The Seven Hills

CHAPTER TWELVE

For once, the Senate of Rome was not boisterous. The senators stood in their ranks downcast and grim. All day the messengers had been coming in from the battlefield to the north. The first report had sounded ominous, and subsequent reports had done nothing to lighten the sense of foreboding. Now the princeps stood with Aemilius's final report in his hand, and it required an effort to keep that hand from trembling.

"There you have it," Gabinius said. "Two legions destroyed, and Rome now open to attack from the north." He closed the tablet, lowered his head, then looked up at his peers. "We have been too confident. We have had everything our own way for too long. We have been too contemptuous of our enemy. I point no fingers, for I have been as foolish as anyone here. We should have seen it coming. This Carthaginians used Hannibal's old route, only he bypassed the Alps."

An elderly senator stepped forward. He was an old familyconservative, and notoriously reactionary. "They were inferior legions. They were made up of half-Gauls and Germans! We should never have entrusted our safety to such men!" This raised shouts of agreement and of protest.

The senior consul stood. "Let's have none of that! Those men were Roman citizens. They were guilty of no worse than being green troops. This is an inevitable consequence of raising so many new legions, so quickly. We sent them north precisely because it seemed like a quiet theater of the war, a place where they could be trained and blooded without demanding their utmost. We thought there might be a weak feint from the north, accompanying the thrust of the main Carthaginian army and navy from the south. As the princeps has pointed out, we were wrong. The blame lies with this body assembled here, not with men who stood between Rome and her enemies, and died on their feet, sword in hand, to repel the barbarian! I will hear no word spoken against them!" This raised a fierce roar of agreement.

"Senators!" shouted Gabinius, whose duty as princeps it was to set the order of debate. "We must now decide upon a course of action, and do it quickly. Above all, we must know the Carthaginian's intentions. Is he still in sufficient strength to march upon Rome? We have sent scouts north to report upon the Carthaginian's movement, but we dare not wait for them to return. I suggest that we summon some of the legions garrisoned in Campania. If it should prove that this Mastanabal and his hirelings have been so bloodied that they dare not advance, our legions can always be sent back, or else posted to the north against a renewed offensive. Let's have a show of hands." His suggestion was carried unanimously.

"Secondly," he continued, "I urge that we take every measure to get the younger Titus Norbanus and his four legions back to Italy."

Norbanus the elder stood from his curule seat. "My son is already striving to return. Have you not read his reports?"

"I have," Gabinius said, dryly. "He's not striving hard enough. He's getting involved with Eastern politics and building his own foreign policy over there."

"Building his own power base, you mean!" shouted the same old senator.

"Quiet, if you please," said Gabinius. "I submit that young Norbanus now commands our four most hardened, most experienced legions, and that they are legions that we require here in Italy. Time enough later for adventures in the East. First, we must make Italy and Sicily absolutely secure, and that is going to take every man we have. We must smash Carthage utterly! Only then will we be free to bring the rest of the world beneath the Roman yoke."

"And how are we to go about this?" asked the Consul Scipio. "Young Norbanus is as far away as ever, and we can only send messages, which he is inclined to ignore!"

"Perhaps," Gabinius said, "this might be a model training exercise for that new navy we've built. A voyage around southern Greece and across to the coast of Asia might just be the thing to accustom our new sailors to voyaging. If Norbanus finds transport home awaiting him at some convenient port, he will have no excuse to avoid returning."

The possibilities were thrashed out over the rest of the afternoon. Outside, word of the defeat had spread through the city and the mood was bleak. People began to speculate that the gods had withdrawn their favor. Gabinius was concerned that panic might set in, should word come that the victors of the Arnus were marching upon undefended Rome. He summoned a meeting of all the augurs still in Rome. Since the members of the college were all senators, all were present in the curia and he took them into a side room.

"I want no unfavorable omens spread about," he told them tersely. "If you see any, keep them to yourselves. People here are on edge as it is. Until our legions arrive from the| south, or else we know that the Carthaginians are not on the march toward us, let's see nothing but approval from the gods." The rest nodded. Augurs were not priests, but elected officials co-opted into the college of augurs. They read the omens according to an ancient list and did not believe themselves to be divinely inspired.

"How could this have happened without a single unfavorable omen?" asked one of them. "Since leaving Noricum, we have had an unbroken series of favorable omens. What has happened?"

A thought struck the princeps. "The gods gave us no

sign because this is not a serious defeat. Jupiter and Juno

would have given us warning had this been a true disaster,

threatening the city. The gods do not consider the deaths of

a few thousand mortals to be of great account. Only had it

signaled the fall of a great nation would they have considered it worthy of their notice."!

"That is very true," said the head of the college, one of the elders of the great clan of Brutus. "I'll wager our scouts return with word of the Carthaginians in full retreat, or if they come here and invest the city, our legions will come up. from the south and crush them against the walls like bugs."

Gabinius nodded eagerly. "That's the way to talk! Let the citizens hear that and all will be well. They're Romans, after all. It's just that, as Romans, they have never known news of a defeat in generations."

That evening, the princeps and consuls convoked a special meeting for further military planning. As always, Gabinius spoke first.

"Conscript fathers," he began, "I need hardly point out that the reconquest of our old empire has proven an even more formidable task than we had anticipated. It is clear that our legions will not be sufficient to the task unaided.

At the moment, we have no allies. We have drained the manpower pool of Noricum to build all these new legions. We need many cohorts of auxilia and where are we to find the men?" He paused for rhetorical effect, then went on. "Here in Italy, that is where!"

The Consul Scipio stood. "Princeps, Italy lost its manhood when our ancestors went north in the Exile! Those who stayed bent their necks to the Carthaginian yoke. They are little more than slaves! Early on it was proposed that they earn their way back into our good graces and limited citizenship by serving as rowers in our new navy. But to give them arms and place them in the battle line with our citizen legions? That is to give them too much honor." Applause greeted this.

"Honor can be earned," Gabinius answered, "and let us not fool ourselves. We have no alternative. We know from the battle of the Arnus that we were defeated not through the weakness of our legions, green though they were, but for lack of sufficient auxilia to support their flanks. We need light infantry, archers, slingers and, above all, cavalry!" He held their attention with his intensity and went on.

"North of the Rivet Arnus is what used to be Cisalpine Gaul. The people there were our allies in the old days. By all accounts, they suffered little from Carthage, and most of them never even saw a Carthaginian. I'll wager they have not lost all of their warrior heritage. Let's start there. Then we can scour old Latium and central Italy, paying special attention to the mountainous regions; the places where living is rough and the Carthaginians never went. Let's call in those bandits who infest this peninsula. Yes, I know what you'll all say: 'What! Bandits in Roman service?' And to that I say: 'Yes!' These are men of spirit; men who refused to till the soil for absentee landlords, who found more honor in taking arms and raiding. Were Romulus, Remus and their followers any different? Offer them amnesty with no demand that they lay down their arms. Offer them limited citizenship in exchange for service in our auxilia. I promise you we will quickly raise a sizable force of first-rate skirmishers and foragers!"

There were howls of protest but Gabinius smiled grimly. He knew he could bring them around. There was no question about it, because he and they knew that there was no choice. They were registering their protests for the sake of form. They knew now that Roman legions could lose a battle. He would get his way.

For a few days the city remained tense, until the scouts came pounding back down the Via Clodia with word that the Carthaginian force had, indeed, returned from whence it came. There was no jubilation, but a general sense of relief settled over the city. Sacrifices and omen taking resumed, and further scouts were dispatched to shadow Mastanabal's army and report upon its every movement.

When two legions arrived from Campania, they were sent north to the Arnus, there to undertake construction of extensive fortifications. It was defensive warfare, the sort Romans hated the most, but unavoidable since the main Roman forces had to be concentrated in the South. The legions in the North were also to raise, arm and train as many auxilia as they possibly could.

One question plagued the consuls, the princeps and the Senate: Where were Titus Norbanus and those four veteran legions?

The legions landed on the little pirate cove like a thunderbolt from heaven. By their thousands, the armored men poured over the narrow pass in the inland hills during the hours before dawn, moving with their now-accustomed quiet. By the time the village was awake, the soldiers were upon it, killing wherever they met resistance, taking prisoners where there was none. The pirates were sturdy men and tough fighters, but they had neither the numbers, the equipment nor the discipline of their pitiless conquerors. A few minutes of vicious fighting saw the utter destruction of the pirates; then came the sack of the town. The prisoners, mostly women and children, were herded into a compound and kept under guard.

Titus Norbanus rode in and inspected his latest acquisition. First, he assured himself that not a single pirate had escaped by sea. It would not do to let anyone spread the word of his coming to the many other pirate towns along the coast. Satisfied, he rode into the little town square and dismounted. His men had already secured the town's finest house for his use, and he seated himself upon its spacious, covered porch, sipping wine while his men piled the loot before him.

Norbanus was outrageously pleased with this stage of his march. It was proving incredibly profitable. The march north through Syria had been tense but uneventful. They had been shadowed the whole way by native soldiers, not a real threat but in enough strength to discourage any attempts upon the cities of the coast. Norbanus had sent word to the Seleucid governor that he meant no hostility, that he and his soldiers just wanted to get home. The governor had made no offer of help, but neither did he make any aggressive move. They passed within sight of the walls of splendid Antioch, and Norbanus was greatly tempted to sack the place, but that might have been more than the Senate could stomach, so he merely used its crossing of the River Orontes, paying the ferry companies meticulously and paying also for all the necessities they needed.

Then they turned westward, along the south-facing coast of Cilicia, and the Syrian troops had halted at the border. This rugged country was claimed by the Seleucids, but they had never occupied the place in any meaningful fashion. The only major city was Tarsus, which regarded itself as independent and was mainly Greek rather than native. Norbanus was diplomatic with the fathers of Tarsus and his army availed itself of the excellent water there.

Most of Cilicia was too mountainous and primitive for any kind of rule save the tribal sort. Its towns were virtually independent, and on the coast the only trade practiced was piracy. This was what made the Cilician stage of the march so lucrative.

Nearly every day's march brought them to a range of hills, and on the other side of those hills there was nearly always a little cove, with its own village and its own pirate fleet. There were never more than a few hundred to a few thousand men in each town. Except for the practice of piracy, these would have been nothing but squalid fishing villages. With it, they were fine little towns, their warehouses stuffed with the loot of the sea, taken in raids on coastal towns and from captured ships, and their treasuries filled with gold and silver, most of it ransom money, for the most profitable enterprise of the pirates was the capture of wealthy persons. All over the Inner Sea, there were factors that arranged for the ransom of captives on a fixed scale.

When all the loot had been counted, a group of about twenty men and women were brought before him. They wore clothing of good quality, although some of their garments were very much the worse for wear. They stared about them apprehensively, clearly alarmed by these outlandish soldiers who had appeared from nowhere and displayed such ferocity.

"You are the captives of this little band of pirates, are you not?" Norbanus asked them in Greek.

"We are," said one of them, a tall, distinguished man who appeared to be Greek.

"Are you the spokesman of this group?"

The man looked at the others, who looked back at him blankly. "It would appear so."

"Excellent. I am Titus Norbanus, proconsul of Rome. You have heard of us?"

The man inclined his head. "We have heard reports of your return to Italy, Proconsul. We scarcely expected to see you in Cilicia. Might I inquire of our fate?"

"You may well rejoice in our advent among you. Rome is mighty, and Rome is orderly. I am offended by the disorder of this pirate business. Rome will correct this evil, in time. In the meanwhile, like the other captives in the other pirate towns we have liberated, you will be returned to your homelands by the first available transportation. Rome is just, and Rome wants only friendly relations with the people of the Middle Sea." He paused a moment. "Except, of course, for Carthage. We will destroy Carthage."

The tall man bowed, as did the rest. "Rome is merciful, indeed."

"I said just, not merciful," Norbanus corrected. "Mercy isan attribute of weakness. Justice and clemency are attributes of the strong. Nothing is stronger than Rome."

A woman stepped forward. "Proconsul, I am Atalanta, from Herakleion, on Crete. My ransom of two thousand Athenian drachmas has already been delivered. I was waiting on the next ship bound for Crete."

"Your ransom will be returned to you," Norbanus said grandly. "If any others among you have already been ransomed, report the sum to my quaestor and you will be repaid. Of course, I will want to see receipts. These pirates seem to be meticulous in their accounts, so there should be no problem." No sense letting them take him for a fool, he thought.

The liberated captives were led away, thanking him profusely, some of them coming forward to kiss the hem of his cloak.

"Nice bit of diplomacy, that," Lentulus Niger commented.

"It costs us nothing," Norbanus said, "and it spreads goodwill. These people we liberate will spread word throughout the eastern half of the Middle Sea that Rome has arrived and Rome is their friend, if they are wise. Without conquering a foot of ground, we've put much of the East in Rome's debt and made the rest terrified of us. When Roman armies show up for the real conquest, our enemies will already be half-defeated by their own fears."

By afternoon, Norbanus had sold all the captives to the Syrian slave traders who followed the army like vultures. He made arrangements for the liberated prisoners to be taken to the nearest port city, where they could take a ship for home, and as always reminded the escort what a terrible fate awaited them should their charges not reach their destination safely. Norbanus found it a wise policy always to assume the worst of foreigners and took precautions accordingly.

Preparations for dinner were well under way when lookouts stationed on a headland jutting into the sea signaled that a ship approached. Shortly thereafter the vessel appeared and they saw at once that it was not a pirate ship returning to its base. It was a small galley under sail in a favorable wind, and upon its square sail was painted Jupiter's eagle, clutching thunderbolts in its talons.

Cato set down his cup. "The Roman navy appears at last!" Previously, they had seen only Greek ships commandeered by Rome, usually carrying orders from the Senate which Norbanus always found excuses to ignore.

"Whatever does the noble Senate want now?" Norbanus grumped. "Does anyone want to wager that it's something other than 'come home right this minute'? As if I weren't hurrying there as fast as I can!"

The others maintained detached expressions. Norbanus had had plenty of opportunity to arrange for sea transportation to Italy. He just had no intention of doing so. He was embarked upon his own personal epic and wanted no interference with it.

An hour later the ship was made fast to the town's wharf and a Roman official strode into the square and up to the house where Norbanus and his staff sat at dinner. He wore a silvered cuirass and helmet and his tunic and cloak were blue. Romans had not used blue as a military color since giving up their navy more than a century previously.

"Servius Papirius Caldus," the man announced. "Naval quaestor of the Brundisium fleet. Which of you is Titus Norbanus?" Of course there was no question which was Norbanus, but no Roman would admit to recognizing another purely because of his splendor.

"I'm Norbanus. Have a seat, Papirius, you look hungry. I never heard of a naval quaestor or a Brundisium fleet, but times are changing fast, it seems. Is your ship truly all Roman?"

Papirius took a seat and accepted a cup of wine. "We have a Greek sailing master and a few experienced Greek crewmen, but the rest are Italian. We'll depend on the Greeks for a while, until we've more experience at sea. I'm carrying messages from the Senate, plus a sealed letter from your father, the consul." He looked around at the officers seated at the table, all hard-faced men wearing an unusual amount of gold. He looked at the great heap of loot before the steps, then he turned back.

"We sailed too far east at first and learned in Tarsus that you'd already passed. Then we turned around and just followed the smoke of burning towns until we caught up with you. You certainly seem to have made your mark on this part of the world."

"We have made the presence of Rome felt," Norbanus said modestly.

"It looks like it's been fun," Papirius said. "But I think your adventure is about to come to an end. These are excellent figs, by the way."

Norbanus's eyes narrowed. "End? What do you mean?"

Papirius spat out an olive pit. "There's a big fleet of transports just been built and undergoing sea trials when I left Brundisium. They'll be coming this way to pick you all up and fetch you back to Italy. They could be sailing this way already."

Everyone looked at Norbanus, whose face had turned to stone. "Excellent," he grated at last. "We shall be home sooner than anticipated."

"Unless," said Lentulus Niger, "the omens prove unfavorable to a sea voyage." He eyed his plate innocently as he said it.

"And," Cato commented, "we are well into fall. The good sailing days are numbered." He eyed Norbanus above his cup.

Titus Norbanus suppressed a smile. These two had been loyal in the field, but they had been his adversaries in all else. But he had enriched them beyond their wildest dreams, giving them leading parts in the greatest adventure in the history of Rome. Now they were his, their fortunes committed to his.

"Of course," he said, "anything could happen."

Papirius nodded. "I suppose." He dipped a piece of bread into a pot of olive oil in which fragrant herbs steeped. "You got word about the defeat on the Arnus?"

"We heard," Niger said grimly. "The report that came with the last ship from Rome didn't give us much in the way of details."

Papirius launched into a colorful description of the debacle. As always happened, a few survivors had made it across the river and back to Rome in the days after the battle, so the people had a fairly clear account of the fighting to supplement Aemilius's bare-bones dispatches to the Senate. While Papirius spoke, Norbanus turned over the possibilities in his mind. It was not in his nature simply to defy the Senate. He was far more inclined to turn this annoyance somehow to his own advantage.

He was certain that there was no real rush about getting back to Italy. The defeat on the Arnus was a setback from which Rome would need time to recover. Hamilcar was not going to attack soon. He had several months yet to continue his march, and by the time he returned to Rome there would have been new elections, new consuls presiding over the Senate. He did not have to please men who would be out of office soon. Thinking of this he opened the letter from his father.

My son: I hope this finds you well and victorious. Our enemies in the Senate, most of them old family diehards, wish you ill. They are jealous of your magnificient accomplishments in the East. Stay your course and pay them no heed. You will return in glory to Rome and you will be the idol of the people. I have been working all year to see that you will have a sympathetic new family consul in office when you return. I have called in all my political debts to win support for Gains Hermanicus. He is not militarily ambitious, so he is quite content to spend the next year sitting in a curule chair instead of in the field. More importantly, he is a firm supporter of our family.

I am all but assured of a proconsular command of one of the armies being readied for the African campaign. My colleague, Scipio the elder, will have another. I foresee trouble with so many proconsuls in the field at once, but there is little help for it with a war this vast. Speaking of which, many here resent your using the title "proconsul." It is true that you have what amounts to a proconsular command, but since you have not held the requisite offices, there are those who whisper that you have dictatorial ambitions. When you return, I urge you to make a show of modesty and say that you assumed the title only to encourage the proper awe in foreigners.

Do not hurry at the behest of our rivals, but do not delay too long, either. Return covered with honors and take your place in the Senate. Long Live Rome and the family Norbanus.

Nothing much of interest there, he thought. Just what he already knew. Dictatorial ambitions, eh? He decided he liked the sound of that.

He went back to pondering what to do about this fleet that wanted to whisk him away to Italy before he completed his planned journey. As he thought, the first animals of the baggage train entered the town. It had grown so vast that it followed his legions at some distance. The bulk of it would have to encamp outside the small town. He would have to scour the countryside for more pack beasts and wagons to transport, his takings.

He had been wondering how he was going to get all of this loot to Italy, but now it seemed that he had sea transport on the way. This presented him with a new possibility. He had greatly enjoyed commanding his own army. Now it might be just as pleasurable to have his own navy.

A month later they were on the coast of Lycia, having made a profitable march along the coast of Pamphylia. The Pamphylians were a half-Asiatic, barbarous people who had much finer cities than the Cilicians, but had the same penchant for piracy. To make the situation even better, they had the temerity to try to stop the legions from crossing their territory. They mounted aggressive attacks against the marching columns, and this gave Norbanus the perfect excuse to acquire those cities for his own. In most places he installed petty chieftains as the new rulers and they pledged themselves as his personal clients.

From Pamphylia they passed into Lycia. This proved to be an extremely rugged land, composed of the many spurs of Mount Taurus that fanned out to the sea, where many of them formed high, wave-splashed promontories. It was impossible to hug the coast, so they had to make their way through one mountain pass after another, and progress was slow. They were further slowed by the immense baggage train, but the soldiers never complained when a wagon broke down and they had to put their shoulders to the wheels. They knew it was their own wealth they were transporting.

At the mouth of the Xanthus near the Lycian town of Myra, they found the Roman fleet in the harbor.

"That's quite a sight," Lentulus Niger said with some understatement as they crested a pass in the hills to the east of the little bay. The harbor was full of galleys and transports, all of them bright with new paint, their prows, masts and sails sporting Roman eagles. On the narrow, rocky beach spare sails had been employed to make marquees. Most of the ships' crews appeared to be ashore, relaxing, tending fires or dickering with locals for livestock and produce.

"Let's go down and have a few words with them," Norbanus said. They nudged their horses into a walk and descended the hillside. Behind them came the standard bearers, and then the rest of the army. Down below someone shouted and pointed upward. A huge cheer rang out from the men below when they saw the standards and the dusty men coming down toward them.

Norbanus and his party rode into the shore camp amid the cheers and congratulations. They saw a sprinkling of Greeks, but most of the men in blue tunics were clearly native Italians. There were marines among them, wearing bronze helmets and armed with sword and spear, but without body armor. Norbanus rode up to the largest marquee and a man emerged dressed in splendid armor and grinning broadly.

"Greetings, Titus Norbanus!" he called. "Your feat is the talk of all Italy."

Norbanus took the man's hand. "Decimus Arrunteius; isn't it? Haven't seen you since Noricum. In the Senate now, eh?" He dismounted, as did his officers. He remembered the family as soldierly but poor. They could rarely afford to have more than one man in the Senate in any generation. That could work well for him.

"Enrolled last year. Now I'm duumvir of the Brundisium fleet. Come inside out of this sun." Duumvir was the old Roman title for "admiral," revived for the new era.

They followed him into the shade of the spread sail. Long tables had been erected and they sat on benches. Arrunteius told them of the latest doings in Italy, and the much-traveled officers told him and the other Roman naval commanders of their adventures in the East.

When the wine had flowed sufficiently, Norbanus said: "Duumvir, eh? Of course, I'm sure it's an honor to have so much responsibility so young, but with your family's long military reputation, I'd have thought you'd be given an army command." In the old days, the navy had always been considered an inferior service, no matter how crucial it might be.

"Oh, you know how it is," Arrunteius said. "The good commands always go to the old families, no matter how distinguished anyone else might be. With everybody clamoring for officer's commissions these days, you're lucky to get any kind of appointment. I have friends qualified to lead cohorts who've taken appointments as centurions just to get in on the fighting. And I can't complain that it isn't interesting, whipping a fleet into shape. You've never had fun until you've tried to bludgeon a pack of Italians into being sailors. Especially if you've never been to sea yourself."

Under the bluff words Norbanus heard the edge of resentment. This was something with which he was familiar. It was something he could use.

"So you've been given the task of ferrying me and my men back to Italy, eh?" he said, reminding Arrunteius that he had not been given the task of battle with the Carthaginian fleet.

"Well, yes. I believe we've carrying capacity enough for your whole force. There'll be crowding, of course, but that can't be helped."

"I have more than men to transport. Come outside with me for a moment."

Puzzled, Arrunteius took his cup and walked outside. The other officers went with them, Norbanus's looking amused, Arrunteius's puzzled. Outside, they studied the legionaries, now encamping on a field off the beach. They were lean, burned dark, and wild-looking. Their arms were perfectly kept, but their tunics were of every color and design, scavenged along their route. Clothing wore out quickly on a long campaign, and the fine tunics Jonathan had given them had long since been reduced to rags. Most oddly, many now wore their swords on belts studded with plaques of gold and silver. Their hands and arms wore rings, bracelets and armlets that winked gold and jewels.

"Well, they seem to have done well in your service," Arrunteius said. "I think we'll have no trouble getting them all aboard."

"Look up there," Norbanus said, nodding toward the pass. Arrunteius followed his gaze and gasped. An endless line of pack animals and wagons still poured over the pass to join a huge compound next to the legionary camp.

"Is that your baggage train? I'm sorry, Titus, but you'll have to leave most of it here. We can't get a tenth of it into our transports along with your men. How much more is there?"

"I'd say about half has come through the pass now." He enjoyed his friend's gape-mouthed expression, then said, "It's not exactly baggage, Decimus. Come have a look."

They walked to the compound where the animals were being unloaded and the wagons parked in long rows. "Pick something at random."

Mystified, Arrunteius walked to a wagon and pointed to a chest. "Open it." Norbanus ordered the wagoneer. With a small prybar the man pried the lid from the chest. Arrunteius and his officers gasped. The box was packed with a miscellaneous heap of gold coins, bars of the same metal, gemstones in the raw or carved and set in jewelry, pearls in endless ropes, chains of every sort of precious metal. Their eyes dazzled.

"Is it all like this?" Arrunteius said when he could get his breath. He looked out over the fast-growing compound, up at the train still coming through the pass.

"Oh, it's not all gold and jewels, by any means, but other things equally valuable and portable: spices, incense, fine weapons, ivory, works of art, wonderful cloth-I've even got a few bolts of silk."

"Silk! I've heard of the stuff, but I've never seen it." Silk was to the Romans no more than a rumor-the magical cloth from somewhere far east that was so valuable that when it reached the West it was unwoven thread by thread and rewoven together with common thread. Even thus adulterated, it sold for many times its weight in gold and was owned mainly by oriental monarchs.

"It's real," Norbanus assured him. "Near Antioch we encountered some bandits who'd waylaid a caravan from far inland. We relieved them of it. It's the pure cloth, too."

He watched their stunned expressions for a while, then said, "Now, Decimus, you really don't expect me to leave all this here on the beach, do you?"

"What are we going to do, Titus?" Arrunteius said in a strangled voice. "My orders from the Senate are to bring you and your legions home at once."

"Some of this goes into the state treasury. The Senate will not thank you for impoverishing Rome at the outset of what must be a very costly war."

"Just some of it?" said one of the naval officers.

"By ancient tradition," Norbanus said, "the general in charge is free to determine the division of the spoils. Some must go to the treasury, of course. The rest he may divide among his officers and men and, of course, keep a substantial share for himself. It's been that way since the beginning of the republic."

Arrunteius shook his head. "That's in wartime, and you haven't been given a war to fight."

"The situation is unique, I'll grant you that," Norbanus said easily. "But let me work things out with the Senate when we get back. I'm sure that I can appeal to their good sense. In the meantime, this is what I propose: My men and I will continue our march along the coast. You will accompany us offshore, carrying our, ah, baggage. We can move much faster with it loaded on ships. It really has been slowing us down. We'll proceed up the coast of Asia. At one of the major cities-Miletus or Smyrna or Ephesus-we can arrange for transport to take the legions across to Greece. We can make a march there, just to let the Greeks know firsthand that Rome is back in earnest, then do the same thing there. It's a short hop across the strait from Greece to Brundisium." He saw the tormented look on the duumvir's face as he considered his duty, then looked at the huge heaps of loot now assembling before his eyes.

"Elections are coming up," Norbanus reminded him. "This year's magistrates will be out of office when we get back, and they'll be thinking about nothing but the commands they'll be taking up. This is Roman history in the making, Decimus, and you," he nodded to the other naval officers, "and your subordinates, can be a part of it. Think of the glory when we return. And you'll have a part when it comes to the shareout, of course."

After a long while Arrunteius turned to his officers. "Start loading all this baggage onto our ships." They jumped to do his bidding.

Titus Norbanus, de facto proconsul and now, it seemed, de facto admiral, smiled.