The Ninth Addict p 65ish
Posted: November 30th, 2010, 6:43 pm
Thrice three hundred years having run their course of fulfillments,
Rome by the strife of her people shall perish. Oracle
Augustus had established the Vigilis, the Watch, almost sixty years ago. It functioned primarily as a fire-fighting unit with limited police authority. It was evolving into a paramilitary unit made up of seven cohorts. Since the reign of Tiberius, any free man surviving a six-year term was granted Roman citizenship. Over the next nine days, the Watch would lose a third of the city at a relatively low cost to its own ranks.
The Prefect of the Watch, Plotius Firmus, held his position at a most unfortunate time. He answered directly to Nero. As the commander of thousands of men of no rank, he knew what went on in the Subura, the small places crowded around and between the seven hills. He knew plebs talked more than they thought, but the rumors he had heard lately were too consistent to be ignored. The maddening thing was that he was helpless to do a thing about them. It would have meant going up against the Praetorian Prefect as well as the Emperor. Even some of the men he commanded had more influence with this emperor than Plotius did. Plotius had come to hate the fat little monster. How had he survived this long? He comforted himself with the thought that he couldn’t survive much longer. The question this night was whether Rome would survive him.
Nero was in Antium and the festivals and the upcoming games had swelled the number of people in the city. Plotius stood outside the barracks of the third cohort just southwest of the Praetorian Camp; he didn’t need an auger to tell him terrible things would happen tonight. The full moon and all the stars, all the gods, must have been out tonight. “Come to watch the show?” he asked them. A rat, the vanguard of hordes, ran across his boot as the stars in the southern sky blinked out one by one.
Rome by the strife of her people shall perish. Oracle
Augustus had established the Vigilis, the Watch, almost sixty years ago. It functioned primarily as a fire-fighting unit with limited police authority. It was evolving into a paramilitary unit made up of seven cohorts. Since the reign of Tiberius, any free man surviving a six-year term was granted Roman citizenship. Over the next nine days, the Watch would lose a third of the city at a relatively low cost to its own ranks.
The Prefect of the Watch, Plotius Firmus, held his position at a most unfortunate time. He answered directly to Nero. As the commander of thousands of men of no rank, he knew what went on in the Subura, the small places crowded around and between the seven hills. He knew plebs talked more than they thought, but the rumors he had heard lately were too consistent to be ignored. The maddening thing was that he was helpless to do a thing about them. It would have meant going up against the Praetorian Prefect as well as the Emperor. Even some of the men he commanded had more influence with this emperor than Plotius did. Plotius had come to hate the fat little monster. How had he survived this long? He comforted himself with the thought that he couldn’t survive much longer. The question this night was whether Rome would survive him.
Nero was in Antium and the festivals and the upcoming games had swelled the number of people in the city. Plotius stood outside the barracks of the third cohort just southwest of the Praetorian Camp; he didn’t need an auger to tell him terrible things would happen tonight. The full moon and all the stars, all the gods, must have been out tonight. “Come to watch the show?” he asked them. A rat, the vanguard of hordes, ran across his boot as the stars in the southern sky blinked out one by one.