Sword of Rome (52 page)

Gaius Valerius Verrens lives in interesting times, and none more interesting than the tumultuous period of civil war erroneously dubbed The Year of the Four Emperors. The year is actually eighteen months and it would be unfair not to count Nero, whose policies and fatally flawed decision making were the genesis for all that followed, among its key players, taking the Emperor count to five. It was a remarkably untidy and sprawling civil war, which had a devastating impact on every subject of the empire from Lusitania in the west to Alexandria in the east, and from Britannia to Africa. With a little more composure and confidence, Nero might have survived to do more damage. His successor, Galba, was the worst possible candidate; arrogant, elderly, stubborn – admittedly not in themselves a barrier to high office – a skinflint who refused to pay the Praetorian Guard their due, and so aloof he could not see what was happening under his nose. He was also a poor judge of character who, of several possible alternatives, chose an heir in his own image, alienating all others. Marcus Salvius Otho came to the throne with Galba’s blood on his hands and a reputation as the man who sold his own wife to Nero for Imperial favour. Our main sources, Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius, portray him in a poor light for different reasons. Yet despite all the carnage and political upheaval of his succession, and the horrors that followed, some decisions he took in office point to a thoughtful, if impetuous, leader who might have grown to become a fine Emperor. Otho’s misfortune was to inherit
power without strength, and to be presented with a military crisis before he could create political stability. The man who faced him, Aulus Vitellius, is another who suffers from the record; a spendthrift glutton who cared for nothing but his own belly. Again there are certain facts that cloud this judgement, which is why I’ve chosen to portray Vitellius as a man carried along by flattery and events, unfortunate in his choice of collaborators. If the civil war was untidy, the first major confrontation between the two sides – at Bedriacum – was diabolically so. It was so badly botched on both sides that it’s a wonder anyone emerged a winner, and afterwards Otho’s supporters cried ‘Betrayal’, possibly with some justification. In the aftermath, a devastated Otho chose to commit suicide, and his death probably paints him in a much more flattering light than his life, because it prevented further bloodshed. If he had waited a week, or even a few days, he would have been joined by an overwhelming force of veterans from the Danube frontier. His impetuosity was literally the death of him.

Whereas the final battle in
Avenger of Rome
was entirely a work of fiction, the major events of
Sword of Rome
are as accurate as I can make them. The scratch marine legion, First Adiutrix, recovered from the massacre at the Milvian Bridge to acquit themselves heroically at Bedriacum. Otho was so starved of soldiers that he recruited Rome’s gladiators to his cause, though his generals wasted many of their lives in futile engagements, and they ended up fighting each other for Vitellius’s entertainment. Aulus Vitellius did borrow Julius Caesar’s sword from the temple of Mars Ultor to make himself look more of a general.

The result of First Bedriacum leaves Vitellius on the throne of Rome and soon to be confirmed as Emperor by the Senate. His old friend Gaius Valerius Verrens is an outcast, stripped of his rights and his property. The only way to have them returned is to join the growing insurrection of the new contender for the purple, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the elder, and become an Enemy of Rome.

I’m grateful to my editor Simon Taylor and his team at Transworld for helping me make
Sword of Rome
the book it is, and to my agent Stan, of Jenny Brown Associates in Edinburgh, for all his advice and encouragement. As always my wife Alison and my children, Kara, Nikki and Gregor, have been the rocks on which this book has been built. Apart from the primary sources, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio, Gwyn Morgan’s
69
AD,
The Year of the Four Emperors
was constantly at my side, and any gaps in my ever-advancing knowledge of life in the legions were filled by Stephen Dando-Collins’s
Legions of Rome
. Special thanks to my friend Moira Pringle in Milan for her help in guiding me through the swampland and forests of northern Italy in the 1st century AD.

A journalist by profession,
Douglas Jackson
transformed a lifelong fascination for Rome and the Romans into his first two highly praised novels,
Caligula
and
Claudius
. His third novel,
Hero of Rome
, introduced readers to his new series hero, Gaius Valerius Verrens, tribune of the Twentieth legion.
Defender of Rome
and
Avenger of Rome
followed, and this acclaimed series has established its author as one of the UK’s foremost historical novelists. An active member of the Historical Writers’ Association and the Historical Novels Society, Douglas Jackson lives near Stirling in Scotland.

CALIGULA

CLAUDIUS

HERO OF ROME

DEFENDER OF ROME

AVENGER OF ROME

For more information on Douglas Jackson and his books, see his website at
www.douglas-jackson.net

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First published in Great Britain
in 2013 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © Douglas Jackson 2013

Douglas Jackson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781448127610
ISBNs 9780593070543 (cased)
9780593070550 (tpb)

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