Scourge of Rome

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‘I fear I must report a failure in Athens.’ The only reaction from the man on the throne was a slight lift of the head, but the messenger flinched at the menace his words kindled in the dark, unforgiving eyes. ‘Our operative vanished,’ he stumbled on. ‘And the traitor was able to take ship for the East.’

‘Could he have been warned?’

The messenger took time to consider his reply. This was even more dangerous territory. His dealings with Titus Flavius Domitian, younger son of the Emperor Vespasian, had made him aware that the new prefect of Rome nurtured an irrational hatred for the man they were discussing. The reasons were lost amid the murk of intrigue and conspiracy of the eighteen-month civil war that had come so close to bringing Rome to her knees. Not five hundred paces from where Domitian sat they were still sifting charred bones from the burned-out ruins of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. The seeds of the bitter conflict had been planted by Nero’s enforced suicide, after the erratic young Emperor’s downward spiral had cost him the support of the legions and the Senate. His successor, Sulpicius Galba, governor of Hispania, had made the mistake of cheating the Praetorian Guard out of the payment he’d promised them, and been murdered by Marcus Salvius Otho, the man he’d spurned as an heir. By the time the new Emperor took the throne, the German legions of Aulus Vitellius were already marching on Rome, and a disastrous defeat at Bedriacum had cost Otho his life. In a final twist, Domitian’s father Vespasian, general of the eastern legions, had been hailed Emperor by his officers.

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