Spartacus

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  Crixus rode like the wind till he stood beside the standards of Gannicus. ‘Keep fast in your ranks, retiarius. It is only a ruse.’

  Circling like swallows, the horsemen drew off, leaving here and there a hamstrung horse or a slain rider. But Gannicus’s ranks were broken, and, looking up at the words of Crixus, the German slaves beheld an unexpected sight.

  Shielded under the cavalry ruse, Varinus had set the legion in motion. Rank on rank, steadily, Samnite shields poised to guard the right breast, and elbows crooked behind pila for the thrust, they advanced at a pace that grew ever swifter. Swallows skimmed the near-by hills, there was a drowsy hum of bees in a tree, a slave coughed and coughed, with dust in his throat. The Germans gazed appalled.

  In a moment the crash of the Roman attack echoed up through the valley like the noise of a comber on a shaking rock. Now the inferiority of the newly forged long swords of the slaves became plain. Hacking and hewing, the slaves fell back before the deadly inthrust of the pilum. Cleft through the breast in the moment of swing or recovery, they fell like butchered cattle. Round on the left wing of the slaves rode the Roman cavalry again, and the defeat turned to rout. Screaming, the Germans fled from the terror of the Masters’ attack.

  Crixus sat his horse behind his Gauls and ate pensively at a handful of plums he had stolen from an orchard.

  ‘Were Kleon the Greek here he would tell me that the battle is lost. But I am no General. Therefore I think it is won.’

  Too late Varinus perceived the same. Like an avalanche the Gauls, wheeling at the roar of their horns, fell on the flank of the pursuing Romans, for Crixus, seeing the lie of the land, had placed them a little in advance of the Germans, though this fact was inapparent from the Roman stance. The slave horse, negligible in number, but composed of great-limbed Thracians, miners and lumbermen, met the circling Roman cavalry, and, armed with clubs, splintered the levelled hastae and smote down the riders. In a moment the fortune of the battle changed. The Germans turned and the legionaries, caught between two enemies, struggled to reform in double lines. But this, in that marshy ground encumbered with dead, they could by no means achieve.

  Varinus rode from the field with a hundred horses and took the northward road. Ten stadia away he halted and at nightfall the survivors of his force began to straggle back. A legionary of no rank, a Gaul, saved almost a third of the infantry, fought a way out of the slave-press, and escaped to Varinus in the dusk.

  Overbusied in looting the dead and killing the wounded, the slaves did not pursue. Further, Crixus, having obeyed his orders to hold Varinus, made no attempt to pursue him. Instead, he encamped on the battlefield, sending messengers to Kleon in the Papa camp, and to Spartacus, hurrying from the slaying of Cossinus.

  Varinus and his rout laboured half the night at the erection of a trench and stockade. Hourly they expected the slaves to attack, but the night about them remained void and voiceless. Waiting, Varinus sat down to his tablets and penned to the Senate the news that the band of escaped slaves had grown to an army, strong, ferocious, and well led. He made no mention of his defeat, but only that he had drawn back and awaited reinforcements. These he urged should be sent at once.

  Next morning his scouts reported that the slave army had vanished again into the Lucanian hills.

  The Pits of Death

  [i]

  TWO men, helmetless, but with long swords girded to their shoulders, lay in a cane-brake near the camp of Varinus. All day they had lain there, and all the previous night, suffering the dews and the mists of morning with a hardy indifference, for they were slaves and Gauls. One, red-haired, large of feet and hands, had snored so stertorously in the hours of the night that his companion, wakeful, had frequently kicked him also awake. Lest the Romans hear.

  This companion was a smaller man whose left cheek had been branded with a slave iron, and so twisted his face in a humourless smile. He ate olives endlessly and threw the seeds at the birds which hopped and chirped near the brake with bright, curious eyes. Already the earth was thick with stained leaves and the browns of autumn were on all the land.

  Through the shielding walls of the cane-brake came the sounds of Varinus’s encampment, and sight of a high stockade over-topped by the eagle signum.

  Brennus yawned. ‘Gods, but I’m wearied. When next we come to a farm, I’ll drink hot milk from a horn and share the bed of a woman. If there are any women left.’ He yawned again. ‘I’d give my life to lie with a girl in a withy stockade and hear an aurochs low.’

  His brother, grimy with leaves-stain, frowned grotesquely. ‘I’m not minded to die till I’ve cut more Roman throats.’

  ‘They should be cut in the interest of peaceable men sleeping,’ said Brennus, listening with closed eyes to the mechanical shoutings of the centurions from Varinus’s drill-ground. ‘Is this Master never to move after the Free Legion?’

  ‘He’ll move when the new men come from Rome. Till then we stay here, as Crixus bade us.’

  ‘Gods, don’t I know it? Wake me if they ever come, or if another wearied man strolls out to rest near our shelter.’ He looked back at a dark, shapeless heap behind him, already smothered in drifting leaves. ‘You had all the sport last time.’

  When next he awoke it was with the urgent hand of his brother upon his arm. Noon had passed. From Varinus’s camp came the same ceaseless hum except that it seemed to have increased in volume.

  ‘The legionaries have come from Rome. The Seventeenth Legion, I think. Sh!’

  Suddenly the brother slid from his crouching position and lay flat. Brennus followed his example, and then peered through the interstices of the cane-brake.

  Two men, both carrying swords, but without armour or helmets, walked side by side. They were deep in converse, and Brennus, recognizing the nearer man, strained his ears. It was the commander of the Romans, Varinus.

  Closer they came, then passed. Then wheeled and passed again. Brennus’s hand stole to the hilt of the long sword that rested across his shoulder. At the movement his brother gripped him again.

  ‘O son of foolishness and a forest bitch, is this the time to play with a sword? Didn’t you hear?’

  ‘I heard, O brother of the son of a forest bitch. Now I’d end their planning and make south to Crixus.’

  ‘And won’t the legions remain and new leaders be found? Any fool may lead an army. Now of these leaders we know the plans. Of the plans of their successors you’d know nothing, being by then poison in the stomach of some Lucanian wolf.’

  Brennus growled, but withdrew his hand from his sword. They watched the slow stride of Varinus and his companion back to camp. Then Brennus glanced at his brother.

  The latter nodded and rose cautiously to his feet. He spoke one word.

  ‘South.’

  Brothers, and rivals since infancy in the games of childhood and barbaric youth, they made south, each at his uttermost speed, running shoulder to shoulder, in the huntsman’s long lope. Finding that their new swords encumbered them, they threw them away, retaining only their knives. Hours passed, but they did not ease their pace, encouraging each other with taunts and jests. With the fall of darkness they were many miles south of Varinus’s encampment, and came to a deserted village in the hills.

  There they found a stray goat, milked it, drank its milk, slew it, broiled and ate its flesh: then lay down to sleep. At moon-rise the indefatigable brother roused Brennus, and they sat out again.

  They slept once more, in a sheltered ravine, just as the dawn tipped the eastward mountains. Awaking, Brennus pointed to a far summit that rose like a copper dagger against the blue bowl of the dawn.

  ‘Papa.’

  [ii]

  Crixus had entrenched the camp of the Free Legion in Gaulish fashion, dyking it with sloping sides and setting thorns in place of a stockade. So strong was it now that many of the slaves believed it would repel even the attack of a legion. Within its bounds all the warring and raiding parties had reassembled in the last few days, Crixus from h
is defeat of the Masters in the Battle of the Gauls, Gershom ben Sanballat from his systematic raiding and looting in the foothills, Oenomaus from a sudden descent on Thurii. Amazed, the slaves awoke to the sudden plenty in their camp, food, weapons and clothes, and stared at these things, stuttering, and turning shamed, hesitant faces from unaccustomed garments and unaccustomed comforts. Then they would remember the Battle of the Gauls, where they had faced a legion in the open and defeated it: and in all the slave horde a strange new spirit stirred, with no longer the bravery of desperation, but instead a pride and a wild hope.

  Walking the bounds of the camp that morning, Crixus the Gaul hailed Gershom ben Sanballat, the commander of the Bithynians, who was stalking past him in silence, his fierce eyes fixed on the ground.

  ‘You are early abroad, Bithynian.’

  ‘As you are, German.’

  Crixus laughed. ‘German? I am a Gaul.’

  ‘And I am no Bithynian. I am a Jew.’

  Crixus nodded. ‘I’d forgotten. A very worthy people, though they eat horses. Or am I thinking of the Thracians?’

  ‘My people were eating of the bread of God when yours were starving in their northern stenches.’

  ‘A very desirable and praiseworthy God,’ said Crixus, politely. He cared nothing for Gods. ‘Could you not make him a sacrifice and bring him over the seas to help us now?’

  Gershom ben Sanballat looked at the heathen with the old Pharisee arrogance.

  ‘He is the God of Israel alone.’

  Crixus signed. ‘That’s a pity, since He specializes in bread. He might have helped in the feeding of this gaping camp. The country is as bare as a desert for a score of pace miles around.’

  Gershom nodded: ‘Then let us move.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the sea and disperse.’

  The Gaul shook his head. ‘That we can’t do, unless Spartacus orders it. We’ve sworn to abide by the orders of the Strategos alone.’

  ‘I have sworn no such oath.’ The Jew combed his black, curled beard with irritable fingers. ‘This Thracian is our leader for as long as we please, not a King whom we cannot depose.’

  ‘Yet I heard of a tribune of the Free Legion who beat one of his men – a Bithynian, I think – who had spread the rumour that Spartacus intended betraying the slaves to the Republic.’

  Gershom shrugged impatiently, but made no answer, tall, black-haired, black-bearded, incongruous in his Roman armour and silvered Greek helmet. Crixus looked westward and spoke almost to himself.

  ‘Yet we can’t stay here long, as Spartacus knows. He must return within a few days, he and the Greek.’

  Gershom was blunt. ‘What is this Greek eunuch to the Strategos? His lover?’

  Crixus laughed again. ‘Many men love Spartacus. Even you, I think, Jew.’

  ‘Many men love a maid: but she beds with but one. This Kleon is with the Strategos night and day. He came back from the killing of Cossinus and I saw the Greek meet him. They talked together, then summoned you to their tent. Then I heard the sound of a company leaving, and saw the Strategos and the woman Elpinice, together with the Greek and a score of Thracians, setting out southwards. How do we know they haven’t fled to the sea?’

  ‘Spartacus or Elpinice desert us? Ask the Gladiators who were with them in Vesuvius. You know little of either, Jew.’

  ‘I know little, else I’d be neither a fool nor a slave – nor a so-called tribune in an Unfree Legion commanded by a barbarian who withdraws from the camp when he chooses, and where.’

  ‘He has not withdrawn far. Listen: but don’t spread the news about. They have crossed the hills to the great Stone Way to lie in wait for a tribute-train coming from the East through Brindisium. The Greek learned of this train’s arrival, and laid the plan for its capture. With its treasure Spartacus is to buy the help of the Italiot cities and make payment to each slave as a Free Legion soldier.’

  Then the Jew saw clearly. ‘So will it cease to be the Free Legion. We’ll wander this land, fighting small battles and storming small towns, seeking alliances that never mature, seeking never to escape from Italy. Till the Republic awakes and crushes us as a man walking through grass crushes an adder.’

  Crixus cared nothing for the morrow. ‘So be it. Any death is a good one if it isn’t the Cross. And I’d rather any day go into the dark with a gladius in my ribs than escape to Gaul and grow old, and die of old age and hunger in some forsaken hut. Especially if the dark, ill Gods of whom they speak lie waiting one at the thither side.’

  He fell silent a moment, straining his ears, listening; then looked at Gershom with bright, mocking eyes. ‘But Spartacus and the Greek have other plans. They talk of upbuilding another Republic in opposition to that at Rome – a Republic here in south Italy to which the Italiots will cleave.’

  ‘A Republic in the skies,’ said Gershom. ‘Are these fellow slaves of ours allies that the Italiot cities will welcome? Especially after Metapontum – not to mention Paestum. Were I a free man I’d rather seek allegiance with a herd of swine.’

  For even yet there were moments when the sight and smell of a fellow-slave disgusted the one-time aristocrat of Kadesh – disgusted him both as ruler and Pharisee, he who had twice defeated the Hellenizing Jannaeus, and then turned and ground under-heel the revolting serfs of Kadesh. He was amongst them, but not of them, himself seeking only escape, return to Judaea and a secret passing to his mountain folk, there to raise again the standard of the Hasidim against the unclean Salome. Marching his Bithynians through Lucanian towns, he had freed the slaves, as his own men clamoured, but coldly, contemptuous of those he freed. Half at least that he freed had been slaves from birth; slavery he thought their apportioned lot.

  Yet also (and this startled his haughty heart when he thought of it), there were long stretches of days and hours, when he sank himself in the mood of the slaves, moved with their anger against the Masters, with their compassion for the fellow-enslaved. Gannicus the Teutone had now a fine tent, and two Roman captives who served him at meat: for that he was hated throughout the camp, perversely, the slave-horde pitying the Romans. Gershom joined in the hate like a slave; looking now towards the quarters of the German slaves a thought, unbidden, came sharp on his lips.

  ‘If the Strategos were wise he’d have his German tribune impaled on a stake ere he started the campaign.’

  Crixus laughed. ‘What, in the Free Legion? Gannicus had done better to die as a slave.’

  ‘He has the heart of a slave. As have too many of the Legion. See to it, Gaul: no man may ever be a slave but he bears the stigma until he is dead. And that stigma is on his soul. We are no free men. We are rebel slaves.’

  For a moment it seemed to Crixus that he was aware of a bitter truth. Then the sharpness of it faded from his mind. He laughed again.

  ‘I am no slave: I have no slave-stigma on my soul. I hate the Romans as I hate an enemy, not as a slave his Master.’

  ‘Then you are a fool,’ said Gershom, and turned away. Then halted. ‘Here come your two spies.’

  ‘Brennus and his brother? Where?’

  Gershom pointed across the entrenchments to two far figures that neared the camp with speed. The Gaul nodded.

  ‘You have keen eyes, Jew.’

  ‘Though a dull heart, Gaul. Heed to me, Crixus. If you and I led this Free Legion, were there in it no Gannicus, no dreaming Spartacus or Kleon, we might save it yet.’

  Crixus shook his head. ‘I’ve sworn an oath to the Strategos; which is nothing. But I love Spartacus; which is much.’

  Then he went forward to meet his panting spies.

  [iii]

  Early that same morning a band of twenty, on horseback, forded a river and rode north-westwards into Lucania. They drove a long train of laden ponies. All of the band was mounted, mostly on small horses, long-maned and long-tailed, Calabrian bred and hardy. Each rider carried a shield and javelins. Some were in armour, some not. Some rode half naked, their garments torn. Some had their bodi
es bound with bloody cloths. One rolled in his saddle, held there by a fellow-rider. It was the slave-band of Thracians, returning from its raid on the great Stone Way.

  At the head rode their solitary scout, a small man with retreating chin and forehead. It was Titul, the Iberian. In the rear rode three who every now and again looked over their shoulders at the plains retreating and fading in the haze of the brightening sun. The tallest rode in the middle, a giant, mounted on a giant stallion, unwounded, unwearied, his great body cased in gilded armour. A magnificent figure, the Strategos Spartacus, commander of the Free Legion, once a slave in the ludus of Batiates.

  So Kleon thought, riding on the Thracian’s right side. But more than merely magnificent, the Thracian. In the space of three months he had changed from a wild, brooding slave who sought no better future than freedom in Thracian forest to a General, a statesman, archon with strategos, to the seeming, inward and outward, of that Prince whom Plato the divine had sought in sun-washed Syracuse. A feat for a eunuch to perform, this, while the Seeker slept with the shades!

  Elpinice rode on the Gladiator’s left. Since dawn she had ridden in agony, cloths wound tightly round her body, her armour long since thrown away. With lips compressed, she had felt the pain surge over her and set her teeth, and said nothing. For they could not stop in the plains, and she knew that the pains were but early ones, and her body would tell her in a keener agony when her ultimate hour had come.

  At the first, in the marching and riding from Papa, when that knowledge had come on her in a night that she bore in her womb the seed of Spartacus, fear and anger had come with the knowledge. By means that were known to many women, in Rome and Capua and the white-walled houses that rose in all the cities of men that girded the Middle Sea, she had taken heed in her nights of old that she should give no children to Batiates. Then in her madness for the Thracian Gladiator, in the wild rides and hidings that followed Capua, when the world gaped to engulf their revolt, there had seemed no purpose to guard herself afresh. The days and the nights of the Thracian’s love would endure but a shining space ere the dark came down.