by Randy Singer
“A champion has not yet been crowned!” Caligula announced. “The two remaining gladiators have earned the right to fight the great Flamma!”
Even as the emperor spoke, Flamma entered the arena and headed straight toward Cobius. I heard Mansuetus cry out, “No!” as he tried to break free of the Praetorian Guards, but there were too many men holding him back. I turned in disgust as Flamma ran his sword through Cobius and spun to go after Mansuetus.
The fury returned to Mansuetus’s face as he picked up a sword and marched forward to meet his fresh new challenger. Flamma threw down his shield, an attempt to even the fight. But Mansuetus was exhausted and injured, dragging his right foot and unable to raise his left arm.
Flamma let out a battle cry, gripped the hilt of his sword with two hands, and moved in for the kill. The two traded blows, but Flamma was striking with a speed and power that Mansuetus couldn’t match with a single hand. One blow sliced Mansuetus across the back of his right hand, and he dropped his sword.
Flamma hesitated as Mansuetus fell to both knees. The wounded gladiator tilted his head back, and Flamma, whose face could not be seen through his helmet, put the tip of his sword against Mansuetus’s neck.
Men throughout the arena turned their thumbs up, a tribute to the amazing valor that Mansuetus had shown throughout the day. Everyone looked at Caesar.
Like the others, Flamma turned to see what Caligula’s verdict would be.
It was apparently the opening that Mansuetus was looking for. He knocked the sword away from his neck and lunged.
At first, he caught Flamma off guard and had his opponent in his grasp. But Flamma recovered quickly, pulled his right arm free, and drove his sword into Mansuetus’s exposed side, burying it halfway to the hilt.
For a second, the entire world seemed to stop. Mansuetus leaned on Flamma, the sword piercing his side.
Flamma stepped back, and the great Mansuetus, just two fights away from earning his freedom, fell face-first into the wet sand.
This time Flamma took no chances. He pulled the sword out of Mansuetus’s side, put his foot on the gladiator’s neck, and finished the job.
The crowd was stunned. I was sickened. Mansuetus had seemed invincible. I never thought it would end like this.
Nobody cheered. No sestertii were thrown into the arena. An eerie stillness filled the place, the only sound coming from the driving rain.
Caligula stood at the edge of the imperial box and spoke into the silence, loud enough for the spectators to hear. “It’s a pity Mansuetus took things into his own hands. I was about to extend him mercy.”
Flavia had tried to rush the arena floor when Flamma was brought in for the final fight. She screamed and battled, but the Praetorian Guards dragged her outside the arena. When her hood came off, one of them realized she was a woman.
“I won’t kill you this time,” he sneered. “But if you ever try to sneak into the lower stands again, I’ll see to it that you are crucified with the prisoners.”
She was still outside when the place went silent. She knew immediately that Mansuetus was dead.
She sobbed uncontrollably and made a vow to the gods that Caligula would one day pay.
After Mansuetus died, I sprinted down the steps, pushed my way through the crowd, and ran as fast as I could to the exit where they were dragging out the bodies of the slain gladiators. By the time I got there, the spectators were leaving the arena, and I had to fight my way against the flow. Men seemed anxious to get out of the rain and shake off the disconcerting memories of the day’s events. The games weren’t supposed to conclude that way.
I elbowed my way through the spectators until I found the two guards who were disposing of Mansuetus’s body.
“Where are you taking him?” I asked.
“He was an honorable contestant. We’ll cremate him with the other brave ones.”
The less courageous ones, I knew, would be dragged to the Tiber.
“I know him,” I said.
“You and everyone else.”
I reached into my pouch and pulled out two gold coins. “An aureus for each of you,” I offered. Each aureus was worth more than a hundred sestertii. It was more than either of these soldiers would earn in the next three months.
“Where do you want him?” one of the soldiers asked under his breath.
I gave him a location in an alleyway near the shops at the foot of the Palatine Hill. “If you have him there in ten minutes, there will be another aureus for each of you.”
By the time I arrived, the soldiers were already there. A few minutes earlier I had purchased a horse at an exorbitant price. We now loaded the body of Mansuetus and tied it down. His hair was matted with blood, his body covered with dirt and sand. We wrapped the body with blankets I had brought, and I paid the soldiers. They left without saying a word.
I rode slowly down the cobblestone streets of Rome and ignored the looks of those who watched me pass. It was four miles to the estate of Apronius. Once there, I would build a funeral pyre from the driest wood I could find. I would place the body of Mansuetus on top of the wood and prepare it for a proper funeral.
I had spent a considerable amount to bribe the soldiers and buy this horse. But that was the last thing on my mind.
I was sickened by what had become of my country. A mad emperor was single-handedly destroying the greatest civilization the world had ever known. Good men like Mansuetus were paying with their lives.
My emotions swung between despair and rage. I thought about the heartbreak that today’s events would cost Flavia. I thought about the complicity and cowardice of so many who allowed Caligula to continue his tyrannical ways. I thought about my own naiveté in thinking that good people doing things the right way would ultimately prevail.
I was supposed to be an unemotional Stoic, but every inch of my being was consumed with hatred and thoughts of revenge. That night I planned on lighting the fire and watching the flames rise and the sparks fly, carrying the body of Mansuetus to the heavens.
That fire would quickly go out. But a second one, burning hot within me, would not be quenched until Caligula was dead.
CHAPTER 61
When I returned to Rome, I wrote a letter, sealed it with my signet ring, and took it to the temple of Vesta. I gave it to one of the guards who recognized me as Flavia’s advocate. I asked if he would deliver the letter to Flavia, and he promised that he would.
Later, at midnight, Flavia met me under the Arch of Augustus just as the letter had requested.
She wore a hooded black cloak, and even in the torchlight, I could tell she was in deep sorrow. I was shocked to see her hair cut so close to the scalp. It made her look thinner than she had at the trial and gaunt, ghostlike in the dim light. Her big brown eyes were hollow, underscored by dark circles. They were red from crying. She carried herself with the same regal bearing as always, but it seemed to be at great effort.
She walked up to me, and we embraced. I could tell she was fighting back more tears.
“I have Mansuetus’s body,” I told her.
Her head jerked back at the news. “Where?”
“At the estate of Apronius. I’ve prepared it for a proper funeral.”
She was anxious to go with me, and we rode out on the horse I had purchased, Flavia sitting behind me, her arms around my waist. The trip went slowly because I was not much of a horseman and because the steed I had paid handsomely for was not much of a horse. We talked very little, and occasionally I could hear her quietly crying.
The storms had passed, but when we arrived at our destination, the ground around the funeral pyre was still soggy.
I had done my best to prepare Mansuetus’s body. I had washed his exposed skin and hair, cleaned out his wounds, and anointed him with oil. I left him in his gladiator’s armor. He lived as a warrior; he would be cremated as one. I had created a wreath and placed it on his head.
I asked Flavia to wait for a moment before she approached the body. The night was
pitch-black with dark clouds covering the moon and stars. I lit two torches, one on each side of the funeral pyre. Mansuetus actually looked peaceful lying there, his battles over.
I turned and nodded to Flavia. I stepped away so she could have a private moment with him.
She walked up to the body, removed her hood, and gently stroked his cheek. She leaned forward and kissed Mansuetus’s forehead and placed a coin in his mouth, the cost for the gods to transport him in the next world. Her tears fell softly on his face. She ran her fingers over his eyelids, and I watched her body tremble with grief as she stepped away. I moved next to her and put an arm around her. She leaned into me and sobbed.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
After a few minutes she regained her composure and wiped her eyes. “I’m ready.”
Before I lit the fire, there was one more thing that needed to be done. Every great man was entitled to a funeral oration. I would give it my best shot.
“Mansuetus fought with great valor and dignity and skill,” I said. “But more than that, he embraced life, even life in the arena, with the joy and passion of a true Roman. He fought to obtain Roman citizenship, and he fought for his brothers, the other members of his gladiator school.
“In a way, he gave his life for them—one man laying his life down for his friends. He knew when he stepped into the arena for the last time that he wouldn’t just be fighting his fellow gladiators. He would be fighting the twisted schemes of the emperor himself. He did it anyway because his brothers needed him to. He did it because he thought it was the right thing to do.”
I paused, unsure if my words were helping or hurting. I decided to plow ahead.
“He also knew how to love. He called himself ‘gentle’ because that’s what he was. The same huge heart that made him courageous in battle made him tender in love.”
Flavia gave me a squeeze with the arm she had wrapped around my waist, a small token of thanks.
“I could see in his eyes, Flavia, that he loved you more than life itself. I sometimes think that his great success in the arena was due in part to his visions of spending the rest of his life with you. Love is stronger than fear. Total love eviscerates fear.
“May the gods be merciful to his soul. May his spirit rise to the heavens. May the name of Mansuetus be praised and his memory be as fixed in our hearts forever as it is on this day.”
I paused, but I knew I couldn’t stop there. It would take more than mere words to honor the memory of the great Mansuetus.
“And may the gods give us strength to avenge his death and desecrate the memory of all those who caused it.”
We waited in silence for a few moments, and I sensed that Flavia was summoning the strength to light the fire. “Thank you,” she said softly.
She left my side, picked up a torch, and lit the wood.
We watched for a few minutes in reverent silence as the flames leaped to the sky.
“Did you mean what you said about avenging his death?” she finally asked.
I turned to her. Light from the flames seemed to dance on her anguished face. “Yes.”
“Let me have your dagger,” she said.
I handed it to her, and she wrapped her left hand around the blade. She pulled the knife through her hand, slicing her fingers and palm. She handed it back to me, her hand now bloody.
I did the same, doing my best to ignore the pain.
She placed her bloody hand under mine and her right hand on top. In turn, I placed my right hand over hers.
“I vow by the gods to avenge the death of Mansuetus,” she said. “Blood for blood, life for life. I will not rest until Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus is dead. May the gods curse me and torment my soul if I do not fulfill this sacred vow.”
I repeated the words while our blood ran together. When we were done, we rinsed out the cuts, and I sliced a piece of my toga into strips so that we could bandage our hands.
I had no remorse about what I was preparing to do, but I marveled at the person I had become. Theophilus, the lover of Roman justice, a man who saw the best in everyone, was now a conspirator intent on assassinating the Roman emperor.
We both knew, as we watched the flames die out on Mansuetus’s funeral pyre, that other similar conspiracies had failed. Yet I had no doubt that ours would succeed. It wasn’t just the look in Flavia’s eyes. It was a sense that somehow the gods were with us. That despite the death of Mansuetus, the gods could not sit idly by and watch Rome be destroyed.
And if they did, we would succeed anyway. The gods be cursed. We were taking matters into our own hands.
CHAPTER 62
For two weeks, Flavia and I met secretly every night and planned our conspiracy. We studied the failed attempts to take Caligula’s life and learned from them. Other would-be assassins had enlisted too many conspirators. They didn’t have a plan to get past the Praetorian Guard. They had underestimated Caligula’s cunning and paranoia.
I told Flavia about the poison I now carried with me at all times, but we both agreed that Caligula wouldn’t die that way. He never ate or drank anything that hadn’t been tested by others. Plus, although Flavia never explicitly said it, I sensed that she thought poison would be too humane.
There were three major complications. The first was finding somebody close to Caligula to help pull this off. He had surrounded himself with trusted members of the Praetorian Guard and elite soldiers formerly from the Germanic tribes his father had fought against. Many of these men didn’t even speak Latin, and all were fiercely loyal to Caligula.
Our second problem was the Senate. Flavia, who at one time had defended imperial rule, now agreed that the imperial system would be the death of Rome. We didn’t just want to avenge Mansuetus; our goals were loftier. We would reestablish the Republic. But this would require decisive action by the Senate, and who could be trusted in that backstabbing body?
Even if we found a senator we could trust, we had to make sure he wouldn’t be implicated in the plot. Caligula still had enough popularity among the freedmen and the military that the Senate would never be able to take back power if the people believed that a senator had been complicit in the assassination.
Our final challenge was the emperor’s family. If all we did was kill Caligula, the Praetorian Guard would appoint another member of his family as emperor. We would have to arrest Caligula’s family members as well, including his incompetent uncle Claudius—the butt of Caligula’s jokes but still the most likely successor to the throne.
Yet none of these challenges would matter if we couldn’t find a way to get Caesar alone.
After two weeks of planning, the idea for doing so came from an unexpected source.
The conversation took place at the conclusion of a lavish banquet hosted by a distinguished senator. I generally despised such affairs, but my station in life demanded I show up for this one. Seneca was there as well, reclining on the other side of the large banquet hall. We hadn’t spoken to each other since our falling-out after Flavia’s trial.
To my shock, he asked me to go for a walk with him in the gardens. At first the conversation was forced. But when he was certain that no one else was around, he opened up.
“Timidius has accused Senator Pomponius of conspiracy against Caesar,” Seneca said. “Pomponius knows of our past friendship and asked me to intercede with you to take his case.”
I was taken aback by the reference to our past friendship. And though I was flattered that Pomponius would turn to me, I was still inclined to say no. The very last thing Flavia and I needed right now, in the midst of our conspiracy to kill the emperor, was the attention of a maiestas trial.
“I want to say yes, Seneca, as a favor to you. But I can’t.”
I could sense his disappointment. He didn’t immediately respond, and I knew he was too proud to beg.
His mood weighed heavy on me, and so I took a risk. If I couldn’t trust Seneca, a friend and mentor who detested Caligula nearly as much as I, whom could I trust
?
“You once told me that bold times require bold actions,” I said, checking his reaction in my peripheral vision. “I’m tired of defending good men from maiestas charges. I’m tired of emperors who condemn valiant Romans to die just to amuse the people. I’m tired of senators who kneel down to kiss the foot of a man like Caligula, vote to bestow him with great honors, and then complain about the emperor behind his back.”
We took a few steps in silence. I hesitated to get any more specific unless Seneca gave me a sign that he was sympathetic to our cause.
“You’ve always been an idealist,” he said. “Idealists become teachers. Pragmatists become emperors.”
It was typical Seneca. Vague and tantalizing. Not a word that could ever be used against him.
“I’m going to kill Caesar,” I said bluntly. “I need your help to restore the Republic.”
Instinctively, Seneca checked behind us. He frowned, making no effort to hide his concern. “I assume you have a plan to get him alone?”
“Not yet.”
“I assume you are keeping your inner circle of trusted advisers small?”
“Yes.”
“And who might they be?”
Again, I deliberated how much to say. “I’m not at liberty to tell.”
“I see.” He let out a big sigh, the same symbol of exasperation he had used years earlier when I had disappointed him. “So let me get this straight. You have decided to kill the emperor, but you have no plan. And for this reason you are rejecting my request to represent my friend Pomponius in his treason trial?”
“I am open to suggestions,” I said.
Seneca smiled. “I suggest that this time you leave my name out of it.”
I promised I would, and I apologized again for listing him as a witness in Flavia’s trial. I then told him about the funeral I had arranged after the death of Mansuetus. I told him about the vow that Flavia and I had made. I tried to paint a compelling picture of Flavia and her overwhelming grief.
