Muses of Roma (Codex Antonius Book 1)

I found Roma a city of marble and left it a city of steel.

- Marcus Antonius Primus, final words.

Third year of the reign of Imperator Octavian Caesar Augustus

Marcus Antonius sat atop his horse outside Roma watching the smoke rise into the twilight sky above the Forum and the docks along the Tiber. Musket fire echoed throughout the city; fire engulfed the Senate House and the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill. His new senses brought him the screams of citizens as his legions entered the city. The equestrian villas on the Aventine Hill lay in blackened ruins, pillaged by his men for every valuable they contained—artwork, gold, jewels, slaves.

The gods gave him the ability to take it
all
in, to sear it into his memory. To be sure, he knew he was allowing a blasphemy on the Eternal City. But that was the old order. Antonius would bring a new order, and he would rebuild Roma.

A rider charged out the Porta Capena less than a half-mile away, swerving around the crush of refugees exiting the gate. When he reached Antonius, he pulled in his reigns and reported to General Lucius at Antonius’s side.

“We have him, sir,” the rider said, breathless. “We captured him in his residence. He offered no resistance.”

Lucius sighed, then looked to Antonius with a smile. “It’s over, my lord.”

“Very good,” Antonius said, staring at Roma. “I want to enter my city now. I want to see Octavian.”

Lucius hesitated. “My lord, we may have Octavian, but the city is far from secure. Octavian’s men may still hide in pockets throughout Roma. We could have him brought out.”

“Lucius, old friend,” Antonius said, “you forget who I am now.” He turned to Lucius. “The gods have made me their Vessel. They have great plans for me and for Roma. They will not allow any harm to come to me.”

Lucius nodded slowly. “Of course, my lord.”

Antonius spurred his horse forward before Lucius could order his men to follow. The mounted protective cohort rushed up to Antonius and surrounded him, each with one hand on his reins and the other on the stock of his musket holstered on the side of his horse.

Refugees flooded the Via Appia on the city’s southeast corner. Some pulled carts while most carried nothing but their children and a sack thrown over their shoulders. Women, children, and the elderly—the younger men had mounted a futile defense of Roma’s walls during the attack—gave him hollow stares, each one too exhausted to cry out to him. Such a crowd suggested Antonius’s surprise attack had worked better than even he imagined.

Not
my
plans
, he thought humbly.
This is the work of the gods.

While Antonius’s cohort eyed the refugees, Antonius looked on them with pity. He could not explain to them now why they should stay, that they should watch him make Roma greater than any king or dictator could.

Especially that whelp Octavian.
Excuse me,
he thought,
they call him
Augustus
now.
He glanced at the rubble of the great Roman walls blasted to gravel by his cannons.
I wonder how august they think their tyrant is now?

The gods whispered to him, calmed his thoughts, and told him to focus on the tasks ahead. The citizens who fled today would return once they saw the first fruits of his plans, how he rebuilt the city with methods and materials with which the brilliant architects of Roma or Greece never dreamed. He would build monuments to shame the Great Pyramids of Egypt. The gods would show him how to create indestructible roads and magical carts able to run by themselves. And one day, when humanity was worthy, machines that flew faster than an eagle would take Romans to the firmament above, where they could bow before the gods themselves.

These were the plans the gods showed him every day since they blessed him in that crumbling Egyptian temple ten years ago.

Antonius and his cohort passed through the Porta Capena. The refugees still poured from the city, most too shocked to give him more than a glance. The further Antonius rode into Roma, however, the fewer refugees he saw. The areas nearer the gates were packed with plebian tenements that Antonius’s legions looted first. Bodies lay crumpled on the ground, some shot, but most run through with the
gladius
Antonius’s men still insisted on carrying. Antonius smiled at his men’s preference for traditional tools over a superior weapon like the musket. They even insisted on wearing their armor, though the enemy had barely touched them since they started using the cannons and muskets.

On his left, the merchant class shops and tenements on the Aventine Hill were quiet. But on his right, the Caelian Hill was awash in screams, musket fire, and the crackle of burning buildings. Many of the city’s richest patricians had villas on the Caelian. Antonius felt no mercy for the patrician nobles who lived there, for most had denounced him in the Forum and Senate, questioning his “moral character” for living in Alexandria with Cleopatra. Culling Roma’s patrician class would be a bloody task, but a necessity for Antonius to establish his new order. By the time Antonius’s men were through with them, the Caelian would look on the Suburba’s slums with envy.

Six city defenders burst from an alley in front of Antonius. Three held swords, and all bore wounds and blood on their tunics, limbs, and faces. They stared at Antonius and his cohort, stunned to see him. Antonius’s cohort was prepared. They raised their muskets as one and fired at the six men. Two defender heads exploded. Two more defenders took shots to the chests and fell to the cobblestones, while the other two escaped harm. With nothing left to lose, the two men screamed defiance and jumped toward Antonius.

Having fired their single shots, the cohort dropped their muskets to reach for their swords. But they would not intercept the enraged men before they reached Antonius. Antonius pulled his sword, ready to meet the two defenders, his heart quickening. He would
finally
join the battle. The gods could not hold him back now.

Shots rang out from the alley, and the two defenders fell before they could reach Antonius. Seven of Antonius’s men emerged from the alley, looked at the fallen defenders, then up at him.

Antonius glared at the squad’s centurion. “Well done, Servius Minicius.”

Antonius knew every man’s name in his legions. He met them all during the year-long march to Roma. His memory was another ability that made his men believe Antonius himself was a god.

Minicius stepped forward and bowed his head. “Thank you, sir. Sorry they surprised you, sir.”

Antonius frowned a moment longer, then sighed and re-sheathed his sword. “Not your fault. Although you did deny me the chance to bloody my sword. Haven’t had to pull it since Actium. Damned shame.”

Minicius grinned. “My apologies, sir.”

“Carry on.” Antonius spurred his horse forward. “I expect you to clear the city of this sort by nightfall tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Minicius called out.

As Antonius advanced further into the city, the scent of blood and smoke increased. He passed the Circus Maximus on his left; its large walls were pockmarked with musket shots. Antonius marveled at the marble columns and arches Octavian had recently installed along the walls of the huge rectangular racetrack. It had been years since Antonius last rode through Roma, and the new construction on the Circus was inspiring.

But the Circus was no more than a cheap bauble compared to what the gods had planned for Roma.

Several companies of Greek draftees formed battle lines outside the Circus, their muskets on their shoulders. When the Roman commander saw Antonius, he rushed over and saluted. “My lord, we weren’t expecting you so—”

“What is happening here, Leget Durmius? I assume there are no chariot races today?”

“Hah, no, my lord. We got some defenders holed up in there. They barricaded the entrances, but they won’t hold once we storm them. We’re about to start if you want to watch, my lord.”

“I have pressing matters with the city’s former rulers,” Antonius said. “I have every confidence you will accomplish your task, Leget.”

Durmius saluted again as Antonius rode on.

Octavian lived in a modest two-story villa on the Palatine Hill overlooking the Circus Maximus. New walls surrounded the home. Antonius chuckled when he noticed a partially constructed corridor connecting the villa to the Circus Maximus.
The great Augustus is too much like a god to walk among the citizens of Roma, eh?
Antonius could not wait to show Octavian what real gods could do.

When Antonius approached Octavian’s open gates, he spurred his horse into a trot and charged into the courtyard, surprising the centurions and soldiers who stood about inside. He stepped down from his saddle, and a centurion—Numerius Albius—ran over and saluted.

“My lord, we weren’t expecting—”

“I know. Is he here?”

“Yes, my lord. He’s in the atrium with his wife and daughter. Some Senators and the Pontifex Maximus are with them.”

“Good,” Antonius said, striding past the centurion.

He entered the house through the remains of the double wooden doors, which had been shot up and then battered with a ram. In the entryway, several wax busts of Octavian’s ancestors stared at Antonius. He stopped at the last bust, Gaius Julius Caesar remarkably well rendered. It was the Caesar that Antonius remembered in Gaul, when he had watched the Gallic king Vercingetorix throw down his axe in surrender at Caesar’s feet. Forty-nine years old, yet youthful, full of confidence and ready to conquer Roma.

Things didn’t turn out like you expected, did they, you old dog? It could have been you in my place. Fortunate for me the gods and your “friend” Brutus felt otherwise.

Antonius made his way through the entryway and into the villa’s atrium. Six soldiers stood nearby, and they snapped to attention when Antonius entered the room. Antonius ignored them, focused instead on the seven figures huddled on benches in front of the
impluvium
pool at the atrium’s center. Ruddy sunlight fell through the open atrium, illuminating the figures with a bloody tint. Antonius had no trouble recognizing them.

Octavian stood up, his purple toga arranged precisely. Octavian’s wife Livia and his fifteen-year-old daughter Julia sat behind him. Three of Octavian’s most loyal Senators sat on either side of him. The Pontifex Maximus sat on a bench by himself, his black robes torn. The Pontifex whirled around and stared at Antonius with panicked eyes. A large bruise had spread across his mostly bald head, and his long gray beard hung in strings.

Antonius turned his gaze back to Octavian. The boy—Antonius would always consider Octavian a boy despite his forty-one years—stared at Antonius with the same arrogance he had the whole time they shared power as Triumvirs four years ago. Antonius glanced at the painted walls.

“I love the frescoes,” Antonius said. “Perhaps I will make this house my own.” He strolled past the walls, hands behind his back. He stopped before a painting of Gaius Julius Caesar standing at the right hand of Jupiter. “I hear they call you Augustus now, ‘son of a god.’”

“It is true,” Octavian said, voice steady. “The Senate declared Caesar divine. Caesar adopted me as his son, therefore I am also divine.”

“‘Divine.’” Antonius grunted. “You know nothing of the divine.”

“I suppose you do. How else could you create these wondrous weapons? Wooden sticks that spit fire, smoke, and metal. Iron tubes that destroy stone walls. What did your Egyptian whore’s priests teach you?”

Antonius smiled. “
They
did not teach me anything. They showed me a temple where I found…well, it’s a long story. Suffice it to say the gods have blessed me with knowledge you cannot imagine. These weapons, they are only the beginning. I will remake Roma. Conquering the known world is nothing. I will conquer lands no Roman has ever seen. I will bring Roma’s light to every barbarian that toils and dies in meaningless darkness.”

Octavian laughed. “Come now, Marcus, this is me. The Marcus Antonius I knew was happiest carousing in the whorehouses and drinking with his soldiers until he passed out. That man was no philosopher. He was no ruler. Now here you are claiming the divine legacy of Caesar? You will never be a Caesar. We both know it.”

Antonius rushed forward, grabbed Octavian’s throat, and slammed him against a wood pillar. The boy’s eyes bulged at the move’s speed and violence.

“You’re right,” Antonius whispered into Octavian’s ear, “I will never be a Caesar. I will be so much
more
.”

Antonius clenched his fist, crushing Octavian’s throat and the vertebrae in his neck. He let Octavian fall to the floor. Roma’s former ruler gasped for air, face as purple as his toga. Then his struggles stopped and he stared with lifeless eyes up at the red sky through the open atrium.

Livia and Julia cried out and went to Octavian, wailing over his body. Antonius ignored them and then motioned to the centurion nearby.

“Your squad can have the women for your entertainment,” Antonius said, “but only after you do a few things first.”

When he told the centurion his task, the three Senators sobbed in outrage and fear. The centurion nodded grimly, gave Livia and Julia an appraising glance, then told his men to take the Senators outside.

Antonius turned to the Pontifex Maximus. The portly old man stared at Antonius with wide eyes and a gray face. Antonius put his hands on the quivering Pontifex’s head and drew him close. “I am willing to overlook your support for Octavian. You were in a delicate position. You had no choice but to give his illegitimate rule the gods’ blessing—”

“You’re right, my lord,” the man cried. “I had no choice. He would have killed my family if I had not gone along with—”

Antonius gave the man’s head a gentle squeeze. He gasped, and his lips quivered.

“Do not interrupt me again.”

The Pontifex nodded. Antonius smelled urine pooling around the man’s feet.

“Now then. You had no choice but to give Octavian’s illegitimacy your blessing. You could not have known it was wrong because the gods have never talked to you.”

The Pontifex stared at him. “I am the Pontifex Maxi—”