by Quinn, Jack
Provocators58 and other blade-wielding, helmeted combatants were large, hard-muscled and powerful. Most of the retiarii, like myself, were slender and lithe with the nimble minds required to execute tactical ploys necessary to foil their brute opponents. With a thick pallet for sleep, adequate food, and regular visits from prostitutes—except for the prospect of death at the hand of one of my peers once or twice a month--my life of enforced slavery had turned almost bearable. Popular gladiators were occasionally requisitioned for sexual services by women and men of the aristocracy enthralled by the their ability to dominate professional killers in their beds, whose murderous activity or death they might witness on the morrow. The few female gladiators who fought each other with tightly wrapped breasts to avoid offending the sensibilities of bloodthirsty Roman spectators, were regularly sought out for orgies by provincial officials and wealthy merchants.
The lives of highly valued gladiators, therefore, were sometimes preserved by faking a kill, when two men of the same familia59 fought, or through arrangement between two lanista. This subterfuge was difficult to achieve, however, under the gaze of thousands of spectators clamoring for blood, because the traditional killing stroke severed the spinal cord at the back of the neck while the doomed man knelt grasping the knees of his executioner. To further discourage false killings some arenas had adopted the practice of slitting the throat of every loser carried off the sand. If the artifice were successful, however, the lanista would not schedule the saved gladiator to fight until they moved on to their next circus engagement.
Because the procurator Pontius Pilate, several divisions of troops, countless administrators, servants, freedmen and settlers from Rome lived and worked in Caesarea, the games were frequent, and the stadium filled to capacity, which prompted Fabian to remain in that metropolis of fifty-thousand people for two months. He kept me at training, practice and exercise during our time there and our month’s stay in Ramat Gam, until we traveled to the city of Beersheba at the southern extremity of Palestine. At the end of those several grueling months of punishing work, exercise, nourishing food and nights of refreshing sleep, my diminutive body had filled out appreciably, my new musculature solidity of chest, arms and legs serving to make me as strong as some of the taller gladiators, yet more agile, and I believe more wily, the combination making my abrupt movements in combat unpredictable.
Each lanista arranges the engagement of his familia gladiatoria with editor60.or arena managers, whereby a nominal bribe can result in the pitting of one gladiator against another of lesser or equal skill. My first combatant was a novice myrmillo from another familia who had lost two previous bouts, both of them missus61, indicating the crowd was impressed by his audacity or courage.
I slept not at all the night before that match, contemplating the forbidden suicide of my religion, by which many men in my position choose to escape the torment of our inhumane lives. The next morning, the sounds of boisterous spectators above my cell conjured up the slaughter of a hundred or more wild animals by bestiarii who had opened the games, chariot races that elevated from a contest of speed to bloody spectacles of collision, overturned vehicles, maimed horses and trampled men, and the mass slaughter of noxii.
My body felt weak throughout as I entered the arena in blinding sunlight from the dark carcare62. to a tumultuous roar from thousands of voices anticipating the assured bloodletting of the preliminary single combat of the day. A slave handed me my fascina as I tried to adjust my vision to the brilliant light, taking in the flailing arms of spectators in multicolored togas surrounding me on all sides on tiered benches, wealthy and titled citizens of Rome lounging in the front seats in the shade of striped awnings wafting lazily in the hot breeze, Pilate and his entourage in a special section among them, my nostrils suddenly filled with the stench of blood and gore from earlier events.
My opponent emerged from a carcare on the opposite side of the arena in a glinting bronze helmet and red subligaculum63 brandishing a large rectangular shield. He grabbed his only weapon from a slave, thrusting his hand through the loop of the thong on the hilt of the sharp double edge scutum and ran to the center circle waving the sword in the air to the delight of the crowd.
I walked to meet the man, favoring the new brace to a querulous murmur from the stands and a pompous strut from my opponent. People come to games to witness spilled blood, hacked and dismembered torsos, and prolonged battles displaying courage and skill. They do not appreciate a short fight and quick kill, which we are instructed to avoid, even at the risk of losing. I will not describe that first encounter, except to confess that the initial ferocious charge of that tall myrmillo in his terrifying, plumed fish-scale helmet sent a bolt of energy through my body, crouching in fear before that long sword held high, poised to slash down at my bare neck. My subsequent reaction was more the result of instinct and training than skill or bravery, which culminated in my exit from the sand amid derision from the crowd and censure from Fabian.
I do not relish the recollection of my first murder of a human being. Despite the more conscious killing I have done since, the mental picture of the futile struggle of that first netted man has visited me nightly, my recollection of his brief knowledge within that anonymous mask that his life would seep from his chest in seconds at the single plunge of the deadly prongs of my fascina.
I was not scheduled to fight again in Beersheba, but if I had been, Fabian assured me, even my blackened red hair would not prevent the crowd from calling for my death the first opportunity or provocation if I again cheated them of a prolonged engagement. For his own part, if I ever again slew an opponent so quickly, he promised to sell me to the most unconscionable lanista he could find, or engage me against some seasoned giant killer who was sure to spill my last drop of blood from multiple wounds before administering his final, welcome ferrum recipere64.
Following that initial contest, I began bribing the guards to bring me a full wineskin, with which I chased those horrible blood-soaked images of death on the hot sand from behind my eyes and drank myself to oblivion every night when I would not fight on the morrow.
Although trapped in my circumstances, I was burdened by shame and guilt, not by breaking the strict laws of my religion, I was surprised to discover, but my own nagging conscience. During my early years on the circuit, Fabian arranged contests throughout the southern provinces that took us to Jerusalem, Joppa, Haifa, Nahariya and Qiryat in Palestine; Damaskus and Rabbah in Jordan; across the Lebanese border to Tyre and Bayrut, plus other smaller outposts of the Empire with amphitheaters65 whose names do not bear repeating. I was fairly certain that neither my family nor acquaintances were aware of my circumstances, nor that any Jew in the Galilee would attend the games. I did take the precaution of blackening my hair with charred firewood crushed in water when I fought in Jerusalem, because I was concerned that some spectator in the amphitheater would talk about the performance of a gladiator with red hair and a crippled right leg, which might get back to James. Since there was nothing else for it, I did my best and always, to my great relief, received a stans missus66 in that arena when bested by a more experienced opponent.
During those years fighting for my life in the major Roman cities throughout the provinces, I came to view Fabian as a moderately sincere man, concerned for the well-being of his gladiators as long as they performed well and enriched his coffers. Having been in our position himself, he realized that our main reason for fighting well and pleasing the crowds was to build a reputation that would draw enthusiastic spectators and within our short gladiatorial life span, accumulate enough money from salary, audience donations, wagering and prizes from editors to purchase our freedom and retire. In the meanwhile, a gladiator who had achieved the stature of primus palus67 could demand the best quarters, personal slaves and a percentage of the remuneration paid to his lanista for his performance. “Subsisto alive68,” was our motto.
The goal of a lanista, such as Fabian, was to own a large familia of winning fighters whose perf
ormance was sought by editors and arena managers throughout the provinces and eventually the Circus Maximus in Rome itself. To this end he acquired and recruited angry young ex-legionnaires with combat experience discharged from the military for some minor infraction, who required little training or encouragement. One of his few slave purchases included a dumb, black-skinned Nubian of enormous proportions from Egypt, whose tongue had been cut at the root by a prior owner as punishment for some perceived transgression. Although Fabian began training him as a secutor, because of my facility with languages, he installed him as my cellmate, bidding me to assist in his communications with others as best I could.
Although I never learned his name, the man possessed enough intelligence to make himself understood to me through gestures, drawings in the sandy earth, and characters he scratched on the mud-brick wall with a sharp stone. I did learn that he had twenty years of his age, three less than my own at that time, a wife and three children in the wilds below the border with Jordan, and was a noncombatant civilian captured as the Roman legions overran his country. He laughed and giggled at practically everything, shaking his entire body in good-natured pantomime of his errors in the day’s practice session, a silly prank played on him by another cellmate or the antics of a rat he caught and kept for a time under an overturned bowl. I do not believe Nubian had ever killed a man before, but had certainly stalked and slew animals. For that reason, Fabian was tempted to train him as a bestiarii, but decided that risking that mountain of potential death on a starving tiger would not be a good business decision. Despite his training and observation of actual one-on-one combat in the arena, and often the ensuing death of one of the fighters, I became increasingly concerned that the simple black man did not comprehend the reality of his own forthcoming requirement to kill or be killed on the same bloody sand.
We were allowed no fighting tools or any sharp instruments in our quarters for fear of an uprising such as that led by the slave Spartacus over a hundred years ago in Rome and to deter the constant attempt at suicide by inferior or reluctant fighters, of which the mass strangulation of twenty-nine gladiators recently purchased by the wealthy political editor Symmachus in the capital city was a stark reminder. Since I could not seem to adequately demonstrate the ultimate lethal aspect of Nubian’s initial contest, I did attempt to instruct him in a variety of tricks and strategies to employ against a retiarii, and as best I could, any one swordsman pitted against another. The day before Nubian was scheduled to fight an equally large Thracian from another familia, I brought him out to the mouth of the carcere to watch a match between an hoplomachus69 and provocator. By gestures and my few words of his Egyptian dialect, I was finally able to convince the man that he would either lose his life on the morrow or be forced to take one.
With that final understanding, his usual pleasant expression was replaced by a disturbed frown, with which he turned and reentered the dark tunnel to fall on his sleeping pad, a thick black arm flung over his eyes. Later that night, in the dim light of our solitary oil lamp, I woke to see him kiss and fondle the rough clay figures he had fashioned to represent his wife and children.
It was a somber Nubian who took his sharpened sword from a slave the next morning, his visage hidden behind a sculpted helmet of polished bronze as he walked with measured steps toward his opponent who already occupied center sand. The anticipated combat between black and white giants brought resounding acclaim to the throats of the spectators even before the first blow had been struck.
Fabian later claimed that Mars was napping that afternoon, after the two burly gladiators had thrust and parried, stabbed and wounded, scraped and bloodied one another in aggressive, though inept and ultimately ineffectual results. The crowd evidently recognized a pair of unskilled but promising combatants, awarding them unenthusiastic stans missus for their prolonged encounter.
I heard Nubian cry that night and wondered that he had not done so before his first encounter, rather than after it. In retrospect, we all react differently to the same stimulus. Where mine became a resolve to remain on the edge of the fickle torchlight of fame, avoiding censure from the most rabid spectators and accrue as much money as possible to buy my freedom as quickly as I could--Nubian seemed determined only to withdraw within himself. He shut the world, including me, out o f his private hell, except for those mindless minutes on the sands of the arena where he became the most brutal defender of his own life of all the gladiators I have ever met. During my last two years with Fabian, we traveled around the Mer Mare70 through the conquered Roman provinces in Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Albania and finally, his ultimate goal: Rome in Italia.
Our engagement in Athens lasted two months, where we observed a unique battle between a team of two female secutors against a single male Thracian that was extremely pleasing to the crowd that awarded the women a stans missus. The day following that conflict, Fabian summoned me to his room and bid me to sit. In the harsh light from the window, I noticed that he had lost more hair since he had bought me, and the lines in his face were deeper.
“The lanista who owned the women and Thracian,” he told me, “received double the fee for that contest.”
“Do you intend to buy women?”
Fabian waved a hand impatiently. “Argh! They bring trouble, too.”
I waited for the purpose of his summons.
“The pairing of unequal teams would do just as well.”
I must have looked puzzled, because I could not think of anything that had not been tried, from heavily armed gladiators against a mob of unarmed slaves, a hundred wild beasts, fifty horsemen....
“I want to pair you and the Nubian against five provocators.”
“Five!”
“A giant secutor and undersized, crippled retiarius taking on double their number fighting back to back.”
“You would lose a substantial investment if the people went against us.”
“They will laud your courage,” he insisted, “regardless of the outcome.”
I knew I had no choice if Fabian ordered the contest, and also realized that he was counting on me to persuade the volatile Nubian. “Taking that kind of risk over a standard fight will require a percent of your payment.” I felt bold. “Plus our regular salaries.”
“For you.”
“Nubian, also.”
The lanista blew a breath of air from his mouth in resignation to my terms. Although he could have denied them, I knew he expected such a demand from me and realized our enthusiasm for the contest would be important to its success.
Nubian cared little for the money, but relied on my judgment. He seemed more interested in our fighting together than any other aspect of the concept. I also suspect that the huge Black still hated the need to kill an occasional opponent and was counting on my apparent passionless attitude toward administering the ferrum recipere.
Fabian trained us together to our great advantage for two weeks in secret against a half dozen swordsmen of our familia in a small area beneath the stadium behind our quarters. Since Nubian lacked the ability to speak, I was appointed team leader and taught him the Aramaic words for the various moves, tactics and warnings we would require during combat. For his part, my teammate would jab me with shield, elbow or sword hilt to alert me to danger.
Suffice it to report that the concept was a prodigious triumph in Athens, and instrumental, I believe, in securing our familia a coveted engagement in Rome. Fabian had staged our matches with high drama, instructing Nubian and me to enter the scorching sand from opposite sides of the arena to a moderate clamor from the crowd at the prospect of a diminutive David fighting a towering black Goliath. We stood side by side as three swordsmen jogged toward us to increasingly loud spectator approbation as a fourth, then final secutor from other familiae aligned themselves before us. Teamed together in that first instance and others that followed, the bulging-muscled Nubian waded into the midst of our opponents, dispatching three, sometimes four of the five to my one or two. He did so with abandon and
glee, disarming, spilling blood, wounding or severing a limb, but never administered a killing blow. In fact we were consistently victorious during the several weeks we were paired in this way, and our adversaries so determined, that no crowd, editor or consul ever demanded one of our opponents periit71.
3779 Tammuz (CE 33 June)
The city of Rome sprawled out before us was the most glorious apparition I have ever witnessed before or since. We traveled the hundred miles from the port of Pescara on the east coast to the capital city in four-wheeled carts that Fabian had rented for his familia, whose slaves, tironae72 and meridiana73 jogged beside, arriving on the crest of the Caelian Hill of the legendary seven, in mid-morning of a day whose dazzling sun reflected on the brilliant white buildings below that stretched as far as my vision could see.
Always the astute businessman, Fabian had made signs promoting our scheduled contests which he attached to the sides of the carts before we paraded along an indirect route to our amphitheater, down the Via Ostiensis, even along the Palitina section permeated by the stench of excrement and rancid garbage, beleaguered by abject poverty, shabby wall-to-wall houses, dirty children, dispirited adults and snarling dogs.
We soon turned onto a wide avenue lined with magnificent columns fronting tall peak-roofed buildings of exquisite architectural design, the ubiquitous S.P.Q.R.74 emblazoned in stone
entablatures, pagan temples, baths, lush homes fenced with wrought iron, walled courtyards and balconies, vendors of every imaginable product clustered together under striped awnings. We passed through the Forum in the company of gilded tironae borne by slave quartets carrying wealthy women enclosed in diaphanous curtains, affluent men vying for prominence with chariots of carved wood and bronze, drawn by sleek horses prancing through thousands of citizens on foot, men and boys clad in sparkling white knee-length tunics belted at the waist, older men in heavier togas draped over one shoulder, women and girls in pleated stolae, all gawking, uttering shouts of welcome and clapping hands at our passing, opening a path in their midst, envisioning us prostrate and bleeding into the sand of the arena before their eyes in the days to follow.
