Fire and Sword

In politics often emotion must be set aside. Pupienus would have to stomach the patrician’s sneers and jibes. Rome is less your lodging house than your stepmother. Beguile us with your ancestry; tell us the great deeds of your father. But what bait could Pupienus dangle before those slobbering jaws, what prize so glittering that it could pierce Balbinus’ lethargy, and induce him to prevail on his relatives, friends and clients in the Curia to vote imperial honours to a man he regarded as an upstart, little better than a slave?

The honours of an Emperor. Pupienus reviewed the purple, the ivory throne, the sacred fire. In a private enterprise one could press on or draw back, commit oneself more deeply or less. But in the pursuit of an empire there was no mean between the summit and the abyss. To be Emperor was to live on the stage of a public theatre, every movement and word visible. There was no mask. One’s inner being and past were stripped bare. Certainly too close a scrutiny for a man with a secret lodged less than two hundred miles from Rome. If he were to proceed, Pupienus would have to go one last time to Volaterrae, and bury his past. It was a task he had prayed never to have to undertake. Everything decent cried out against it. But to bid for the throne all emotion must be set aside.

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