A Christmas Epic

2. Caesar Vs the Waitress

  Three days after Octavian's presentation, he and Mathew met up in a local café in order to hash out the details of their future Empire. Octavian had originally balked at Matthew's request to be a co-Emperor for several days after his "coming out" as an aspiring emperor in front of the class, but he quickly realized he'd have no choice. The flood of converts to 'Renovatio Imperii Romanorum' (renewal of the empire of the Romans) that he expected never came. He went scouting for recruits at local Dungeons and Dragons matches, but anyone he could find who had more than a sliver of interest in restoring the glories of the past was going medieval instead thanks to the influence of a local rich kid named Wilson.

Wilson was a monarchist and far-right social media influencer with millions of followers online. His content consisted of slickly produced videos where he interspersed medievalist philosophy with demagogic rants about contemporary issues. He had even seen fit to crown himself 'King of the United States.' Because of his wealth and influence, he had no trouble attracting a band of like-minded young men willing to back that claim up with their fists against anyone who denied it. He called this loyal coterie his 'Knights,' but in practice they operated as little more than a gang of street toughs.

Octavian, as a right-thinking Roman, detested kings by instinct. A man who insisted on royal honors for himself would always rub him the wrong way. The previous morning, he'd typed up a long post in the comment section of one of Wilson's videos contrasting the Middle Ages unfavorably with Classical Antiquity and blasting feudal monarchy as feeble compared to the enlightened meritocratic despotism of a Roman emperor. 

  Wilson responded quickly; by that afternoon he'd dropped an entire video dedicated to trashing the Roman Empire and mocking Octavian's pretensions to be emperor. His takedown video touted the fact that skeletons of commoners dug up from early medieval graves were found to be healthier than skeletons from the same areas in the Roman period as if this proved his entire case that the Roman Empire deserved to fall.

  To Octavian, those were fighting words. He responded by getting in a flame war in the comment section. The other side's arguments mostly consisted of laughing-face emojis and "cope and seethe." Octavian did indeed seethe-he resented Wilson for making him the object of public ridicule despite the fact that his original comment had been civil and respectful. The timing of this damage to his reputation was especially problematic because he'd already been dealing with the impact of Lillie, the other new pain in his ass.

Ever since she first showed up it seemed like school had become a battlefield between the two of them. Every class they shared was polarized between those more inclined to support him, and those more inclined to support her, and it seemed like the weight of numbers was on her side, even in Latin Class. Octavian was convinced that he would've been more successful in spreading his message if she wasn't there to relentlessly oppose and mock his ideas at every step of the way. He wanted to be taken seriously, but she seemed hellbent on making sure he was viewed as a laughingstock, and it galled him to no end because from his perspective, she was the one with the laughable ideology. Now, Wilson was doing the same thing with an equally absurd ideology. 

  As a result, with the exception of Matthew, even the people who took Octavian's side on individual issues didn't seem to be going along with the whole 'Roman Empire' thing. He was beginning to see that harnessing the political energies of his own generation would be more difficult than he initially thought. Realizing he needed a true believer he could actually trust as an ally, he came to the grudging conclusion that the only person who fit the bill was Matthew.

The discussion in the café was long, intense and punctuated by thirty glasses of chocolate milk. It was, after all, the most significant divvying up of the world since Yalta. After two hours of historical debate, they finally settled on a model of governance based on Diocletian's Tetrarchy. Octavian reluctantly agreed to grant Matthew the title of 'Caesar' or junior co-emperor. The Caesar's authority would be supreme within his sphere of influence but subordinate to Octavian's authority as the senior 'Augustus.' Octavian had taken out a magic marker and drew a rough map of the middle east on a napkin in order to represent Matthew's future Empire. He looked less than pleased but made no complaint. When they had finally finished figuring out the foundational conception of their new empire, the talk turned to Wilson. Octavian vented furiously about Wilson's video.