Province of Noricum
Colonia Ferramenta
(Erzberg mine, Styria)
1st May, 170 CE
“This doesn’t look in the least like any ironworks I’ve ever seen before, Tribune,” said Legatus Augusti pro praetore Marcus Claudius Fronto on a bright spring afternoon.
In fact, if you hadn’t said so I wouldn’t have taken this… place… for an ironworks at all, he thought, turning from side to side in the saddle to take it all in.
That was difficult; it was just… different… from anything he’d seen before.
The weather was even mild, at least by Pannonian standards, though he wore a thick fitted wool cloak with the hood thrown back as well as his densely-woven white wool tunic with the broad Senatorial stripe and another, plain wool tunic beneath… as well as the new knitted wool knee-socks.
His military balteus-belt and spatha-sword were worn over it, and tight knee-length leather riding breeks, femoralia, beneath. His mount was good… though no better than that which Artorius bestrode beside him; the man was an excellent judge of horseflesh too, and was establishing a fine stud on his home estate, breeding tall chasers of fifteen hands and better. That was a very suitable diversion for a gentleman, of course, like most things to do with horses.
Still, Artorius always makes good on a promise—we’ve all seen that. So far, at least, so it’s the way to bet.
He coughed a little as the wind bore harsh acrid smoke towards them down the slope of the valley. The road twisted to follow the upward-ranging cleft in the land and the brawling, leaping stream that ran a little distance away, occasionally sending a little spray their way. The basic scent of the smoke was burnt charcoal, familiar enough, but with an odd mealy, gritty, metallic-stony overtone not quite like anything he’d smelled before.
There wasn’t as much smoke as he’d have expected, though. Big Imperial ironworks usually existed in a constant haze, and their workers coughed constantly… until they coughed blood and died, often enough.
Artorius and he were riding side-by-side a little ahead of Fronto’s mounted aides and couriers, servants and baggage and the turma of thirty-one cavalry guards whose new-style long lances rose and fell with a steely glitter from the afternoon sunlight. Their armor came from here too, some of the first, and all made from steel, not just iron. Even the wire for their mail shirts was fine steel, which was unheard-of.
And won’t those couched lances and the stirrups and the thunderballs and tormenta throwing cannonballs a mile or more be a surprise next time we fight the Gods-detested Parthians in the east, he thought happily. And the big siege-tormenta Artorius has mentioned, that will batter down strong city walls in a day or less… no more long sieges and camp-fever killing our men…
He grinned like a shark at the images that flitted through his mind. He’d fought the Parthians himself as a legionary legate in the bitter struggle that had greeted the new Emperors on their accession seven years ago, before the Marcomannic War. And he’d won most of those engagements, fought others to a draw… but never easily and it never really seemed to settle much.
Because you can beat a Parthian army, if you’re smart and skilled and have a little luck… and then they run off faster than you can catch them.
Rome and Parthia had fought many wars in the East since the first back in the times of the Republic, when the easterners had slaughtered Crassus’ army in the desert at Carrhae. That was a disaster whose memory still made Roman soldiers wince.
Though that victory hadn’t let the Parthians come much further west, either.
Nor had the Romans gone much further east when they won battles with the easterners. Emperor Trajan had beaten them badly, back about fifty years ago, and come maddeningly close to turning all the rich, fertile irrigated lands of Mesopotamia into new Roman provinces. Without those lowlands and the vast revenues they produced, the Parthians would be merely savages haunting the mountains and deserts and steppes at the edge of the world.
But then those promising new territories had fallen apart in chaos and rebellion as he sickened and died, and after that the new Emperor Hadrian had been too occupied with a Jewish revolt to do much.
Armenia in particular had gone back and forth between the empires like a leather ball in a boys’ game of toss-and-catch. First one side putting its nominee on the throne there, then the other, nothing lasting. Armenia was worth having since it bred good fighting men, especially for horseback work, and its mountains had rich mines, but neither empire had been able to stake it down for long.
Nobody else on the Roman side had even come close to what Trajan had done. Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital in the west on the banks of the Tigris, had been sacked in the latest war more than five years ago now, and all Rome had really gotten out of it besides… probably temporarily… a secure hold on Armenia was a little plunder and a bad plague.
Thank the Gods that Galenos came up with a way to stop it! Apollo’s son Asclepius truly whispers in his ear. Without that…
He shuddered at the thought.
But the reports from the East and Rome said the plague was dying down now, fewer falling ill every day, week and month as the vaccine was spread like a wall around each outbreak by the ones Galenos had trained. They were making more vaccine now from the east to Britannia, and soon there would be enough everywhere, and eventually they could give doses out to the remotest village or hut.
And everyone would take it, like it or not, with troops standing by.
Deaths had been very heavy in the east, maybe as much as half a million in total by now, not to mention ten thousand or a bit more in Rome itself, but he’d used his position to ensure that everyone in his family got the vaccine quickly. And his dependents, and then all the tenant-farmers and slaves on his estates and all his clients and their clients, slaves and dependents.
That was merely meeting a patron’s obligations to those who supported him, of course. A noble who didn’t do that soon found his clients wouldn’t back him when he needed it badly; a patron had to secure the loyalty of his clients by concrete favors, by being loyal to them.
As I support the Emperor, who is my patron.
What it might have been like around his home without the vaccine boggled the mind, a holocaust of unimaginable scale.
Everything would be very different the next time Rome fought Parthia, hopefully… and the reports that the plague had raged over there totally unchecked was an added gift from the war-God Mars, or from Far-Shooting Apollo whose arrows carried death. Since it might well kill every third or fourth Parthian, more than any Roman army could hope to do.
After all, Rome’s frontiers with the European Barbaricum hadn’t advanced much for most of a century either… not since Trajan conquered Dacia… until the Marcomanni tried to invade Pannonia. Since then the tribes on the Danube had been swiftly crushed without much loss and a huge swath of Germania annexed.
He looked forward eagerly to teaching a similar lesson about Roma aeterna victrix to the easterners.
Oh, what a surprise for them it will be! Who knows? We might march as far as Alexander of Macedon did! But unlike his our Roman conquests… our conquests usually last.
Right now he could spare the time to come here, to where the very latest wonders were born. Especially since the campaigning season started late in the far north, where his command was now, and his subordinates were fully capable of handling what was essentially a long mopping-up process punctuated by small battles that always ended the same way. Raids and ambushes and the odd arrow or slingstone or javelin from behind a bush were annoying, but didn’t matter much in the long run unless you happened to be one of the casualties. You crucified the skulker if you caught him, burned a few villages around the spot and sold or slaughtered the inhabitants, and went on.
There had still been snow on the ground in some of the passes over the Carpathians on his journey here, after a winter in log huts. Those at least worked surprisingly well, and with an improvised ignis locus of sticks or rocks set in mud… they were warm enough you were just uncomfortable, not freezing and coming down with death in your lungs. And they were quick to run up by deeply notching the ends of the trunks and squaring off the top and bottom of the timber in that land of many tall straight trees.
Which had been another suggestion by Artorius.
Worse than Armenia in winter up there, and I thought nothing could be! the general reflected with a shudder. Thank the earth-shaping Gods there’s plenty of firewood!
His own ancestral home was in the mild coastlands of the Aegean amid rich rolling fields of grain and pasture, and vineyards and olive-groves and orchards of apricots, figs and pomegranates as well as cherries and apples.
More dampness in the cold than Armenia, at least, up there in the north of Germania. It soaks into your bones! No wonder they keep trying to come southward!
The crunch of shod hooves on pavement and the grinding of wheels would make their conversation private; Artorius had said that seeing the works would be better than him trying to explain them ahead of time. Before them the mountains of Noricum, outliers of the Alps, still bore winter’s lingering snow. Their lower slopes were green with trees… and now threaded with rising columns of smoke from charcoal-burners’ work, turning wood into fuel for the smelters.
He pointed one hand in that direction.
“Not as much of that smoke as I’d have thought necessary, Tribune,” Fronto said. “Ironworks devour charcoal, and this is to be a very large one, I believe?”
“The process we use here is more economical of fuel than those you are used to, sir,” Artorius said. “You will understand that I did not make iron myself in America; my family were landowners… mostly a grazing estate, what we called a ranch… and I was a soldier, and I hope something of a scholar.”
Fronto nodded. That made Artorius… respectable would be the best word, he decided. Respectable by Roman standards.
The novus homo went on:
“But I’m familiar with the principles our American artificers used—if nothing else, weapons are mostly iron and it behooves a soldier to know where they come from.”
The general inclined his head in acknowledgment; that was why he’d made a point of visiting the local Imperial ironworks whenever he was moved to a new province on the frontiers.
You got less in the way of embarrassing surprises about supplies if you did that.
“With some trial and error over the past couple of years, we’ve duplicated the essentials,” Artorius said.
He added a short phrase in the mysterious tongue that the ex-Americans used among themselves. It was the oddest-sounding language Fronto had ever heard, even more than Aramaic or Armenian, a hard rasping-nasal staccato that grated on the ear.
In this case, what the other man murmured under his breath sounded like:
The essentials as of about eighteen-thirty-five.
Whatever in Hades name that meant.
Fronto smiled and gestured friendly agreement. Artorius had a reputation for being brusque and acerbically direct. And he lived up to it in his no-nonsense way, like Cato the Elder come again with all the ancient blunt Republican virtues that some now considered vices.
But his voice was carefully respectful of Fronto’s rank, and bore less of the odd accent he’d noticed when they first met, back when the Roman armies crossed the Danube. Now it could almost be that of any scholarly Pannonian eques, though in appearance he might have been Gallic or German… save that his blue eyes had a bit of a slant and were narrower than you might expect.
Like his client, that woman Philippa who knows so much of horses… and even more strangely, of mathematics… but not nearly so much so, he thought. Just a hint of what she has in full. Though the tint of her skin and hair would be quite normal around my home estates.
Romans were a mixed lot too these days, of course, and more so all the time; they could look like anything from Egyptians… or even Nubians… to Germani.
But then, we started that way, you might say. Romulus and Remus recruited shepherds and land-pirates, escaped criminals and runaway slaves, and they stole their brides from the Sabines by force. They violated a sacred truce to do it! Banditry, really, by a bunch of peasant bullies and thugs living in thatched mud huts on the Palatine Hill behind a log palisade… but on a grand enough scale, with the favor of the Gods, banditry becomes an Empire. With Empire comes law and prosperity.
Fronto was always conscious of accents. His own family spoke Greek at home in western Asia Minor, but he’d been expensively tutored as a child to make sure his Latin was that of Rome’s elite, and was doing the same with his own children so that they’d be equally at home in both tongues, both spoken and written.
Even my daughters! You never know what matches may be made.
Many men born of the upper classes throughout the Empire, equestrian or Senatorial, spoke Greek as well as Latin…
Still, Latin is the language of state, of command. And of the army… mostly. Even auxiliaries usually learn it. And it is the tongue for addressing the Senate.
The further west and north you went in the Empire the less Greek you heard, too, except in the bigger cities like Rome and Carthage, or ancient Hellenic colonies like Neapolis or Massalía or Emporeon.
Artorius pointed ahead; growing larger as they rode up the valley towards the spanking-new dam of stone and earth that ponded back the river were four great circular towers, separated by several hundred yards each. Forty Roman feet high at least, constructed of roughly shaped stone set in concrete… and they tapered a bit from base to summit, and were broad enough to look a bit squat.
Like fortress towers but a little larger than most.
Flames burst from their summits occasionally, with a high-pitched shrieking sound that made him soothe his horse reflexively as it shied at what sounded like a whistle blown by the lungs and lips of Jupiter the Best and Greatest.
“What are those, Tribune?” Fronto asked, pointing to the towers. “Surely not…”
Now he could see that an endless bucket-chain like arrangement ran up a sloping framework to the top of each I bore loads of charcoal, broken iron ore and some other crushed rock. Brought there by wagons from up the valley that ran on wooden rails strapped with iron on top; it looked like they coasted down and were hauled back up—empty, or nearly so—by mules.
“Yes, those are the furnaces, excellent general. The heart of Colonia Ferramenta,” Artorius said.
Fronto nearly jerked his reins in surprise, and his horse snorted questioningly. He’d seen iron-smelting furnaces more times than he could count; they were simple clay columns not much taller than a tall man—than Artorius, say. And no bigger around than two men could span with linked hands.
In an Imperial working, dedicated to supplying the constant iron-hunger of armies and fleets, there might be dozens or even hundreds of them pockmarking the ground. With several slaves squatting near each all day to work the bellows and more bent double hauling baskets of ore and charcoal on their backs.
Though he supposed some were using unarotas by now. Wheelbarrows was the term in the American language.
“Furnaces?” the Roman general said incredulously, blinking. “Furnaces big enough for the smithy of Vulcan!”
Lame Vulcan was the God in charge of artificers and craftsmen. Or He was dubbed Hḗphaistos, if you were speaking Greek, as Jupiter was also Zeus Pater. Some said these days it was a sign that Latin and Greek had a common origin, an ancient mother-tongue from which both descended. The Emperor was writing a book on that, when he had some spare time.
“Not quite that big, sir,” Artorius said with a chuckle. “The fourth is just finished and started producing this week. The concrete needs time to set and it’s slower in cold weather, we had to keep carefully banked low fires on the hearths for weeks. Then they’re thickly lined inside with a special brick in a careful shape. That brick has to be renewed now and then, but not often.”
These giant things… Fronto thought, and went on aloud:
“How is that possible? No bellows could supply enough wind! Not with a thousand slaves for each, all working at the bellows!”
“Ah, we use… there, sir!”
Artorius pointed. They’d come level with the first of the towers…
Furnaces like fortresses, Fronto thought, shaking his head in wonder. Artorius is Vulcan’s favorite son indeed!
… and a long shed with a roof but no walls yet ran beside it. A waterwheel turned at one end of it; that was familiar enough from gristmills, though this one was bigger than most, had iron bracing, and the blades seemed to be curved instead of straight boards… and the millrace delivered water from the top but a little back from the summit, so that…
“The wheel will turn in the same direction as the water flows in the lower race!” he said.
That meant less back-pressure and more work for the same flow. He added:
“Ingenious!”
Like all of his new things, Fronto thought silently. His native homeland is destroyed utterly, apparently, as utterly as Atlantis in the philosopher’s fable, but Rome… Rome benefits. Who knows how long the war with the Marcomanni would have lasted without the thunderballs and tormenta and new roads and the other new things? Perhaps with other barbarians… the Sarmatians, for example… aiding them too, beyond the Great Barbarian Conspiracy that we nipped in the bud. Truly, the Goddess Fortuna’s wheel turns to favor Rome!
The shaft from the waterwheel ran for some distance, with short squat stone pillars cut into U-shapes with greased iron liners on top to support it, and iron collars on the shaft at each resting-point. But the timber of the shaft was not straight; instead it bent back and forth at morticed, metal-braced joints like the key-design often painted on walls below the ceiling. The outer faces of the extensions had heavy poles on lateral pivots moving back and forth as well as up and down as the shaft turned.
Those in turn connected via more pivots with other poles that were pulled back and forth horizontally…
“To convert the circular motion of the waterwheel to back-and-forth!” he said.
“It is called a crank-shaft, sir,” Artorius said. “Because it is cranked—bent back and forth.”
“Also ingenious! But what are those things like great straight-sided barrels? I see no bellows.”
“Those are the bellows, in a way. See how the moving rod pulls the iron-rimmed circular plate inside each tube of wood backwards and forwards resting on greased iron strips? The row of hinged insets in each opens with the back-stroke, letting the air through… then they snap shut as the plate… the piston… is pushed forward. That provides the draft, more powerful than any bellows worked by men or animals. With six pistons working at different stages of the cycle, as there are here, the amount of air is continuous.”
Artorius’ finger went to four large brick structures between the…
Air-pumps, I suppose, Fronto thought. Odd to think of pumping air as if it were water! Though I suppose that is what an ordinary bellows does too… Air can push things itself—hence the sails of ships, and the new wind-mills, so it must have… would weight be the right word? Very odd, so odd to think of air having weight! Yet… it must, the logic is irrefutable.
…and the impossibly-huge furnace, each flanked by a tall narrow brick tube, easily twice the height of the furnace. Three of those were pouring out smoke to add to the tang of the air.
“And see how the hot air from the top of the furnace is moved to those block structures by pipes? They are called preheaters. The gas from the furnace burns in the preheater, too, making it hotter still.”
Fronto peered. “Are those pipes iron?” he said with astonishment; they were huge, big enough that a man could crawl through them, or at least a toddling child. “Lead pipes for water I have seen, of course, and even bronze sometimes for public fountains and the like, but iron?”
“Yes, from the first liquid iron of the first furnace. There are four preheaters for each furnace… blast furnaces, they are called. Inside each preheater is a checkerboard of the special brick I mentioned; it is called fire-brick. The hot burning air from the furnace heats the bricks until they glow. Then the outrush is put to the other preheaters, and the air from these piston-bellows is put through the hot brick before it enters the furnace at the base. That heats it—which again reduces the amount of charcoal needed still more, and increases the heat in the furnace, melting more iron from the same weight of ore.”
“Hmmm,” Fronto thought, trying to visualize it.
Then it was as if something went snap in his head and he said:
“Yes! I see! Instead of being vented to the air and carrying away the heat from the burning charcoal, the hot fumes of the burning… or the charcoal itself, in a way… is used twice! Most ingenious!”
He was subtly flattered by the look of approval Artorius gave him. Fronto supposed some broad-stripe men—the common phrase for those of Senatorial rank—might be offended by approval from a man born a foreigner. One only granted Roman citizenship a few years ago and even more recently raised to the Equestrian Order, the lower end of the noble class…
But then, his own family had only been entitled to the broad stripe since his grandfather’s time, at the end of the reign of Trajan, not long before his own birth. And they had been granted Roman citizenship by Vespasian during the First Jewish War two generations before that, for services rendered to the State, which together with their wealth had made them equestrians.
We had to work at being Roman. We climbed the ladder by our own strength! And I… I have added to the fame of my line, become the conqueror of the Germani… under the Emperor, of course… and eased the way for my children.
Artorius nodded and went on: “These furnaces don’t produce blooms which must be hammered to expel slag. The iron is fully liquid, and the slag—helped by the limestone which is tipped in with the ore and charcoal as a flux—all runs off… carrying far, far less iron with it than the old way.”
“It’s a nova res, a new thing,” Fronto said, impressed.
New thing was the general term that had grown up for the innovations the Americans had introduced, with Pannonian gear as the alternative words for things like stirrups and horse-collars, huge improved freight-wagons and nailed-on iron horseshoes.
“Some of the liquid iron is cast into things like cannonballs, as you have seen recently in the north, sir, and the cost is much, much less than bronze shot was. Some to stoves or cookpots or other uses, like the fire-plates at the back of an ignis locus. The cast iron is very hard, harder than steel. So hard that it is brittle.”
Fronto chuckled. “An iron stove? What a luxury! Perhaps for the Imperial palaces, eh!”
Artorius shook his head. “The cost is less than one-tenth the cost of iron that you are used to, sir. At least that much less, perhaps more. And casting is easier and cheaper than smith-work. So it may be used for many things… cast iron plowshares, for instance.”
Fronto felt his ears perk up at that. He’d seen the two-furrow riding plows the Americans had introduced on the Villa Lunae, which now belonged to Artorius. They did a better job than the usual wooden walking plows, did it much faster and with less labor and fewer draught-animals. So did the disk-harrows, and the seed-drills needed much less seed than hand-sowing the same acres and you could weed the fields with animal-drawn cultivators since the grain was sown in straight rows, thus raising yields still more.
He intended to have it all introduced on his own estates just as soon as he could; he’d already made a start. Along with a raft of other improvements and the new crops from America, brought here as seeds when Artorius and his clients fled the terrible war there—maize and potatoes, sunflowers and tomatoes and those very tasty peppers and such.
The vilicus, the manager, on the Villa Lunae had told him that all together the new things there had cut costs by four parts in ten, and increased yields and profits by even more. But the plowshares on those riding plows he’d seen were thin sheets of soft wrought iron hammered over carved beechwood. If they could be cast from iron, iron that was very hard, they’d last much longer… and if the iron was so cheap…
Visions of greater revenues from his estates danced in his head, almost as satisfying as the vision of Parthian armored cataphracts lying dead in windrows, or screaming and flailing at themselves as gobbets of burning Ignis Romanus ran under their hauberks.
Though not as amusing as that, he thought, smiling at the pictures his mind painted.
Or those damned elusive Parthian horse-archers flogging their mounts as they fled from cannon-fire in howling bulge-eyed terror and shat their saddles.
Artorius went on: “Some of the cast iron is turned into ordinary bar iron in the finery furnaces you see there…”
He couldn’t see the details of that, but a hammering noise carried to them, louder than any he’d heard before, a heavy CLANG… CLANG… CLANG.
“And bringing the cast ingots in still glowing red-hot in those closed wagons on rails saves fuel too, so it’s cheap to do. Just for one example, all horse owners will be able to afford horseshoes eventually.”
Fronto grunted thoughtful approval. Horseshoes made a big difference in how often hooves chipped and cracked, and the Roman cavalry throughout the Empire from Britannia to Armenia would all have them by the end of this year, along with framed saddles, raised cantles, stirrups and instruction in the couched lance. The stirrups gave mounted archers a big advantage too, increasing the weight of bow they could draw by a full third and making it easier to control the horse by leg-signals.
If horseshoes could be made cheap enough for civilians who could barely afford a horse… horses were much faster than oxen, and now they and mules could pull just as hard with the new collar-harness…
Time is money, he thought, a saying popular in Pannonia these days.
“Some is made into steel—by pouring the molten iron into crucibles with saltpeter, which does it rapidly and cheaply,” Artorius said and went on over his shoulder:
“Dablosa!”
One of his ex-gladiator bodyguards came forward; the man looked prosperous, from the fine armor he wore and the gold and silver ornaments on his harness and the hilts of his weapons, and the tall chestnut horse he rode, almost as good as his employer’s.
“Sir? You wish?” he said with respectful courtesy.
In fluent Latin but with a strong Dacian accent the Roman general recognized from auxiliary cohorts recruited there.
“Show the lord Fronto your new sword,” Artorius said.
“Lord,” the man said and drew his blade with an arena-style flourish.
He presented it hilt-forward across his left forearm… which had a guard on it, not of boiled and varnished leather but of smooth steel.
The weapon was a horseman’s spatha, with a fairly broad double-edged blade of about thirty-four inches tapering to a wicked point. That made it a little narrower and a foot longer than an infantry gladius. Though those had been getting a bit more substantial lately in a swing of military fashion, after getting shorter for the previous three generations. Soon they’d be back to the twenty-four inches they’d been in the divine Julius Caesar’s time.
He took the sword and sent it whickering in a figure-eight through the air with an experienced flick of the wrist—it was nicely balanced by the solid-steel pommel, as nicely as any blade he’d ever held. And it had an odd guard, like a steel letter S squashed down into a near-circle, that looked like it would give very good protection for the hand. He knew from experience that on horseback you couldn’t completely rely on your shield for protection; you had to be able to parry and block with the sword as well.
The blade rang sweetly with a sound he recognized when he tapped it with the hilt of his dagger, too, so it was both hard and resilient. The edge was good as well, knife-sharp but not honed so fine that it would turn on bone.
“Excellent Noric steel,” he said approvingly.
Wise men didn’t stint their bodyguards, and steel weapons from Noricum were among the best, as good as any fine forging from Syria.
“As good as any I’ve ever seen!” he went on. “Expensive, but worth it if you can… wait, though you said…”
Artorius grinned as he replied, an infectious expression.
“Yes, sir. With this saltpeter process… where I was raised it was called Heaton steel, after the inventor… fine steel like this will also cost only a tenth or less of its present price. Perhaps a twentieth part or less. Low enough to equip all Roman soldiers with blades as good… and at a lower cost than for the, umm, less-good ones they use now.”
“Vah! Deodamnatus!” Fronto swore, his eyes slitted for a moment in calculation.
Soldiers in the Roman army technically owned their own personal weapons, armor and gear: the cost was deducted from their pay, and then they usually sold most of it back when their enlistment was over, to add to the lump sum of twelve years of pay that made up their pension. When they weren’t given land-grants for farms instead, which would become commoner again with the fresh conquests adding to the ager publicus, the land that was at the disposal of the Empire.
Conquest paid well, especially with the new things helping. And veteran colonies were nearly as good as garrisons and cost a lot less, since the land was booty in the first place.
If the troops could all be sold fine blades like this… and at a lower cost, but the deductions stayed the same or didn’t diminish as much… and the armor could be upgraded too…
More effective troops and at a lower cost!
“The accountants of the fiscus will weep for joy, Tribune,” he said sincerely.
Over three-quarters of all Imperial revenue went to the military, every year… even when there wasn’t a major war on. Or to the closely related tasks of building and maintaining roads and forts. His home province of Asia Minor had been webbed with Roman highways during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, which made defense—or attack—much easier.
He handed the sword back to the guard with a nod and smile—intelligent men were polite to bodyguards, too, and you were polite to the bodyguards of men whose opinion you valued. Then he ventured a jest:
“And the a rationibus—”
Which was the title of the Equestrian official who managed the Imperial fiscus, the Treasury.
“—will sacrifice oxen… or possibly his children… to the Gods in your name.”
They both chuckled at the mildly scandalous remark—Romans considered human sacrifice a mark of barbarism, and had since the Punic Wars at least—and Artorius went on:
“Not to mention that scythe-blades and axes and saws and sledgehammers and other tools can be made from the steel too.”
“That would be useful,” Fronto said. “Very!”
Too expensive to be practical now, but possibly not in the future he’d just glimpsed. Steel tools were stronger and springier and kept an edge much better than ordinary iron. For many uses they were just impossibly expensive… or had been. He went on:
“Especially steel axes and saws in the north! You would not believe the forests there once you’re north of the Marcomannic lands. Endless! The cleared ground is just patches and the only big areas without trees are the bottomless bogs where the rivers spill in floods, or naked rock in the mountains. You have to fell timber to move anything but the exploratores, the scouts, even a pace ahead. And the forests swarm with savages as a poor man’s hair does with lice.”
He glanced down at the road they were riding on, recognizing the type.
The roadbed and its ditches had been shaped from cleared dirt by a simple horse-drawn earth-mover called a Fresno scraper by Artorius. Then the beveled soil had been rolled with column-drums to firm it up and covered in a surface of broken rock, the bottom eight inches of three-inch broken rock, then another four of two-inch that was a little thicker in the center, to produce a low curve that shed water.
Then that was rolled and pounded until the broken bits of stone locked together, a method the more cunning since most of the hooves and wheels and boots of ordinary traffic also worked to keep it consolidated. Just here it looked like dark-gray furnace slag, though limestone was commonest elsewhere.
Traditional Roman paved roads were five feet deep, with shaped rock in layers often set in concrete even before the paving surface was added.
This was just as good for animal-drawn carts or hobnail-booted feet, shed water about as well, resisted hard frosts in cold areas more strongly, and was fifteen to twenty times faster to build and required a lot less skilled labor. Plus it was easier on the hooves and legs of horses than solid stone blocks.
It did need a bit more maintenance, but that was easy enough. You just dug up the surface around a pothole or rut or wet spot with picks, added some more crushed rock—piles of it were kept spaced along the new roads—and pounded it down with wooden blocks on poles until everything was smooth once more. And every few years you added a little across the whole surface and rolled or pounded it in.
Fronto went on aloud:
“These new roads… by the Gods they’re quick to make! That’s been a great help in the north, Tribune. If it isn’t rocks up there, it’s bogs; and if it isn’t bogs, it’s forests of giant trees, and the winter is cursed long and cursed cold even compared to Pannonia or the Caucasus. And with more snow than either. The natives strap long boards with upturned tips to their feet and glide over the snow! Thunder-powder helps with cutting through rock for roads in the high country, too. And breaking it up for the pavement.”
“I am glad to hear it, excellent Legate,” Artorius said. “Do you think you’ll reach the German Sea this year?”
Fronto shrugged. The German Sea was about six hundred and forty Roman miles as the crow flew from the Danube between Vindobona and Carnuntum, the capital of the province of Pannonia Superior.
That knowledge also came from the new things, the uncannily accurate maps drawn to scale on the paper… stamped onto it, actually, like stamping a seal on your ring into wax. That made the relevant ones cheap enough to issue to every commander of a cohort or cavalry ala, even in the Auxiliaries. You could measure off distances with a ruled stick, or your thumb at a pinch, and along with the very new north-pointing needles called compasses they simplified travel greatly. Now you could tell which way was north, even in a winding valley in the fog.
And the maps made strategy easier to think out.
And… not least… they greatly reduced your chances of getting lost when you were campaigning away from known country.
And you need not rely so much on possibly treacherous local guides, either.
Before, everyone had assumed the northern sea was much, much closer. Currently the vanguards of the Roman armies were a bit over three-quarters of the distance, say four hundred and forty miles from the old border.
Say also twenty or thirty days march on good roads… now that there are good roads where there were only muddy deer-tracks before.
And they were pushing ahead as the snows melted and the mud became slightly less bottomless and roadbuilding became practical again.
“We’ll reach it in this campaigning season, if Fortuna spins her rota in our favor,” the Roman general said, invoking the Goddess of Luck and Her sacred wheel. “We’d be there already if we hadn’t had to march against tribes well west of the Ouistoula river, and raid east of it.”
“As the divine Julius did over the Rhine when he conquered Gaul,” Artorius said… which was a flattering comparison.
“Exactly. We’re more than halfway down the Ouistoula river, now that the ice is more or less gone… it was never solid, but there was too much for river-boats.”
“Yes, the Vistula,” Artorius said, as if making a mental note.
That sounded a little odd. Ouistoula was the Greek name for the river; the Latin spelling was Vistla.
Fronto continued: “And we’ve put some light galleys on it, with your new carroballistae throwing thunderballs and Roman Fire. And a few with twelve-pounders in the bows. We have a good road over the mountains to the navigable part now, and with the new wagons and harness our supply-train is able to get us what we need, when we put it together with what we’ve plundered from the natives. That lets us use enough troops that we can overwhelm resistance quickly, and empty bellies for the natives drives the lesson of Roma semper victrix home.”
Rome forever victorious, Fronto thought again to himself with satisfaction, and went on:
“When we do reach the German Sea we’ll have the unsubdued Germani tribes between there and the Rhine, the Agri Decumates and the Alps boxed in on three sides. We have outposts on the eastern side of the Elbe now, and bridgeheads over it. Four sides, when we get ships on the water up there. Ships with cannon, and carroballistae to throw Jove’s Balls.”
“And the new provinces reduce the Barbaricum between the Rhine and the Vistla by a quarter… or perhaps a third… already,” Artorius noted.
“Just so! When the Rhine legions and their auxiliaries are re-equipped—”
At Artorius’ raised eyebrows he specified:
“—that’ll be finished soon—we can subdue everything in the pocket that’s left in no more than a few years. Possibly as little as one campaigning season!”
“If Fortuna keeps smiling at us,” Artorius added.
Fronto laughed agreement and went on: “Varus… and better still, the fine army the accursed fool lost… will be well and truly avenged.”
Romans, particularly military men, remembered the disaster that had cost Rome three full legions in the Teutoburger Wald forest. And the prospect of bringing Germania into the Empire, even though it had happened a hundred and fifty years ago. It had been one of the few real and serious defeats in the reign of the first Augustus.
Publius Quinctilius Varus’ name was not recalled fondly.
At all, Fronto mused. As the first Emperor said… repeatedly… Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!
If prayers and sacrifices affected Hades’ choices, the man would be enduring an eternal fate that made Sisyphus’ look like soft rest in Elysium. Avenging his defeat, though, that was a different matter.
Many slaver and drool at the thought, now that it looks to be practical, Fronto thought happily. And I, I have the glory of it! After the Emperor, of course. But he deserves his greater share, it was his policy that set the stage… not least, that he quickly saw what Artorius and his clients could give us after that first victory with Jove’s Balls saved the Tenth Legion and Vindobona. He bound them to his person by favor and largess, and they to him by acceptance. And hence Artorius and his clients are solidly loyal to him. Remember that! Marcus Aurelius is not a man anyone can safely underestimate, for all that he’s not really a soldier himself.
Being a successful general was all very well… but it could carry risks of its own, if an Emperor became suspicious that you had secret thoughts of wearing the purple yourself. Marcus Aurelius was no Domitian or Nero or Caligula, no mad monster seeing plots under every leaf and lashing out unpredictably, but he wasn’t a trusting fool either.
Fronto went on:
“Not all that much fighting so far this spring. Once the native tribes up there get a taste of the thunderballs and cannonballs and malogranatum—”
Which word meant both pomegranate and now grenade. They did look rather like the fruit.
“—which I can testify personally shred a charge nicely—they wail and weep and puke and run. Or lick dirt at our feet. And the news of our great victory over the Marcomanni and Quadi spreads and sows a good and wholesome terror. Late last year and early in this we’ve had some brushes with that folk you called Goths when you warned us of them. The native name is something like Gutōz, but I call them filthy blond swine myself. Mad bastards and savage ones, but primitive compared to the tribes along the old border and we hammered them badly last year and again this spring. And they don’t like Jove’s Balls or Roman Fire or cannonballs—now that we have more cannon. Not the old bronze shot nor the new iron stuff from here! Or case-shot and grapeshot.”
He felt cheerful. The prospects ahead filled his stomach with delight, even better than a fine feast with good wine and naked dancing-girls wiggling their backsides.
“So it shouldn’t take more than two or three more years at the very most to bring all the Germanii under the wings. Many have surrendered without a fight and more will. The length of our European frontier will be nearly cut in half once Germania is pacified! Especially since the Sarmatian tribes east and west of Dacia have submitted now, and the Bastanarae too. Dacia isn’t a thumb rammed up into the Barbaricum’s arsehole anymore and surrounded on three sides by stinking, dangerous barbaro-dung. It stretches from the Danube at Aquincum to the Black Sea and the Tyras river.”
That parlous position of Dacia’s had become more obvious with the new maps. It had set his teeth on edge every time he looked at one that showed political boundaries, and others had the same reaction.
The new eastern frontier of the Empire would be much more…
More tidy, that would sum it up. Tidy, running from northwest to southeast, and shorter by more than a third, and needing a smaller garrison. Say four or five legions and an equal number of auxiliaries to hold the Germani down for the first generation, less once they’re reconciled to living under the wings. Also it will put the remaining legions needed on the new frontier much, much further from Rome. Another month’s marching distance, which all Emperors will appreciate! No foreigner has ever overthrown a Roman Emperor. But the Roman legions have, and more than once, though not in the past few generations. And the ones on the Danube and Rhine were uncomfortably close to the City and to Italy. Soon the garrison camps will all be much further away.
“I hadn’t heard about the Sarmatians yet, sir,” Artorius said thoughtfully. “Just that they were talking with our envoys. I’ve been—”
He waved at the ironworks.
“—busy.”
“That’s just this month, I saw to the last of it on the way here, and the reports will be reaching Rome about now. After a few demonstrations of what the thunderballs and bronze tormenta can do to distant formations of horsemen they crumbled like… like snow in the spring, up here! One ball took off the head of a rearing horse and the chief riding it at three times long bowshot! And another sight of the battlefield where we broke the Marcomanni and Quadi and their allies. The bones and tatters of hair cover nearly a square mile there, with weeds and saplings growing up through the ribs and eyeholes of skulls. A third or better of the Iazyges and Roxolani left for the Pontic steppe when they saw they couldn’t persuade enough of their countrymen to fight us. Plenty of room for colonia of veterans, and plenty of land to sell cheaply to new settlers.”
“The Pontic steppe is where those tribes came from originally,” Artorius said. “I don’t think the ones there now will welcome them with open arms, or joyfully offer them half their grazing. Whether or not they’re relatives.”
Fronto nodded. “And the others went on their knees and brought tribute to lay before us, horses, cattle, gold… And we conscripted many of their young warriors for the auxiliaries, they’ll be useful in the east.”
“And won’t make trouble north of the Danube,” Artorius observed. “By the time they muster out the ones still living will be Romans themselves for all practical purposes, wherever they settle. Probably in the east, in fact.”
“Just so! The new frontier will run up the Tyras river—”
Which was on the western edge of the Pontic steppe itself. Artorius nodded and murmured something like:
“Dniester.”
And then at Fronto’s curious look:
“The Dān-Ister, as the Sarmatians call it.”
Fronto nodded agreement: “— then northwest through the higher country and down the Vistla—”
He used the Latin rendering of the river this time, since it was apparently the one Artorius was used to.
“—to the German Sea. That’s what I’ve recommended to the Emperor, at least, and I am confident he will agree. A glance at the new maps shows that that is the most convenient stopping-point, and it won’t take long to do. By the end of this year possibly, or by the middle of the next at most.”
“That will do nicely, sir.”
Artorius grinned, and added in a pawky accent that imitated the old-fashioned crisp speech of someone reared in the upper-crust mansions of the Empire’s capital:
“It will do as a stopping-point… For now, perhaps. For now…”
They shared a laugh, and Fronto went on:
“Yes, imperium sine fine, as the poet put it! That will be a shorter length and easier to hold securely than the Rhine and Danube, with cheap river-transport along most of it, and access to the Black Sea for nearly half, and to the German Sea for most of the northern portion. The tribes east of it aren’t much except for the Sarmatians… they can be formidable… and the ones to the west…”
He smiled, or at least barred his teeth.
“…well… they’ll all be dead or on their knees soon.”
They passed the last of the furnaces, and a wilderness of trampled mud, piles of beams and bricks and logs and new roadways where humans and horses, oxen and carts, labored to run up other buildings. More quarters for the workers, and workshops to make finished products, amid those already functioning.
Fronto cocked an eye at the gangs laboring amid the ring of hammers on nails and the snarl of saws in wood, while wheelbarrows and wagons full of brick and stone and mortar went by.
“Working fast!” he said, and chuckled. “Your overseers must wield a wicked whip!”
There was an echoing silence. Fronto looked over, a bit surprised, but Artorius’ face was carefully blank. It was odd, since all he’d done was pay him a complement.
The man cleared his throat and spoke:
“In fact, sir, I am using a bonus program here—rewards for good work, ranging from more food and better quarters through permission to marry, to cash. So that if a man works sufficiently hard and well, and saves what he earns, he will accumulate a peculium sufficient to purchase his freedom in, oh, five or six years. I find it reduces supervisory costs very considerably. And we have few runaways.”
“But if the men are freed on such a scale, who will do the ordinary laborers’ work?”
“The same men, sir, mostly. For pay. Since we need far fewer men than the old ironworks, we can afford to pay good wages.”
“But they’ll save them to buy land, or at least the smarter ones will,” Fronto said, interested.
“We can afford to pay better than an ordinary peasant farmer can make. That too will lower costs, I believe, sir. Then they can rent houses with gardens… buy them from the ironworks societas eventually… raise chickens… and buy their own bread and potatoes at the bakeries and commissary shops we’ll rent out to men who take up the franchises. And the laborers will buy pork and mutton and beef now and then too. Pannonia and Noricum are producing more crops and stock these days, what with the new seeds and better methods, and will grow more and more as they spread. Potatoes do well in wet upland areas like this part of Noricum, for instance, where grain won’t yield very much, and an acre… or less… of them will feed a man for a year as far as basic… bread-like stuff… is concerned. Two or three thousand acres of potatoes would feed this whole colonia, at least for basic… bread-like-stuff.”
“Carbs,” he added in his own English speech.
Fronto frowned. Cash and the prospect of manumission was often used to get highly-skilled slaves like doctors or accountants working harder. But not on this scale, that he was aware of, and not for common laborers. It was…
A bit disturbing. Though I couldn’t say why, exactly.
Artorius went on:
“This works will produce around eight or nine thousand tons of iron and steel a year when it’s fully built, with around four to five thousand workers, sir. Including the charcoal burners, and clerks and so forth.”
Fronto dismissed his momentary unease. It was buried under astonished delight, reinforced by Artorius’ reputation for never boasting beyond what he could really do. As a former provincial governor and present commander of armies, he knew that the entire Roman Empire’s production of iron as of last year was not much more than ten times that.
Give or take, nobody knows precisely. But as a rough estimate, that’s about right, he thought.
Which probably required at least three hundred thousand workers, half a million if you included those who labored at it part-time in out-of-the-way places. Iron was usually made locally, wherever there was ore and fuel.
Here…
“How?” Fronto said.
“Many different things, sir, each reinforcing the other.”
“Ah, that word you told the Emperor when the three of us spoke just before the last big fight with the Marcomanni… synergy, if I remember it correctly? Caesar Augustus was quite taken with it.”
“That’s it, sir. The big furnaces smelt much more of the iron in each unit of ore because they are so very hot, and they need much less fuel to make each unit of iron, and both those mean less labor, as does the thunderpowder to help quarry the ore and flux, water-powered machinery for crushing it, for blowing the draught and lifting heavy forging hammers and so on. And powering machines, too… lathes that can cut iron, for example, and drills that can bore into it. We’ve a few of those now and more and better ones will follow. And the cheaper steel makes the tool-bits for those…”
Fronto whistled; turning iron like a wooden leg for a table was also a new thing. He could see how it would assist many operations.
He mused aloud:
“Then ten plants like this could double the whole Empire’s iron supply, with one-tenth of the labor. At one-tenth the maintenance cost in food and housing and clothes as well. Or wages, for the free workers. And twenty… they would give us twice last year’s production at a small share of the cost! It would take many, many such works to match what we spend on producing iron now. And that many would have iron as cheap as rocks!”
“We’re planning… the Emperor has endorsed the plan… on twenty to start with, yes. All about this size. One every two years for the first few, then one every year, with men who’ve learned the skills here teaching others, sir,” Artorius said. “And those workers not making iron anymore by the old methods can do other things; grow more food, make shoes and cloth or wagons… In the long run it’ll also be good to have many works bidding against each other for contracts.”
“Twice our current production at a small fraction of the cost,” the general mused.
Then he thought for a moment, and went on:
“But can the Empire use that much iron?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Since it’s so much cheaper, iron and steel will be used for much more, things that wooden tools are used for now or which aren’t done at all. Cheap cast iron rollers for the new style of road, for just one instance, pulled by working stock. That will make roadbuilding even faster because we’ll need fewer men hand-pounding the broken stone.”
Artorius gestured and went on, some enthusiasm showing through the measured speech:
“It’ll be the same for all the crafts, more tools and cheaper and better. And it will cut the cost of equipment for the legions to the same degree. For instance, iron horseshoes will become cheap enough for everyone to use them… and that will mean more work from and longer lives for the horses… more work done with the horses…”
They pulled up in front of the Praetorium of the Colonia, a colonnaded courtyard-centered building a bit like the pars urbana of any Roman villa on a gentleman’s estate… except that there were chimney-stacks through the red-tile roofs. That meant fireplaces…
I must see to that back home on my domus and villas, Fronto thought. It’s warmer there than here, thank the earth-shaping Gods, but winter can still be damp and chilly. Especially when you get old, which I hope to do someday. And firewood for hypocausts is a bit scarce these days back home. If we could limit it to the bathhouse… that would be convenient.
“And you have these cast-iron stoves for your kitchen-staff, I suppose?” Fronto said genially.
“Yes, sir, among the very first. Here and back home… that is to say, on the Villa Lunae. You’ll be eating the results tonight!”
“I am a man of war and hence a man of iron, so why not?” Fronto said with a laugh. “It’s bound to be an improvement on trail-rations and what we eat in the north among the savages—it’s no wonder they lust to kill with the diet they have, bland isn’t the word. Or what they serve at a mansio, where they just think they have good cooks for the travelers. Though at least those have baths.”
He saw Artorius’ wife on the portico of the building, and checked his horse a little so that they could greet each other first. Stewards and their staff bustled about to see to his followers and gear—the low-ranking ones who wouldn’t be bidden to the formal dinner, though they’d eat better and sleep softer than usual. His four young tribunes, who were of course all eques themselves, dismounted and waited for introductions. A groom came to hold his horse.
The lady Julia was a woman past her mid-twenties now, and he’d wondered a little at why Artorius had wed her—especially since he’d done it after he’d received the Emperor’s favor, along with elevation to the Equestrian Order and broad estates. One of which he’d swapped with the eques Sextus Hirrius Trogus for the Villa Lunae, at the same time as the wedding that made them brothers-in-law.
All of that Imperial favor meant he could have made a much better match. With a new bride rather than a widow, a virgin in her teens, from a more prominent family, and with more than a token dowry. After the great victory over the Marcomanni a bit later… that would have been not just possible, but easy.
For example a better match with my family. My eldest daughter Flora is just sixteen now, and highly suitable. I’d propose it at once if he weren’t already wed! He’s going to be a broad-stripe man if he lives another decade, or I’m a Barbary ape. Old Senatorial families die out… well, many of them live in Rome, it’s hard on children there… And new ones arise. As my kin did!
Granted that Julia’s family, the Trogi, were of the Equestrian Order themselves and had been since Julius Caesar had been a young man, elevated to that status by Pompey the Great.
Great as compared to what? Fronto thought with a smile; people had been making that joke since the man was alive.
That made hers a very respectable lineage. Her elder brother, Sextus Hirrius Trogus, was rich… by provincial Pannonian standards, at least… and a major landowner around Sirmium southeast of here. Though he’d been burdened by debts until Marcus Aurelius rewarded him for helping Artorius by paying them off and giving him a lifetime’s tax-exemption to boot.
Most of those debts had come to him indirectly, via the Lady Julia’s wastrel first husband. Her father had picked a man of good birth, but hadn’t investigated his character as thoroughly as he should.
So she’d been a widow rather than a virgin, and she’d been twenty-six when they wed, quite old for marriage to a man in his thirties. And with only one surviving child, a daughter who Artorius had adopted and given his name as part of the marriage contract.
Though she’d born Artorius a son since; the boy was several years old now, in the care of a nursemaid standing behind Julia, and from his looks flourishing. But you should be careful about becoming too attached to a young child, since so many died in their first few years.
Hmmm. He’s not swaddled… is that some local Pannonian custom?
Women usually couldn’t help that love for a newborn, of course, and so got more grief. It was one more reason to thank the Gods who’d made you a man.
He looked at Julia with dispassionate appraisal. Yes, a comely face, full of character and life as well, with light russet-brown hair and greenish eyes showing the Gallic strain in her family’s bloodline. Even white teeth showed as she laughed as well, an unusually fine set for someone her age, as pretty as…
Well, Flora has good teeth too! he thought a little defensively.
Yes, and he’d seen and heard with his own ears that she was witty and for a woman very learned, which would appeal to a scholar like Artorius. And she blossomed as she saw her husband and took his hands as he stepped quickly up to the portico. Their smiles at each other were like a private letter that only they could read.
Not a splendid figure to match the face and good teeth, though, he decided judiciously.
She was broad enough in the hips, but a bit too big in the bust to be quite fashionable, and rather tall for a woman.
And wearing that new garment.. the bra, it’s called.
He shrugged mentally; doubtless Artorius had his reasons, and she was pleasant socially. She and Artorius greeted each other decorously, but there was obviously true affection there, and from the lingering handclasp passion too. Her daughter, Claudia, was eleven—only a few years from the marriage-market herself, bound to be courted eagerly given her formal, legal adoption by an Imperial favorite. And she threw herself at Artorius with filial eagerness, if not overmuch decorum; obviously she thought of him as her true father now.
He laughed and swung her effortlessly up and around and put her back down, smiling; the man was strong, too. Then he grinned as his young son regarded him dubiously and jammed a little fist in his mouth, and the fond father tickled the boy’s nose with a finger, laughing outright at the grimace and grin that produced.
Fronto swung down from his horse—stirrups made that so much easier, and no need for a slave on hands and knees to provide a way to get up into the saddle in a dignified fashion either. He made his bows in the moment between politely allowing family to come first and overlong, impolite hesitation. He was of higher rank and birth, but there were other factors at work. Artorius might be a novus homo, a new man… but he was one with extremely good prospects.
Fronto took a bundle from the new-style saddlebags of his mount, and after the first greetings presented it to Lady Julia with a flourish. She unwrapped the cloth and twine around it and then stood frowning in puzzlement with the libra—one Roman pound—weight across her palm.
“Well, thank you very much, excellent Legate Fronto,” she said politely, looking up at him with a question in her eyes.
You could read it: A silver ingot?
Gifts from guest to host were common, but a lump of precious metal would seem… crude, from a man born a gentleman and reared as one. Usually guest-gifts were more symbolic, or picked because they were unusual or humorous, or special produce from the guest’s own lands. Fronto himself often gave amphorae of ripe figs preserved in spicy wild honey, a specialty of his home estates.
Now he grinned and inclined his head.
“The very first yield from the new mine at Cowl Mountain, in the former Marcomannic territories, Domina Julia.”
Which were now in the center-west of the brand-new Province of Transdanubia, and a swarming construction-site that made this ironworks look small. The ingot had been from a test run to prove the ore, using the new smelting methods.
“Ah!” she said, and beamed at Artorius. “My lord husband’s discovery!”
Fronto nodded:
“Just so, lady,” he said and turned to Artorius:
“And it is as rich as I hear you promised, in that staff meeting with the Emperor in Carnuntum—the one nearly three years ago, right after the Quadi night-attack that you alerted everyone to just before they struck.”
Which illustrated why everyone with two denarii to rub together hastened to invest in anything Artorius did if they could manage it. Fronto did himself, nowadays. There were quiet but intense scrimmages to be allowed to invest where the Tribune did.
He went on aloud:
“The fiscus accountants are delirious with joy at how many talents of silver it will produce, and at the way your new refining methods… what are they called?”
“Sartagine amalgamation,” Artorius said absently; he was obviously distracted by a thought. “Pan amalgamation.”
“—your pan amalgamation yields so much more silver from the same ore; they have just now sent men who’ve learned it to Hispania to apply it to the Imperial mines there as well. And to try using it on the old mine-waste, possibly that will pay too! Five more of the mines in the new territories will be producing silver by the end of this year, and that one further east is already yielding gold. Enough taken together to pay all the costs of the Marcomannic War quite soon, and this year’s campaigning further north as well!”
Artorius reached out and touched the cold shining metal, shaped like two blunt triangles joined point-to-point and bearing an Imperial stamp. He seemed pleased, though commendably not showing it much. He had a tenth-share in the new-style permanent limited-liability societas that managed the mines on lease from the Imperium in the recently added provinces. That had been assigned him on the Emperor’s orders, because he’d given the location of the precious metals in the first place and the improved refining methods; and he’d given each of his four American clients a tenth of that share for their own.
It would pay abundantly.
Fronto… and nearly all the prominent men who’d been at the meeting, which he hadn’t, but a friend had sent him the news… had put money into it too. The Senate would be very pleased as well, when they realized that it would enable the special war-taxes to be scaled back very soon. The Emperor didn’t have to take the Senate’s opinions into account. But wise Emperors, of which Marcus Aurelius was emphatically one, did. Because taken as a whole the Senatorial families had too much wealth and too many clients to ignore. And after all, army commanders and provincial governors were drawn from their ranks. Save for a few special cases like Egypt.
The wearer of the purple could afford to anger some of the upper crust, as long as the Army supported him, but not all. Marcus Aurelius was firm, with a hard hand when it was absolutely essential, but popular. With most of the upper classes now more than ever.
And with the masses, too, for what little that latter was worth.
Fronto smiled at the future, his own and the Empire’s.
Roma aeterna victrix! he thought. Imperium sine fine! Next… Parthia. After that… who knows?
@@@
Copyright © 2025 by S.M. Stirling