Episodes from Horatione History

The Empire of the Five Senates

In the fifth century after the formation of Horato, the reign of the Emperor Mamilian was marked by campaigning. He spent the best part of two decades in the lands that would one day become Hentzay, extending Horatione control into those territories and shoring up the border forts elsewhere. 

The absence of the Emperor from the capital was not, strictly speaking a problem. His sister took over most of his ceremonial functions - taking an immoderate pleasure in donning male costume for the purpose. Day to day domestic policy was set by not by the Imperial bureaucracy (which had its hands full on ferrying men, money and material to the frontier) but by the Senate of Horato, and four cities of near-comparable splendour and prominence.

So long was Mamilian's absence from the heartlands that his nickname became 'the Sentinel Emperor' - or, in the private circles of his critics 'the Porter' or 'the Gatekeeper'. No single senatorial lineage had representatives in all five cities, but enough had two or three magistracies to their name. Co-ordination between the five became ever-smoother and the senators prospered. 

It is for this reason that Annullina Perpetua in her Annals of a Pensionary, writing with about two centuries of hindsight refers to this not as the Empire of Mamilian, but 'an Empire of Five Senates'. (Orlando Babbon, in his rather later Withering and Descent attributes her harsh judgement to 'the bitterness of the defeated').

A Tauroctony

When, in the later days of the Popular Despotate, the sun-arc was replacing the bull's head in the iconography of Horato, one of the last major Imperial centres was the great garrison of Porsena. This was home to the XII Legion, long posted at the border and thus earning a cognomen perhaps best translated as 'Margraves'. The XII were notoriously battle-proud and, when the Legate Nallian came to present them with fresh battle-honours and a new war-shrine objected, crying 'You are here to take our horns!' Nallian, fearing a mutiny had the presence of mind to reply 'Gallant Margraves, as I rode hear I heard the sighs of half the maidens of the Empire. Had you been doing something with your horns, I would not have come to take them.' The welcome reminder of leave and the border-term bonus mollified them - but some memory of it resided in the XII and rankled, for Nallian would eventually gain the bitter nickname 'Bullslayer'. 

(or at least, that was the nickname that junior officers felt able to pass on to the Legate)

Berenician

The brother of the vigorous Berenician succeeded him as Emperor. The new Emperor moved into the Volsinian Palace near Mandalium. There he was greeted by the Grand Chamberlain Danpherus, who ushered him swiftly into the patterns of his deceased brother. At each turn, the new Emperor would be met with the whispered reminder 'This is how blessed Berenician did it'; 'This was the favoured hall of Berenician'; 'The mighty Berenician burnt incense here every other week'; 'Would Berenician approve?'

Eventually, Danpherus was rejected from the Imperial Household with the accompanying statement 'I am the Emperor of Horato now.'

Soon after, the Volsinian Palace burnt down.

The Pastoral Secession

In its first days, Horato's alliance with the countryside around was shaky. The union of the Horatione senate and people with the shepherds and land-owners was re-affirmed every year in a great ceremony. But in order for the union to be remade, it had to be broken (in order to demonstrate the independence of the countryside). A large crock of goat's milk was broken on the steps of the assembly house and twelve stout shepherds would stare in a hostile silent vigil at the Gate of Astur. 

By the time of the Popular Despotate, the Secession ceremony had taken on a different tone. The new Despot (whoever that was at the time) would have to go out the country for a day and a night, where he would eat plain food, wear a course tunic and listen to shepherds playing the reed pipes and having poetry competitions.

It is not recorded when the Pastoral Secession came to an end, but it is recorded that the Emperor Servilla did not like goat's milk or chestnuts. 

Consider reading this and this.