In the Shadow of the Wall

by Gordon Anthony

  The training began. It was brutal, efficient and relentless. They ran, lifted weights, spent hours hacking at wooden poles with heavy wooden swords, jumped on rolling logs to improve their balance, and had to run a course which involved dodging swinging weights and beams. In the sweltering summer heat they were soon exhausted but the trainers gave them no respite, working them till they dropped. Brude had thought he was fit and strong but this was the hardest thing he had ever done and he never had a problem sleeping at nights. Often it was all he could do to stay awake long enough to climb into bed. His muscles ached from exertion and his body was bruised whenever he misjudged a swinging obstacle and caught a blow from one of the weights.

  Despite the exhaustion, the training had its compensations. The food was varied and good and, if Curtius deemed they had done well, he would sometimes send one of the female slaves to their cell at night. That was about the only thing that could keep them awake.

  In the barracks room they were soon accepted, although only if they kept their place in the pecking order. The experienced fighters were always at the head of the queue, sat together to eat and rarely spoke to the newcomers. Then there was a group of men who had fought a few times and survived and, finally, those who were untried in actual combat. Despite the warning Curtius had given about forming friendships, Brude soon discovered that many of the gladiators were close. Living together in such proximity, he supposed it was inevitable but, for his own part, he took care not to become too friendly with any of them, not even the three he had arrived with. He thought Josephus was mad anyway. The little Jew boasted he had killed half a dozen Roman soldiers in his homeland in what he called the perpetual struggle for freedom from the imperial yoke. He insisted he was enjoying the training because it would allow him to kill more Romans. He did not change his view even when Brude pointed out that most of the gladiators were slaves, not Romans. “I’ll kill them anyway,” Josephus laughed. “The Lord has told me that is my destiny.”

  Valerius was strong but slow-witted and Brude had little in common with him while Sarcho made no attempt to learn Latin and spoke to nobody, so Brude was happy to keep himself to himself. He concentrated all his energies on working hard at the training. He still recalled the words of Basillus, in the slave stockade four years earlier, about how a slave could win his freedom in the arena. That dream kept Brude going, drove him to become as fast and as strong as he could.

  Like all of the gladiators, he took a few bruises and pulled some muscles. When that happened he would be sent to the infirmary where a Greek physician would examine him. If the physician said he should stop training, there was no argument until he was pronounced fit again. Brude quickly realised, though, that getting hurt deliberately to be allowed some days of rest was not a good idea because when he returned to training he had to work even harder to catch up with the others. If he was not able to train, it also meant that he was assigned other duties such as cleaning out the privies. After only a few weeks, most of them preferred to put up with the aches and pains, refuso go to the infirmary unless they were genuinely unable to train.

  It was three months before they were given any training in actual combat, three months of hard work, which improved their strength and their speed beyond anything Brude would have thought possible. He tried catching flies off the wall of his cell in the evenings. He never quite managed it but he felt that one day soon he might do it.

  He learned more about the school as well. Lentulus was not the owner, just the manager who ran it on behalf of an ex-slave called Trimalchio who was, therefore, Brude’s master. “You’ll hardly ever see him, though,” Curtius told him. “He pays for the running of the place and takes a share of the profits but it’s just a hobby for him.”

  “He was a slave and he owns the school?” Brude was incredulous.

  “Yes, he was a slave and he is now a very rich man indeed. He’s a pompous ass, but he’s a rich pompous ass and he owns more land than you or I could walk across in a day.”

  “How does a slave get to be that rich?” Brude asked him.

  “Don’t start getting ideas,” warned Curtius. “First you’ve got to gain your freedom and then you’ve got to earn the money. Trimalchio has fingers in lots of pies and from what I hear he has an influential patron.”

  “But a slave can be freed and become wealthy?” Brude insisted, his mind once again racing with dreams of freedom.

  “It can happen,” Curtius conceded, “but most slaves die as slaves. Even if you do get your freedom, either by buying it, which you won’t because you’ll never be given enough money, or by winning it in the arena, like I did, you still stay poor.”

  “Poor but free.”

  Curtius looked at Brude seriously. “Look, Brutus, you’ve got some talent and, if I was a betting man, I might put money on you being good enough to win the rudis and get your freedom. But don’t count on it. Aim for it and try your damndest and you might get there if you are very, very lucky, but this is a dangerous life. No matter how good you are, and you’re not that good yet, believe me, you can have bad luck or you can get over-confident or you can simply meet someone who’s better than you. When that happens, it can all be over.”

  Brude listened to the advice and promised he would work as hard as he could, but the dreams of freedom would not go away.

  He also learned that while the threat of death was a constant companion for every gladiator, it was not as common as Curtius made out to the newcomers. There were twenty-six gladiators in the school, all at various stages. Those who were deemed ready to fight would only be taken to the arena perhaps three or four times a year and, even if they lost, death was not always inevitable. Gladiators were expensive to train and to keep and no lanista liked losing an experienced man so the school charged a lot more when a gladiator died. The magistrates who paid for, and supervised, the shows knew this, so would often let a gladiator live, especially if they had fought well and enough of the crowd called for them to be allowed to survive. On the other hand, they sometimes liked to show their generosity to the crowd by condemning a defeated gladiator to death. If the emperor was presiding, there was more chance of this happening because emperors liked to be generous to the people and money was no object for a man who ruled the empire. One more dead gladiator would make no difference to the emperor’s wealth.

  So every few weeks Curtius and Lentulus would go off to Rome with a few of the experienced men and, perhaps, a novice they deemed ready. Later that day they would come back, sometimes without one or two of those who had left. The bodies would follow later, brought on a wagon and the men would be buried in the small graveyard, which sat outside the school. Often they all came back, even men who had lost their fights. Brude saw that such men were welcomed even though the school had lost some reputation. Every gladiator knew that defeat could happen to any of them. There was no shame in it provided the man had fought well. That did not stop them fighting hard in training and constantly trying to outdo each other, to improve their standing in the group, but when it came to actual combat there was a feeling of togetherness, a fraternity of fighting men who looked out for each other because of the dangerous lives they shared.

  By the time the autumn rains were turning colder and winter was approaching, Brude was given to Kallikrates, a Greek who had lost his left hand after a wound had become infected, forcing the physician to amputate it at the wrist. Kallikrates could no longer fight but he had been allowed to stay at the school to help train the other fighters. He was very good at it. He had fought as a Samnite and now he trained the eight men in the school who also fought that way. Brude was allowed to join the group and was initiated by being dressed in the armour of a Samnite, given a wooden sword and set against Pollio, the most experienced man in the school, who had fought nine times and won seven of the bouts.

  Brude listened carefully as Kallikrates explained the armour. Wearing only a loincloth, Brude had an iron greave strapped to his left shin and a broad leather band fastened around his
belly like an enormous belt. Next, the ornate crested helmet with its face guard was placed over his head. He could hardly see anything out of the eyeholes and the weight of the helmet was far greater than he had expected. A heavy linen sleeve was strapped to his right arm by leather bands, providing protection for his sword arm. Then he was given the rectangular curved shield, made from layers of plywood bound in iron, with a large, round iron boss at its centre. The shield was large enough to cover his body from the gro his shoulder and was curved so that it provided almost full protection when held in front of his body. Lastly, Kallikrates gave him the heavy wooden sword then shoved him onto the sand of the training arena to face Pollio.

  The fight did not last long. Brude was nervous, felt restricted by the helmet and was still trying to adjust the shield when Pollio attacked, using his own shield as a battering ram to knock Brude off balance. Pollio’s sword cracked against Brude’s helmet, sending a ringing through Brude’s head. Dazed, he waved his sword in a futile attempt to hit Pollio who simply blocked it with his shield before knocking Brude over with another massive shove.

  Brude crashed to the ground, jarring his head when the heavy helmet struck the sand and getting a crack on the ribs from the rim of his own shield. Lying on the ground, he felt Pollio’s foot on his chest. Angry and disappointed, he let go of his sword and heard the laughter from the watching men. Kallikrates helped him to his feet and removed his helmet for him, a broad grin on his face. “We do that to every new man,” he said cheerily. “It makes you realise how much you still have to learn.”

  More training and more mock combats followed. Kallikrates showed Brude how to use his shield as a weapon, not just something to hide behind. “The sword does the killing but the shield is what can really do the damage,” the Greek told him.

  He was pitted against novices from the other types, the Retiarii and the Thracians, once against Josephus who was making a name for himself among the Thracian fighters. He danced round Brude, lashing at him with his tiny shield and a wooden replica of the curved sica. Brude was adjudged to have lost that fight but it was a close contest, and he was pleased with himself that he managed to give the Jew a real test.

  “You’re very fast for a Samnite,” Josephus told him after the fight.

  “Not fast enough yet,” said Brude. “I couldn’t catch you with a single blow.”

  “Nobody’s as fast as me,” Josephus said happily, “but you were close a couple of times.”

  So Brude worked on his speed all through the winter. The cold, which others complained of, did not bother him. Compared to the winters he knew from his youth in Broch Tava, the Roman winter was just pleasantly cool.

  He began to win some of the mock combats, even against men who had fought in the arena, and soon he found that he and Josephus were moving up the complex and unspoken social scale of the barrack room, even though neither of them had ever actually fought a real fight.

  Then, on a day which he reckoned must be near to his twenty-first birthday, Curtius called him and Josephus out of training and told them they would be going with a couple of other men to fight in the arena. “I think you’re both ready,” he told them, “and so do your trainers. This is a small show in a town a few days’ march down the coast so hopefully it will be a nice easy start for you.”

  Brude’s stomach churned all day.

  It took them over a week to get to Paestum, nestled on the Campanian coast south of Rome. It was the home town of a young senator who had just been elected as a praetor and wished to celebrate his success by giving a small show to the people of his home town. The emperor had given his permission so a small wooden amphitheatre had been hastily constructed on the outskirts of the town. Curtius, accompanied by two guards, had taken four gladiators, as instructed by Lentulus. They were to fight four men from another school, the school of Propertius, which, Curtius said, was one of the biggest around. “It would be nice to put one over those bastards,” he told them cheerily. It had been arranged that each school would provide two novices and two experienced fighters. Brude and Josephus were the novices while Pollio and a tall Retiarius named Frontius were the experienced men.

  Brude was nervous but Curtius sat with him and Josephus in the cramped space set aside for the gladiators beneath the rising rows of seats. He talked to them calmly yet reassuringly, reminding them of their training and instilling confidence. Then he went to meet the lanista from the school of Propertius, leaving the gladiators to listen to the sounds of the crowd gathering in the tiers of benches above their heads. Over the clumping of footsteps and the murmur of voices they heard a woman laugh. “Sounds nice,” Pollio said.

  “She probably looks like a goat,” replied Frontius. Brude and Josephus laughed. Then the door opened and Curtius returned. He looked at Brude and told him that he would be up first, fighting a Retiarius.

  Brude threw up.

  Curtius checked Brude’s armour, tightening the greave on his leg, checking the straps on the thick linen binding on his right arm, then fastening the wide leather belt that protected his belly. Finally he handed Brude his helmet and told him to tuck it under his arm. “You’ll be fine,” Curtius said. “Just remember, the trident you can dodge or block, it’s the net that you have to watch out for. Get tangled in that and you’re in trouble, so stay clear of it. Uhisstand?”

  “I remember.”

  “And try to get the crowd on your side. That way even if you get into trouble, they’ll want to keep you alive.” Brude had heard Curtius say that hundreds of times but, right then, it somehow didn’t sound quite as reassuring as it had before.

  Curtius led him out into the narrow corridor that led from the cells to the arena. In the dim light, Brude felt hemmed in, as if the walls were closing in to crush him. The noise of the crowd filtered down, adding to his nervousness. He had never fought in front of an audience before and the thought that he had to die for the entertainment of the Romans made him angry, yet the anger could not force out the fear.

  There were armed guards in the tunnel and another man, tall, wearing a loincloth and sandals, who stood facing the entrance door to the arena. A lanista stood beside him. The gladiator’s skin was black and Brude hesitated, fascinated by the sight. He had heard about the Nubians but never seen one before. The man turned to look at Brude, opening his mouth in a feral grin, his teeth pearly white against his dark skin. Brude struggled to keep the fear from his face. Curtius leaned close behind and whispered into Brude’s ear, “His blood is red, the same as yours.” Brude nodded, thankful for the reassurance. Curtius was telling him that the Nubian was just a man, whatever colour his skin was. Brude took a deep breath, trying to calm his mind, to think of nothing but the task in hand.

  In the shadows of the tunnel, he had a closer look at his opponent. The Retiarius’ only armour was an iron shoulder guard on his left shoulder and a long sleeve of linen down his left arm. He would be unhampered by the weight that Brude had to carry. He would have speed and the weapons he used would give him greater reach.

  The weapons were handed to them. The Nubian strapped his wide net to his left wrist, had a small dagger wrapped round his waist then took his trident in his right hand, checking the wickedly barbed tines to make sure they were sharp. Brude was given his shield, strapped his left arm through the loops and took the gladius in his right hand. It was heavy, but not as heavy as the training swords they used so it seemed relatively light to his touch. Short and double-edged, it was designed for thrusting, the way the legions did their killing, not the wild swings of a barbarian long sword.

  There was a fanfare of trumpets then a herald’s voice called out, announcing to the crowd the beginning of the games being given by their own Publius Cornelius Glabro, son of Publius, by kind permission of the emperor, Lucius Septimius Severus. Brude barely listened. His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry, the taste of his own vomit still lingering. Then Curtius slapped him on the back as two guards pulled the doors open to let in a blaze of sunlight. The
trumpets blasted again.

  The Nubian strode forwards, out into the light with Brude only a pace behind him, walking out into an amphitheatre for the first time. The roar of the crowd met him.

  The amphitheatre was both a surprise and a disappointment. The arena itself, oval in shape, was not sand but hard earth. It had walls of wood, too high to jump to the first row of seats from ground level and seats that rose in steep tiers. The people at the front were close enough to make out their faces clearly and hear their individual voices above the general hubbub. There were shouts of encouragement, clapping and cheering as the people anticipated the show. Brude tried to ignore them but saw that the Nubian was grinning broadly and nodding his head to people in the crowd, waving his trident in salute.

  The two combatants walked to one end of the arena where Glabro himself sat with his friends and clients. The two gladiators gave the traditional salute, “We who are about to die salute you!” Brude heard the Nubian’s voice, recognised the confidence in his tone, the conviction of victory. Glabro beamed proudly, waved at them to begin and they backed away from each other. Curtius helped Brude put his helmet on, making sure it was fastened tightly, rapping his hand on it when he was satisfied. “Remember your training,” he said urgently. “Watch for the net.” Then Curtius stepped back, as did the opposing lanista, each holding a whip and a short sword. There were four guards, armed with spears, and archers standing round the top of the arena wall. Gladiators, heroes to the crowd, were still only slaves. If they did not fight, or tried to attack anyone but each other, they would be killed without hesitation.