Spartacus - Swords and Ashes

by J. M. Clements

  Timarchides said nothing, already preoccupied with his tablet again.

  “Now,” he said, scratching behind his ear with his stylus, “your names are upon the list as the catervarii. I doubt not that you can ride?”

  “Since boyhood,” Spartacus said.

  “Horses?” Varro asked.

  Spartacus and Timarchides turned to look at him quizzically.

  “Of course,” Varro said, chuckling nervously. “Of course.”

  X

  AD BESTIAS

  “YOU HAVE NOT ATTENDED MANY SUCH GAMES?” BATIATUS said, going to refill Cicero’s cup, but finding the wine in it still untouched.

  “I favor them not,” Cicero said.

  “Ah,” Batiatus said with a wink. “If you had, Cicero, you would know that the world of literature is alive in the arena.”

  “How so?”

  “The sight of two men hacking at each other with swords grows dull over time. The most ill-educated of bumpkins will tire of that diversion soon enough.”

  “It is surely the reason different kinds of armor are employed?”

  “Different weapons, different styles. Costumes from bygone ages. Carthaginian shields, Greek helmets.”

  “The man with the net?”

  “Indeed, the retiarius with his net. All serve certain purpose.”

  “I am sure they do,” Cicero said. “But you spoke of literature.”

  “I did indeed. Apologies. For even such variations in weapons and armor are sure to weary the crowd. Perhaps when gladiatorial combat was a rare thing, seen only in funeral celebrations and the most highly appointed of civic games, such things might have been enough.”

  “But gladiatorial games are commonplace now,” Cicero pointed out.

  “Indeed! To the benefit of the lanista! There is always a new politician on the rise. Always a priest with a penance to pay. Always a young patrician boy about to wear the toga of manhood. Birthdays, funerals, weddings, even. Many require celebrations, and celebrations in this great Republic require the shedding of blood and the sight of human suffering. And that requires a little originality of thought. Masks to disguise repeat performances, and ways to disguise the use of masks.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as great moments from legend. Re-enactments of famous stories.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, Cicero, you have not laid eyes on the greatest of games. A good lanista can fulfill requests both strange and wonderful. A good editor will ensure that even the executions are original. Throwing a bunch of slaves to the lions is child’s play. Instead they should be attired in the costumes of our rich history, re-enacting wondrous scenes from the past.”

  “And the coming tableau is...?”

  Batiatus squinted at the painted programme boards near the steps.

  “Some... people... eaten by lions.”

  Cicero sighed.

  “And what is our purpose in this?” Spartacus asked.

  “You arrive late,” Timarchides replied, “and kill the lions once they have met their last victims.”

  The two gladiators looked at each other.

  “Like the Thespian cavalry at Thermopylae,” Timarchides explained, “arriving too late. A little joke. Nothing can save the victims.”

  “Are we to be attired as the Thespian cavalry?” Varro asked, but Timarchides ignored him.

  “We shall have to watch and wait,” the freedman continued. “Executions ad bestias are events that cannot be predicted. It is impossible to know the minds of the condemned. The lions are both hungry and angry, giving hope that events will proceed as planned.”

  “This sounds as if it is being set up for comedia,” Varro observed, with a grimace.

  “You will play the clown if required,” Timarchides warned.

  “And I surely can,” Varro said.

  “My friend’s meaning,” Spartacus interjected, “is that we are attired as heroes: our armor gleams; our lances decorated with bright pennants. If we are seen to fail, attired in this manner, they will find it unsatisfactory.”

  “If we are to fail, arrive late, and not quite save the imperiled...” Varro agreed.

  “Then you need to be attired as fools.” Timarchides nodded. He bit his lip and glanced fretfully up at the balcony, where the dignitaries could be seen in animated conversation.

  “These games have been thrown together with haste,” he lamented. “I have been too busy on matters funereal to adequately arrange such spectacles.”

  “What would you have us do?”

  “Perhaps...” Timarchides mused. “I can lay hands upon some comical masks.”

  “It might make it clearer that we are the comic relief,” Varro agreed.

  “Hasten! See what you can uncover!” Spartacus said.

  Timarchides scurried back into the shadows, while Varro smirked after his retreating back.

  “Did you just issue order to free man?” he asked.

  Spartacus shrugged.

  “Fate itself decreed he go and look. I merely acted as voice of fate.”

  “Let us hope so, my friend,” Varro said. “For a freedman uncharitable might not smile upon such a Saturnalian reversal.”

  “I am not desired audience,” Cicero explained.

  “You are Roman. It is tradition,” Batiatus protested.

  “So I am told. But I fail to see how any—forgive me.”

  “Please continue, good Cicero. You are among friends, here.”

  “Very well. I fail to see how any civilized man can derive pleasure from the sight of a defenceless human being torn to pieces by a wild animal. I see little ‘magnificence’ in a beast under display, if I am also expected to watch it die for my entertainment.”

  “Aha! You are one of those Romans,” Batiatus cried.

  “One of what Romans?”

  “One who denies the blood and pain upon which our Republic has been built. You talk of ‘civilized’ Romans. Do you mean people who dwell in cities? If so, look around at the very rabble you despise. See how they exult at the bloodshed before them. See how they take simple pleasure from the sight of nature in all its raw intensity.”

  “It is not natural to set fire to a man who is tied to a post,” Cicero argued.

  “Even a man who was complicit in the murder of his master?” Batiastus countered.

  “One crime does not excuse another.”

  “But you are a man of justice. You actively seek to impose penalty upon wrong doers.”

  “I exact punishments, that is true,” Cicero allowed, “but not for the entertainment of braying animals.”

  “They favor it.”

  “They know no better.”

  “Ha! What book would give them this?”

  The trumpeters gave the fanfare of the March of Beasts, as half a dozen manacled slaves were ushered into the arena, pushed and prodded by armored guards with long spears and full mail on their arms. These were the tamers who would ensure that both men and beasts would perform correctly, and their armor was designed for all eventualities.

  The huddle of slaves was herded into the center of the arena. Clothed in rags, each was chained in individual manacles. They were free to move, but unarmed. There were whispers and giggles among the crowd as they realized that one of the wretches was a woman.

  “Before you stand the ringleaders,” Verres explained. “Denied the right to die as gladiators, instead, they shall be eaten alive like common murderers.”

  “Ringleaders? Of what do you speak?” Cicero asked, not following.

  “And so it begins,” Verres said, eagerly.

  “And so it ends,” Batiatus said. “With justice for Pelorus.”

  “How so?” Cicero asked.

  Batiatus looked at Cicero in bafflement. Over the quaestor’s shoulder, he saw Verres signaling frantically for him to be silent, although Batiatus could not understand why he should be silent regarding a matter so vital.

  “Have you not been informed of circumstances that broug
ht the death of Pelorus?” Batiatus asked the new arrival.

  “Of course,” Cicero replied. “Gaius Verres showed kindness enough to meet me at the docks and inform me of the circumstances of my meeting’s unfortunate cancelation.”

  “Of the murder of Pelorus,” Batiatus clarified.

  “He was murdered? How unfortunate,” Cicero said without much interest.

  “By a slave!” Batiatus continued dramatically. But Cicero seem to remain unmoved.

  “Tragic,” he said flatly.

  “By a slave within his own house!” Batiatus declared, with a triumphant look at Verres.

  “Poor Pel— Wait. In his house?”

  Cicero rose to his feet, his dish of sweetmeats clattering to the flagstones. He stared accusingly at Verres, his arms outstretched in entreaty.

  “And Verres, you held tongue this whole day! Speaking of no such thing while we dawdled through the streets, and walked in upon the sight of the burning... Oh sweet Jupiter! You burned the household slaves! Have we been seated here, conversing idly, while the woman I seek roasts alive before us?”

  Verres scratched his head.

  “I know not, Cicero,” he said, not meeting the other man’s eyes. “The freedman Timarchides acts as editor. This day before us bears witness to the execution of all slaves of House Pelorus. Only his gladiators yet remain to be thrown to the beasts, and to each other.”

  “The servants and house slaves?” Cicero demanded.

  “Already dead, before your eyes!” Verres confirmed.

  Cicero slumped back down in his seat, suddenly heavy with the weight of unseen years.

  “I despise Neapolis,” he breathed. “My presence here is futile.”

  Batiatus and Verres exchanged a glance.

  “I am rarely at the arena early enough for the deaths ad bestias,” Verres said. “Will it take long?”

  Batiatus responded with exaggerated excitement to lift the mood. “We are dependent upon the whim of the animals. In the wild, tigers and lions are simple creatures, but in the arena they swiftly learn to please crowd. Why, in Capua on one occasion of note, I witnessed a Mesopotamian tiger of great majesty ignore with disdain the criminals placed before him for consumption. Instead, he paced up and down before the balcony, as a gladiator himself, head held high, strutting to and fro in long, calculated ellipses. He paused at each end and raised proud head as if in salute.”

  “I will wager the crowd loved it,” Verres said.

  “Oh, they lapped it up!” Batiatus said. “He was not wild and hungry like these poor creatures.” He gestured at the animals beneath them. “He knew the crowd. He raised his paw, flexed his claws, in what one could call a feline salute. Awaiting acknowledgment and cheering before turning to the business at hand. It was almost touching.”

  “Except for the ‘business at hand,’” Cicero sulked.

  “A murderer, or a rapist, or something. I do not recall. But his death was surely justified.”

  “And its manner, too?” Cicero seemed unable to resist an argument.

  “Assuredly! What better way of discouraging crime than by offering such brutal deterrents.”

  “As you say,” Cicero said. “Perhaps I dream, and such displays were sufficient to prevent the murder of your friend Pelorus.”

  All three men turned to watch the arena, in silence.

  Within the entrance enclosure, behind the gate that permitted entry to the arena, Spartacus lifted himself onto his horse, settling in the saddle.

  “Lions only know two numbers,” he said to Varro. “One and many. Where they see lone victim, they pounce. Where they see a herd, they wait.”

  “And how is this fact known?” Varro asked, struggling to clamber into his own saddle. He strained to lift himself across the horse’s flank.

  “Hunting lions is a rite of passage in Thrace.”

  “It sounds idyllic. A veritable Elysium.”

  “You envy me?”

  “A little,” Varro admitted. “For the hunting and the riding.”

  “Varro,” Spartacus said, realizing, “how much have you ridden?”

  “Enough!” Varro scowled, shifting awkwardly in his seat.

  “Enough to sit on horseback to travel to the next village?” Spartacus asked. “Or enough to control it in an amphitheater full of hungry lions?”

  “We shall see.”

  “Not encouraging,” Spartacus said.

  “If I had coin enough to own a horse,” Varro protested, “I would not be poor enough to have to become a gladiator!”

  Medea knelt down and scooped up a handful of the dark Neapolitan sand.

  “We are doomed,” one of her companions said.

  “Doomed to what?” she demanded. “Doomed to die? All are doomed to die. But will I bend my neck to my killer like tired deer? I will not.”

  The others looked at her and at each other. Across the arena, the inner gate rose up to admit the lions. The men gasped as they caught their first glimpse of the tawny flanks and bony shoulders, a prowling, teeming mass of animal hunger. Some of the lions bounded eagerly onto the sands, others paced warily. All marched ever onward, away from the sharp sticks of the guards, ever closer to the huddle of undefended humans.

  The lead creature, a lioness, paused and sniffed the air. One of her mates lapped experimentally, almost tenderly, at a patch of blood, but was prodded onward by the tamers. The lions began to fan out as if they sensed the circular nature of the arena, and that some great prize awaited them in its center.

  “They are starved,” one of the slaves hissed, fear and panic raw in his voice. “Starved and hungry.”

  “They are,” Medea said. “And untrained. Lions to be sacrificed to catervarii the moment we are dead. They may have never before hunted human prey.”

  “There is no point,” another one of the slaves said, sinking heavily onto the sand. “Perhaps we should kill each other? To lessen the pain.”

  “No!” Medea declared angrily. “We are already dead. What life yet remains to us should be devoted to spiting the Romans that oppress us!”

  “We barely dented their armor in our attempted escape,” the slave protested.

  “And yet for those moments we were free. And we may yet be free again,” she urged.

  Another companion unfastened his loincloth, to howls of delight from the crowd. The other slaves stared at him in confusion.

  “The Thracian in the cells spoke true,” he said. “Anything can be a weapon.”

  He scooped handfuls of sand into the loincloth, fashioning it into a crude cosh.

  “That against lions?” lamented the man sitting in the dust.

  “Us against lions!” Medea shouted, her voice full of defiance.

  The men needed no further urging. They, too, stripped off, filling their loincloths with sand from the arena floor. The crowd began to crow in appreciation.

  “Hopeless,” Verres laughed from the balcony.

  “Do you think so?” Cicero asked.

  “I would sooner wager coin on the white rabbits,” Ilithyia said.

  “Not so, my friends, not so,” Batiatus said, smiling.

  “They will die!” Verres cried.

  “They will die like gladiators!” Batiatus said. “Counting for all in the arena. Their sentence, punitively, denies them opportunity to die with swords in hand. But even so, they prepare to make stand in the arena. That will earn respect of the crowd.”

  Cicero watched as the victims in the arena tore off their clothes to fashion makeshift coshes and slings. There were cries of appreciation from the crowd at the sight of their naked forms, particularly the woman. As she tore off her tunic to fashion crude bracers on her arms, she revealed in the process intricate tattoos and scarring that crept across half her body. Cicero leaned in closer, squinting at the distant figures, unsure of what he saw.

  “Verres, Batiatus,” he murmured, his eyes locked on the arena, “I thought you said that all the household slaves were dead.”

 
; “Indeed,” Batiatus said. “They are.”

  “Then who is the painted woman who stands now upon the sands?”

  “The ringleader,” Verres said carefully. “The very instigator of the uprising.”

  “That little thing?” Cicero was surprised. “A gladiator?”

  “A vicious, conspiring, murderous bitch,” Verres said. “I fought her myself during the struggle.”

  “That is her!” Cicero declared suddenly. “The Getae witch yet lives! Stop the games! I want her spared.”

  Batiatus and Verres looked at each other and laughed louder than they had all day.

  “I order you, with the authority of the Senate and People of Rome, to halt these games!” Cicero insisted angrily.

  “You cannot stop the games!” Batiatus said. “Justice will be done, in the name of the gods themselves. Would you defy them...?” He pointed at the sky. And then he pointed all around at the yelling crowd. “Or them?”

  Cicero’s fists clenched in rage, and he leaned forward in his seat, willing the painted woman to fight.

  The doomed men huddled around Medea in the arena. About them, in a ragged circle, patrolled the group of lions, their heads held high, their eyes watching for any break in the human herd they stalked.

  “Make a weapon!” Medea urged one man who stared fixedly at the hunters. “As we do.”

  But he seemed not to hear her. Instead, without warning, he bolted from the group.

  “Do not!” Medea shouted. “It is what they want!”

  But he was already running, straight for the exit gate.

  The bulk of the lions maintained their pacing near the huddle of fighters. Two of the animals, however, peeled off from the main pride, and bounded quickly toward the lone figure.

  “A denarius on the male!” Verres shouted.

  “On the female!” Ilithyia cried, clutching his hand in excitement. It was all they had time to say before the two lions were neck and neck at the fugitive’s heels.

  As one they sprang, their competition forcing neither into a strong position. Instead, both snatched at the runner’s shoulders, each sinking its fangs deep into an arm. The man remained upright for an instant, before tumbling to the sand at the foot of the balcony, wordless, noiseless, his body was hidden beneath two powerful, tawny beasts.