Master and God (9 page)

So, joining the Praetorians who were barracked in an enormous camp outside the city relieved him of some stress by letting him escape arguments. For a man this was ideal. For Arruntia it was just another downhill lurch in their deteriorating life together.

But even Vinius himself was depressed; his transfer seemed a sixteen-year prison sentence (sixteen years was the Praetorian term of service, though he was appalled to hear that many Guards were so keen they stayed longer). His short stint in the army had instilled in him a loathing for this special corps; it rankled with regular legionaries that the Guards not only received pay-and-a-half but wallowed in a life of ease at home. Now Vinius suspected that there was no guarantee of the supposed easy life; the Praetorians were the emperor’s bodyguard, his personal regiment. If your august leader developed military ambitions, you went on campaign. Vinius, who had thought his fighting days were over, faced the unwelcome possibility of more overseas travel and more active service. Should Titus fancy roughing up barbarians, there would be no getting out of it.

Duty in Rome was a mix of luxury and tedium, he soon found. One cohort at a time, carrying weapons but in civilian dress, accompanied their emperor wherever he went. Since Vespasian, Praetorian cohorts had each been bumped up to close on a thousand men. At every change of the guard, they marched down from the Viminal Gate through the Fifth and Third Regions, crossed the Forum and stomped up the Palatine Hill; reverberations shook flagons from shelves in wine bars and made wet sheets slither off washing lines. Standing guard at a palace or a villa, a cohort of Guards filled up a lot of corridor.

Eight other cohorts would be left to hang around the camp. There, a tiresome amount of unnecessary drill occurred, plus occasional homosexuality and much undercover gambling. Sick leave was high. Vinius informed his wife that staying in the camp was rigidly enforced, though Arruntia could hardly miss the fact that off-duty Praetorians ran rife through the city like rats in a granary.

Vinius had a hard time fitting in at first. Nobody wanted him. He was too young. His service record was too short. He arrived with mysterious patronage, which gave no protection because if he had been favoured by Domitian Caesar that counted against him with Titus’ men. He did his best to survive. With what he had learned from his father, he managed to dodge various raucous clubs that had unpleasant initiation rituals. Many Praetorians wore beards; he grew one, found it disgusting and had it shaved off, which at least gave him impressive scabs temporarily. He followed his father in using only two of his three names, dropping ‘Clodianus’ and saying two had been good enough for Mark Antony, always the soldiers’ hero. Otherwise he lay low. Keeping to himself in such a fraternal environment marked him as antisocial, which to Praetorians meant plain disloyal. Loners cannot hope to be popular.

Joining in the reign of Titus, his first major exercise was the opening of the Flavian Amphitheatre. This helped his colleagues forget their antagonism. The Guards now had too much to do to waste energy on bullying him. Vinius was too busy perfecting new skills to worry about them.

The Praetorians were supposed to look friendly to the public, but their role was to scrutinise faces. While everyone else was staring at the Emperor, they would pack around their charge looking outwards, searching for signs of trouble. Soon it came as second nature. Vinius knew to the inch where Titus was sitting or standing, but he never glanced that way. Instead, his one good eye was constantly moving, raking the crowds. With forty or fifty thousand seats in the elegant new amphitheatre, this was a damned large crowd.

‘Still, we’re all having fun, aren’t we?’ was the sarcastic comment each centurion barked. For them, the inauguration was a nightmare. They wanted their man back in his easily patrolled throne room.

There were a hundred days of celebration, with Titus attending all the shows and constantly needing the ultimate security. Often his brother and other relatives came with him, so extra bodyguards were detailed. The imperial box, with its private access corridor, gave protection, but once on show the gregarious Titus liked to throw himself into the occasion. He was never the sort of Games president who just dropped the white scarf to signal the start, then sat like an automaton. Titus was always bobbing up to throw balls labelled with lottery prizes into the crowd, or enjoying arguments with them about contestants’ merits, especially Thracian gladiators who were his favourites. Whenever he leapt to his feet, decorative ranks of Praetorians in celebration uniforms cheered nearby; their breastplates flashed in the sunlight and their tall helmet plumes bristled. But a small, almost invisible cadre of duty Guards in civilian dress were closest to Titus, watching for any suspicious movements that could threaten him, grim faced and with hands on their sword pommels.

The Prefect was twitchy. All the cohort tribunes were jerky in reaction, so the centurions found it hard to relax and they took it out on the men. This made it easier for newcomers to bond, as everyone suffered. At least, on duty or off, they regularly got the best seats.

The order of play was similar on most days: animal entertainments in the morning; at midday criminals were executed in various inventive ways, at which point the Emperor and fastidious audience members slipped away for lunch; on their return in the afternoon there were races or gladiatorial displays. Sometimes the arena was flooded for mock sea battles. These were conducted briskly, before the waves leaked out; subsequent performers had a soggy time of it until the arena floor dried.

Anyone had to marvel at the building’s beauty and efficiency. But its greatest achievement was imperial propaganda. Nero had offended people by commandeering the Forum to build his Golden House, turning the whole centre of the city into one man’s private home and grounds. In giving back the stolen site for public use Vespasian had imposed benign rulership in place of maniacal despotism. When Vespasian returned the Forum to the people, he restored Rome to itself. The massive crowds who assembled in the marble-clad arena, including groups from faraway parts of the world with their colourful robes and outlandish turbans and hairstyles, were staring at the ultimate in statement architecture. Here, sport was pursued not as mystic religion in the way of the Greeks, but as part of the pragmatic politics of Rome.

The programme made available that August was one nobody present would ever forget. Wild animals had been gathered from all over the Empire for the hunting scenes and beast contests. Elephants, lions, leopards, panthers and tigers; boars and bears from the north; desert ostriches, camels and crocodiles; even cranes and rabbits –

Rabbits?

Oh killer bunnies pack a mean thump, Gaius Vinius.

Don’t even try to tell me how!

It was exciting when the nervous trainers managed to persuade unusual combinations to fight, and even more exciting when uncooperative animals ran amuck, throwing things in the air and threatening to clamber over the safety barrier right beside the marble seats on the front rows where the senators sat. Fortunately – or not, if you loathed the aristocracy – the barrier was a cunning arrangement of vertical rollers that defeated both animals and gladiators who tried to escape. The maverick rhinoceros was a firm favourite. The bull maddened by torches briefly had his fan club. The trained elephant that approached the royal box then knelt submissively before Titus showed the Emperor as a man with so much charisma he could control wild creatures, while the lion that let a hare play harmlessly between his paws was generally thought adorable. Less appealing was another lion, who unsportingly mauled his trainer.

Gaius Vinius had never been cold-blooded; he was generally pleased that Titus left for lunch so he could miss the execution interlude. That had fairly routine pitting of thieves and army deserters against ferocious wild beasts – or sulky beasts that had to be goaded to attack the cringing convicts. There were also lurid re-enactments of scenes from mythology and theatre: Pasiphae being raped by a bull, supposedly for real; crucifixion of a bandit in a notorious play, adapted to a gory new version where Prometheus had his liver torn out by a Caledonian boar; the Orpheus myth cruelly perverted so that although the pinioned criminal who was acting the lyre player did seem to tame various creatures with his exquisite melodies, a wild bear who was presumably tone-deaf then tore him to pieces.

After this basic stuff, professional gladiatorial combat seemed to represent pure skill. There were single bouts and group fights. To meet the Roman fascination with the exotic there were female contestants and dwarves. At one point, Titus presided over a record-breaking combat: two evenly matched fighters called Verus and Priscus slogged it out for hours, neither able to break his opponent, neither willing to concede defeat. A draw was not unknown but a draw with honour was unheard of. When Titus eventually persuaded the crowd to allow him to declare equal rewards for these fabulous contestants, giving both gladiators their freedom, the occasion crowned the Games.

This inauguration would be the highlight of his reign. Nevertheless, a sense of anticlimax visibly began to affect the Emperor. Perhaps it was exhaustion, perhaps he was grieving his father’s demise, perhaps he was already in poor health. On the final day, Titus dedicated the building formally, along with the nearby public baths that he had built in his own name. Something went wrong at the sacrifice, and the bull escaped, which was a bad omen. It was said that Titus wept.

Vinius was not on duty but he heard about it. Many of the Guards were unsettled.

There were no more celebrations. The following September, Titus set off from Rome along the Via Salaria towards the Sabine Hills, his father’s place of origin and a long-time family resort in summer. They owned a beautiful villa above Falacrina where Vespasian had been born. On the way, at Aqua Cutiliae, where only two years previously Vespasian had developed a fatal fever after bathing in the ice-cold springs, Titus also fell sick. Immediately his condition must have looked serious. He was taken on to Falacrina, clearly aware that he was dying. His brother must either have been travelling with him or was called to the scene. Lack of clarity about Domitian’s whereabouts and role would add to subsequent suspicions over what happened.

Back in Rome, the first Gaius Vinius knew was a clamour in the Praetorian Camp. When he emerged from his barracks block to investigate, he was told all leave had been cancelled and a full parade summoned. News had flown round. Men reappeared from all quarters of the city. The camp was soon packed. Tension was so palpable the air tingled.

It seemed Domitian Caesar had arrived in a state of high excitement. He galloped in and demanded the Guards’ protection and acclamation. Vinius saw him a short time later, his eyes so bright that he looked drugged, his face flushed, heavy sweat stains on his tunic. Any of Vinius’ resourceful aunts would have made the agitated prince open wide for a big spoonful of calming syrup, followed by a lie-down. Vinius himself thought the man needed a stiff drink among older, more equable friends, then a siesta with a couple of well-articulated dancing girls to put life in perspective. But real life had ended for ever for the impatient Caesar.

Domitian insisted his brother was dead. The Praetorian Prefect responded with caution, still nominally Titus’ man; he probably thought his own days would be numbered from the moment Titus was officially declared dead. Troops began talking amongst themselves of a large accession bonus – for most of them, their second in two years. Somebody said to Vinius in a speculative voice, ‘This should be good news for you!’ but the prospect of Domitian coming to power failed to fill him with joy.

A small mounted squadron was quietly despatched to Falacrina but met a sobbing messenger who confirmed the news. All kinds of rumours rapidly circulated. Most fanciful was the Jewish belief that when he destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem, Titus had slept with a prostitute and a gnat entered his ear, growing inside his head for years until he could no longer bear the noise of it. Perhaps the headaches he suffered were really malarial, though doctors seemed to doubt that. Popular belief was that Domitian’s plots had finally succeeded; one way or another, he had murdered Titus. More believable was that he had ordered Titus to be finished off by putting him into an ice-bath; but could this be a proper medical recourse for a patient with such a high fever? The certain truth was that Domitian abandoned Titus to die alone while he raced to Rome, indecently eager to replace his brother.

An announcement was sent from Domitian to the Senate. To his pique, the senators spent all the rest of that day applauding the virtues of Titus and grieving their loss of such a beloved leader. Theoretically they could hail anyone to follow him, which was the reason Domitian so hurriedly pleaded for Praetorian support. Only the next day did the senators appoint Domitian formally as successor. They would pay for their delay.

The Praetorian Prefect lined up the ranks. To a man, the nine thousand Guards dutifully swore the oath of allegiance to their new master, their mighty shout audible across large parts of the city and intentionally threatening. So, apart from the first year, Gaius Vinius would spend his service as a Praetorian Guard with Domitian as his emperor.

He swore the oath. He took the money. He supposed that he would do his duty.

A
lba. The Alba Longa of the ancients, pride of Latium, chief city of the Latin League, whose kings claimed an unbroken line from Ascanius, son of Trojan Aeneas, to Romulus, founder of Rome. The lake, a deep volcanic crater with sheer sides is accounted the most beautiful in Italy. On a high sunlit ridge stands a five and a half square mile compound of elegant white buildings, centred on the Emperor’s enormous villa, built over the citadel of the old, lost town. This has been and will always be a holiday retreat for the best people. Its devotees say it has the best views in the world.

In high summer, it has the best houseflies. Or so the Alban flies believe.