“I don’t understand what you mean, Father.”
“I visited Rome just once,” Macellius said. “And Londinium is more like the Rome I was brought up to honor than Rome is now. The Empire is in the devil of a mess, Gaius; that shouldn’t come as any surprise to you.” He frowned, then with sudden irritability turned on the slave who stood by their chairs and demanded, “Get us something to eat, don’t stand there gawking.”
When they were alone he turned back to Gaius, “What I’m going to say now comes under the official heading of treason; when I finish speaking, forget you heard it won’t you? But as an officer of the Legion I have a certain responsibility. If there’s ever going to be any reform, it may have to come from the Provinces, like Britain. Titus . . .this is dangerous talk . . .Titus is well meaning, but he seems to care more about increasing his popularity than governing the Empire. Domitian, his brother, is at least efficient, but I’ve heard rumors that his ambition may outrun his patience. If he falls heir to the purple and becomes Emperor, then what little power is left to the Senate and People of Rome may disappear.
“I would advance my family in the old way, by service and solid achievement, one generation following another,” Macellius continued very deliberately. “You asked me why I stayed in Britain. Julius Classicus tried to create a Gallic empire not ten years ago. After Vespasian crushed him, he decreed that auxiliaries could not be used in the country of their birth, and the Legions must be drawn from a mix of men from all over the Empire. That’s why I had such a hard time gaining permission for you to serve in Britain, and why, it might have been wiser for us to seek our fortunes in Hispania, or somewhere like that. Rome’s deepest fear is that the subject nations may rise again . . .”
“But you raised me to revere the old virtues of Rome. What do you want, Father – since we are speaking frankly – and what do you fear?”
Macellius looked at the smooth face of the boy before him, searching for some trace of his own father’s rugged strength. There was a resemblance, perhaps, in the strong line of the jaw, but the boy’s nose was Celtic, short, almost snubbed, like his mother’s. No wonder he had looked like a Briton when he walked through the door, Is he weak, he wondered, or only young? And then, “Where do his loyalties really lie?
“Chaos . . .” he said soberly. “The world upside down. The time of the four Emperors, or the Killer Queen again. You wouldn’t remember, but it seemed to us that the world was ending the year that you were born . . .”
“You think Roman and British rebellion are equally dangerous?” Gaius asked curiously.
“Have you read Valerius Maximus?” his father said suddenly. “If not, read him sometime; there used to be a couple of copies in the legionary library here. It’s a scandalous book; he never should have written it. He damn near lost his head in Nero’s day, and I’m not surprised. He started writing in the days of the deified Tiberius, but he makes some good points about some of the Emperors that followed him – to say some of them were as fallible as G—, well, as gods always are, isn’t treason – not now, anyway. The point is, even a bad Emperor is better than civil war.”
“But you said that reform might have to come from the Provinces—”
Macellius grimaced. At least there was nothing wrong with the boy’s memory.
“Reform, not rebellion . . .You may remember that I also said that these days Londinium is like Rome used to be. The old Roman virtues can survive in the Provinces, away from the corruption that surrounds the Emperor. In a lot of ways, the tribes here are like the country people where I was born. Give them the best of Roman culture, and maybe Britain can become what Rome was supposed to be.”
“Is that why you married my mother?” Gaius said into the silence.