Re: First Among Equals: A Guide to Role-Playing Your Characters
PRIMVS INTER PARES
PART IV: Where Eagles Dare
"The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wings
He can at pleasure stint their melody."
--Titus Andronicus, ACT IV, Scene IV
The decade 190-180 BCE was a period of prosperity and growth for the nascent empire of the Roman Republic. With successfully concluded wars in both Spain and Greece, the Senate's authority was at an all time high, with Roman magistrates having influence on the far-flung shores of the Middle Sea. Men like Cornelius Scipio and Julius Caesar had demonstrated to the kingdoms of Europa that a Republic was not to be trifled with, not when peopled by Romans. The descendants of Alexander bowed to Roman law in Macedonia, and the heirs of Socrates and Plato bent the knee to Roman power in Achaea.
The decade saw the growth of Roman infastructure in Italy, with spectacularly designed roads of white stone laid across mountains and valley, bringing the secluded cities and vales of Italia together in a cross-knit weave who's heart was Roma herself. The treasury overflowed with tribute from client princes and tribes and confederatons, and a period of great achievements in both art and architecture was on. The first arena was constructed in Capua, and then spread across Italy as gladitorial combat became the sport of the day, fueled by the many slaves won in Rome's foreign wars.
The slave trade exploded in fact, leading to the growth of rural farmsteads across Italy worked by chain gangs of foreign servants. Land speculators and merchant conglomerates purchased estates in Illyria and Spain, establishing great corporate mines and agricultural plantations ran by slave labor camps.
In the later years of the decade, the Kingdoms of Illyria and Dalmatia were annexed by the Roman Republic, and made provinces so that they could be better administrated by the Senate's magistrates, leading to a flood of wealth from the gold and silver mines now owned by the state.
Banditry from the Dacian frontier was intermittent, a constant threat as on any wildland border, but the chain of Roman and local garrisons across the mountains kept any incursions in check.
Roman politicians and diplomats traveled the world, making calls upon potentates and kings in courts across the world, establishing the superiority of the Roman people and her good will to her friends, and unrelenting hatred to her enemies. Trade agreements and knowledge of geography was exchanged far and near, leading many to believe it was the most prosperous time the Republic had ever seen.
In 185, an incursion by Gallic radiers across the Padus river led to a brief expedition by a Roman legion into Italian Gaul, as it was called, where the Insubres and the Venetii made their homes. Manius Cornelius Dollabella was made governor of Cisalpine Gaul and sent to throw the barbarians back across the Padus.
The Venetii, a people long Romanzied due to the influx of merchants and travellers in and out of Italia, petitioned the Senate to protect them from the Gallic armies, and thus a Roman garrison was sent to stiffen the defense of the city against attack.
Dolabella did not prove himself to be the most competent of commanders however, and despite a strategy of ringing the Gallic lands with fortifications and watchtowers to screen their movements, managed to lose track of an entire army of tribesmen under a chieftan called Critognatos of Belenos, a union of Gallic and Alpine tribesmen bent on plunder and rapine in the fertile lands of the Padus valley.
Fortunately, Dolabella's legate, Publius Cornelius Blasio, had the good sense to take his legion east along the river and caught up with Belenos' forces outside Patavium, where they had begun a circumvallation in order to starve the Venetii and their Roman garrison into surrender.
It was a crushing defeat for the Gauls, who had not faced the steel of a Roman army in some years. Such was a hard lesson for those whose lust for gold and land outweighed their sense, and it should serve us well for years to come reminding barbarians to remain on their side of the Padus!
Two weeks after the battle, Dolabella's agents caught up with Critognatos in a village just one day's ride north of Patavium...
Dolabella, despite his blunders, was hailed in Rome for his victories over the Gauls. The mood of jubilation was broken, however, when one of the Senate's oldest and most respected members, the famed Numerius Julius Caesar, passed into the afterlife. A state funeral was held outside the Senate house, and a procession marched from the Forum to the gates of the city to inter him with his ancestors. Caesar, once Rome's greatest general, had in his later years become something of a pacifist, speaking out against foreign wars and encroachments on the Republic's behalf, being Numerius Scipio's primary opponent in the Senate as both were then Censors and held much esteem.
Now, with Caesar dead, Scipio's party in the Senate had designs on a grand war with non other than Rome's greatest enemy.. Carthage.
And then, disaster struck...
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