The Kingdom of the Wicked (62 page)

       A clean-looking Roman met Galba at Ostia. During the complicated disembarkation of troops and war engines, he accosted the new Caesar with a pleasant smile but no servile obeisance, saying: 'Marcus Salvius Otho, if you remember.'

       'I remember your wife.'

       'Yes,' Otho said sadly. 'Caesar's wife. As she became. You never met her, if I may contradict you. She was not in Lusitania with me. My transfer to the governorship in Lusitania was my official divorce.'

       'I don't remember ever having called on you in Lusitania. But I remember meeting Poppea Sabina in Rome. Whither I march tomorrow. I suppose it is useless asking if she is well, or even still alive.'

       'Useless. And unnecessary to ask where my loyalties lie.'

       'Yes, I can see where they might lie. So you join me in cutting Nero's throat?'

       'Of course, you've heard no news. Nero performed that necessary task himself. Last week. The Senate approves your nomination. Your march will be a triumphal one, Caesar.'

       'Thank you. You have the privilege of being the first to call me that on Italian soil. Where do I lodge tonight?'

       'Rough lodgings for the Emperor, I fear. The confiscated mansion of an import merchant who was imprudent enough to have himself converted to this new faith.'

       'Imprudent indeed.'

       'But we soldiers are used to rough lodgings, are we not?'

       'You call yourself a soldier?'

       'Oh, I've done my share of leading troops. Against Rome's enemies. Caesar,' he added. They looked very steadily at each other. Slaves ran up, carrying a litter. Otho smiled at Galba and then looked down, not smiling, at his Emperor's twisted feet. 'A painful condition?' he asked.

       'Old, Otho, old, old, old.' He confirmed the statement by opening his ravaged mouth in a grin hard to interpret but certainly ugly. 'I must do something very rapidly, mustn't I, about proclaiming my successor to the purple? An old man without a wife and without heirs of his body. How old are you, Otho?'

       'Thirty-seven, Caesar.'

       'Ah, youth, youth. And a man of good connections. Very close to two emperors.'

       'My closeness to Nero was, as you may guess, a matter of policy, which may be interpreted as a question of survival. The divine Claudius was very good to me, Caesar, and to my family.'

       'Well connected, as I say. Is it far to my lodgings?'

       'Less than a thousand paces.'

       'So we'll march together, shall we, Otho? Yes yes, march together.'

       The march to Rome that followed the following day should have partaken of the quality of a holy procession in which priests hymned their deliverer and little children strewed flowers of the season in Galba's way. But the tuba and bucina brayed harshly in opposed tonalities, big drums were thumped and little ones spanked, and a bald old man with twisted feet rode a fine bay and grinned horribly at the crowds which greeted him and his bronzed troops. There were some in the crowd who mysteriously objected to Galba's succession though they shouted no worthier name, and the new Emperor was very quick to dispense what he called justice. The dissidents were nailed roughly to trees or summarily beheaded. When he entered Rome by the Via Ostierisis he was somewhat disappointed that the ravages of the famous fire should so speedily have been repaired: Nero had left Rome looking rather better than he remembered it. The Palatine was still in process of being made more beautiful than ever before, and the palace which Galba entered on his hideous bare feet, leaving flat damp footprints on the marble, was of a magnificence not, naturally, to be paralleled in Spain. Galba had hoped to create a kind of Galbapolis, but Neropolis bloomed all about him. He called the court together quickly: remnants of the old palace administration including Tigellinus the great survivor. He would see the Senate later. He said:

       'Servus Sulpicius Galba. Caesar. New purple on an old body, but do not be deceived by the signs of natural decrepitude. I am here to rule, not to sing, dance, cavort on the stage.' Tigellinus seemed to grin at some inner image of Galba dancing on those ghastly feet, and Galba said: 'Who are you?'

       'Ottonius Tigellinus, Caesar, at Caesar's service. Praetorian prefect under the late Emperor.'

       'I appoint my own praetorian prefect,' Galba said. 'I make my own appointments. But I do not necessarily consider that the servitors of the late unlamented butcher are unemployable. Listen, all of you whom I must consider to be the imperial court. You have lived through bad times and some of you have helped to engineer them. We must forget those bad times and look forward to a future which, in the nature of things, can hardly be a long one for me. I crown my provincial career with Rome's highest honour, a widower whose wife is long dead and his sons, alas alas, are dead also. I appoint as my heir in my first imperial act the noble Piso Licinianus.'

       Galba looked carefully at Otho when making this announcement. Otho reacted only with apparent satisfaction. Piso Licinianus, a handsome emptyfaced young man in military uniform, stepped forward to be inspected by the court. None knew him, few had heard of him before, all wondered how Galba happened to know him. He did not know him; he had picked him out rather arbitrarily from the squad of young nobility which had been presented to him in Ostia. Anyone would do for the succession. Galba addressed the army prefects present, saying:

       'To the imperial forces I say this. Look for justice but do not look for special favours. I am all too well aware that the army considers itself to be a maker of emperors and a sustainer of emperors in office. I, with my own decree, make the next emperor. It is my custom to levy troops, not to buy them. I demand loyalty from you all, I do not seek it. Titellonus, stay with me a while. The rest of you may dismiss.'

       The court padded or marched out. The two villains, one in advanced old age, the other certainly greying his way towards it, looked at each other. 'So, Titilinus

       'Tigellinus, Caesar.'

       'Whatever your name is, was all that well said?'

       'In what capacity do you ask me, Caesar?'

       'I can see that you're something of a rogue. Responsible for the burning down of Rome, weren't you?'

       'That was solely the responsibility of the late unlamented, Caesar. He was an artist. He loved bright colours.'

       'Well, I'm no artist. A plain man. They tell me you were once a fishmonger.'

       'An honest occupation, Caesar. I was seduced into the imperial office I still officially hold by the wiles of the late Emperor. It was an unhappy time for me, but I did my duty.'

       'So you want no more of the imperial service? You'd rather go back to selling fish?'

       'I would wish to serve a true Emperor with every ounce of blood and sinew I possess.'

       'Very well. I'm appointing a new praetorian prefect, never mind who for the moment. A matter of a promise. Call it a matter of honour. But I need the Praetorian Guard well watched. Perhaps you can understand why.'

       'You levy troops, Caesar, you do not buy them. At Caesar's service.

       I am to spy on the Guard I once had the honour of commanding.’

       ‘Somewhat crudely put. You're a crude man.'

       'I am anything that Caesar says I am.' Galba chuckled.

       When it seemed certain that Galba's appointment of Piso Licinianus as his successor was to IN., officially confirmed, Otho gave a party for the senior officers of the Praetorian Guard at his estate on the river. He did not at first produce the cates and vintages they expected; they looked, most of them, puzzled at the lack of the materials of revelry. They were puzzled also at the smiling presence of Tigellinus and the absence of their new prefect Cornelius Laco, but the latter was excused by his being ill of a toothache and the former explained in terms of a nostalgic desire to be with old friends. Otho had severe things to say before his guests became fuddled and lecherous. 'Gentlemen,' he told them in a flowery bower where undisciplined thrushes sang merrily, 'I've done enough soldiering to know that it's a hard life and that the material rewards are nugatory. As a lifelong friend of the Empire's most distinguished soldiery I blush at Caesar's ingratitude and, indeed, ineptitude. I think, to be charitable, we may speak of senility.' Many of the officers looked at each other: this was bold language. 'Seneca, a great man slain, said something very wise, as I seem to recall. He spoke of the danger of authority without power. Dangerous to the one in authority, he meant. Such a man cuts his own throat.' He beamed at them. That was, as they all all too vividly recalled, no mere metaphor. 'Too many promises made. Too few fulfilled. Gentlemen, I keep my promises.'

       'What exactly do you mean, sir?' a grave senior officer asked.

       'I think, with the help of my good friend Tigellinus here, I'm in the happy position of being able to compensate you for the Emperor's deficiencies.' He clapped his hands in the Oriental manner and the whole roast boars were wheeled on. Flitting through the green groves which were part of the estate, white naked bodies seemed to be seen and tinkling laughter to be heard. 'I do not, of course, speak of bribery.' Of course not, most dangerous word. His guests, being sharpset, fell to.

       Somewhat later, Galba went to address the Senate. Followed by his foolish followers Titus Vinius, who had served him in Spain, Cornelius Laco, an arrogant idiot, and the freedman Icelus Marcianus, who was after Laco's post, he made for the curule chair. He found it turned to the wall. He was furious as the attendants hurriedly put it into its right orientation. 'Who did this?' he called. 'Who had the effrontery to arrange this act of ill omen?' None spoke. Galba said: 'I'm well aware, reverend senators, of your attitude to your Emperor. Inured to bribery, you are unused to justice. I hear murmurs of promises unkept, sums unpaid. You will hear from me this this this — that there are steps to authority, and they make for heavy climbing, but if the climbing is helped and eased by ready hands and arms, then such aid is rightly rewarded with soft words. But at the head of the stairway stands the plateau of power, and power lies in the very name of the office, its very history and mystical resonance. I will not buy the sustention of my office. Caesar is Caesar.'

       The reverend senators recollected that they had heard similar words before, composed by Seneca, intoned by Nero, now presumably passed on to the new man by that damnable Tigellinus, who had been rendered immune to senatorial vindictiveness, or justice, by an imperial fiat. They looked with little confidence on the old toothless baldhead, in whom only sharp blue eyes burned with a promise of imperial vitality, pitying and despising the gouty hands that could not even unroll a parchment unaided, wondering how many more weeks he had to go.

       Tigellinus said to Galba later in the gardens of the Palatine: 'It's as you surmised, Caesar. The Guards were ready for mutiny. They're a bad lot. Venal.'

       'Like the whole city. What made them change their minds?’

       ‘A little talk from your humble servitor. A little bribery.’

       ‘Whose money?'

       'My own.'

       'That takes loyalty very far. What do you want?'

       'Caesar knows what I want.'

       'I don't sell offices, Tigellinus. Not usually. We'll see. You say ah the ah disaffection has been damped?'

       'Caesar may walk abroad in perfect safety.'

       Caesar walked abroad towards the Temple of Saturn. Icelus Marcianus told him that Otho had seized the camp of the Guards. 'The legionaries,' Galba panted. 'Where are the legionaries? Immediate orders that the legionaries rally to my standard.' He saw with panic that his entourage was, singly and at various degrees of speed, running towards the Forum.

       'The cavalry, Caesar, see.' An unnecessary notification. Armed horsemen were galloping in from the eastern end of the city. 'Caesar, I humbly take my leave.' Galba found himself facing, under a hot sun, a reined-in squadron that raised much dust. To his relief, he heard and then saw behind him a running platoon of German troops. Then there was no relief because they ran too slowly and the swords were out and bright.

       'What is all this? What do you want of me? I don't like those looks. Come, aren't we comrades? You belong to me, I belong to you.' It sounded like a popular song that would have been despised for its banality by Galba's predecessor. The leader of the troop made a rough vocal signal, then it was all hooves and blood. Struck down. He was left there by the ornamental pool named for Curtius. The German troops about turned and marched back. The cavalry galloped back east to the Guards barracks, where Otho was being proclaimed. The bleeding body was left to the phagocytes. A common soldier knew whose it was and had a vague notion that he might be paid for the head. He sawed it off without difficulty, the neck being thin, all strings, and then he cursed it because there was no hair to carry it by. He stuck his thumb in the toothless mouth and hooked it against the hard palate. Then he bore it aloft and swaying towards the head-quarters of the Praetorian Guard. He heard cheers. Otho was being borne on stout shoulders. A new Caesar. How long would he last?

       Aulus Vitellius, a long man in his fifties, on whom a disproportionately gross paunch seemed to have been plastered, received the news of Otho's accession in his camp on the lower Rhine. He chewed fibrous gobbets of overboiled boarmeat with strong brown teeth as he read and reread the letter in which Otho asked for the hand of his daughter and invited him to share the rule of the Empire. Vitellius's slow brain, inveterately clogged with the fat of gross feeding, pondered this and pondered also his present gubernatorial appointment, which had been made by Galba. Evidently these upstart Caesars feared him. One had wanted him out of the way; the other craved an alliance. It was as good as an invitation to take over. His aide Severus agreed. Picking delicately at the bone Vitellius had offered, he said: 'The fact is that times have changed. The Praetorian Guard thinks it makes the emperor. The days of the power of the military in the capital are done. This province of Germany speaks for the future. The Empire is its provinces.'