The City
THE
CITY
BY ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY
The Vindolanda Series
Vindolanda
The Encircling Sea
Brigantia
The City of Victory Series
The Fort
Non-Fiction
Hadrian’s Wall
Philip and Alexander
THE
CITY
CITY OF VICTORY,
BOOK 2
ADRIAN
GOLDSWORTHY
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Adrian Goldsworthy, 2022
The moral right of Adrian Goldsworthy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781789545784
ISBN (XTPB): 9781789545791
ISBN (E): 9781789545777
Head of Zeus Ltd
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For Robert
The city of Nicopolis in this story is fictional. Several cities with this name existed in the Hellenistic world, named in commemoration of battles won by a king or Roman emperor.
CONTENTS
By Adrian Goldsworthy
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Epilogue
Historical Note
Glossary
Cast of Characters
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
MAP
PROLOGUE
WHEN ALEXANDER THE Greek came, the shepherds said it was like a great ram, always enraged, charging at anything in its path. His main army did not come this way, and the shepherds and the farmers heard of battles and slaughter and were glad that such things were far off. One Great King was dead, they heard, and Alexander was Great King. There were Greeks in the cities, satraps who sent their soldiers to collect the taxes as soldiers, satraps and kings had always done. Greek or Persian, what did it matter, for life was hard enough without worrying about anything beyond their control. There was always work enough to keep a man busy.
Trade caravans came and went as before, and the dusty travellers said that Alexander the Greek was waging war in Bactria, climbing mountains that reached up to the Heavens and crossing into India. Traders told good tales, and whether they were truth or lies did not really matter for it was all so far away. After a few years they said that Alexander the Greek was become a god and that he was dead. The shepherds admitted that the boldest rams often fell sick and died before they grew old, but the farmers had heard before that Alexander the Greek had fallen and it had not proved true. So they tilled the hard earth and cherished each drop of rain and waited to hear what the traders would say next year. Instead the soldiers came and laid out their city, choosing a hill to make it strong, for that is how soldiers think.
The men of the caravans had never said much about the Greek soldiers, for what was there to tell? They were savages from the distant west who knew only how to kill. The merchants had not spoken of the warriors grown weary of Alexander the Greek, of the ones who whispered that they should halt and turn back for home, and that the young Great King was too drunk with wine and his own might. They did not speak, if they ever knew, of how Alexander grew angry with these men, and ordered that they be taken from their regiments and formed into a special band. Into it went all the men who criticised him, all those who broke his rules, all those who tried to desert and were caught, and any who disgraced themselves in battle. Few outside the army ever heard of these men, the ‘Disorderlies’, as they were called, or knew that in the tongue of the Greeks they were called the Ataktoi, and that Alexander gave them all the posts that brought great danger for little honour. Many died, but some did not, and there were always more sentenced to join them.
These were the soldiers who came, sent by Alexander the Greek to make a new city and hold the lands around it in his name. They told the farmers and the shepherds that they were to be subject to this city, that their fields, flocks and herds were no longer their own, but property of the citizens of this new place for whom they must work. The farmers and the shepherds could not hope to match the weapons and murderous skill of the newcomers, so did as they were told, and the colonists had the sense to leave them enough to feed their families. Such is the way of the world.
Yet these Greeks were strange folk, who called their new city Thebes and said that it was because there once had been a great city in the land of the Greeks of that name until Alexander the Greek had destroyed it. They did not seem happy or sad when a few months later the news came that Alexander the Greek was most certainly dead, and they did not leave but continued to build their city, quarrying stone from the hills rather than baking clay into bricks like sensible men. Many of them had brought women from half the world – Carians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Persians, Bactrians and Indians as well as Greeks – and the rest took girls from the villages to be their wives and that was as it should be.
The settlers said that the brother of Alexander the Greek was now Great King and that the unborn son of Alexander the Greek would also be king, but that they no longer cared and wished only to live, and that seemed wise to the shepherds and the farmers. Yet kings arose throughout the lands and made war against each other and in time two armies came. The settlers argued for many days, for such is the way of the Greeks, until they decided to arm themselves and join one of the kings, for thus they said their homes would be safer. They arrived late for the battle, when already corpses lay in heaps and the carrion fowl were feasting, and one king, bloodied and weary, was rallying his bloodied and weary soldiers for a last stand. Yet the settlers came from behind the enemy army, and their attack was so sudden and so bold that the enemy panicked. The other king led a charge against the settlers and died on their spears, and his soldiers grew afraid and fled. It was a victory, as if that mattered, and the almost defeated king praised the settlers and renamed their city Nicopolis, which meant ‘City of Victory’ in the Greek tongue. There were lots of cities with much the same name and some were famous and most were not. The shepherds and the farmers did not mind, and watched their animals and tilled the hard earth and were glad when the armies went away.
The years passed and the first settlers grew old and died. Some villagers were forced and some chose to join them, while craftsmen, labourers, merchants and slaves all came to the city, and lived within its strong stone walls. They mingled together and some worked hard and some did not, and some had skill and some did not. For a while more caravans came, while the armies stayed away, for Nicopolis was neither as wealthy nor as desirable as an outpost to make them scorn the strength of its walls. Though the Disorderlies were gone, their descendants and the other inhabitants kept both their suspicion of Great Kings and their desire to be left alone.
Kings and kingdoms rose and fell and life went on. Caravan routes to the south became safer and some said faster, and the few who still came this way were the stubborn or those who valued the beautiful inscribed gemstones crafted by the Nicopolitans or the fine silk they took and reworked into flimsy gauze. The city was not wealthy and built fewer temples or monuments and did not add to its walls. Yet it was not poor, and like the shepherds and the farmers, the craftsmen endured and had enough and sometimes more than enough.
When the sons of Greece dwindled and the lines of their kings failed, others appeared. The proud Arsacids rode their fine horses out from the east and later the barbarian Romans and their Caesars came from the west. Kings appeared in Edessa and claimed the lands all around as far as Nicopolis and the great Euphrates beyond, calling their kingdom Osrhoene. There will always be kings and their satraps and their soldiers and there will always be tribute. The Nicopolitans paid the tribute, but would not take any of the kings’ soldiers into their city and said that they would defend their own walls, and the first king was wise enough to see that the old stone walls were still strong and agreed. Not all his heirs were so wise, but willingly or not they kept the promise to let Nicopolis govern itself and defend itself as long as the city paid tribute. When they spoke of this sometimes the traders laughed, because the same agreement was made by these kings with the great Arsacid king of kings in Parthia.
For four hundred years and more Nicopolis stood on its hill, its stone walls weathered and cracked like an old warrior who still kept some of the vigour of his youth. The citizens were of many races and spoke many tongues, though all were governed by a council and magistrates who wrote laws in the language of the Greeks. Outside the walls, the shepherds and the farmers spoke as their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had done back to the very beginning. Just as it had always been, they tended their flocks and tilled the hard earth, cherishing every drop of rain.
I
In the hill country
Fifth hour of the night on the Ides of February
In the consulship of Quintus Ninnius Hasta and Publius Manilius Vopiscus Vicinillianus (AD 114)
RUFUS’ FACE WAS numb, battered by wind and the driving rain. He was soaked through, his clothes heavy with water, cold and clumsy. No doubt the mail cuirass, polished to such a fine sheen by his slaves, was already rusting. It was hard to care, and this barely a month after he had arrived with such pride to take up his commission in the legion. For all the cold, his back was slick with sweat from the sheer effort of climbing, and he was barely half way to the top of the hill, its sandy soil turned into slick mud by the storm. That meant going carefully to keep his balance. Then a stone hit him squarely on the head. Rufus yelped like a child and fell flat on his face.
For what seemed a long while Rufus lay in the slime, no longer caring what anyone thought and lacking the will to rise. There was a sound, perhaps a faint cry, from higher up, and he raised his head, spitting out mud. The rain was slackening, the night becoming just a little lighter, and he thought that he could make out the dark shape of the tribune, with his face a pale blob looking back. The clumsy oaf must have realised that he had dislodged a stone and sent it lobbing back down the slope.
‘I’m fine!’ Rufus shouted, although he doubted that the tribune could hear, and gave a thumbs up, which the man might or might not be able to see. Either way, the tribune seemed satisfied, for the white blob vanished and the dark shape resumed its climb. He seemed hunched, so must be near the top of the hill, where the slope was much steeper. According to the legatus, the two officers ought to get a good view from the top, and find some landmark which would tell them where they all were before anyone found out that the commander of Legio VIIII Hispana was stranded in the middle of nowhere with a handful of officers and a tiny escort. Rufus was doubtful, although the easing of the storm might just give them a chance, but one of these scrubby ridges looked much like another to him, most of all at night, while they should not be near any city or even village of note. Since they had not yet fallen into the river – an experience that surely could not make him any wetter than he already was – he could not think of any feature likely to tell him anything of use. Still, orders were orders, the legatus an odd man even at the best of times, and since even Rufus’ minimal experience of the army made him suspect that as the most junior officer present he was an obvious person to blame, there was nothing else for it. Rufus felt the top of his head and suspected that there was a bruise, perhaps even a cut. With his hair soaked he could not tell if there was any blood.
‘Bugger,’ Rufus said softly and pushed himself up, nearly slipping again, and started to follow the tribune. The numbness was spreading to his limbs, and he panted as he forced himself onwards when all he wanted was to sit down and rest. No, that was not true. What he really wanted was be two thousand or more miles away at home in Tarraco, with his father – his dear, indulgent father – once again telling him not to be such a damned fool as to take a commission in the legions and having the sense to listen this time.
Soon the centurion was leaning forward and using both hands because the slope was getting steeper. The ground felt different, harder and much stonier, and sometimes he had to go around stretches where it was almost vertical. He could see more, and once or twice glimpsed a few stars between the tears in the clouds. It must be well past midnight, and less than half an hour, even if it felt like days, since the legatus had sent the centurion and tribune on this climb in the hope of working out where they were. With a final effort, Rufus scrambled up to the crest. The tribune was waiting, reaching down with his hand.
‘Ah Rufus, my dear fellow,’ he said and hauled the centurion up. ‘Beastly climb, isn’t it? And beastly night too, for that matter. Who’d join the army, eh?’
Rufus managed to straighten up. ‘Only the hopeful and the hopeless,’ he just managed to say, repeating something he had seen written on more than a few walls. ‘And I’m no longer sure that I am either.’ He decided not to add any of the riper sentiments that usually followed the slogan.
The tribune grinned, his teeth very white. Lucius Flavius Arrian was a short, stocky Greek from Bithynia. Rufus was twenty-six and guessed that the tribune was a similar age, or perhaps even a little younger, which made his air of cheerful competence as impressive as it was exasperating. Still, Arrian was an eques and had spent several years commanding an auxiliary cohort somewhere on the Danube before becoming one of the five equestrian tribunes with the legion, so he must have been through his share of hardships in the past.
‘Hard to be sure of anything in that storm. At least we’ve seen the end of that. Look, there’s the Moon herself!’ Arrian was pointing up at a thin crescent. The clouds were scattering, the great fields of the Heavens appearing and washing the hilltop in a pale silvery light.
‘It really is quite beautiful here,’ Arrian declared brightly, sweeping his arm across the horizon. ‘And the foulness of that storm makes us appreciate that loveliness all the more… Rarely known worse weather,’ he added, now shaking his head, ‘or a worse place to be in such a storm. Enough to make a man wish that he was home – or anywhere other than here.’ He sniffed and then rubbed his face with his hand. Rufus’ skin was still numb from cold and the hours of hammering rain. ‘And yet…’ The light was good enough to see the tribune’s brow crease as if he was in deep thought. ‘And yet we must consider whether such wishes are truly justified or even rational. After all, wherever you are, are you not wet when it rains?’