False God of Rome Read Online Free PDF Page B

attempting to address them.
Next to him stood a young woman carrying a one-year-old girl-child; a three-year-old boy squatted at her feet looking fearfully at the crowd.
    ‘Another Jewish proselytiser, I expect,’ Vespasian replied with a sigh. ‘There seems to have been an influx of them recently, preaching some new sort of Jewish cult. I’m
told that the elders don’t like it, but as long as they don’t cause any trouble I leave them alone. The one thing that I’ve learnt here is that it’s best to keep out of
Jewish affairs, they’re impossible to understand.’
    Unimpeded now by beggars, the litter-bearers made good progress along the lower city’s wide main thoroughfare, lined with the old and tatty, but still imposing,
two-storey houses of the richer merchants, and they soon started the short ascent to the upper city.
    Heartened somewhat by the prospect of reading Caenis’ letter, Vespasian turned his thoughts to his lover whom he had not seen for over seven months. Still a slave in the Lady
Antonia’s household, she would be thirty in three years’ time and he lived in hope of her being freed upon attaining that age, the youngest allowed by law for the manumission of slaves.
Although it was against the law for a man of senatorial rank to marry a freedwoman, he hoped to take her as his mistress as soon as she was able to make decisions in her own right. He planned to
set her up in a small house in Rome with the money that he was quite quickly accruing from the bribes and gifts that naturally came his way from provincials anxious to have the favour of the
highest ranking Roman official in the area. Now that he had put his scruples to one side and was taking the bribes he hoped that by the time he got back to Rome he would have enough not only for a
house for Caenis but also for himself and the wife he must soon take to fulfil his duties to his family. A series of letters from his parents, now living in Aventicum, in Germania Superior, where
his father had purchased a banking business, had impressed upon him the need to produce an heir for the security of the family.
    They soon reached the street of King Battus in the upper city; at its eastern end was the Roman Forum, beyond which stood the Governor’s Residence – a much more modern building that
had been purpose-built by the Romans one hundred years previously after Cyrenaica had become a Roman province.
    Vespasian’s litter was set down in front of the Residence and, brushing off his bearers’ attempts to help him, Vespasian stepped down, adjusted his toga and mounted the steps.
    Magnus followed, grimacing at the quality of the four auxiliary guards beneath the portico as they brought themselves haphazardly to attention. ‘I see what you mean,’ he commented as
they passed through the doors and into a large atrium with clerical staff working at desks down one side, ‘they’re a fucking shambles; not even their mothers could be proud of
them.’
    ‘And they’re among the best from the first century,’ Vespasian replied. ‘There’re a couple of centuries who can’t even dress themselves off into a straight
line; the centurions are getting through vine-sticks at an incredible rate.’
    Before Magnus could express his opinions on the effectiveness or otherwise of beating discipline into sub-standard soldiery, a well-groomed, togate quaestor’s clerk approached them.
    ‘What is it, Quintillius?’ Vespasian asked.
    ‘There’s been a woman waiting to see you for three hours now; I tried to get her to make an appointment to come back at a more suitable time but she refused. She said that as a Roman
citizen it’s her right to see you as soon as you return. And also that it’s your duty to see her as her father was your uncle’s clerk when he was a quaestor in Africa.’
    Vespasian sighed. ‘Very well, have her shown to my study. What’s her name?’
    ‘That’s the odd thing, quaestor, she claims to be a kinswoman of yours;