Germans are free like so many wolves in the woods. We have to be good shepherds, and make sure they don’t slaughter our flocks and run wild.”

“A nice figure, sir,” Aristocles said.

That might have been flattery, too. If it was, Quinctilius Varus didn’t notice, because he also thought it a nice figure. He would have thought of the Germans as wolves even if they weren’t fond of draping themselves in pelts like aquilifers and buccinatores. Since they were, the comparison sprang even more naturally to his lips.

Except for his visit to the friendly chieftain, he hadn’t seen many of them since Legions XVII, XVIII, and XIX plunged into Germany. That didn’t surprise him. Even in provinces the Romans had ruled for years, locals made themselves and their livestock scarce when legionaries marched by. No doubt the farmers in Pericles’ Greece had done their best to disappear when phalanxes full of hoplites came near their holdings.

Varus laughed. Back when the Pyramids and Sphinx were new, Egyptian peasants must have tried to steer clear of the Pharaoh’s soldiers. Some things never changed.

“What’s funny, sir?” Aristocles asked. Varus told him. The pedisequus dipped his head in agreement. “I expect you’re right,” he said.

“I suppose Pharaoh’s armies went through Syria every now and then,” Varus said musingly. “That’s old, old country there in the East. Maybe not so old as Egypt, but older than Greece and Rome.”

“Yes.” Aristocles’ mouth tightened as if he’d bitten into an unripe persimmon. Pride in their own antiquity was one of the few edges Greeks had on Romans. Varus’ slave couldn’t even complain, because the Roman had already admitted that Syria was older than his own homeland, too.

Then Quinctilius Varus’s mouth also tightened, but for a different reason. “From a land as old as time to one where time doesn’t seem to have started yet ... A bit of a change, isn’t it?”

“Just a bit. Yes, sir.” Aristocles looked around at the oaks and elms and beeches and chestnuts coming into leaf, and at the pines and firs and other conifers whose needles darkened the German forests’ aspect. “It is a pity Augustus didn’t name you Augustal prefect. Then you could have seen the Egyptian antiquities at first hand. As you say, there’s nothing old here except the woods.”

“Yes. Indeed.” Varus’ mouth got tighter yet. A clever slave could get back at his master, as the Greek had just proved. Augustal prefect of Egypt was the most important administrative post in the Empire – after the one Augustus held himself, of course. It was also the post Varus had craved after governing Syria. And it was the post his wife’s great-uncle had chosen not to give him.

“I have to do the best I can where Augustus decided to send me,” Varus said. “The decision was his.” Everything in the Empire was Augustus’ to give or to withhold as he saw fit. That was what winning all those civil wars meant. Oh, he’d built up a fine Republican facade to operate behind, but it was a facade, as anyone with eyes to see knew.

Aristocles sighed. “If only the Pannonians hadn’t rebelled . . .”

“If, if, if,” Varus said, not because the pedisequus was wrong but because he was right. If Tiberius weren’t putting down the rising within the Empire’s borders, he would hold this post now. And if stern, unsmiling Tiberius were whipping the Germans into line, Augustus might well have sent Varus to Egypt.

Had Augustus sent Varus there, Aristocles would have gone along. The Greek sighed again, this time on a more resigned note. “Oh, well. What can you do, eh, your Excellency?”