Spartacus

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  Furius spurred the white stallion back, broke bloodily through the onset of the slaves, and in a moment was again at the head of his men. He tossed the girl to the ground, drew his sword, and slung his shield on his left arm. In front of him a man, drawing back, whirled a great sling in his arm. Something sang through the air and Furius reeled as the stone glanced from his silver helmet. But behind him an Iberian, bending his bow, pierced the slinger through the throat.

  Over a hundred of the Romans were down. The slave attack seemed to falter a moment, and then was pressed with redoubled fury. Half-armed men flung themselves on to the Roman swords. Transfixed, a slave would seize his assailant by the throat and seek to strangle him. Others charged yelling, and then, at the final moment, hurled themselves to the ground and grasped the feet of the soldiers. By this means many legionaries were dragged down and despatched by the blows of knives driven through their armour.

  Cursing, Furius thrust and thrust, but contemptuously, for the slave-reek offended him. Half clad, half armed, it was evident that the slaves could not long keep the field. Jesting, the legionaries smote and smote with pilum and sword till their assailants reeled back in the beginning of rout.

  Abruptly, from the mountains a horn blew wildly. At that sound panic seemed to fall on the slaves. With yells they turned and fled, and after them, Furius on his stallion in the van of the pursuit, swept the legionaries. The stream of flight swung round the mountain-base a full hundred yards; and then, for the second time, the horn blew. Furius found the tribune clinging to his stirrup.

  ‘Back, back, Legate! Look to your right!’

  Looked Furius, and strove to rein in the stallion; looked the other Romans, and strove to wheel to the right in ranks. But it was too late, and the order too scattered in the pursuit. The body of three hundred Gladiators, fully armoured, and armed with the long Etruscan hastae, smote through the disordered Roman line like the blow of a gigantic fist, then turned and smote again. At that even the veterans among the legionaries knew themselves lost, and, smiting their way out of the press of battle, fled northwards.

  Furius was hurled from his stallion and killed by a giant Gladiator wielding an axe: he grasped the stallion by the nostrils and clove down Furius in one blow; the Gladiators roared at the sight. The tribune was down, and within five minutes rout as complete as that which had overtaken Clodius at the Battle of the Lake fell on the half-legion of Furius. The aquila of the three thousand was captured and torn from its pole and smashed in the mud. Then the din and the dust died off as the sun stood at noon.

  [ii]

  Gershom ben Sanballat had charged in the shelter of the cattle with his Bithynians, and was the first of the slave commanders to beat his men away from plunder and the killing of the wounded to make account of their losses. Wielding a great whip, as long before in the guerilla wars of the Hasidim, the Jew commander marshalled his panting, ragged horde into straggling lines. There he found that over a hundred of the company he had led from the north were dead; over a score had wounds of such nature that recovery was impossible. Himself half-naked, bleeding from a wound in his shoulder, his curled beard torn and dusty, the Jew walked up and down the ranks and tugged at his beard with an irritable hand. Then he gave an order, and turned the cold back of a Pharisee on the ranks while it was executed; for this order was against the Law, and a Gentile abomination.

  The Bithynians surrounded their wounded comrades, chattering, weeping, and kissed them, and made pretence to serve them. But the wounded had heard the order, and panting, bared their throats to the knives. So they were slain that the slaves might march unencumbered.

  On that sight Kleon of Corinth came to look with cold, amused eyes. The Jew turned and saw him and scowled, for the Greek had neither armour nor sword, and still carried no more than his knife. He bore as little sign of battle as that morning he had entered the camp of the Bithynians.

  ‘I see you sacrifice to Jehovah, Jew – or is it to Kokolkh?’

  But Gershom did not look towards his company. ‘Sacrifice? I am no baal-worshipper. What could I do? These men were unfit to march. Would you leave them for Varinus to be tender with?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a good killing. All killings are in this country. I think the God of its land drinks blood. A bloody people and bloody Gods. But what do you think they’ve profited, those slaves you liberated five days ago?’

  The Jew forgot his anger in weariness. Suddenly, in the blood and din of a thousand little fights, he saw, hopeless, the road to Kadesh. ‘What profit is there under the sun? wrote a King of ours. What truth is there in a Greek?’ His heavy lips curled. ‘Or valour?’

  The eunuch’s cold look of amusement did not change. ‘With his manhood, no doubt. I’m classed with the women, Jew. What would one of the Mutilated do in a battle?’

  Gershom ben Sanballat flushed with rage. ‘Now, by God, did those Gladiators refuse you a sword? I’ll teach the slaves courtesy with the edge of mine.’

  Kleon’s laughter was the shrill, high laughter of the Mutilated ere he bit it to silence on his lips. ‘Keep your sword for the throats of your wounded, Jew. I need neither your help nor your pity.’

  He turned away with twitching face, and Gershom stared after him angrily – angrily at the pity that twisted his own heart. Were he himself so defiled would he keep a quiet temper? And he shuddered at that thought, and passionately, a moment blinded his eyes in prayer that whatever end awaited him in this revolt, the cross, the stake, or the mines, it might not be that mutilation which would cut him from the kingdom of the Elohim, alone and lost and defiled in this heathen land.

  And it was then that he swore to himself that wherever a Jew slavewoman should join them, he would take that woman to his bed, be she Samaritan or Sadducee, that the seed of his loins might not be lost and the eyes of a son remember him.

  [iii]

  In an orgy of hate, the slaves flung themselves on the legionaries, captured and wounded. A Roman, a centurion, who resisted was surrounded and torn piecemeal by a pack of Germans, with a wrenching of tearing flesh and a crackle of breaking bones. Coveting a helmet, Brennus the Gaul seized a prisoner and drew him aside, and attempted to rive the stout leathern bands from under the captive’s chin. They were clumsy to move and he drew his knife, sawing at them. The legionary screamed and writhed. The Gaul held with a vacant grin, still sawing with his knife while the screams went on. Then the other slaves saw that the Gaul was hacking off the captive’s head with his helmet, and screams of laughter arose. Pallid and filthy, denied the sun, denied the remembrance of wine or warmth, the slaves of the mines went mad in a lust of revenge, delighting in torments, bathing their arms to the shoulders in blood, tearing the entrails from still-living bodies. A pandemonium of howlings arose afresh from the battlefield a moment quieted. Then a murmur spread and Spartacus appeared.

  He it was who had led the Gladiator charge and smitten Furius from the saddle. Now, he shouted aloud. The slaves stared their incomprehension and then, as he sprang among them, desisted from their torment of the legionaries, seeing that a God of madness had seized the Strategos. For all had sought or taken vengeance, and the strange Thracian Gladiator looked round about him at circlings of faces still fired in the heat of cruelty, saw Crixus himself unbend from thrusting a dagger in the heart of a legionary, saw Gannicus strapping bloodstained ocrea to his legs, saw Elpinice, who had charged with the Gladiators, cleaning her knife in the sand. She had cut the throat of the wounded tribune.

  It was as though a dark cloud fell over the sun of their victory. All stared, Spartacus now silent, with strange, glazed look and heaving breast. Then they turned their gaze to the giant stallion which stood shivering beside him. Its nostrils were still in the grasp of his great fingers, and as the general of the slave-host groaned, his knuckles whitened and the stallion groaned beside him. And, because of that terrifying sound and sight, the slaves drew away from their prey, staring at man and stallion. Slowly his grasp relaxed and the Gladiator looked up in t
he eyes of the great beast he had held. Those near at hand cried out to Spartacus to beware, but he did not move, staring at the stallion. It heaved its head and snorted, and snorted with quivering nostrils between its knees till its white knees were spattered with a bloody foam. Then it raised its head and slowly, hesitatingly, made a step towards the Gladiator. The leader of the slave-horde had found a mount.

  [iv]

  By mid-afternoon the slaves had marched away, all marching in ordered companies in imitation of the iron-clad Gladiators. Laden with weapons and armour, they marched with great carrion-birds already a cloud overhead. The Roman dead were left unburied, the Roman wounded that survived unharmed. But the dead of the slaves Spartacus buried in a great mound; thereon was heaped a pile of stones and at the foot the fragments of the broken aquila strewn for a memory. Into far years that cairn survived, long after the name of the battle was lost, and all that they did and suffered there.

  At nightfall Varinus’ legion came up and heard the news from such of the wounded as still lived. Thereat Varinus cursed coldly his dead legate, Furius, with regret that he had not lived to meet torment in the hands of the Gladiators or the mines-slaves. Then he desecrated the mound of the slaves, left his wounded to care for themselves, and pressed on all that evening in pursuit of Spartacus.

  But he was too late to come up with the horde that had routed Furius. By the falling of dusk, in sight of the marsh, he was aware of lines of entrenchments and the burning of watch fires. The slave-leader had left behind him the Gauls to entrench the camp while he fell on Furius.

  Cursing, Varinus gave orders to camp for the night. The legionaries dug hasty earthworks against a surprise attack, then lay down and slept in weariness under the deepening frosts of Spring.

  And at length it drew near to dawn.

  [v]

  A figure muffled in a grey abolla came hastening through the dimness, passed a watch-fire and stood by the side of Kleon. The eunuch leaned on his pilum and looked towards the Roman camp. As the muffled figure approached he turned round indifferently.

  ‘Time?’

  ‘The horses are waiting. Come.’

  They passed through the camp together, skirted the edge of the marsh, crossed the last line of entrenchments, and came to a thicket. Here three great horses were tethered, Roman horses from the rout of Furius’ half-legion. They stood with bent heads in the darkness. Kleon groped to an unaccustomed saddle. The muffled figure, hand on the saddle of another horse, made a gesture.

  ‘Not yet. He’s waiting the light.’

  The eunuch looked up at the sky. His head ached under the weight of his helmet and the effect of the stifling marsh air. But now, faint, a ghostly whisper, he was aware of a little wind that arose. The reeds sighed underbreath, moved by the God, and the thicket shook beside the horses. In the east a dull pallor overmantled the sky.

  The night was lightening; and with a feebler glare burned the fires. Kleon and the other looked back on the slave encampment.

  It was completely deserted.

  Yet not quite. As they looked they could hear the ringing tread of one who wore greaves and carried armour. Then, against the Roman camp and the reflection of the dawn on the dark western horizon, across the deserted lines of the slave-horde, they saw a great figure pass and vanish into shadows. Kleon shivered, for the cold bit into his bones. Why ever had he volunteered this wearying watch?

  Then he felt against his breast the crinkle of the roll of The Republic, and smiled with a chill amusement for his plan.

  Beyond the thicket rose a sleepy cheeping of birds.

  The footsteps of the giant figure drew near. Now he himself was at hand and the horses pricked startled heads. Kleon soothed them and was aware of a giant pair of hands reaching for a bridle.

  ‘Don’t mount yet. Walk the horses softly.’

  Hand beside the moist mouth of his beast, Kleon led the way. Each crunched twig underhoof seemed to him thunder-loud. The dead reeds swished as they passed. Far off in the east a wolf howled.

  They held along the south border of the marsh, till the darkened water lay entirely between them and the Roman camp. Then the giant spoke:

  ‘It will soon be light. Ride.’

  Now the eastern sky was stippled in crimson. Mounting, the three looked back. The watch-fires of the slave-camp had died to a smouldering glow where all night the three had paced to give the illusion of an army still camped there.

  Kleon yawned.

  ‘Vale, Varinus!’

  Then the three of them rode south.

  South to Lucania

  [i]

  ALL that morning they rode, while the light paled and grew and was touched with gold; and the sun, unseen, crept up behind the bastion of the eastern mountains. They passed down wild and deserted valleys, skirted long necks of swamp, rode soft with muffled bridles by villages and great farms. Ever the sky brightened and presently the sun was on them, and the white hoar under-hoof began to thaw. A thin mist rolled over the Campanian land. The eunuch hung wearied in his saddle, but the other two pressed on untiring.

  Still holding south, they held by the banks of a river for many pace miles, on a ragged via terrena fringed with rushes. Once or twice they sighted boats: once, in a forest clearing a gang of slaves at work. Still they rode undetected.

  Sleep came and went before the eyes of Kleon. Now and again he would jerk to a vague wakefulness: once dreamt himself again at sea with the pirate ships of Thoritos. In a clear moment he spoke to the others.

  ‘We’ve surely missed the track. They cannot have passed this way.’

  The giant eased the pace of his horse, a great white stallion. He turned his face. It was the Gladiator Spartacus.

  ‘They passed this way.’ He rode for a little looking at the track they followed. ‘See.’

  Kleon for a moment saw something in the path ere his horse was beyond it. Then weariness fogged his eyes, sick of the jest and the plan he had planned.

  ‘What was it?’

  The third rider, still muffled in abolla, answered him:

  ‘A slinger’s pellet.’

  The speaker pushed back the hood of the abolla then, for the day promised heat. It showed the young-old face of Elpinice, weariness-pinched, her gaze on the riding Gladiator.

  The three rode south.

  The slave-horde had passed that way. But at legionary’s pace they must have passed, for there was no sign of them. They had set out silently as soon as night fell, under the leadership of Castus and Gannicus and Crixus, with the little company of Eastern men commanded by the Jew ben Sanballat. The three had remained behind to patrol the watch-fires and deceive the watching Romans.

  Few of the slaves, stealing away in the darkness in long files, realized that they left the Strategos himself behind. Several of the leaders even did not know. Some said two Italian shepherds, men well acquainted with the country, remained. But Elpinice was the second, and Kleon, moved by the plan of his humour, the third. Riding now, he cursed that impulse. Would they never halt?

  Yet this at last they did, at an open and deserted horreum, away from the river track and with the Lucanian mountains looming in view. Beyond the horreum itself, through a fence of osiers, the steadings of a farm loomed. Though no smoke arose and it also seemed deserted, they did not approach. Instead, Spartacus hobbled the horses in the shelter of the overhanging eaves of the building; Elpinice disappeared. Kleon staggered inside.

  The floor was thick with the chaff-winnowings of many a harvest. In one corner mouldered a heap of straw. To the Greek eunuch it seemed he would never reach that straw. Lying on it, it seemed he had slept but a moment when a hand shook him.

  ‘Time to ride south again.’

  [ii]

  He rose and followed the Gladiator out of doors. The sun was again low in the sky. The great white stallion stood tail-switching, snuffling at the necks of the other horses. Elpinice squatted near. In front of her was a heap of olives and a goat-milk cheese, at which she hacked w
ith the dagger that had cut the tribune’s throat. She pushed a handful of olives towards the eunuch.

  ‘Where did you get the food?’ he asked.

  ‘At the farm while you slept. It is deserted, so I stole the cheese and olives.’

  Kleon looked at her in cold puzzlement. ‘Didn’t you also sleep?’

  ‘Like the dead – after Spartacus awoke.’

  The Gladiator stood unhelmeted by the open door, staring into the sunset peace with his dark, blank eyes. The wind moved the strands of his great beard. The stallion ceased to snuffle at the necks of the other horses and thrust its muzzle into the hand of its new master. Spartacus did not move. And to the woman who looked at him there came back again a memory of those faces in stone on the terraces of the Violet City. She ceased to eat, sitting still and clasping her knees.

  The eunuch glanced from one to the other – the slave bed-woman of a lanista and the taciturn Thracian savage. And for a moment a cold wonder held him. How had these two come to free and lead the Gladiators, to gather about them the beginnings of the slave-revolt? How came this savage to show the generalship he had done in two battles? And he remembered the saying of the Jew ben Sanballat that the ordering of these battles was the ordering of a hunter planning a battle, their success the success of surprise against known tactics in marshalling a battle. How long would these successes continue with the half-armed rout that already called itself Legio Libera – the Free Legion?

  And he knew it likely that another month would see that legion dispersed or enslaved afresh. The Republic as yet had hardly moved. Now, with the rout of Furius, the Wolf would howl her packs to the hunt and the slaying. But ere they gathered . . .

  That would be a good play to play. And the Greek eunuch thought with a twisted mouth how the divine Plato would have stared in amaze had he heard it proposed that a Thracian savage, a slave eunuch and a courtesan hardly more than a girl should set to organizing the Republic which he had planned! Yet, ere the Romans gathered and ended the revolt for ever, the Gods might laugh at that jest – if he could prevail on the Thracian to play it.