Throne of the Caesars 01 - Iron and Rust Read Online Free PDF Page A

Glabrio and Poplicola turned. Abruptly, the two arrogant young patricians were thrust aside, Poplicola so hard that he stumbled. A pair of Senators pushed past and got on to the tribunal to make their offerings.
    The Consul exhibited the admirable self-control to be expected of a descendant of the divine Marcus Aurelius, and continued speaking.
    Having paid their respects to the deities, the two latecomers descended and walked to the floor of the house. They stood there, glaring about them defiantly.
    Pupienus regarded them with what he hoped was well-hidden disfavour.
    Domitius Gallicanus and Maecenas were inseparable. The former was the elder and the instigator. He was an ugly man with a shock of brown hair and a straggly beard. His toga was conspicuously home-spun. Everything about his ungroomed appearance chimed with his self-proclaimed love of antique virtue and old-style Republican freedom. He was in his mid-forties. He had been Praetor some years before, but his ostentatious free speech and continual truculence towards the imperial authorities had stalled his career and so far prevented him becoming Consul.
    Pupienus had never had much time for Gallicanus – a noble spirit should seek the reward of virtue in his consciousness of it, rather than in the vulgar opinion of others; he had even less since last night.
    ‘And that it be lawful for him to veto the act of any magistrate.’ The Consul had no need of the notes in his hand. ‘And that it be lawful for him to convene the Senate, to report business, and to propose decrees, just as it was lawful for the divine Augustus, and for the divine Claudius …’
    Claudius Aurelius was proposing Maximinus be voted the powers of a tribune of the plebs, which gave an Emperor legal authority in the civil sphere. Distracted by the theatrical entry of Gallicanus and Maecenas, Pupienus must have missed the other of the twin bases of an Emperor’s rule: the clauses about the Emperor’s overriding military command.
    Events had moved fast since noon the previous day when Senator Honoratus and his escort had arrived from the North, pushing their foundering horses down the rain-swept Via Aurelia and into Rome. It had been three days after the ides of March. It was the day of the Liberalia , when boys are awarded the toga virilis of manhood. Attending family ceremonies, the Senators had been scattered throughout Rome and beyond. It had been late in the afternoon before enough had been gathered in the Curia.
    Honoratus was another novus homo . His hometown was Cuicul in Africa. Pupienus did not hold that against him. Honoratus had worked his way up the cursus honorum . After he had held a Praetorship, he had been given command of the 11th Legion up in Moesia Inferior, and from there appointed to a special command with the field army in Germania. Honoratus knew the ways of the Senate House as well as the camp. There had always been much to admire about him. Now there was something to fear as well.
    Still in his mud-splattered travelling clothes, Honoratus had told the tale simply, without affectation. The Emperor Alexander had been murdered in a spontaneous and unsuspected uprising of the troops. The senior officers and the army had proclaimed Gaius Iulius Verus Maximinus Emperor. With mutiny in the ranks and a barbarian war on hand, there had been no leisure to consult the Conscript Fathers. Maximinus hoped the Senate would understand the need for alacrity. The new Emperor intended to take advice from the Conscript Fathers, and to continue the senatorial policies of his predecessor. Maximinus was a man of proven courage and experience. He had governed Mauretania Tingitana, and Egypt, and held high command on both the eastern and the northern expeditions. Honoratus commended him to the house.
    It was a fine speech, Honoratus’ slight African accent – where the occasional ‘s’ was lisped into ‘sh’ – notwithstanding. The Senate would have voted Maximinus the imperial powers