The gate itself was nothing more than a large, slightly misshapen hole in the wall with no portals to close, graffiti covering the stonework extolling the virtues of one prostitute or another, casting aspersions on the masculinity of certain youths, or simply defacing the stone for the love of writing filth.
His first impressions of Rome had been informed simply by the press and busyness of the outskirts. He commanded a rough geography of the city, passed down from his father on wintry nights when the seemingly uncrossable gulf between them had been narrowed by the same unwatered wine that loosened the old man’s tongue and made him maudlin about the days of his youth. From what he remembered of his father’s words, the Campus Martius was home to some of the great monuments of the city: reminders of great men. The Baths of Agrippa, the Pantheon of Hadrianus, the Mausoleum of Augustus, the stadium of Domitianus; wonders too many to recount.
And he’d seen nothing of such symbols of imperial majesty. All he’d been able to lay eyes on outside the gate had been endless housing and shops, high insulae and narrow streets. And the dilapidated state of the once grand gate had done nothing to improve his impression.
Then the column had passed from under the dark arch, the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves echoing deafeningly, into the bright sunlight of the heart of Rome. The route they had taken had brought them through the gate that stood closest to the centre of imperial power and they entered the city already at its core.
He gaped, his head turning this way and that. The men around him seemed merely relieved or bored, but then they had been stationed here before. None of this was new to them.
A street ran left, jumbled housing separating it from the wall. At the far end, a great curved structure stretched left to right, cutting through the city walls where. A massive carved column rose beyond, a gleaming bronze statue atop that could only be the great Traianus.
To the right, ramshackle brick insulae crowded the street, small stairways running up between them granting access to another row that stood above the first on the slope of the Capitoline, more beyond that, and more, towering over him until, at the top, rocky cliffs gave way to buttressed substructures of the grand, columned temple of Juno. Even the rear view of that most sacred place was breathtaking, framed in painted marble against the cloudless blue sky. Rufinus checked his horse, which was drifting left with his lack of attention.
‘Keep your eyes on the Argentarius!’ hissed Mercator.
‘The what?’
‘The road, you prat.’
Flushing slightly, Rufinus watched Rome unfold in splendid glory. The road they followed, worn flags uneven from centuries of use, followed the curve of the Capitoline hill, grand structures springing up to left and right. His father had verbally mapped the city many times, but his lectures were now mere words lost in the mists of memory. Marvels lay everywhere.
To the left, myriad stores in the arches of an arcade sold everything imaginable in a welter of colours and smells, from expensive Arabian frankincense to pungent German beer in heavy kegs; silks traded across the mountains of Parthia from the farthest reaches of the world, to jars of fish sauce imported from Hispania. Every arch had its merchant bellowing his wares, most pausing to cheer or stare as the imperial cavalcade passed by, before raising their voice to promote their goods once more.
To the right, the hillside veered away, staircases climbing between temples that rose halfway to the sky, bright and richly painted, on a scale that made the great provincial forum of Tarraco look like a barbarian village. The Clivus Argentarius opened out into a great square surrounded by public buildings, each one more magnificent than the last. Despite his noble roots from this very city, Rufinus had never felt more like a country bumpkin.
Across the forum with its soaring columns supporting gilded statues of generals, emperors and heroes of Rome, the cavalcade rumbled, passing on along a wide thoroughfare full of people who hurried to the shelter of the surrounding buildings as they passed. A circular temple bore all the hallmarks of a Vestal shrine, the smoke of the eternal flame twirling from the centre of the roof into the cerulean blue. Behind it: a massive, palatial structure that could only be the residence of the Vestal priestesses.
It was hard not to ogle like an idiot. A few moments further and the column turned right at a crossroads, marked by a grand triumphal arch, and up a long slope. Here, the crowds thinned out and the column ascended slowly, wagons slowing the pace due to the gradient. Gradually, the emperor and his escort reached the crest of the great hill and came to a halt in an open space surrounded by buildings every bit as high and impressive as the temples and basilicas of the forum.
As the column assembled and the men sat stiff, straight and formal, horses whinnying and snorting, sweating and shuffling, Rufinus became aware of a number of Praetorians on duty at doorways and gates. Given the grandeur of the great portal ahead, there was no doubt in Rufinus’ mind that this was the palace that had been home to Marcus Aurelius during his brief sojourns in the city and would now be the residence of Commodus.
Seeing the vast magnificence of it all in the centre of a city of marvels filled with a million people, it seemed absurd that he had walked, talked and even bathed alongside the man who would now live here.
Almost as if summoned by the thought, the door of the main carriage swung open and Commodus stepped out and down the rungs to land lightly on the paving, a spring in his step. The young emperor looked around and his smile of sheer pleasure at being back in Rome was unmistakable.
Others clambered down from the carriages, looking more relieved than anything. Pompeianus was the last to exit and, while the rest of the nobles made for the great palace’s main portal on the heels of their master, the Syrian bowed to his brother-in law, the emperor, and turned, striding away into the city without an escort.
Men of the Fourth Praetorian cohort who stood on guard opened a large gate to one side of the main structure and slaves ran out, taking the reins of the beasts that hauled the carriages and leading them into ancillary areas.
Rufinus sat with the others, sweating in the heat as his horse swatted bothersome flies with its tail. Time passed as the column, now a simple cohort of mounted men in white with no passengers of import, awaited further instructions. Finally Prefect Perennis, having followed the emperor to the palace, returned, climbed onto his horse and flashed his grim face at the column before gesturing onward. Buccinae sounded and the unit moved off.
Wheeling in that great square before the imperial palace, the cohort trotted off back down the slope toward the triumphal arch at the base again. A right turn took them between a sprawling bath complex and a massive temple bigger than any he had seen. Just as he felt he was settling in, becoming inured to the constant barrage of glory that made him feel so provincial, his eyes fell upon the great Flavian arena and he marvelled anew.
The main amphitheatre of Rome curved away with delicate row upon row of arches. Rufinus was no newcomer to the games; he had seen some of the best slaves Hispania had to offer face one another and, on occasion, savage beasts in the arena at home. But the Tarraco amphitheatre, carved into the hillside and hanging above the blue waters of the Mare Nostrum, could hold sixteen thousand when full to bursting. The huge edifice before him now must hold four times that number; a truly mind-numbing prospect.
Further opportunities to marvel were torn from him, however, as the column turned before the great ellipse and trotted off up a wide street. The most notable difference as the cohort moved into the packed residential district of the Viminalis, hugging the slope, was the smell. A constant drone of flies accompanied the smell of dung, both horse and human, that clung to the drainage channels in the road, regardless of the combined efforts of bucket-men and the rain. The centre of the great city with its painted marble coating seemed to be largely faeces free, no doubt as a result of the great sewer that flowed beneath it and of the effort of public workers. Not so the rest of the city.