Rome’s Fallen Eagle by Robert Fabbri

right,holding their heads high and with their left arms crooked before them supporting the folds of their togas. Each eligible magistrate was accompanied by the requisite number of fasces-bearing lictors to add to his stature. Military crowns, won whilst serving in the legions for acts of bravery, were worn by every man entitled to them.
    Preceded by twelve lictors, Claudius was borne in an open sedan-chair by sixteen slaves at shoulder height so that all could see him. Behind him, travelling recumbent in a horse-drawn carriage, strewn with cushions and garlanded with flowers, came his wife, Messalina, heavily pregnant but brought out of her confinement for the parade. Her daughter, Claudia Octavia, travelled with her; only eighteen months old, she seemed bewildered by the occasion.
    Following them, marching in slow-time, crashing their hobnailed military sandals down hard on the paving stones to the blaring of bucinae , came the Urban Cohorts.
    Surrounding Claudius and Messalina were three centuries of the German Imperial Bodyguard, sauntering rather than marching, with their hands on the hilts of their swords behind their flat oval shields and keeping their pale blue eyes fixed on the crowd. Long-haired, full-bearded, be-trousered and each over six feet tall, their barbarian looks presented a striking contrast to the otherwise ordered and very Roman pageant.
    The multitudes chanted and cheered themselves hoarse, waving brightly dyed rags or racing-faction colours in the air as the slow procession passed. They lined the streets, crowded the steps of temples and public buildings, balanced on the bases of columns, clung to the pedestals of equestrian statues or heaved themselves up on to window ledges; small children sat on their fathers’ shoulders whilst their more nimble elder siblings scaled any vantage point too small or precarious for an adult.
    It seemed that every one of the common people of Rome, free, freed or slave, was there to welcome the new Emperor, not because they particularly disliked the old one or that they particularly liked Claudius; it mattered not to them who was in charge. They had come because they still remembered the games,largesse and feasts that accompanied Caligula’s accession and they wished to earn, through their rapturous support of the new incumbent, a repeat or maybe even a surpassing of that profligate display of generosity. There was, however, a sizeable minority in the crowd with longer memories; they hailed Claudius not in his own right but as the brother of the great Germanicus, the man whom many wished had succeeded Augustus to the Purple.
    Claudius, for his part, sat as composed as he could in his chair. He acknowledged the ovation of the crowds with jerking waves and sudden nods, occasionally dabbing his chin with a handkerchief to stem the flow of the drool that, along with his nervous tic, was far more pronounced, betraying his excitement at receiving, for the first time in his fifty-two years, public acclamation.
    Messalina ignored the crowd. She kept a firm arm around her small daughter and with her other hand gently caressed her swollen belly. She stared straight ahead towards her husband with a self-satisfied expression on her face.
    The procession eventually neared the Senate House in front of which, in an outrageous breach of all precedent, stood Narcissus, Pallas and Callistus.
    Doing their best to ignore the affront, the Consuls mounted the steps and positioned themselves to either side of the open doors, ready to welcome their Emperor. The rest of the Senate spread out, in order of precedence, on the steps, leaving a path to the doors for Claudius.
    The imperial chair came to a halt at the foot of the Senate House steps.
    ‘This should be interesting,’ Gaius commented to Vespasian as the sweating slaves stopped and made ready to lower it. It swayed slightly.
    A look of panic swept across Claudius’ face and he gripped the chair’s arms.
    Vespasian half closed his