Chapter XX #2
Gaius has learned how to sit up and is trying to say his first words. I know what he wants to say, because I want to say it too – come home, Agrippa, we miss you.
I was determined to try to return to Rome in time for the birth. But just as I was preparing to leave Nemausus, I received a message from Augustus alerting me to fresh trouble, this time in his province of northern Spain. He implored me to leave Gaul immediately and take control of the crisis.
This was doubly infuriating. Not only would it take me a month of arduous travel merely to reach the scene of the uprising, but the rebellious tribe was the same Cantabri whose menfolk had been sold into slavery by Augustus after his supposed victory six years earlier.
They had risen up and slaughtered every single one of their masters, then returned home and organised a general revolt that was now threatening the Roman garrisons.
I sent a message to Julia explaining the situation. I apologised for my absence, and begged her above all else to look after her health, and to send me news of the baby as soon as it was delivered.
Then I set off for the coast of Aquitania, where I took ship for northern Spain.
Augustus had left behind a powerful army of eight legions in Spain, under the command of Gaius Furnius.
With the addition of cavalry, our force numbered more than fifty thousand.
But it was clear from the moment I met Furnius and his commanders at Castra Legionis, their permanent headquarters about fifty miles inland, that they were gripped by defeatism.
The warriors of the Cantabri, and their allies the Astures, were tough fighters, hewn from the same rugged landscape that had bred them.
It is a region of mountains, mostly forested on their lower slopes, with narrow winding paths clinging to the sides of steep ravines, and fast streams that can swell overnight into mighty rivers thanks to the torrential downpours to which the area is subject.
Their fighters, usually armed with daggers and double-headed axes, would sweep down from the higher ground, ambush our patrols, and disappear into the woods before our reinforcements could be summoned.
It is the kind of warfare a regular army dreads, and it had been going on for more than a year. Our casualties were high. Morale was low.
My first task was to tour the legions and raise their fighting spirit, using a combination of exhortations and threats.
I decided to make an example of Legion I Augustus, which had disgraced itself in a recent engagement.
I stripped it of its honorific title as a punishment for its cowardice.
The legion was mortified at this public shaming. The other seven took notice.
Once I had done what I could to restore the army’s backbone, I turned my attention to the enemy.
I imposed a naval blockade along the entire coastline, from Portus Magnus in the west to Portus Blenium some three hundred miles to the east. I closed the roads to all traffic except our own.
I set fire to their crops, and I burned their settlements so their fighters would have nowhere to return to.
Their womenfolk were as fierce as the men, and I received frequent reports of mothers killing their own children rather than surrender them to Roman captivity.
It was a brutal business, a war of attrition and terror. I based my tactics on what I remembered from the time I fought in Spain as a young legionary under Caesar – and gradually I prevailed.
I tightened the net around the enemy as a hunter might trap his prey.
I forced them into battle. I took the walled town of Attica, and pursued the survivors to another mountain stronghold, Mons Vindius, where I besieged the fortress of Aracillum.
When that surrendered, I moved on to Mons Medullus, their last redoubt, above the River Minius.
Here, as so often in the past, I encircled the town with a fifteen-mile barricade of timber, earth and stone, with a deep ditch in front of it so that nothing could enter or leave, and when the garrison was sufficiently reduced by hunger, we attacked.
I led the assault myself, a foolhardy piece of bravado for a man of forty-four, but I felt I could hardly punish my soldiers for cowardice and not demonstrate courage myself.
Besides, my blood was up, and I could never resist a fight.
I scaled the first ladder we set against the wall, vaulted the parapet, and in the hand-to-hand combat that followed received a spear thrust in my right calf and had to be carried back to my tent.
This wound, which has never entirely healed, was the beginning of the leg trouble that has plagued me ever since.
I was hailed by the army as imperator in the field.
The rebellious tribes were crushed so utterly, I was able to recommend to Augustus that he reduce our garrison in Spain from eight legions to two.
There has been no trouble since.
As soon as I had arranged to settle those veterans who wished to remain in our new Spanish colonies, I made haste across the peninsula to the Mediterranean to begin the voyage back to Rome. Julia had by this time given birth to a daughter, and I was keen to get home to see her.
At the port of Tarraco, a letter awaited me from Augustus, who was now back in Rome.
He said he had proposed a motion in the Senate awarding me a triumph for my victories in Spain. He reported that it had passed without opposition. You have waited many years for this honour. No man deserves it more.
It was true I had waited a long time, and I dare say it was also true that no one was more deserving – I shall let others be the judge of that.
And certainly, when I was younger, I had dreamed of such a glory.
But now when I contemplated it, I realised I no longer desired it.
It was too late. I should have had it for Actium, or the victories in Gaul or Illyricum.
The Spanish campaign was not one of which I was proud.
It was hardly a war of equals. It was the annihilation of a fierce but primitive people by a vastly superior military machine, which I should never have had to undertake if Augustus had settled matters properly in the first place.
Where was the triumph in that?
I was tired and irritable and in pain. I suppose you could say I was sulking, as men are prone to do when they get older.
I did not even reply.
I sent no word ahead of me to say that I was on my way back. When I reached Ostia, there was no one to welcome me. I travelled directly to Rome, without an escort, and entered the city unrecognised, thus forfeiting my imperium and with it my triumph. Then I went home.
It was the middle of the afternoon. Julia was on the terrace with a group of friends her own age, as many men as women. I could hear their laughter as I walked through the villa, and I remember the surprise on their faces when I suddenly appeared.
I must have looked a strange apparition – wind-blown from the long sea voyage, dusty from the road, unkempt and bearded, my right leg in a bandage through which some blood had seeped.
Julia quickly recovered from the shock and ran to embrace me. She asked her friends to leave, which they did very politely, after making suitably deferential remarks of welcome, and then she led me by the hand to the nursery, where our baby daughter was sleeping – Vipsania Julia Agrippina.
My second Julia.
I touched her hand with my finger. She stirred and grasped it.
I wept.
Augustus learned that I was back in Rome.
He sent a message demanding that I come and see him at once.
It was three years since our last meeting. His greeting was icy and abrupt.
– Why are you in the city? Why didn’t you inform me you were back? You should be waiting outside until your triumph can be organised.
– I do not deserve a triumph.
– Why not?
– The campaign did not warrant it.
– I believe it did.
– You were not there.
I suppose no one had spoken to him in such a tone since we were last in Rome together. He was outraged.
– What is this? Suddenly you think you are too grand for public honours, is that it? You think they are beneath you? This is false modesty, Agrippa, the very worst kind of pride!
– I have brought back no prisoners to parade through the streets – they are all dead. There is no treasure to display – they were too poor. Believe me, such a triumph would have made a meagre spectacle, unworthy of us both.
– But I requested it personally from the Senate!
Now everyone will see your refusal as a snub to me.
‘Look at Agrippa,’ they will say, ‘the loyal soldier, the humble citizen, for whom duty is its own reward, so unlike Augustus!’ Or worse, they will say I offered it and then secretly asked you not to accept it because I have always been jealous of your success.
He seemed to have forgotten he had done exactly that in the past.
– I am not responsible for what idiots go around saying. I am sorry if I have embarrassed or offended you. It did not occur to me. I have never been very good at politics.
– For someone who isn’t any good at politics, you have done remarkably well for yourself!
Gradually his anger began to subside from shouts to grumbling.
– Well, we shall have to give you something, otherwise it will look as if we have fallen out.
Not long afterwards, at his instigation, I was presented with a special decoration by the Senate, the corona muralis, a solid gold crown with four turrets, signifying that I had been the first man to scale the walls of an enemy fortress – a weighty trinket that meant nothing to me. I wore it in bed with Julia that night.