Rome's Lost Son(9)

Vespasian’s twelve lictors led the procession along the Via Sacra, past the House of the Vestals and the Domus Publica and many other sights, to no more than a rumbling murmur from the crowd. Gone were the jeers and the insults and not even a crust of stale bread flew towards the Britannic King as he strode behind Vespasian and the other leading magistrates, erect and dignified, a full head taller than most of them and their lictors. News of his words had filtered through the crowd and it was with reverence that they watched him pass with the rest of the Senate following behind, out of the Forum and then left, up towards the Vicus Patricius where the buildings became less grand as the tenements of the Subura jostled against one another for mutual support and where prostitution was the main reason for the transferral of coinage.

But it was with unseeing eyes that Vespasian made the journey; his mind was not on this world.

Ever since, as a boy of fifteen, he had overheard his parents discussing the omens found at his naming ceremony, he had suspected that he was subject to the will of his guardian god, Mars; but no one would tell him what had been predicted as his mother had subjected all present to an oath never to reveal what signs they had seen on the sacrifices. Was what he had seen today similar? A ‘V’ stamped in the realm of Mars on the liver dedicated by him to Rome’s greatest god, Jupiter. But there were many parts of this puzzle and as he tentatively pieced them together a picture emerged whose entirety he had already glimpsed.

The Oracle of Amphiariaos holding a centuries-old prophecy to be delivered only to him and Sabinus. Tiberius’ astrologer advising the old Emperor that a senator who witnessed the Phoenix’s rebirth in Egypt would father the next dynasty of emperors: Vespasian had witnessed the event in Siwa and thought nothing of it until Sabinus had told him that the oasis had once been a part of the Kingdom of Egypt. Then there was the Oracle of Amun and the dying gift of his patroness, the Lady Antonia: the sword of her father, Marcus Antonius, one of the greatest of all the Romans. There was also Myrddin, the immortal druid of Britannia; he had told Vespasian that he had seen the destiny that Mars held for him. That destiny had terrified Myrddin because he was convinced that Vespasian would one day have the power, but fail to use it, to halt a disease now germinated in the heart of Rome; a disease, Mryddin believed, that would eventually destroy the old and true religions. Twice, Myrddin had tried to kill him with his gods conjured to life; proof that the gods existed, proof that they had power. That he had survived, Vespasian knew, was proof that Mars held his hands over him; and because that was certain, what he had seen that morning should be taken seriously.

All this echoed around his head as he led the procession towards the heir to the Julio-Claudian bloodline: a twitching, limping, dribbling fool ruled by his wife and freedmen. A scholarly historian? Perhaps. A legal pedant of some note? Certainly. But a wise emperor who weighed his words or a vain fool, dismissive of the talents of others, resentful for years of humiliation and under the mistaken impression that he was one of the finest wits of the age?

On they went up the Viminal, along the Vicus Patricius, to barely a raised voice, past the more respectable brothels of both sexes and on towards the Viminal Gate, beyond which waited the fool who drooled. Vespasian put his thoughts to the back of his mind and wondered how the Emperor would deal with a man of such dignity and so worthy of respect as Caratacus.

Then Vespasian considered what he would do were he in Claudius’ position.

The Praetorian Guard crunched to attention, shaking the ground as thousands of feet stamped down in absolute unison. Beyond the ranks and files of regimented cohorts, crows rose, in wing-beating chaos, from the rooftops of the Praetorian camp, protesting with shrill caws the interruption of their morning slumber. The sharp bellows of command and the resulting military thunder echoed between the camp’s walls and the city’s high, brick-built Servian defences for a few moments before fading abruptly to leave only the fluttering of massed banners and the faint hiss of the breeze blowing through thousands of horsehair crests, augmented occasionally by mournful bird-cry. Rigid, the men of Rome’s élite unit held their eyes to the front, unblinking, as the Senate paraded through the Viminal Gate, Vespasian at their head, bearing the gift of a captured king and his retinue to their Emperor.

Claudius was seated on one of two daises to the left of the Guard’s formation with the wives and children of the leading men in Rome to his other side. Flavia and their eight-year-old daughter, Domitilla, were seated in places of honour to the front of the women; her pride in Vespasian’s position was very apparent as she sat, bolt upright, her head turning from side to side acknowledging the real or imagined compliments of her peers, her worries over wet nurses temporarily put to one side.