Spartacus - Swords and Ashes

by J. M. Clements

“Your hair is too much trouble,” Varro continued. “A gladiator should not fuss over his looks like a preening woman.”

  “You know nothing,” Bebryx said. “I suppose you would have me close-cropped and anonymous like the Thracian.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of Spartacus, who said nothing, munching slowly on his food. “Or shave my head entirely?” the drunken gladiator added.

  “There is a middle ground,” Barca said, his mouth full.

  “A shaven head is the mark of a prisoner of war,” Varro said in agreement. “Unkempt hair, the mark of a barbarian. A gladiator must find some middle ground. He must decide if he wishes to look like a presentable, neatly trimmed, Roman.”

  “Such as you!” Bebryx snorted.

  “Or find some form of hair that marks him out to the crowd from a distance,” Barca said.

  “Barca’s size marks him alone,” Spartacus said.

  “And what of those who lack Barca’s stature?” Varro said. “They need the crowd to remember them. Particularly if,” and here, there was the slightest, briefest glance in Bebryx’s direction, “their honor in the arena is wanting.”

  “Honor is what the crowd remembers,” Spartacus said with a shurg. “Honor and victory.”

  “That is easy for you to say, Champion of Capua,” Varro said. “What of we mere minnows in the sea of swords?”

  “You are easy to see,” Barca scoffed, “with your ridiculous golden hair.”

  “And what of those poor unfortunates who lack the height of Barca or the jet-black skin of Bebryx?” Spartacus asked. “What then?”

  “Perhaps,” Varro said thoughtfully, “the crowd might note the hair. They might call for the ‘Plaited One’ or the ‘Braided One’? Will women swoon at the sight of some lizard-like crest down the middle of his head? Will the crowd remember a distinctive mustache or knotted beard?”

  “I doubt it,” Barca said, belching.

  “You talk too much,” Bebryx added.

  “Ask yourself these questions, and mark them well,” Varro continued. “Plaits or braids or knots can serve as additional cushioning, too. Beneath a helmet, they might soften an enemy’s blow.”

  “You talk absent thought,” Spartacus said. “What if the crowd uses hair to call for death? Death to the Plaited One! What then, if the Plaited One is you?”

  “Come,” Batiatus said, appearing behind the guard. The shadows in the room lurched sideways as a lantern threw new light through the bars. “It is time to show you off to the crowd. Save Bebryx, and his wounded shoulder.”

  They marched down the corridor in silence.

  “My arm tires with this lantern,” Batiatus said after a few moments. “Here, Barca, lead the way.”

  And as the expressionless Carthaginian lifted the lantern and strode ahead, Batiatus moved to walk beside Spartacus.

  “You fought well, Thracian,” he said.

  “Gratitude, dominus.”

  “You saw my signal to take on Timarchides.”

  “Apologies that we did not succeed.”

  “He is a foe of unexpected prowess. But rest assured that, should another occasion arise to accidentally press upon him with deadly force, your dominus approves.”

  Batiatus scurried ahead to announce his fighters’ arrival, while Varro and Spartacus exchanged a cynical glance.

  “Fellows all,” bellowed the voice of Verres, “the shade of Pelorus welcomes you to this banquet.”

  The gladiators reached a curtain, where Batiatus was standing. He signaled them to wait.

  A few ragged cheers erupted, but most of the crowd stayed respectfully silent.

  “And as you surely know, tomorrow, Pelorus, the greatest lanista in Neapolis, will be celebrated in games.” The voice of Verres continued with a practiced air of moment and importance. It was the speech of a man used to making others believe that what he had to say mattered.

  “When I call your name,” Batiatus hissed to his gladiators, “enter as if you are walking into the arena itself.”

  “Dominus,” they chorused in response.

  “And for the gods’ sake, look gladiatorial.”

  “Dominus.”

  In front of the curtain, Verres’s voice rose to a crescendo, intoning a cue for Batiatus, the lanista of the hour.

  Batiatus ducked through the curtain as Verres introduced him.

  “Citizens of Neapolis,” Batiatus called, voice full of warmth. “united in mourning and in grief, but also in expectations! The surviving slaves of my good friend Pelorus will die tomorrow ad gladium, in rightful recognition of their crimes. But tomorrow will also see the finest that another town has to offer. Yes! Prime gladiators from the Campanian hills, the greatest warriors from that nest of Mars—Capua!” Batiatus finished with a flourish and waited, expecting at least a fraction of the cheers that had greeted Pelorus. But, instead, he was greeted with stony silence.

  “Capua!” Batiatus cried again pointedly this time. Verres applauded solo, and was eventually joined by a few desultory echoes from among the crowd.

  The gladiators lurked behind the curtain, waiting in the dull shadows while their fame was declaimed by Batiatus.

  “I give you, Varro!”

  Shooting his fellow gladiators a pained look, Varro strode through the curtains, arms raised as if in victory. He was greeted by a series of ragged cheers.

  “The Beast of Carthage... Barca!”

  Barca swept the curtains aside and roared at the crowd, whose applause rose considerably.

  “And the prize of our ludus. The Bringer of Rain. The man who slew the Shadow of Death. The Champion of Capua... Spartacus!”

  Spartacus grabbed the curtain and wrenched it from its hooks, staring into the sea of expectant faces. They were low in his line of sight, clustered before the stage. To the crowd in the atrium, the gladiators would seem to tower above them, like statues of the gods.

  He walked in to complete silence, peering into the watching crowd in search of—

  Women stared up at him hungrily, their gazes dwelling lazily on his chest and thighs. Men stared at him in appreciation or envy... and there, there in the front row, he saw the faintest hint of a sneer. On the face of a Roman youth in his twenties Spartacus saw the contemptuous gleam of a man who thought no gladiator was worth such praise.

  He strode tantalizingly close to the audience, within reach of the women’s fingertips should they reach out toward him. He walked slowly, deliberately, round to the place where he had sensed a challenge.

  His quarry was not expecting it. The man had already forgotten him, and was picking absently at a tray of sweetmeats. It was only as Spartacus drew near that he noticed he had caught the gladiator’s attention. The young man looked up, his eyes now wide and fearful, as Spartacus stepped to the edge of the stage, his oiled muscles firm in the brazen light. The gladiator looked down at the man who had glared daggers at him.

  Their eyes met, and Spartacus stared deep into fear, into the mind of a foe who only now realized that there were no safe barriers between him and the wild arena animal. Had he bragged to his friends that gladiators were mere clowns? Had he boasted of the prowess of a Roman freeman versus a mere slave? There was no evidence, no facts to lean on, nothing but the simple, naked fear in his eyes as he stared back into the soul of the arena, and realized that he had nowhere to run.

  “Spar-ta-cus!” the man said, tremulously. “Spar-ta-cus!” he said again, punching the air. His chant was joined by others, first in hesitant echoes, then in a more powerful voice, as the Champion of Capua basked in the glow of their approval.

  At last, he looked away from his antagonist, and gazed out into the crowd at a hundred voices raised up, calling that name by which the Romans knew him. It was praise for another. It was praise for an ideal, not a man. But Spartacus drank it in, all the same.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught Varro chanting along with the freemen, while Barca waited in solemn silence.

  Batiatus grinned at the crowd’s reaction, and t
wirled his finger in a signal for his gladiators. Spartacus, Varro and Barca marched to the edge of the stage, and began a slow walk around the colonnade, now within touching distance of the crowd. Women giggled excitedly at the sight of their near-naked forms. Men shrugged in approval or masked envy. As they walked, Batiatus addressed the crowd, meanwhile the musicians clambered back onto the stage.

  “Such fine specimens of Mars,” he cried. “Such deadly creatures in the arena. Tomorrow they will draw blood in memory of Pelorus. Tomorrow they shall fight in the primus, to avenge his death!”

  Amid further cheers, Batiatus signaled the band, and the music began once more. As Spartacus and his fellow gladiators left the stage, the dancing girls arrived, tinkling with bells and cymbals, sparkling in the bronze light, their skins bearing the starry sparkle of mica rubbed into oil.

  The men in the crowd cheered even louder than they had cheered for the gladiators, pushing toward the stage, while Batiatus detected a distinct rush of soft silks toward food and drink as the women found other diversions.

  Seeing no sign of Lucretia or Ilithyia, Batiatus turned instead to watch the stage, as the girls writhed in time to the music. He ignored their pert breasts and glittering skin, and did not dwell on the shadows of their thighs or the curves of their bottoms. Instead, he looked at their faces with the practiced eye of a slaver. The girls jutted their hips in time with the music, curling their hands in gestures of erotic symbolism, but Batiatus watched instead for the look in their eyes.

  This one had the sullen, dead stare of a beast of burden. That one curled her lip as if her every moment on stage was distasteful to her. Perhaps it was, but that was of no concern to Batiatus. Another kept her lips pressed grimly together, concentrating on her movements as if her life depended on it. Perhaps it did—Batiatus saw the telltale welts of a corrective whip on her shoulders, and suspected that her dancing skills came at a price. The fourth, however, the fourth had it all. Long blonde braids fell below her waist. Bright blue eyes, the mark of a northern savage, glittered in the light from bronze mirrors. Her skin was milky white, in stark contrast to the dusky, tanned flesh of most of the other slave women present. She weaved sinuously on the stage, a bright smile upon her lips, her eyes shining beneath her tiara. She saw Batiatus watching her and tongued suggestively at her upper lip. Their eyes met momentarily, before the next turn of her dance took her away from his line of sight.

  “She favors you,” Timarchides said, who had appeared, unnoticed, by his side.

  “As she will any man for a price,” Batiatus laughed. “Even you!”

  Timarchides said nothing, and Batiatus laughed too long, in an attempt to make it clear it was a joke.

  “Cheer yourself,” Batiatus said. “Soon you must purchase slaves of your own.”

  “Indeed,” the freedman conceded. “But I shall be sure to buy local stock. My house shall be staffed exclusively with Roman slaves.”

  “Local slaves with heads rammed right up their own asses, like other eunuchs in this crowd,” Batiatus commented.

  “Their response gave surprise?” he asked.

  “Capua was once the greatest city in Italia.”

  “Remind me again why it cannot still make that claim,” Timarchides said, his eyes fixed on the gyrating dancers. One half-heartedly held out her arms to him, as if entreating him to embrace her, but he met her gaze without expression, and she turned away with the next phrase of the music.

  “Were it not for Rome...”

  “Or Carthage. The people of Neapolis have heard many tales of the famous war against Hannibal that almost brought Rome to its knees. When the Carthaginians marched across the Alps with their war elephants, and crushed the Roman army at the battle of Cannae. The people of Capua welcomed their new Carthaginian overlords on bended knee, with cheeks spread, reaching out hands to stroke Carthaginian cock.”

  “You twist events long past.”

  “I merely repeat facts.”

  “Some have died for repeating less as fact.”

  “Capua boasts of its champions, but it is nothing but a city of sheep. Its heroes ignorant of true conflict, with knowledge only of the staged victories of the arena. The road to redemption is one fraught with difficulties for citizens of Capua. Though one supposes even the most craven cowards might better themselves in time, with enough luck and virtue.”

  “I see,” Batiatus said stiffly.

  “And what do you see?”

  “You speak with tongue wet with only days of freedom. Merely because your freedom permits you to speak without being whipped for your insolence, Timarchides, does not mean that you should spit out any bile that springs to mind.” His gaze darted around in search of Barca, who could always be trusted to protect him in times of trouble, but Barca was already gone, assuredly already marching back to his cell. “The clarity of the language you speak. Your very ability to complain with such concision is a benefit to you from the Latin world. As is your freedom to whimper like a pup without being slapped like one.”

  The music and merriment thrummed around them as they stared expectantly, each at the other. Batiatus tensed, wondering how long he would have to ward off any blows before someone came to his aid. His heart pounded, his fists trembled.

  And then Timarchides laughed.

  “You must forgive me, good Batiatus,” he said. “I am, as you so bluntly observed, only recently liberated, and not yet used to the chains of manners that still constrict the free.”

  “There is time,” Batiatus replied, somewhat confused at the sudden change in tone from his companion. He patted Timarchides on the arm in an attempt at camaraderie, and turned away in search of friendlier conversation.

  VII

  ROMA AETERNA

  BEBRYX SNORED FITFULLY IN THE CORNER, HIS BREATHING labored, one hand clutched protectively at the seeping bandage on his shoulder. Empty wine flasks were scattered all around him.

  Varro shook one experimentally, then hurled it at the wall. It bounced, noisily, but Bebryx did not stir.

  “Bebryx has been defeated by wine,” Varro mused. “It has laid him lower than this morning’s combat.”

  Barca ignored him and stretched out by the dwindling fire. Varro hunched sulkily by the embers, and watched as Spartacus lay back on a bundle of straw.

  “Fine living can wound a man as easily as hunger,” Spartacus observed. “As deadly as a spear.”

  Varro smirked, and poked at the fire.

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “And perhaps,” Spartacus asserted, “Rome will be brought down from the inside. Not by barbarian threats, but by honey and cured meats.”

  “You know nothing, my Thracian friend,” Varro said smiling. “Such luxuries are the rewards for Roman virtue. They do no harm in moderation, for the residents of Roma Aeterna, the eternal city.”

  “Nothing is eternal. Not even Rome,” Spartacus said. “There will come a time, some day, when Rome is a distant memory, like the Egyptian Thebes or Barca’s Carthage.” Barca scowled at him, but listened. “Some day they will wonder at the ‘glory’ that was once Rome.”

  “Then glory, too, is eternal,” Varro protested. “They will see our roads and aqueducts, our statues and our temples, and they will see a republic grander than any other.”

  “You see bricks and marble, and Republican finery. But I see the brick-maker, the stone-carver, the weavers and water-carriers. Rome does not rest on victorious laurels or noble sentiments. It rests upon millions of slaves.”

  “So speaks the ant as he carries a leaf back to the nest. Sure of his importance.”

  “A great nation can fall. Ask Barca what became of Carthage. What is Carthage now but barren ruins in Africa?”

  “Carthage had no divine destiny,” Varro insisted.

  “And Rome does?”

  “Assuredly.”

  “So speaks the sacrificial bull, nurtured and pampered throughout its life—unaware of its ultimate fate.”

  Barca chuckled at the Thrac
ian’s deft reversal of Varro’s argument, but soon grew solemn again.

  “Do you not think that the Carthaginians said something similar around their campfires?” Spartacus said. “Right up until the moment they were sold into slavery.”

  Across the fire, Barca glowered silently.

  “Carthage was fated to fall,” Varro stated carefully, with an apologetic nod at Barca. “Rome is fated to rise.”

  “On whose authority? On that of the gods that have shown you such ill favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Show me their words. Show me their assurances.”

  Varro chuckled.

  “What you ask for is not beyond the reach of men.”

  The fire crackled between them, as if daring each of them to speak.

  “We have no other entertainment,” Spartacus said. “Tell us.”

  “You do not wish to hear this,” Varro said. “It will make you seem yet more foolish.”

  “Really?” Barca interjected suddenly. “Spartacus will look foolish? What better entertainment than that?”

  There was muted laughter all around.

  “You surely know this story?” Varro said. “It is told to Roman children in their cradles.”

  “I am a Thracian,” Spartacus said.

  “I am the last of the true Carthage,” Barca said.

  Bebryx snorted in his sleep, and then turned over, still dozing.

  Varro sighed.

  “Then I shall tell you,” he said. “I shall tell you a story that you would have done well to know before your peoples thought to oppose the might of Rome. It is a tale that dates back to the age of kings, before Rome became a Republic. A story of the last of our kings, the feckless Tarquin the Proud.”

  “Are you allowed to call a Roman nobleman ‘feckless’?” Barca mused. “We would be whipped.”

  “I can call him that,” Varro replied. “For I am a Roman, myself. Those were the days when Greek culture had impact much greater on Italia, when Greek customs and beliefs held great sway with the people. You might even say that Italia was not the center of the world. Instead, it was regarded as a land of distant Greek colonies, ‘Greater Greece.’