Some, of course, boasted much more. According to Aviola, his line went back all the way to Aeneas himself and thus to the gods. Neither divine descent nor centuries of privilege tended to breed humility.
The young relatives of these patricians were still worse. Aviola’s cousin Acilius Glabrio and Valerius Priscillianus’ son Poplicola were two of the three-man board of junior magistrates who ran the mint. They were not even Senators yet. But they stood on the floor of the house, hair artfully curled, drenched in perfume, as if it was their entitlement. They knew as well as anyone that their birth, the smoke-blackened busts of their ancestors displayed in their palatial homes, would bring them office and advancement, irrespective of effort or merit, as it had for generations of their families.
Pupienus considered that he had nothing against the patriciate or the wider circle of the inherited nobility in general. The men on either side of him, Cethegillus and Sacerdos, came from the ranks of the latter. They each had several Consuls in their lineage, but remained men of sound mind and hard toil. They were men who could put public duty before their own self-regard and pleasures.
Pupienus himself had ennobled his family when he had held his first Consulship. Cuspidius had done the same, as had his other closest friends. Rutilius Crispinus and Serenianus were absent in the East, governing the provinces of Syria Phoenice and Cappadocia respectively. Part of Pupienus wished they were here now. He would have valued their advice and support.
Across the way, Balbinus was telling a joke, laughing at his own wit, his face porcine. Pupienus detested him. The higher Pupienus and his friends had climbed the cursus honorum, the ladder of offices, the more the likes of Balbinus had sneered at their origins. Their families were immigrants. Rome no more to them than a stepmother. Not one of their ancestors had been worthy of admittance to the Senate. What did that say of their heredity? What could a new man know of the age-old traditions of Rome?
The snide comments infuriated Pupienus. A novus homo had the harder path. He had to rise by his own services to the Res Publica, by his own virtue, not by the deeds of his distant ancestors. There was no comparison between the two. True nobility was to be found in the soul, not in a pedigree.
Balbinus finished his joke with a flourish. The patricians laughed, the corpulent Valerius Messala immoderately. Perhaps he was nervous. Perhaps it had penetrated even his obtuse understanding that in this changed landscape his splendid marriage to the sister of the murdered Emperor Alexander might leave him in a dangerous eminence.
One of the Consuls, Claudius Severus, rose to his feet.
‘Let all who are not Conscript Fathers depart. Let no one remain except the Senators.’
Some moments after the ritual sanction, the young patricians Acilius Glabrio and Poplicola sauntered towards the rear of the house. They did pass the tribunal, but stopped before the doors, still well inside the Curia itself. Pupienus was not alone in eyeing them balefully. There was always a majority of new men in the Senate.
The other Consul, the polyonymous Lucius Tiberius Claudius Aurelius Quintianus Pompeianus stood.
‘Let good auspices and joyful fortune attend the people of Rome.’
As he recited the injunction which always proceeded a proposal there was something of a disturbance behind him in the crowd of onlookers wedged in one of the rear doors.
‘We present to you, Conscript Fathers—’
Acilius 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 immediately – some had even begun to chant acclamations – had it not been for Gallicanus.
Like a hirsute revenant from the old Republic, Gallicanus had risen up and thundered against the vitiation of senatorial procedure. It was well past the tenth hour of the day. After the tenth hour no new proposal could be put to the house. It was almost dark. Were the Conscript Fathers ashamed of their deeds? Did they seek to hide in obscurity
