Hadrian's Consolidation - reboot

[Hecatee]

Somewhere in Northern Mesopotamia, May 248


The men of the turma were exhausted, as were their horses. They had been fighting for close to a month now, and had already lost a third of their comrades in arms. Yet each life had been paid dearly by the Scythians who’d come down from the Parthian lands.

The Romans, familiar with the lay of the land, used every water channel or rise of the ground to sneak on the invaders, showering them with arrows or falling onto smaller foraging parties, trying to kill the men and capture the horses.

Today was no exception, although it would be the last day on patrol before falling back to the legionary base in Antiocheia Mygdonia for rest and introducing replacements. At least if any were available… The turma was part of the Cohors Parthorum Veterana, one of the oldest units on the Eastern border of the Empire, and was attached to the XVI Flavia Firma legion, the main defensive unit in the 3 borders area between Parthia, Armenia and the Empire..

Earlier in the conflict the cohort’s cavalry had provided security for smaller infantry detachments which had consolidated to give their parent’s units full strength, before starting those small units hit and run tactics that had allowed them to slow down the barbarians and prune them at the edge, although it mainly seemed to be pinpricks enraging them...

However angry they might be, the Scythians seemed in no hurry to go deep into Roman territory, leisurely pillaging on as large a front as possible, obviously attempting to bait a larger defense force. Yet many of the civilians had fled to the fortified cities, bringing their most precious belongings with them, and the Scythians seemed unwilling or unable to lay a proper siege against walls that had been built with defense against the full Parthian strength in mind.

Singara in particular seemed to be the southern limit of the Scythians’ raids, although it might be due to the large Parthian force attacking in the south. In the North it was said more Scythians were invading Armenia through the Caucasus mountains, and the XV Apolinaris legion and its attached auxiliaries were rumored to have been dispatched toward Artaxata to help the allied kingdom repel them. The XII Fulminata had moved to Antiocheia Mygdonia, reinforcing the XVI Flavia Firma, although a number of auxiliary units from western Asia had been left in Samosata, Zeugma and Edessa to hold those key cities and prevent a breakthrough west of the Euphrates.

But all this was of no importance right now, as the enemy foraging unit was coming into range of the archers hidden in a nearby culvert… On a sign from their commander, the men rose, their short bows already drawn to full strength, ready to unleash a devastating barrage of arrows at short range against the fifty some enemy horsemen just as they went past the hidden Romans. The survivor of the initial barrage of twenty arrows looked disoriented and had no time to turn their horses around that already a second and a third flight of arrows were in the air, their near flat trajectory delivering powerful hits that went right through the clothing of the Scythians or the skin of their horses.

Not waiting for their foes to regain their senses, half of the Romans let their bows fall on the ground and took their spatha, rushing into the chaos while their comrades kept firing above their heads. Half of the Scythians had already fallen and none had taken a shot yet…

 

[Hecatee]

As promized and by now traditional after three or four years of doing it, the first of a series of daily post from Christmas to New Year, enjoy the feasts season !

At sea near the island of Quesh, may 248


Lucius Annius Pulcher was sick of being at sea. He and his vexilation were onboard a ship bound for the southern coast of Mesopotamia, where they would reinforce the VI Ferrata legion and push the Parthians toward Babylon, where they were supposed to get crushed. This meant that they would mainly move on the eastern side of the Tigris river, but they had first to reach the damn place…

Not helping Annius Pulcher’s mood was the fact that his men were sharing ship with most unpleasant comrades : the camels of the I Ala Ulpia dromedariorum were nasty stinking beasts which he prefered to see as barbecue meat than as living, foul creatures with a temper…

Many men were also unnerved by the ship they were on, a large transport built in Alexandria in a hurry with a steam engine and large side paddles for propulsion, alongside two masts to catch the wind when possible and thus save on fuel.

This was the first time Annius Pulcher saw such an engine, although they had been created decades ago. As far as he knew it was the first time they were used for military operations, at least on this scale. The urgency need of sending troops to southern Mesopotamia meant that the Emperor’s domus militaris, the central headquarter in Rome, had ordered the experimental build of dozens of large barges as wide as the Pharaoh’s canal would allow and with shallow bottoms, designed to work near the coast and transport troops and supplies without caring for the wind patterns and seasons.

The equivalent of one legion and a half made by vexilations of the two Egyptian legions and of Annius Pulcher’s own X Fretensis had been sent under command of the legatus of the XXII Deiotariana, alongside with a large number of auxiliaries. A large proportion of those auxiliaries were cavalry and dromedary, and they were not going all the way to Mesopotamia, at least not on ship.

Indeed, as Annius Pulcher had discovered the day before during a halt on the island of Quesh, most of the cavalry was to disembark at the nearby port of Hormirzad and from there head directly for Persepolis, with order to make Alexander’s firing of the city a small thing next to Rome’s vengeance…

 

[Hecatee]

Vulture’s keep, Armenian Kingdom, May 248


Mynasian was still alive. Exhausted, hurt, but still alive. Only he did not know for how long… The fortress had been under siege for more than two weeks now. After their failure to take in the first days, most barbarians had left, probably to attack through another way, but they had left enough of them to prevent any move by the garrison.

Now the siege had fallen into a routine of false alarms and tiring, nerve racking stillness broken by the demonstrations of some Scythians who would either burst on horseback to shot a few arrows or try to approach the walls at night to kill a sentry.

While the fortress still stood defiant, it had failed in its strategic goal as it had not prevented the Scythian invasion of the country. Yet its very defiance was also a victory in and of itself, at least for those who still fought for its defence.

Those were fewer than originally, and in fact Mynasian had been promoted following the death of too many of his companions. He commanded a group of ten, one also a soldier, the rest strong civilians who had proved their worth during the previous days.

Together they were held as the commander’s reserve, to be sent to any potential breach in the wall. They got slightly more food and, more importantly, had all been equipped with armor from the fallen, making them a potent force able to repel any Scythian that would make it to the top of the wall.

But even this elite force had its breaking point, and Mynasian was not sure it was not close at hand. He sported two cuts to his sword arm and his shield arm was broken from an axe which had struck the metal ombos without going through, a small mercy given the pain the hit had caused. At least his mobility was not impaired… Now his arm was encased in splints to keep it straight and a new small round shield had been nailed to the splints, as much to hold them in place as to hold the shield…

Still he would keep on fighting. He had nothing else to do or to hope for until the Scythians left, so why not ?

 

[Hecatee]

Ad Viarum, Camp of the I Augusta Ituraerorum sagittarii cohors, North East Iazygeia, May 248


There was a lot of time to do nothing in Ad Viarum’s cohort’s base, and none knew it better than Georgios Sprave, one of the soldiers of the I Augusta Ituraerorum sagittarii, a cohors of infantry attached to the IV Flavia Claudia legion from Arx Cubitus.

Set, as its name implied, at an important crossroad between Arx Cubitus, Arx Anconem and Porolissum, the fortress was almost equidistant from the three cities and formed the linchpin of the local defense : should any barbarian manage to take it, the road to Porolissum and the regional capital of Dacia at Napoca would be wide open for the pillaging.

The place was not as well protected by the Tisia as elsewhere due to its slow meandering ways, easily crossed, and the terrain was rather flat, idea cavalry country. Which made the fact that the I Augusta Ituraerorum sagittarii was an infantry unit even more of a weakness. Initially the cohors and been a contingent of allied archers but it had been transformed into an heavy cohors some seventy five years earlier, doubling its strength with a lot of medium infantry to become a more classical cohors milliaria.

Of course the cohors was not alone or isolated on the border, in fact two more powerful cohors equitata with around 250 horsemen in each were only a day’s walk from the camp, but it still made Ad Viarum painfully exposed to enemy raids.

Usually this was not so much of a problem because the barbarians on the other side of the river were the Cottini, a tribe similar to the Gauls and other Celtic tribes that the empire had so often vanquished. While they did sometime attempts small scale raids they were mainly farmers, and most of their army was made of infantry due to the hilly if not mountainous nature of their territory.

This led to soldiers such as Georgios Sprave having too much time on their hand. But unlike many other Sprave did not spend his free time drinking and shagging the four prostitutes of the inn near the southern gate or the three at the inn next to the bath.

His background was, as implied by his name, unusual : a greek women for mother and a german carpenter for father, he’d received his maternal grandfather’s first name and his father’s name for gentillice. Of course he was not a roman citizen and thus did not have the formal tria nomina, but he had a surname alright : artifex, often with the word insanus added to it. But while he might indeed be a tinkerer he was no mad, at least he did not feel so.

His father had taught him his woodworking skills from a tender age, but a life working wood for a few copper coins did not appeal to the young Georgios who enlisted at 16 for his 20 years of service, the piece of land and, more importantly, his citizenship at the end.

This did not mean he did not keep working wood in his free time. He built what his unit needed, looked for the bows of the unit's eponymous archers, and when he had time he looked at how to improve things.

A few months earlier his commander had brought him a broken manuballista, a small horizontal bow used mainly from horseback for hunting. It threw a larger dart than the conventional arrows shot by bows, and had much more penetrating power as shown by tests on discarded pieces of armour Sprave had been able to get his hands on for the purpose.

But the main problem with the weapon was that they were slow and awkward to reload. So George had made himself a copy of the commander’s restored hunting weapon and had then started doing what he did best, tinkering about with it. By trial and errors he’d built a new system that allowed quicker reload, at the cost of some range and penetration power, but he was still not satisfied.

He’d shown the improvements to his commander, who had been duly impressed and had given him more time to keep improving on his concept, allocating him some funds and some time of the local blacksmith so that he may . This led Sprave to another invention, that of a magazine holding seven bolts ready to fire. Combined with his already improved loading mechanism it made for a fearsome weapon…

But Sprave was not finished, truly he was on a roll for one of the unit’s archer asked him if he could fit such a system to a bow and, low and below, he did ! Calling his improvement the “instant Scythian”, he managed to create a detachable magazine and arrow guide that allowed very fast shooting of seven arrows : four arrows would already be in the air before the first hit the target.

It very soon showed a marked improvement in accuracy for the beginners of the unit, while also markedly increased the overall volume of fire of the unit as a whole. A contubernia of archers using the “instant Scythian” had been able to best all the other in the cohors in a test set up by the commander.

New of Sprave’s inventions had spread to Arx Cubitus and the legion’s tribunus machinatorum had praised the man for his inventiveness, setting him to the task of improving the fortress’ fixed ballistae, which he’d done by designing a magazine for them, although he did not yet find a way to improve the re-cocking process.

All those experimentations were now becoming very important because for once life was not boring at Ad Viarum… A horde of thousand of Scythians had come from the steppe, crashed through the Cottini territories and fallen upon the Empire’s border…



--

Inspiration for the “instant Scythian” : no modern technology needed !

And yes the name of today's character is a direct wink at this slightly crazy german guy

 

[Hecatee]

Rome, May 248


The body lay on a trash heap in an alley alongside the baths of Agrippa, behind the Pantheon. His clothes marked him as one of the urban poors, but no one knew who he was : this was visibly not his neighborhood. His skin marked him for an easterner, pôssibly a Syrian, one of too many in the city as Juvenal had said more than a century before.

The first to find him was a kid looking for a hiding place from the world his mother wanted him to make his own. The kild told a vigiles, for the fire brigade was also the basic police unit of the capital.

The body had been transported to the Vigili’s camp. Blunt force trauma at the back of his head showed that his end had not been peaceful, as it was too often the case in that dump of a neighborhood.

Given that no one came to claim the body, they cremated him and put him in an urn alongside his few belongings, to be set into a columbarium under the name “ignotus”, one amongst many to carry the same name.

The vigils had neither the manpower nor the will to investigate the matter any further. This was just another day in Rome…

--

sorry for the short update, I had a busier day than I had planned and I'm dead tired, I actually fell half asleep while writting even this short update ! Getting up at 5 o'clock after getting to bed past midnight and then having a busy day in Rome will do that to you I suppose...

 

[Hecatee]

A field in Armenia, May 248


King Tiridate III looked around him. Everywhere the field was covered in gore, as was his own and his horse’s armour. His third horse of the day, two other laying on the ground somewhere. As were two of his sons and half of his army.

The battle had been ferocious, for his enemies had thought they could win, and then that they were trapped. They were now dead, most of the eight thousand Scythians raiders that had tried to capture Armenia’s capital, along with the ten thousand brigands and opportunists they had collected while pillaging the northern reaches of his kingdom.

The battle had been made even bloodier by the fact that Tiridate had not been able to wait for the promised roman support, which he knew was coming as fast as was possible for the romans legions, fast indeed but still slower than the highly mobile horsemen of the plains, especially since he’d had to send messengers to them, which took time, and they had had to prepare for the walk up the mountains toward his kingdom. He’d also heard that they had their hands tied in part by other attacks further south, which meant that this part of his kingdom was also at risk but that he did not have the means to protect it anymore.

There were only three good news on this fateful day : he’d come away alive, although hurting from a number of light wounds, a lot of his political opponents had died during the fight, more than of his followers, even if that was not from design, and finally it was a victory… if one could call such a butchery a victory.

He’d managed to goad the Scythians to follow a part of his cavalry past the mouth of a secondary valley where he’d hidden his infantry, before hitting the barbarians with his main forces from the front. While his light horsemen duelled with the bow, his cataphractii had been able to close the gap to their enemy, trapped by the narrow confines of the valley. This had constricted the Scythians between the anvil of the infantry and the hammer of the cavalry, depriving them from their usual mobility and leading to the terrible hand to hand fight that had seen the death of Mithridate and Rhadamiste, amongst so many other friends and foes.

Still, he needed to send forces to recapture the fortresses and put to flight the barbarians still in the area, and prepare for the coming fight south…

 

[Hecatee]

Babylon, Mesopotamia, May 248


Publius Albinus Longus had to recognize it, the Parthians had not lost their skills at siege warfare. Since arriving under the walls of Babylon they had managed to dig a siege ditch on the eastern side of the city and to build two pontoon bridges both up and downstream, sending troops to insure the closure of the siege of the city.

Of course the Romans had not stayed inactive, contesting both landings and bridgeheads and sending rafts packed with burning bitumen against the southern bridge, but to no avail.

Still the roman commander was not anxious. He knew that his job was to be the anvil against which the southern force would come and shatter the invades. And while the enemy may have begun digging tunnels they were hampered by the low water table in the area, and the Roman artillery proved superior in range and accuracy to anything the Parthians had brought, and now longer had thanks to the efficiency of the counter fire provided by bracchiae hidden behind the walls and firing at pre-registered sights. The artillery calculation tables designed a few decades earlier were certainly a factor in this accuracy.

Inside the city a plot by some Parthians agents to open a gate had been thwarted and the supply situation was still very good, and the population remained generally quiet. The fact that Publius Albinus Longus also kept many people employed renovating monuments of improving the banks of the rivers also helped to keep the civilians too busy to care about the siege. It also kept spies from catching a certain tunneling project of him as the excavated lands could be thrown on the new banks without arousing suspicion…

 

[Hecatee]

Sorry for the delay, I did not have time at the airport to post this update and was too busy once I landed back in Belgium
I would also like to quote Fronto, Marcus Aurelius's rethoric teacher :

Annum novum faustum tibi et ad omnia, quae recte cupis, prosperum cum tibi tum domino nostro patri tuo et matri et uxori et filiae ceterisque omnibus, quos merito diligis, precor.

Without further ado, the update. Afterward we'll be taking the usual schedule again

Near Ad Viarum, North East Iazygeia, May 248


The I Augusta Ituraerorum sagittarii was drawn up on the battlefield alongside a second infantry cohors milliaria and the infantry of two cohors equitata, the units’ horsemen nowhere yet to be seen in the predawn darkness. Some four thousand men wearing their lorica hamata or, if they were archers, lorica squamata, and carrying their weapons were sitting in three lines in a compact formation barely a mile and a half long although split in the middle. Each line was made of a strength of three centuries, except for the first one which was four centuries wide and strong.

Each century was as near full strength as could be, with ten contubernia -or eighty men- equipped as infantrymen and two tent parties -16 men- of archers, theoretically 3200 of the first and 640 of the second although the real strength was nearer to 80% due to the initial losses and the usual deserters, sick or injured soldiers.

What was more unusual was the composition of this first line : behind a first rank of infantrymen carrying their oval shield, their pilum, the throwing plumbata inside their shield, their gladius and their pugio, the two next ranks were only made of archers equipped with their small round shields strapped to their vanguard, their bows, their “instant Scythian” fixed and loaded, a gladius and a pugio hanging from their belts alongside their full quivers. Another quiver lay at the bowmen’s feet, ready for when the fist one would be empty.

Centurion and optios were going through the ranks, making sure soldiers kept quiet and ate the bread and oignons they had been given before leaving the camp two hours previously. Battle was coming and they would need their strength.

As the sun rose they all heard the sound of a tuba calling in the distance. Instantly the men rose to their feet. The cavalry was coming… The horsemen had been sent to sting a large Scythian group in a predawn attack. Of course the five hundred men had no hope to defeat a force of six thousand, the main raiding group in the invasion force, but they could lead the barbarians into a trap.

Everyone, especially the barbarians, knew that infantry was vulnerable to cavalry charges… So the conditions had been set to force the barbarians to commit to the attack on a terrain of the Empire’s choosing.

Of course it was unusual for battle to be fought by a concentration of auxiliary units without legionary support, but the heavy infantry was too far to intervene and had been sent behind the invaders... The goal for the legionaries was to catch as many barbarians as possible when they reached the border in their retreat, while preventing any further crossing by reinforcements : more steppe warriors could always appear at any time… The legions were also tasked with the rebuilding of the four communications towers the barbarians had burned when invading.

Beside it was thought the legions would not have contributed any significant help : this was not a battle where their artillery, puny cavalry and lesser archer forces would win the day. It was a day were mass of fire and cunning were needed instead of brute force...

The battlefield had been thoroughly prepared : ditches had been dug on both sides of the formation to prevent any easy flanking, and caltrops had been planted both front and back of the line, with clear paths marked by small strips of fabric stuck to the ground. Wooden stakes had also been planted into the ground between the men of the second line in order to give some protection in case the enemy charged into the formation, which was not expected.

The tuba sounded again, closer, and then the men in the first rank of the first line saw them : horsemen riding hard, undoubtedly Romans given their equipment. Behind them, still some distance away, an host of cavalrymen was coming fast…

The tuba of the cohors answered the call from the cavalry. The Romans cavalry rode in formation, by turmae, and seeing their infantry brethren they started to veer toward the gap in the line. They knew of the trap, and knew that the caltrops had been set up so as to leave a passage from the third century on the left to the gap so that they may get through, regroup behind the infantry and defend the rear of the formation.

About two third of those who had set out the previous evening were there, around 800 hundred men and horses, but they had accomplished their mission. Carrying torches they had gone through the undefended and unfortified Scythians camp, setting it on fire and sending part of the large herd of horses in disarray, thoroughly pissing off the 6000 barbarians that had hoped to sleep off their night of debauchery and cruelty to the slave women they had taken.

They still had reacted quickly when attacked, men sometime running almost naked to their horses, other taking somewhat more time so as to have some protection from their foes... Soon a party of three thousand barbarians was on the trail of the fleeing Romans.

Even the sight of the infantry standing in good order in front of them did not discourage the Scythians. They had never heard of infantry not supported by cavalry being able to stand up to their archery, so why should it be different this time ?

Soon they entered the range marked by some stones which had been set in the field and painted for the purpose, but the Romans kept their fire. Then the first Scythians fired their first arrow, leading to the order of “scutum” being sent all over the Roman first line while the order of “sagitarii… nunc !” was given to the archers who started to fire at the rear of the barbarian formation at a frightening rate of fire.

It seemed that only an instant had passed and already more than two thousand roman arrows were in the air, half of them fired by the 130 men of the I Augusta using the “instant Scythians”. Already their magazines were empty, and they unhooked the device from their bows to resume firing more conventionally, the process taking no more than a few seconds.

Authors of old liked to say that the sky darkened from all the arrows fired, and this time they would not have been far from the truth. The rate of fire was stupefying from such a small unit and the arrows, coming down on the rear of the Scythians in plunging fire that pinned men to horses, hurt beasts and masters, broke through clavicles and thighs, brought death and horror to the unprotected barbarians.

In the same time a much lower amount of arrows came from the first ranks of horsemen, sticking into the oval shields of the auxiliaries, punching through the leather of their caligaes and the feet of the men, scratching the Romans’ skin with deadly effect thanks to the poisons in which they were coated, or simply rebounding on the armor of the infantry.

Slowly the Romans shortened the range of their attack, the first rank of archers targeting the front rank of the enemy cavalry while the second rank fired longer ranged shots, the combined attack causing massive losses amongst the barbarians who soon broke off their attack, demoralized.

Of the three thousand who had come to enact punishment of the men who had raided their camp, only half went back to their slower brethren while a further five hundred had died during the night raid. The Roman cavalry, whose horses had had a few minutes of rest, were soon sent to kill any strangler while the second roman line went through the battlefield to seen if any slave or loot could be captured or to give the mercy of a final blow to those too wounded.

Roman losses from the battle were light, only around two hundred men, most of them dead due to the poison on the Scythians’ arrows. Medics ran through the first line but most of the time they could do nothing as the poison had already penetrated into the bloodstream. To those of course one had to add the cavalry lost during the raid, but still the losses were less than five hundred men in total, or around one men in five

A victory had been won. Not the greatest of victories, not the most glorious, but this defeat of the barbarians meant their incursion had reached its furthest point… Beside destroying the nomads was never the goal of the battle, stopping them had been the only purpose and it had been achieved. Of course a large part of the enemy still remained in the province, but the defeat of their main group should lead to their retreat...

 

[Hecatee]

An extra long update to celebrate the new version of the forum

Babylon, Mesopotamia, June 248

They had toiled night and days for close to a month, all in anticipation of this moment. Thousands of men stood in the predawn twilight, at the foot of the dozen mobile siege towers they had built and for which they had prepared the ground, filling in the ditch in front of the wall and preparing new protected firing positions for their artillery which was only brought in position during the final night so as not to give the enemy’s bracchiae the opportunity to smash it like it had done to the previous batch.

In other circumstances they would have had tunnels dug under the city walls to collapse them, but it had proved impossible due to the water table, digging more than two men’s depth caused water to swirl up in the bottom of the pit. So instead of breaching the walls they would have to go on top of them, a more dangerous proposition altogether…

Varham I was anxious. News from the south were not good, the Romans there had been stronger than expected and able to repel the forces he’d sent to destroy or at least hold them back. Another report from the mainland spoke of some kind of raid on the coast, which was more annoying than dangerous, but still showed a surprising level of activity by the enemy, almost forcing him into a reactive posture. No, actually forcing him into one…

Indeed the attack his men were about to launch were nothing but an attempt to accelerate the destruction of the babylonian garrison in order to be able to hit the southern force in strength before any reinforcements arrived from the north…

There at least his plan seemed to be going well, as the Scythians raiding in northern Mesopotamia still clashed with the Roman cavalry in a duel of horsemen trying to outwit each other, although it seemed that the Romans, while inferior in numbers, held their own and massed a strong infantry force in the fortresses guarding the roads to Syria.

A sudden commotion shook the King of Kings from his thoughts. A messenger, still dusty from the road and clearly exhausted. His message must have been important. Beconning with his hand, the Shahanshah entered into his tent, the man following while trying to catch his breath.

Once they were alone, the emperor of Parthia turned to see the man kneel in front of him, as was proper, holding a leather case in his hands. Taking it and unlacing the leather tong that held it closed, he proceeded to extract the sealed tablet, breaking the wax while turning his back to the messenger. None must see his reaction to the news, either good or bad...

His eyes bulged in surprise and shock. Romans in Persepolis ? Impossible ! And the city almost defenseless… Reacting quickly, the emperor took his sword out of his scabbard and noiselessly beheaded the messenger before the man had time to move. This news had to be contained, at least until Babylon was taken…

--

Atop his command point Publius Albinus Longus looked at the enemy massing for the attack. Thanks to his bispector he could see them with great clarity despite the distance. The Etemenanki temple and its ziggurat offered a good vantage over the city and he had observers equiped by monospectors and bispectors all around the uppermost terrace of the building, observing every enemy movements.

The vast building had even allowed him to use horses inside the city limits : ramps built all around the exterior of the disused temple’s terraces had been built to allows the beast to climb quickly to the top of the building or go down carrying messages, a backup communication system that had the advantage of being more discreet than the flags and tuba signals otherwise used. His engineers had even made sure to provide shadow and large water basins for the animals to rest and hydrate

Most of the enemy was on the eastern side of the city, as was to be expected, but the forces on the western side of the river was not to be discounted and forced Albinus Longus to keep a significant force there, as well as a quick reaction team ready to intervene where needed. In fact he even had five such teams for the city was divided in four zones thanks to the interior walls, to which one had to add the Etemenanki complex which acted as a last redoubt and in which he kept a few hundred men. Adding to that the forces defending the bridges, and he had become somewhat concerned that his men defending the walls might be somewhat stretched and unable to deal with the mass of men seething outside…

To compensate that he of course had his artillery and a number of secret galleries going under the walls where the mobile siege towers were expected to come, and through which he planned to set fire to the engines : courageous men were ready to burst through the ground, coat the underside of the towers with pitch and set them aflame before retreating hastily and collapsing the part of the tunnels jutting from walls, with teams of impressed civilians being ready to backfill the tunnels under the walls themselves with rocks prepared for the purpose.

A great shout from the enemy side of the walls broke through the Roman commander’s thoughts. The attack had begun. Dozens of elephants started to pull on ropes which men had, unseen in the night, deployed around huge pulleys near the walls : staying out of range of Roman archers, they made the giant towers crawl forward toward the fortifications. They were not alone as men pushed carts right behind the towers, progressing forward while protected from all but the most powerful artillery shots. Soaken skins on the roofs and flanks of the contraptions protected them from attempt at setting them on fire.

Moving too slowly for the attackers but too fast for any bracchiae shot, the siege implements progressed steadily. The Parthian engineers had done their calculations right and the towers dominated the walls of the city, and archers set in the crown nest at the top of the towers shot at the defenders. Yet not all was going as planned for the attackers…

While bracchiae were indeed unable to hit the moving towers, they did shot their heavy stones at the ranks of approaching infantry, some projectiles falling right on top of men unable to escape to the side or rolling on the ground and crushing those in their path…

Romans archers set on the walls also shot their arrows while balistae and scorpios shots bolts that sometime went straight through the sides of the machines approaching them, impaling the men inside.

On a signal part of the Parthian cavalry approached the walls, the mounted cavalry showering the defenders under a cloud of arrows, although some were crushed when a siege tower crashed, one of its main supporting spar broken clean by an hit from a gastrophete, the heavy round ball of stone splintering the wood and causing the whole contraption to fall.

Still more than ten of them still progressed toward the wall when suddenly one caught fire at ground level, burning with a rare intensity and preventing the men inside from fleeing, some throwing themselves from the upper floor with the hope not to break anything important… Ten a second and a third tower met with the same fate while the first seemed to fall into a hole which appeared just below it…

Half of the siege towers had been destroyed while none had reached the walls yet. Still, there were too many : while two more would fall prey to the Romans’ traps, four did reach the walls and deployed their bridges, unleashing dozens of armored warriors while a very dense covering fire tried to empty the walls from defenders.

Yet the shahanshah could only watch in horror as the Romans threw a large piece of wood held by chains and which they made to move in such a way that it came sideway against the flank of a tower… After three swings of the contraption it broke a main spar, causing the collapse of the tower as it was full of warriors.

At the same time one other tower, ditched in bitume thrown from the wall, caught fire : soon it would be unusable… But the soldiers jumping on the walking way from the two remaining towers kept fighting and getting reinforced. Soon a section of wall between two towers was in Parthian hands, but not the towers themselves… Worse, the soldiers had no protection from arrows fired from inside the city, there being no parapet on the internal side of the walls… But the wall was not sheer on the inside, a ramp leading inside the city. At its feet the Romans were already massing to repel the invaders, using the arrow fire from the towers to disrupt any formations. It was a race of time, who would be the first to assemble enough men between the Romans and the Parthians ?

Suddenly the sound of drums was heard above the din of battle, recalling the Parthians on their side of the wall. Surprised, angry, defiant, the soldiers did not want to retreat, but then some looked behind and noticed the arrival of a cloud of dust coming from the south… The Romanss relief force had arrived at Babylon !

 

[Hecatee]

Near Susa, June 248

The cavalrymen were tired, weary and happy at the same time. Their horses were simply tired, either from carrying the men or from carrying their loot… Each of the three thousand horsemen led three other horses, either remounts or loaded with bags of gold, silver, precious stones, glass vessels in their leather pouches and other luxuries. Some had even made sure to bag stocks of spices and incenses and not a few animals carried such goods.

The treasury of the Parthian kings had been captured almost without a fight, surprise playing in the hands of the Romans. Not only was the Parthian capital lightly protected to start with, but a ruse had also allowed to outwit the garrison, bringing it outside of its walls while a small group of men took control of a city gate.

Once captured, the city had been methodically pillaged, with all the goods centralized in the imperial palace under the control of the legate in charge of the combined force, for fair distribution between the troopers. Outriders were sent to neighboring palaces and villas of the Parthian nobles to pillage them, capturing large amounts of horses of the best breeds, including many of the famed nisean breed. Hundreds of camels had also been captured, taken from the local merchants.

In fact the loot was so huge that there was a lack of leather bags to carry it all. Some had been put in baskets while some men had used every roll of clothe, even some of silk, to carry the products of their rapine.

What had surprisingly not been done in any large amount was raping the women. Too many people lived in the area, and the roman force was too small. The lack of any alcohol beyond palm wine, which most Romans found disgusting, also helped keep the discipline.

Yet there was one more thing to rob from the area, and it was its youth. The amount of beasts captured was so huge that the Romans could not take care of them. On the other hand they did not want to bring grown men that could revolt with them, so it was that every youth between ten and fifteen was taken and enslaved, and put in charge of the animals while being forbidden to mount any.

The going was slow, but they had now reached Susa, unfortunately the city had closed its gates to the Romans. Except that the Romans to which the gates had been closed were not those of the column… A force of three auxiliary cohors and half a legion including a full legionary heavy artillery train was besieging the city !

Soon the legates and praefects in command of the two forces met in the praetorium’s tent in the besiegers’ main camp, each legate bringing his counterpart up to date on the overall campaign under the attentive looks of the praefects in charge of the various auxiliary units. The besieging force was made up of the Egyptian troops which had landed at the southern ports. They had been able to force the Scythian cavalry’s force to engage them : using carroballistae they had been able to disperse the barbarians, who had fled toward the northeast without trying to regroup with their Parthian masters. This had allowed the garrison to move north toward Babylon while detaching the reinforcements toward Susa, which acted as a gate to Mesopotamia for the Parthian army’s logistics and which they knew was the way that the cavalry raid had to come through...

 

[Hecatee]

Vulture’s keep, Armenian Kingdom, June 248

The sun shone high over the heads of the defenders of the keep. A full cohort of Roman auxiliary infantry had arrived to the fortress the day before, to the relief of the exhausted defenders. Of course the Scythians had already fled toward the North, leaving their deads behind.

Mynasian was one of the survivor. He sported a few impressive scars and seemed to have grown in stature, the innocent youth dying in the combat to reveal the man he had now become, an impressive young leader.

It was him who had welcomed the Romans, his commander being too wounded to move. The Romans had been impressed by what they saw : the remains of the battle still lay at the foot of the walls, broken scaling ladders, fragments of weapons, … It was all testimony of the fierceness of the fight.

The auxiliaries had not lost time : under their centurions some had prepared quarters in the fortress while the others went outside to clean the approaches to the walls. Meanwhile the officers toured the facility with Mynasian. A translator brought by the Romans helped him explain the events of the previous weeks, and they also examined the damages done by the barbarians during their assaults and looked at the detritus of the fight at the foot of the wall.

A soldier came to the group as Mynasian was explaining the fight of the first night. Catching his attention, the soldier gave him a small object : the fortress commander’s ring. The man had finally died and was giving Mynasian command of the fortress until a new commander was appointed by the king.

 

[Hecatee]

Near Susa, July 248

The Parthian army more of a disheartened mob than an army. Outnumbered, outmatched, surrounded, with Romans guarding the walls of Susa and Romans behind the rear guard, with allies defeated or having defected and currently ravaging the country on their path home, it was clear that the empire had been defeated, again, by the Romans.

Vahram I, son of Ardeshir II, shahanshah, knew he had lost. The question was whether his life was also forfeit… One good news was that a lot of the Empire’s nobles had fallen in the fighting, either in the failed assault on Babylon’s wall, where many had wanted place of pride, or later in rear-guard operations to protect the army.

But that would be a problem for later. Maybe later in the day, but later anyway. For now he had to go to the Romans and ask for peace. Messages had been sent on the previous day to the commander of the Roman forces, and a large tent had been set between the Parthians and the main roman army.

This was of course humiliating, but there was no way around it if Varham wanted the Parthian empire to have any kind of army in the future, irrespective of whoever ran it. Sitting on his horse in court dress instead of armour, surrounded by twenty of his highest surviving counsellors similarly attired, he went to the rendezvous point.

Under the tent was an empty golden roman curule chair set on a dais, behind which was a gilded portrait of the emperor. Obviously the man had not been able to reach this border of his empire in time or maybe he had stayed on another of the attacked borders. In any case he would not be meeting the shahanshah on this occasion.

Just below the days was another roman chair, this one silver, next to which were three others made of ivory, set just slightly behind the silver one. Obviously the seat of the roman commander in chief and of the legion commanders. Three of them, that was a lot… Yet even with their attached auxiliaries it seemed too few men for a disaster of the scale which had befallen the empire. The Parthian empire had mobilized many more men, they should have been able to… well, no gain in ressassing the past, not when the present was so important.

Chairs had also been provided for the Parthians : a high backed one for the shahanshah, simpler ones for the other nobles, all in exquisitely carved citrus wood, but pointedly not in metal or ivory, which the Romans reserved for themselves.

They did not have to wait long. A man in a senatorial toga, with the usual red shoes, large purple band and iron ring, entered the tent followed by three men in elaborate armors. Around them were twelve lictors who wore their fasces on their shoulders and took place behind the dais and the Roman officials, a sign of power but set in a non-threatening way, or as non-threatening as could be.

Two priests entered the tent from both sides and did a quick ceremony to ensure the benevolence of the Gods over the meeting before retreating as quickly as they had come. It was time. Speaking in his slightly accented greek, the Shahanshah opened the discussions.

Three hours later it was done. The empire had capitulated, Susa and the lands around it down to the Mesopotamia would become a Roman protectorate under a petty king appointed in Rome from a local dynasty, the Empire had to pay a large sum of gold and large quantities of silks and spices, and to give a lot of hostages, including twenty of his principal rivals at court… Five of them had been present during the negotiations and stayed behind to ensure compliance with the terms.

A disaster, yes, but maybe not the end of Vahram I’s rule…

 

[Hecatee]

Near Luoyang Shi, Serica, October 248

Manlius Torquatus Primus looked behind him as the column crossed the top of the hill. Already the barbarians had reached the outskirts of the capital and had started to loot it, some fires were already visible in the distance.

Shaking his head, the roman pressed his mount forward, his legionary escort ready against any attack. It was a shame, really, to see an Empire’s capital attacked in this way. Surely Rome would never know such indignity ! When it was but a town it had been captured by Brennus, but now ? Impossible !

Yet here the emperor’s forces had fallen him, and the Wuhuan had been able to rise in anger against the imperial tax collectors. Unfortunately too many forces were tied down further south, where a peasant revolt had erupted. There was clearly a lack of internal police force and problems with speed of communication in the Empire, which allowed those revolts against the decadent imperial administration.

Torquatus had discussed the situation with imperial officials disquieted by the situation, trying to understand what had happened. It seemed that tribes broken during the reign of the divine Marcus Aurelius had been settled inside the empire and on its northern border, only a few day’s ride from the capital. There they had been able to regain in strength while the imperial gaze turned south and inward, to the point that the barbarians had seen an opportunity to strike.

Now the capital would be besieged, with the emperor inside. Torquatus had offered his men’s service for the defense, but officials had declined, not wanting to face the idea of having foreigners defend the imperial person : it would be a shame too far. Instead they had provided Torquatus and his men with travel passports to the coast, where they could await the Roman trading fleet.

 

[Hecatee]

Hadrian’s villa, Tibur, April 249

It was a great day for Titus Aelius Alauda. Heir to a freedman of the emperor Hadrian of gallic origin, he was born in a mildly successful equestrian family, his father a well known trader in eastern pearls from the erythrean sea. Being the third son, Titus had gone to the Academia Militaria Practica where he’d entered the path to become an engineer. Soon he’d discovered he was not made for the military discipline but that he was a talented engineer, developing a fascination with steam engines.

On this day he was about to show to the Emperor and his court his latest invention, one which had cost a lot of investment. Wooden beams sheeted in iron had been laid down in two parallel tracks from the imperial villa at Tibur all the way to the praetorian camp in Rome and on them had been put a machine of his invention : an automobile.

The contraption was constituted of a chariot on which was a advanced steam-engine of the so-called multi-tubular design, where water was heated by multiple tubes full of air heated by the furnace, so as to turn more quickly into steam which then worked pistons which moved the wheels of the vehicule.

Guided by the rail, the contraption could sustain the speed of a horse walking at a fast trot for far longer than a horse, only needing to be fed coal or another kind of fuel and have its water tank replenished. But more importantly it could tirelessly truck seven other carts behind it, which could be filed with either goods or persons.

Titus had first started with a small track in the gardens of the Academia, and shown the potential of the system : while he’d needed four iterations before getting to a successful result, he’d been able to truck carts overloaded with stones without any issue.

He had also had to find ways to bend the tracks to his needs and discovered the maximal angle such tracks could take in curves, as well as find the right kind of tracks. He would have prefered fully metallic tracks but that would have been too costly, beside being too complex for the metalworkers he had asked.

Instead sheets of iron had been bent around the top of the wooden cores, and the rails had been mounted of solid wooden transverses to make sure they did not move and loose the distance between them, which had to be kept given that the wheels were kept at a constant distance by the cart’s axle and could not get out of the rail…

Once he’d been confident of his success, Titus had shown his results to the emperor, who had been enthused and immediately ordered a first line to be built between Rome and his favourite retreat in the countryside, namely the old palace of the emperor Hadrian.

The rails had been laid next to the paved way linking the capital to the imperial ressort, on the cleared ground usually used by carts when dry. This had greatly facilitated the laying of the tracks, although in some places it had been necessary to go on the lands of some local owners due to the curve being too sharp for the tracks.

A trial run had been executed during the night before to bring the machine from Rome, a more difficult exercice given that the automobile had to go uphill, and had given no problem : none were expected for the return trip...

Now the time had come for the first trip of the machine with a hundred selected passengers including the emperor and his wife. Now had come the dawn of a new era…

 

[Hecatee]

Governor’s palace, Alexandria, March 250

Manlius Torquatus Primus could not deny it, if felt good to be back in the Empire, even if it was in Egypt, a region that in some ways felt more alien than Serica itself. At least here his toga did not cause everyone to stare and the wine was good and plentiful, and the food much more to his taste, although he’d seen to his disgust that rice had been imported and was seen as a delicacy by the local elite who had it planted in some areas of the Nile’s delta.

But rice was far from his main concern as he sat in a chair in the governor’s office, talking with the man about the collapse of Serica. After his escape from Luyang Shi he and his party had made their way to the coast, where they’d waited for the yearly roman trade fleet. While there they had collected information and they all pointed to a confused situation.

The imperial capital had been besieged but not taken by the barbarians, despite the fact they had been able to defeat not one but two imperial armies in the field. One had been led by a southern general while the other had been commanded by a palace official who’d organized a sortie, and both men’s head had found their way to pikes set in front of the capital’s main gate.

But then the really bad news had started to come to the ambassadorial mission : two governors had declared that the Tiānmìng, the mandate of Heaven, had been withdrawn from the emperor and that they, of course, would become the new emperor. One, commanding a southern coastal province, had been more prepared than the other : not wasting time, he’d sent a large cavalry force to his rival’s province in a swift decapitation move while he made ready for the inevitable imperial reaction.

Unfortunately those had been lacklustre effort due to peasant revolts and lack of direction by the court, still besieged in Luyang Shi. One army had been beaten while a second one had simply switched side when it saw what forces had already been amassed by the rebel.

That when news of a third pretendant had arrived from the western most reaches of the empire, muddling the state of affairs further.

For the Romans that would not have been that much of an issue in and off itself, but from their position in a city known for its trade they immediately understood that Rome would be impacted too. Sericulture was impacted by war, and taxes had to be levied to pay for all the new troops. Luckily they had already stockpiled a lot of silk and made sure to have an imperial tax dispensation that prevented any new costs, but next year’s trade fleet would pay a lot more !

Also Torquatus Primus had understood that the western rebellion would probably also impact the land trade, a bad news for the indian kingdoms and for Parthia, through which this trade largely went, another reason why silk would be more costly in Rome in a few months.

When his successor arrived with the trade fleet Torquatus Primus presented him with the still deteriorating situation and both men agreed that the situation was bad enough to warrant an immediate return to Rome with as much silk as possible. Torquatus had already ordered the construction of two local ships of larger than usual dimensions, under supervision of his attached engineer, and had enough precious silks on hand to fill the holds of all of the fleet, spending all his remaining money (both imperial and private) on the endeavour.

At first his replacement had been unhappy with the situation, for the fully loaded holds meant that there was no room onboard for him to bring anything back to make his own fortune but Torquatus Primus agreed to sell him half his private share at the day’s market price, which the man did not know was already 15% higher than what Torquatus Primus had paid ! Even better from Torquatus Primus point of view, the paiement was to be done in Rome, which meant he would not pay any taxes on the cash given that it would not cross the borders !

Also, with the news they brought, if they were careful they would be able to make a fortune by delaying the sale of their marchandises by one or two years.

So it was that after a year of sailing Torquatus Primus was giving the official account of his journey to the governor of Egypt, already savouring in his mind the fortune he’d made, enough for him to buy senatorial rank for his four sons and still invest in his own silk fabric which he planned to build in Asia Minor : he had the perfect estate for that not too far from Illium… And thanks to his newfound wealth the Albini would not be able to stop him either, so while they would be the first to make roman silks the Torquati Primi would be the second !

 

[Hecatee]

Alauna Civitas, Caledonia, April 250

The storm raged against the stone walls of the houses of Alauna Civitas : rain fell from the sky and caused rivers to appear in the streets, and even hailstones hit the roofs from time to time. Chimneys belched smoke, the inhabitants trying to keep warm despite the unseasonably cold weather which made the farmers anxious for their crops.

In one house however the warmth in the room made it comfortable and dry. Titus Prigonus Cicero, the great-grand son of the famous defender of the town in the time of the divine Marcus Aurelius, enjoyed the heat coming from his newly devised stove.

Prigonos Cicero had not only inherited a name and lands from his glorious ancestor, but also a passion for tinkering and inventing that had led him to become a machinator. He’d followed the civilian career for a number of years before retiring to his domain in Caledonia. The rugged landscape had always appealed to him, and the house he had in town was his favourite property despite the fact he had a nice villa a day’s walk to the south of town.

His latest invention was derived from work his friend Titus Aelius Alauda had done on furnaces for his famous automobile, except his was not going to move anytime soon… Made of cast iron, it was an efficient design that limited smoke inside the house, required less fuel that traditional fireplaces and provided more heat by creating a longer path for the cold air that could thus gather more heat and bring the temperature to more comfortable heights.

This was in fact his third prototype, and by far the most efficient. His neighbors had noticed that the tiles of his roof had been the only ones in town not to get frosted or covered in snow and in fact two tavern owners had come and bought his first, less efficient prototypes to heat their great rooms.

Sensing an opportunity, Prigonus Cicero had already ordered the necessary pieces for two dozen more stoves from a number of local smiths and he’d also sent letters to his former colleagues currently serving tours in the region to extol the merits of his invention, those being mainly the lesser need for fuel and the much better diffusion of warmth due to both the circuit of air and the cast iron’s own properties. His cook had also noticed that it was also very good to cook either directly on the iron or in cast iron pots and pans set on top of the stove.

In fact he could just smell the next meal being readied, a hearty soup. Really the next version should have a oven to prepare fresh bread and other recipes… He’d create this special kitchen variant, it would certainly also become an instant hit…

 

[Hecatee]

Tabularium, Rome, July 252

Time had come, there was no way around it. All of the office of the Censors knew it and dreaded it. An immense amount of work had been invested in it during half a decade and had delivered an enormous amount of documentation. Now that the first copy of the final report was there in front of the assembled clerks no one seemed to want to touch it by fear of damaging or loosing it.

The office of the censors had become a permanent institution almost a century earlier, after Titus Manlius Caledonius, a man from the era of the divine Marcus Aurelius that those in this office honoured with a respect bordering on the deification, had proven time and again that good information helped deliver good decisions.

This meant that the Census, formerly the collection of data on all the citizens of the empire for tax assessment and voting purpose, had been enlarged and the staff in charge of it had become a permanent entity although the censors themselves, all former consul ordinarius serving in pairs, rotated every five year, at the delivery of the new census to the emperor.

The importance of the task had grown so crucial that five new quaestorships had also been created, one year positions for men wanting to enter the Senate, enlarging the pool of candidates for the higher functions.

One of them was responsible for the collection of the birth and death registers, an innovation thirty year old which collected the data at the district level : every birth and dead, even of stillborn children, even of slaves, had to be communicated.

The information about the name of the parents, their age, their status, the month of the birth and the status of the child was registered in a roll to be kept at the local archive. Once a year, in mid september, a copy was sent to the pagus with a global summary of all the births and death of the year, with a summary by age category and another one by status of the persons born or dead.

In the pagus the local reports would be bundled and summarized in a table of which a copy would be kept locally and published while another copy would be sent to the province no later than mid-october. Yet, although the official report was yearly, every pagus magistrate knew that it was better to collect data once a month, both to compare with the yearly records and to be able to answer should a district record be lost to any cause : this way there were not too many discrepanties of the records.

At the provincial level new summaries would be made and sent to the diocesis capital where one of the quaestors affected to each vicarius would make sure to have all the data collected by mid-november. Of course some diocesian quaestors had more work than other, but with less than 150 provinces for 17 diocesis none was overwhelmed… Most of the work had already been done at the lower level by the pagus authorities !

There the data was once more summarized but also included into larger tables showing the trends for the diocesis using all the data collected since the beginning of the available records. The clerks in charge of the work had some time as the reports had to be ready for march and the end of the quaestor’s mandate. Given the time necessary for the travel, the 17 diocesian reports arrived only in April in Rome, where the final compilation happened.

Another one of the new quaestor of the tabularium was in charge of a second important report which made the tally of public buildings and private dwellings. The chain of reporting was similar to the one for population, with each district sending a tally of the buildings, by category, present in the territory with a triple classification with regard to the size of the building, its occupation and its condition : was it new (less than five years old), in good repair, derelict or ruined ?

The report was important because it allowed the procurator rei machinatorum and the magistrates to intervene when a district or a pagus showed too many empty, derelict or ruined buildings. It was also used when the emperor had to decide whether or not to allay taxes for a certain period following a catastrophe, and it allowed Rome to see whether reconstructions efforts were going well after such an event.

A third quaestor was in charge of the mapping effort. His task was to keep up to date maps of each province for the use of the central administration. New roads and new towns had to appear, as well as record of how many vici and city there were in each district. Slowly the nature of maps had evolved, getting more precise thanks to the work of dedicated geometer in the staff of each procurator rei machinatorum.

Experiments in how to accurately depict a territory had given birth to new types of representations which showed forests, mountains, settlements, rivers and roads and used code to describe other features such as the potential navigability of opportunity to ford, seasonal or permanent, of a given river. Those codes had slowly been standardized across the provinces, and new concepts such as keys to maps had been developed. This departement of the census office was highly sought after because the Emperors were usually most interested in the production of the service.

The two other quaestors attached to the office were in charge respectively of the tax statistics, which worked a lot with other departments and the officials in charge of tax collection in the provinces, and of the production of the main report and keeping of archives, who directed a number of scribes who made sure older documents were copied before they crumbled into dust and made the new report.

Called the Chronicon censorum, it was the sum of the work of all those magistrates and their staff and gave the emperor an idea of the state of the empire. A side business had also appeared with copies of the Chronicon being made available for sale, with a number of scribes dedicated to the task of reproducing it. Senators and members of the equestrian order would then bid to get the available copies, the most fresh a Chronicon being the most useful it was for those who wanted to explore new markets and business opportunities…

For the state it was a great business because the proceed from the sales more than covered the cost of operating the Tabularium, ensuring the staff got an extra bonus money and that the state got an splendid tool available.

 

[Hecatee]

Because I did have some time on hands... (and might have quite some more in the coming weeks as I look for a new job after leaving my current one on Friday because I could no longer tolerate my boss). If anyone needs a Belgian 10+ years experienced IT manager and project leader with a specialization in public healthcare don't hesitate to PM me

A slum of Alexandria, Egypt, October 254

Epaphos was sick, very sick. His face and body were covered in pustules, all of which had appeared at the same time. Living as he was in a hovel of the fourth floor of a crumbling building of the Egyptian quarter, there was no way he’d get help from anyone, unless he made too much noise or died and began to smell, in which case he’d be thrown out on a trash heap by his neighbors.

The fact was that Epaphos was not the only one to be sick : many of his neighbors were in a similar state to the point that the authorities had taken notice of the epidemic. Already the cities’ main doctors had been called to the governor’s palace to advise on how best to fight the disease overtaking the poors of the Egyptian quarter.

Soldiers were tasked with holding the quarter under quarantine, helped by the massive walls that encircled it. But they all knew it would not be enough… Ships with contaminated people had probably already left the harbor, spreading the disease all around the empire. Fast warships had been sent with dispatches and the telegraphs had also carried a warning, but it was in the hands of the gods, and of the doctors.

They had offered a course : following the recommendations of the great Gallienus they had started to produce vaccine, as the produce of diseased vaccarum was called for the cow pox sickness was thought to be similar to the smallpox that infected the poors of the city.

Already the higher notables of the city had taken the small cut in which some pus from cows’ udder had been inserted, and the vaccination of soldiers and civil servants had begun, before the doctors began to do the same for the general population, with the help of the barbers and other wise women of the poor areas.

At the same time patrols of vaccinated slaves were sent into the streets to collect the dead, escorted by soldiers authorized to break any door from which the smell of a cadaver was perceptible. Food was also delivered to the main squares of the area, military biscuit and porridge mainly, probably better food and in larger quantities than many inhabitants usually had.

Sacred cats from the temples had also been brought to the area to hunt for vermice and thus help control the apparition of other diseases, as recommended by Gallienus. Hopefully the animals would actually do something else than sleeping in the shade !

It was not the first outbreak of the sickness, it came back every twenty years and by now the city continge plan was rather well practiced with some people remembering the previous time in their youth. That’s also why priests in a temple outside the city were tasked with keeping sick cows, as were those in temples near every big city of the empire.

While the sickness would kill many, especially amongst the poor, it would be far better than it would have been without the treatment : while up to one in four infected would die were no measure to be taken, the rate was only of one in ten infected in vaccinated areas, with the infection rate itself being lower.

 

[Hecatee]

Domus Augusta, Rome, May 255

The imperial council was gathered in a large and recently refurbished room in the Hadrianic wing of the palace. Twenty men attended to the Emperor, including the two current consuls, the two censors, the heads of the various offices of the administration and six senators personally chosen by the emperor for their wise recommendations and their ability to properly convene his wishes to their peers.

The emperor was seated on a comfortable chair set on a dais, while the members of the concilium were seated on two rows arranged on both sides as if in an odeon, leaving a central space for the person who presented a point.

The Emperor’s seat was somewhat behind the seats of the other members of the concilium, so that none except the speaked in the arena could see his expression. He, on the other hand, could see by the men’s shoulder tension how they reacted to what was being said...

In front of this assembly, a large painted map of the known world. It was a great wonder that this had been painted on a series of thin iron plates coated in varnish to prevent corrosion. Small sculptures held onto it thanks to magnetised stones and two slaves stood next to it with poles whose magnetised tip allowed them to move the sculptures depending on the movements of the legions and auxiliary units.

But while the head of the imperial military concilium, the central organization that managed the overall logistics of the army and the training of the officers in the various schools of the empire, was present, the topic was definitively civilian. Money was once again the issue, especially for what related to trade.

“This is the fifth year in a row that the Serican ships have come with news of strife in that far away land and of troubles in the whole region. This time they even had to repel pirates who attacked them near the Serican coast. At the same time we have reports that the land trade through Parthia has not gained in strength, especially given the instability the Shahanshah is facing following his humbling seven years ago. Most of the fighting takes place in the north-east of his empire, where his erstwhile Scytian allies thought they could strike with impunity and took control of a number of area around the Parthian border with Bactria.”

“This is good for the security of our eastern lands, especially with the plague still weakening us in Syria and Egypt… But on the other hand this disrupt trade and combined with the plague our revenues have fallen considerably. The treasury is in a precarious situation and while the situation is much different from a century ago when the East was almost the only source of wealth in the empire and the northern provinces were only a drain on our resources, it remains that one fourth of our budget comes from the Indian Ocean trade.”

“Indeed, and some essential commodities come from that trade. It is only last week that my cook came to me with my intendant to ask whether I was ready to pay what is being asked for bunna beans !”

“Yes, those prices are outrageous, soon equestrians won’t be able to have any… And I won’t speak of the impact for the army. You know how the drink is being used to keep the vigils on edge at night or to give a boost to soldiers before important operations… Also in the administration I know of many a clerk that could work better but is now slow and looks dimwitted in comparison.”

“Oh, stop complaining. The important news I hear here is that the North and the West are no longer the drain on resources they were. How comes ?”

“Well you know that we only have detailed informations over the last sixty or seventy years, since the rule of the divine Marcus Aurelius. They show that where western cities were usually considered large when they reached 5000 inhabitants, it is now rather common to see them reach 20 or even 25 000 inhabitants. Arlesia, Lutecia, Colonia Agrippina, Argentoratum or Virunum have even above 50 000 inhabitants. Gaul and Germania had around 10 millions inhabitants in the era of the divine Marcus Aurelius, now there are around 15 millions.

Beside cities growing there is also more towns and villages, more land being used all around the West. While in the East the population is relatively stable, in part due to the war of seven years ago, but mainly because the land is already well used, the West sees an impressive growth.

But more importantly this growth has only improved the imperial budget because we have not had to create new units to defend the borders. As you know the praesidis are paid on local budget and while the new positions created by the divine Marcus Aurelius in his administrative reforms do cost a lot, they are also compensated by the overall growth in population and related trade. The growing importance of iron and coal and the opening of new canals in the western provinces have also contributed to this growth of trade.

But not all regions are equals, some remain poorer such as in Hiberia or Britannia. Another bad news if the fact that the gold and silver mines of Iberia and Dacia are producing less than a few decades ago despite having the same operating costs. Of course the steam pumps and new inventions help go dig deeper, and some mines thought empty have been re-opened, but that is truly an issue…”

“In fact the end of the trade with Serica is something of a small boon for us ! While we can trade buno beans for goods produced in the empire, and while we’ve also been able to substitute some of the bullion for the India trade, we’ve always needed silver for the Serican trade : less silver spent there means less issues for producing coins... “

“We really need to find new ways to use less silver and gold in currency…”

“Don’t go debasing the coins ! You know it is always a problem, as seen when one of your predecessor attempted it twenty years ago. And the histories show that if Athens was so strong in trade in the age of the divine Alexander it was thanks to the stable value of its coins !”

“Oh I know well enough, I remember the report that historically minded quaestor inflicted on us three years ago…”

The noise of a staff hitting the dais instantly silenced the councillors.

“As I understand it we are less dependant on foreign trade than ever before, and the further strengthening of the Western provinces will only increase that situation but we need to prevent any military adventurism and keep track of our spendings. Is that so, rationalis summarum ?”

“Yes princeps, so it is.”

“So what can we do concretely to increase the possibilities of trade in the West ? Are ports to be created, rivers to be enlarged, canals to be dug ? Or new automobile tracks laid ?”

“Some interventions might be needed, but those would be best left to evergetism and the normal action of the Rei Machinatori. What I would recommend on the other hand is to actually farm out this kind of infrastructure building for a part of the tax revenues they will bring during a given time, as was done in days of old with tax collection. And set it so that a conglomerate may buy the concession, each member of the conglomerate to share in the revenue according to his investment, likewise as is done by merchants chartering a ship or as tax were collected in the past.”

 

[Hecatee]

Domus Caesari, Baiae, July 258

The automobile had brought the imperial court to Baiae in two days with a stop at the old villa of Tiberius in Sperlonga instead of a ten days trip as would have been the case only a few years earlier. Two automobiles had already carried many of the necessary goods and of the servants during the previous days and two trains had left the Palatine hill station for the imperial translation itself.

It had come as a great relief for the emperor, as he was in pain from his old age : moving on horseback or on carriage would have been much more painful. He also like the opportunity to work while on the move. His personal coach had a private part, with a bed, and a public part with a working desk where he could read and eventually write, look through the windows, dictate to a scribe or receive a guest. A third small compartment was also present, where a scribe and his personal slave waited with some wine and food should the Emperor wish to have a snack.

The five other coaches of the train were one for the empress, two for the closest advisors and courtiers, one for the three contubernia of praetorians assuring the close security and one for more serving staff. The second train had the rest of a century of soldiers as well as more staff and equipments that might be needed for the ride, including tents, water and food.

The railroad they had used had been built alongside the old Via Ardeacina, which reached the coast at Ardea, and then followed the Severiana until it joined with the Appia, queen of all roads, which was followed until it met the Domitiana at Sinuessa.

Now they had all arrived in Baiae, on the bay of the same name, in a luxurious villa said to have been owned by the divine Julius Caesar himself and which had been renovated and provided with a railroad connection to the main line as well as with its own telegraph tower to keep the information flow from Rome flowing.

Here on the cliff top the emperor could breathe the fresh air from the sea and look at one of the most wonderful place of the empire, far from the heat of the capital in which he’d been forced to stay longer than planned due to the untimely death of a prominent senator. .

Marcus Iulius Philippus Augustus was at the balcony of the imperial suit, pensive while contemplating the dying sun. Behind him four slaves busied themselves to prepare the room for the night, but he did not care about them.

Rather he thought of the changes the Empire was going through. Everywhere it seemed that people were busy building, innovating, changing the way people had always lived. He’d read reports from some cities, especially in the West, where the urban poors now had real wages from working into factories : that was true in particular in the cities which the localization of coal and iron favourized. Smoking chimneys were rising to the sky in ever more places, and new fortunes were made.

The equestrian class seemed to be the one most benefiting from this tremendous evolution. Whereas the administration had often seemed an attractive career for the ambitious equestrians, it was now becoming a second choice for those who did not want or could not enter into the various new businesses of the empire.

But this also meant that some equestrians were becoming notably richer than some senators, and also ambitious. The Senate felt it, and thus tried to keep them out of the political game but Philipus knew they would not always succeed. Further change would be needed. Being on holiday in Baiae was also a way to hold a number of informal meetings with senators to get their feeling on the developing situation.

Philipus was especially afraid of the situation with regard to loyalty of the army. Some of the richest equestrians could easily subvert whole units, and the powerful auxiliary forces were all under command of equestrians.

The 400 auxiliary units of the empire had more or less as many men as the 30 legions, but Philipus also knew that many of the praesidis forces in the provinces would probably follow an equestrian usurper should a civil war break out, because ultimately they drew their pay from the local authorities, often of equestrian class.

The saving grace was that the auxiliary units were rather widely spread and the communication network would ensure rapid warning in the event of a rebellion. Such had been proved only a few months before when a senator fearing the discovery of his financial misbehavior had tried to get himself proclaimed emperor. His men had not followed him and he’d been arrested, and Philipus had ordered his estates seized and his fortune to be divided between the loyal soldiers of his legion, which had amounted to a much larger bonus than what the man had promised them…

While the rationalis rea publicae had been aghast at the decision, it had seemed a good way to ensure loyalty from the troops : order had been sent to all commanders to read news of the decision to their troops…

As he thought of this a smile crept on his face, soon replaced by a rictus as he rose his hand to his chest, clutching it as spasm took his body. The heart attack struck ferociously and he did not feel himself go across the balustrade and fall to the ground two floors below, only to hit a statue head first on his way down, instantly killing him.