Emperor of Rome

CHAPTER I

TITUS FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS had the strange sensation that he had been here before. In fact, to Vespasian, the circumstances of the situation were so similar to an incident twenty-two years previously that he was not surprised by this sense of revisiting time. Almost every detail was in repetition: the legions and auxiliary cohorts drawn up awaiting the order to begin the assault; the objective itself: a small hilltop sett lement of rebels holding out against Roman rule; and then the possibility that the leader of said rebels was trapped within the township. It was uncannily akin to the siege of a hill fort in Britannia, during the second year of the Claudian invasion, when he, Vespasian, had hoped to capture the rebel chieftain, Caratacus. It was all so similar; all, except for one detail: then he had been a legionary legate in command of a single legion, the II Augusta, and its associated auxiliary cohorts; now he was a general in command of three legions and their auxiliaries as well as other contingents supplied by friendly, local client kings, including Herod Agrippa, the second of that name, nominal tetrarch of Galilee, as well as Vespasian's old acquaintance, Malichus, King of the Nabatean Arabs. All in all he had over forty-five thousand men under his command. It was a huge difference; almost as big as the difference in the climate between that damp isle and this realm of the Jews, he reflected as he watched his son and second in command, Titus, ride, kicking up a cloud of dust, towards him and his companion sitt ing quietly upon his horse to his right. Vespasian could not remember the last time it had rained anything more than a light drizzle in the three months since he had arrived in this arid part of the Empire that had so violently risen up against Rome.

And it had been violent; violent and humiliating. For, but a year ago, Cestius Gallus, the then Governor of Syria, had come south to Galilee and Judaea, in an attempt to quell the burgeoning rebellion; with him he brought the XII Fulminata bolstered by contingents from the three other Syrian legions and their auxiliaries, upwards of thirty thousand men in total. His initial success in retaking Acre, in western Galilee, and then marching south to Caesarea and Jaffa in Judaea, where he massacred almost nine thousand rebels, was overturned when, citing threats to his supply lines, he withdrew, just as he was on the point of investing Jerusalem, and was ambushed at the pass of Beth Horon. More than six thousand Roman soldiers died that day, with nearly twice that number wounded; the XII Fulminata was almost annihilated and its Eagle lost. Gallus had fled back to Antioch in Syria, shamefully abandoning the remnants of his army to extract themselves from the province that, buoyed by this triumph, had now gone into a full-scale revolt. Now, however, the Jews' revolt was bolstered by their leaders who claimed that their singular Jewish god had brought about the victory and therefore their success in ridding their land of Rome was a foregone conclusion.

The Emperor Nero had turned to Vespasian to disabuse the Jews of this notion.

But it was not the help of the jealous Jewish mono-deity that caused Vespasian concern as he awaited the reports of spies, working for Titus, who had infiltrated Gabara, the first town he had targeted in his campaign: it was the fact that the dead at Beth Horon had all been stripped of their armour and weapons; many of the wounded, and, indeed, many not so, had also abandoned their arms as they fled. Vespasian was very aware that he faced a well-armed fighting force and no mere rabble of rebels. And more than that, their leader, Yosef ben Matthias, the rebel Governor of Galilee, had the ability to inspire men; this Vespasian knew from first-hand experience having met him when he was a part of a Jewish delegation to Nero three years previously.

'Well?' Vespasian asked as, with prodigious skill and much dust, Titus brought his mount to a skidding halt next to him.

'They refuse to parley and are keeping their gates closed.'

'And Yosef?'

'He's not in there, Father.'

'Not there? Then how did he get out?'

'He didn't; he was never in Gabara. Our informants were wrong.'

'Your informants.' Vespasian took off his high-plumed helmet and the cushioning felt cap and rubbed his bald, sweat-soaked pate; his strained expression, which was the default mode of his rounded face, gave the impression that he had been attempting to pass a stool which was putting up more of a fight than was the norm. 'So who is the commander?'

'Yohanan ben Levi, he's Yosef's rival for power in Galilee and every bit as fanatical; he leads the Zealot faction in Galilee.'

'Zealots?'

'They're zealous for their god, which basically means that they'll kill anyone who doesn't believe or think like they do, especially us; and, even more especially, any Jew who has a less fanatical view of their religion than they do. They were the people who destroyed all the art and statuary in Tiberias because they claimed it offended their god.'

'Barbarians!' Vespasian's disgust at such behaviour was plain. 'How many of the fanatics do your informants reckon this Yohanan has under his command?'

Titus, whose prominent nose, intelligent, quick eyes and large ears made him the image of his fifty-seven-year-old father, suppressed the petulant urge to point out that many of the spies had been recruited by Vespasian; he had taken on the role of chief intelligence officer upon his arrival at the rendezvous with his father in the port of Ptolemais, having brought his legion, the XV Apollinaris, from Egypt. 'Not as many as we first thought, our informants seem to have exaggerated somewhat.'

Vespasian shook his head and smiled. 'I'm sorry, Son; I learnt long ago not to apportion blame. They're as much mine as yours; more so, even, since it's my army.'

Titus returned the smile. 'Don't you mean "the Emperor's army", Father?'

'I do, of course. It's just that he has, very kindly, lent it to me at the moment and the question is now: how am I going to use it? Roughly how many men of fighting age do our informants think are inside the walls?'

'No more than five hundred.'

'And others?'

'At least two, but no more than three, thousand.'

'Good; I can give this to the auxiliaries and let them have the chance to show me what they're made of. It should provide the rest of the army with a bit of sport to whet their appetite for the coming campaign.'

Titus looked with regret at the stone walls of Gabara. 'It's a pity about that sly rat Yosef, though; it would have been good to have caught him this early on. Still, getting Yohanan ben Levi will be almost as good; that will be a great piece of news to have trumpeted around Rome. Nero should be very pleased to hear that we have made such a good start and captured one of the main rebel leaders.'

'What should please Nero and what you think would please Nero and what really does please Nero are three completely separate things, as you should know by now, my boy. Doing too well too quickly won't necessarily endear us to our Emperor; look at what happened to Corbulo.'

Titus sighed. 'Very true.'

And that was just the problem that Vespasian faced: considered to have been the greatest general of the age, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo had been a victim of a combination of his own success and Nero's jealousy. Having effectively prosecuted a war with Parthia to wrest Armenia back into the Roman sphere of influence, it would have been thought a certainty that the Emperor would have sent Corbulo, his best general, to deal with the crisis, when news of Gallus' defeat had reached his ears as he was touring Greece entering every competition for singing, poetry and chariot racing and, unsurprisingly, winning them all - all one thousand eight hundred of them; indeed, the Olympic Games and many other religious festivals had been brought forward out of their normal cycles so that Nero could indulge his vanity, believing himself to be the greatest artist and the most competent charioteer of all time.

But it was not so in Nero's mind. It had been Vespasian to whom Nero had turned; and this despite the fact that he had angered the Emperor by falling asleep and then spluttering awake during one of Nero's interminable recitals.

Vespasian had been hiding from the Emperor's displeasure in the lands of the Caenii in Thracia having taken his long-time mistress, Caenis, home to visit her people for the first time since her mother had been sold into slavery whilst pregnant with her. It had been his old friend, Magnus, who had sought him out with the Emperor's summons, having guessed where he was; Magnus had been with Vespasian, Corbulo and Centurion Faustus when they had been captured by the Caenii forty years previously. A pendant that Caenis had given Vespasian had saved their lives just before the four of them were due to fight to the death; the chieftain of the Caenii, Coronus, Caenis' uncle, had recognised it as the emblem of his tribe. Upon their release, Vespasian had promised to, one day, reunite Caenis with her people.

Vespasian had known that if he did not obey Nero's order to return then he would be forever an exile and always on the lookout...