Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 18

AD 37, Amphitheatrum Statilii Tauri, Rome

The man was useless, absolutely useless. There was no denying that. The lion was clearly dying, the fur on its rear flanks matted and dark with blood from a dozen gaping wounds, a gash along its belly from which a loop of entrails was dangling, and still this stupid man had somehow managed to wind up with his head wedged firmly in the lion’s jaws, almost dead now.

No. Not quite dead yet. His pale arms thrashed pitifully once again.

The crowd jeered and laughed at that. Not even a good-natured laugh. It was disgust at how little the old ex-senator had been prepared to fight for his life, to put on a good show for them.

He looked down from the imperial box at the crowd either side of him, at faces contorted with mockery and anger at the still twitching man down on the blood-spattered sand.

Mind you, how well would you fools fight, hmmm? Would you struggle heroically till your last breath? He imagined the vast majority of them would have done what this weak old man just had: dropped his sword, fallen to his knees and pleaded for mercy until the lion casually swiped at him and knocked the fool on to his back.

He shook his head with disgust at the crowd.

So easy to be brave, isn’t it? When you’re sitting up there, safe, comfortable and entertained.

‘Caesar?’

He watched as the lion lazily crunched on the man’s skull, gnawing at it like a dog on a butcher’s scrap.

‘Emperor Gaius?’

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus turned to his freedman.

So few of the people around him used his name. Instead, to his face, it was usually a deferential term. However, when they thought they were beyond his hearing, it was the name that everyone used for him; the nickname that had followed him all his life from being a small boy.

‘Yes?’ replied Caligula.

‘Might I suggest we ought to proceed with the next entertainment?’

Caligula looked out at the crowd. Some of them were impatiently throwing stones down at the surviving lion and the headless body of the last of today’s ad bestia victims.

‘Yes, yes… of course; you can clear this lot away for the gladitorii meridiani.’

The man dipped his head and left the imperial box quickly.

Caligula settled back in his seat, alone again today. His mischievous, plotting sister Drusilla and her son, and old Uncle Claudius — family — he preferred them all to be kept well away from Rome. They were trouble he could do without.

He watched the midday sun beating down beyond the shade of his purple awning, the heat of it making the dirt in the arena shimmer.

On sweltering days like today, he missed the cool, crisp winter mornings of his childhood in Germania. Dark forests of evergreens, trees laden with heavy snow. The sound of an army camp all around him, his father Germanicus’s voice barking orders to the men. And those men

… those soldiers; stern-faced veterans who grinned down at him in his miniature replica of a legionary’s armour, at his small wooden sword, his little army boots — they regarded their general’s little boy as the legion’s mascot.

His nickname, Caligula — ‘little boot’ — that’s what the men around the camp affectionately called him. He sorely missed those times. The feeling of family. The sense of belonging.

To be an emperor was to be entirely alone.

Part of nothing.

Above everything.

Sometimes he actually longed for one of his dutiful subordinates to dare call him Caligula to his face. He wouldn’t be outraged by such a gesture. He wouldn’t discipline such a person. He’d welcome it, welcome that feeling… of being a little boy again, surrounded by giants of men who would squat down and politely ruffle his hair, regard him with genuine fondness.