Author's Note: This was written for the Valentine's Day contest here in good ole' 2025. I thought I'd try something different from my usual fare, and I hope you like it. This is historical fiction with a lot of license and hopefully what you all consider some good sex and a romance you all will enjoy. I had fun writing it. If you like it, please like and rate the post, as this is the how the contest works. Thanks for reading!
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The feast had been going for hours now. Crispian had seen nothing like it in his twenty years. The people, the food, the wine, the rooms, it was decadent and extravagant, the kind of thing that could only happen in Rome.
Titus Flavius Crispianus, soldier of Rome, Praetorian Guardsman, had spent much of his life in service. He'd served his father, a Senator, in the field until he was seventeen, when he moved to the Legions in his own right. He'd served in Gaul, before returning to Rome earlier this year having been singled out by his commander for a singular honor -- serving the Emperor in his Praetorian Guard. Marcus Aurelius Claudius, Claudius II, had ascended to his Imperium in 268. A year later, he was here, in Rome, gathering his forces to repel an invasion of the Goths in the eastern portion of the Empire.
The Empire was crumbling. For nearly fifty years, since the assassination of Emperor Severus Alexander by his own troops, the Empire had been in anarchy. Dozens of Emperors had been declared, almost as many had been ratified by the Senate, and now there were three competing Empires within the borders of the venerable Roman hegemony built by Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian, Domitian and many other renowned names from history.
This feast was a perfect example of the decadence, the debauchery, the sheer excess of the men who claimed to follow in the footsteps of the Caesars. It turned Crispian's stomach. At the same time, there was a base feeling in him, a carnal desire that rose as he looked over the room, seeing so many beautiful people, eating, drinking, listening to music and making merry. The part of him that was truly Roman, the dark part that he knew lived inside all men, that part wanted so much to be a part of what he was seeing.
Then there was the secret part. The part he dared not discuss publicly, the part that was deep within his heart of hearts. He carried with him a secret that could cost him his life if it were to see the bright light of day. He kept it inside him, under the proverbial bushel. He had no choice.
He was a Christian.
His family were true Flavians, not some of the jumped-up former slaves who had taken the nomen when the Flavian Emperors reigned supreme a century and a half ago. They had freed tens of thousands of slaves, who adopted the gens Flavia as their own in honor of their emancipators. Crispian's family could trace itself back generations, to Titus Flavius Petro, who had served under Pompey the Great during the Civil War, and who was the grandfather of the Emperor Vespasian. His family had ruled in Egypt for a time, and he had grown up in Alexandria. It was there, as a young child he met a holy man, named Anthony, who had taught him about the Christ, had converted him from the pagan religion of his family, and had given him the small wooden cross he wore to this day under his armor.
Anthony led an ascetic life, one shorn of all earthly delights. He wondered what his friend would say about the scene before him.
The feast had been going on for nearly six hours. The amount of food and wine that had been brought in by the slaves was staggering. There were whole deer, whole pigs, exotic fruits and other delicacies by the score, piled high on the tables before the Emperor. Wine flowed from large clay jars into the most beautiful goblets of pure gold and silver. Men and women reclined, ate to excess, then slept, awaking to eat more. Dancers and musicians flitted around the room, filling the air with melodious sounds.
Crispian frowned as he thought of how all this food could have gone to feed the poor. He remembered Anthony quoting the Gospel to him. "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven." Anthony had drilled that into his head as a child. And he remembered it to this day, even after Anthony had gone off into the western desert and Crispian had followed his father to war.
The rigors of campaign had made Crispian strong and hard. He was tall for a Roman, standing nearly six feet. His arms and legs were sinewy muscle, his waist small and his shoulders broad. His curly brown hair was shorn short, the better to fit under his helmet, and his beard was also clipped short, in the style of his Flavian forebears. His piercing blue eyes set him apart, were often remarked upon by men and women. He looked imposing, standing behind the Emperor, along with a dozen of his fellow guardsmen, his gladius at his hip, his armor gleaming, the purple of his tunic and the red of the feathers in this bronze helmet adding a splash of color. He held a pilum, the standard Roman spear from time immemorial in his right hand, leaning on it as he entered the seventh hour of his duty guarding the Emperor at his feast.
He was tired, but this was his duty. His honor. And his shame.
It was only a matter of time, he knew, before the emperor would shift from feasting to fucking. These feasts were not common, but when they happened, they were truly remarkable in their excess. Claudius II was fond of wine and wenches, and he filled his feasts with men and women who shared his lusts. Some were former slaves, some mere prostitutes, others were from the finest families in Rome. All of them loved to eat, drink and fornicate, largely in that order.
This was the second feast this month, and Crispian knew it would be the biggest. The Emperor had just announced he would be headed to the Bosporus with an army to defend against an attack by the Goths. Crispian's family had heard from their relatives in Egypt that Queen Zenobia, Queen regent of Palmyra, was heading towards them with an army bent on conquest, which had sent many of them fleeing back to Rome for their lives. The Gauls were restless, and the Empire itself was beset on all sides.
And the Emperor responded with feasts and orgies. The worse the news, the bigger the feast. And since he planned to be leaving Rome for an extended period of campaigning, he wanted this last feast to be the biggest and the best. It didn't hurt that today was the first day of spring, eight days before the Ides of Februarius, a common festival day celebrating the arrival of the new season. Eight days from now was also Lupercalia, held yearly on the Ides of Februarius. It was the festival of purification and fertility, and the day before the army was set to leave on campaign.
