Spartacus (17 page)
Authors: Howard Fast
Tags: #Ancient, #Historical fiction, #Spartacus - Fiction, #Revolutionaries, #Gladiators - Fiction, #Biographical fiction, #Fiction, #Romance, #Revolutionaries - Fiction, #Rome, #Historical, #Slave insurrections, #Rome - History - Servile Wars; 135-71 B.C - Fiction, #General, #Gladiators, #History
“Do you have a heart of stone?”
“I am a slave. I suppose a slave should have a heart of stone or no heart at all. You have good things to remember, but I am
koruu,
and I have nothing at all to remember that is any good.”
koruu,
and I have nothing at all to remember that is any good.”
“Is that why you can watch this and not be moved?”
“It will not help me to be moved,” answered Spartacus dully.
“I don’t know you, Spartacus. You are white and I am black. We are different. In my land, when a man’s heart fills with sorrow, he weeps. But in you Thracians, the tears have dried up. Look at me. What do you see?”
“I see a man weeping,” said Spartacus.
“And am I less a man because of that? I tell you, Spartacus, I will not fight you. May they be damned and cursed and everlastingly cursed! I will not fight you, I tell you.”
“If we don’t fight, we both die,” Spartacus answered quietly.
“Then kill me, my friend. I am tired of living. I am sick of living.”
“Quiet in there!” The soldiers hammered at the wall of the shed, but the black man turned and smashed his great fists against the wall until the whole shed shook. Then he stopped very suddenly and sat down on the bench and pillowed his face in his hands. Spartacus walked over to him and lifted his head and tenderly wiped the beads of sweat from his brow.
“Gladiator, befriend no gladiator.”
“Spartacus, why is man born?” he whispered in agony.
“To live.”
“Is that the whole answer?”
“The only answer.”
“I don’t understand your answer, Thracian.”
“Why—why, my friend?” Spartacus asked, almost pleadingly. “The child knows the answer, the moment it comes out of the womb. It is such a simple answer.”
“No answer for me,” the black man said, “and my heart is breaking for those who used to love me.”
“And others will love you.”
“No more,” said the black man, “no more.”
In after years, Caius would not remember the morning of the two pairs in Capua with any great clarity. There were many sensations in his life; sensations were bought and paid for, and Spartacus was only a Thracian name. Romans held that all Thracian names sounded alike, Gannicus, Spartacus, Menicus, Floracus, Leacus. Caius might have said, telling the story, that the Jew was also a Thracian, for the growing lore of the arena and the drug-like addiction of a whole people to the arena had given the term Thracian two meanings. On the one hand, Thracian was the term for any of the folk of the hundred tribes who lived in the southern section of the Balkan area, and by the Romans, used even more loosely to define any barbarian people east of the Balkans across the steppes to the Black Sea. Those close to Macedonia spoke Greek, but Greek was by no means a language of all who were called Thracians—even as the curved knife was by no means the common weapon of all those tribes.
On the other hand, in the sporting language of the city of Rome and in the common slang of the arena, a Thracian was anyone who fought with the
sica
. Thereby, the Jew was a Thracian, for Caius neither knew nor cared that he came of the party of the
Zealots
, wild, stiff-necked peasants of the Judean hills, who had carried a banner of incessant rebellion and hatred for the oppressor ever since the old days of the Maccabees and the first agrarian war. Caius knew little of Judea and cared less; the Jew was a circumcised Thracian. He had seen a pair fight, and the second pair would follow. The second pair was more unusual, but in his memories of what had happened to the black man he forgot the black man’s opponent. He remembered well, however, their entrance into the arena, the two of them walking from their cage and from the shadow into the bright, bleeding sunlight and onto the spotted yellow sand. The birds flew off—the bloodbirds,
avis sanguinaria
, the dainty little birds of spotted yellow who pecked so voraciously at the stained sand, filling their gullets. Like the sand, they were spotted yellow, and when they took flight, it was like gobs of sand flung into the air. The two men then halted at the appointed place. Here, do homage to those who have purchased your flesh and blood; here is the moment when life is worthless, when dignity and shame alter the meaning of life. This is what is arrived at; the mistress of the world amuses herself with blood.
sica
. Thereby, the Jew was a Thracian, for Caius neither knew nor cared that he came of the party of the
Zealots
, wild, stiff-necked peasants of the Judean hills, who had carried a banner of incessant rebellion and hatred for the oppressor ever since the old days of the Maccabees and the first agrarian war. Caius knew little of Judea and cared less; the Jew was a circumcised Thracian. He had seen a pair fight, and the second pair would follow. The second pair was more unusual, but in his memories of what had happened to the black man he forgot the black man’s opponent. He remembered well, however, their entrance into the arena, the two of them walking from their cage and from the shadow into the bright, bleeding sunlight and onto the spotted yellow sand. The birds flew off—the bloodbirds,
avis sanguinaria
, the dainty little birds of spotted yellow who pecked so voraciously at the stained sand, filling their gullets. Like the sand, they were spotted yellow, and when they took flight, it was like gobs of sand flung into the air. The two men then halted at the appointed place. Here, do homage to those who have purchased your flesh and blood; here is the moment when life is worthless, when dignity and shame alter the meaning of life. This is what is arrived at; the mistress of the world amuses herself with blood.
Caius would remember how small the Thracian looked against the giant black man of Africa, for that was an engraved picture on the sunlit background of yellow sand, on the unpainted wooden boards of the amphitheatre; but he would not remember what Bracus had said. Those words were small and inconsequential, and they washed away in the river of time. The petty whims of such men are never causes; they only seem to be causes; even Spartacus was not a cause, but the result of what was normal to Caius. And the whim which had led Bracus to plan this microcosmic orgy of death and suffering for the amusement of his empty-headed, worthless companion did not seem a whim to Caius, but rather a thing of great originality and excitement.
So the pair did their homage and the Romans sipped wine and nibbled sweets. Then came the weapon-bearer. For Spartacus, the knife. For the black man, the long, heavy, three-pronged fish fork and the fish net. They were both clowns in their shame and bloody degradation. The whole world had been enslaved so that these Romans could sit here and nibble sweets and sip wine in the shady comfort of their box.
The pair took the weapons. And then, as Caius saw it, the black man went mad. Madness was the only construction Caius could place upon it. Neither he nor Bracus nor Lucius could have made the journey to the black man’s beginnings, and only if they had made that journey would they have known that the black man did not go mad at all. Not even in mind could they have seen the house he had by a riverside and the children his wife bore him and the land he tilled and the fruit of the land, before the soldiers came and with them the slave dealers to harvest that crop of human life so magically transmuted into gold.
So they only saw the black man go mad. They saw him cast his net aside and shout a wild warcry. And then they saw him hurtle toward the grandstand. A trainer with bared sword tried to stop him, and then the trainer was squirming on the three-pronged fork like a pricked fish, and then hurled into the air like a fish, turning over and over and screaming in the air before he struck the ground. Now a six-foot fence barred the path of the black giant, but he tore the boards from it as if they were paper. He was transformed in his strength; his strength made him like a weapon driving toward the box where the party sat.
But now soldiers were running from the sides of the arena. The foremost soldier braced himself, legs spread on the sand, and hurled his spear, the great wooden spear with the iron point which nothing in the world could resist, which had leveled the armies of a hundred nations. But it did not level the black man. The spear caught him in the back, the iron point driving through his chest and out of the front of him, yet it didn’t halt him, and even with that monstrous wooden pole attached to his back, he clawed on toward the Romans. A second spear tore through his side, and yet he struggled onward. A third spear entered his back and a fourth spear pierced his neck. Now at last, he was finished—yet the fork in his outstretched hand touched the rail of the box where the Romans cowered in terror. And there he lay with the blood gushing out of him and there he died.
But it must be noted that through all of this, Spartacus had not moved. If he had moved, he would have died. He cast his knife into the sand, and remained without moving. Life is the answer to life.
PART FOUR.Which concerns Marcus Tullius Cicero and his interest in the origin of the Great Servile War.
If at the
Villa Salaria
, where a group of well-bred Roman ladies and gentlemen had come together for a night to partake of the thoughtful hospitality of a Roman plantation owner and gentleman, there was overmuch thought of Spartacus and the great revolt he had led, this was only to be expected. They had all of them reached the villa over the Appian Way, most of them coming south from Rome, and Cicero coming north toward Rome on his way from Sicily, where, as
quaestor
, he held an important government post. Thus, their hour to hour travel was filled with the presence of the tokens of punishment, the stern and uncompromising
signa poenae
which told all the world that the Roman law was both merciless and just.
Yet the least sensitive of human beings could not have travelled the great highway without pondering upon the series of terrible battles between slaves and free men which had shaken the Republic to its very roots—and indeed shaken the whole world which the Republic ruled. There was no slave on the plantation who did not toss uneasily in his sleep at the thought of so many like him hanging from the numberless crosses. It was a mighty passion, this particular crucifixion, and the pain of six thousand men who died so slowly and so cruelly pervaded the whole countryside. That was only to be expected, and it was only to be expected that a young man as thoughtful as Marcus Tullius Cicero would not be unaffected.
Concerning Cicero, it is worth remarking that men like Antonius Caius went out of their way to offer him a deference beyond what was due to his thirty-two years.
It was not a question of lineage, of current family importance, or even of personal charm or ingratiating quality; for even his friends did not consider Cicero to be particularly charming. Clever, he was, but others were just as clever. Specifically, Cicero was one of those young men—present in every age—who are capable of shedding every scruple, every ethic, every confusion of current morality, every impulse to ease conscience or guilt, every impulse of mercy or justice which might stand in the way of success. This should not imply that he was not concerned with justice, morality or mercy; he was, but only in terms of self-advancement. Cicero was not merely ambitious, for ambition pure and simple could contain certain elements of emotion; Cicero was coldly and shrewdly concerned with success—and if his calculations sometimes backfired, that too was not unusual in men of his type.
They had not yet backfired at this time. He was the boy wonder who had practiced law at eighteen, fought a major campaign—purely for prestige and with no bodily danger—in his twenties, and turning thirty, had stepped into an important administrative post of the government. His essays—on philosophy and government—and his orations were read and admired, and if he borrowed the thin substance they contained, most people were too ignorant to know from where he had stolen. He knew the right people and he estimated them carefully. At that time, most people in Rome searched for influential connections; the prime virtue of Cicero was that he allowed nothing to interfere with his connections with the right people.
Long ago, Cicero had discovered the profound difference between justice and morality. Justice was the tool of the strong, to be used as the strong desired; morality, like the gods, was the illusion of the weak. Slavery was just; only fools—according to Cicero—argued that it was moral. Travelling north along the highroad, he could appreciate the awful suffering of the endless crucifixions, but he did not allow himself to be moved by them. He was working, at that time—and he was always writing something—upon a short monograph on the series of servile wars which had shaken the whole world, and he was intensely interested in the various examples of slaves hanging along the Appian Way. He had perfected himself in interest without involvement, and he was able to study the various types, the Gauls, the Africans, the Thracians and the Jews and the Germans and the Greeks who composed the host of the crucified, without experiencing either sickness or pity. It occurred to him that in this vast passion there was a reflection of some new and mighty current which had come into the world—a current with ramifications which would stretch out into ages still unborn; but it also occurred to him that in his own particular time, a person who could coldly observe and analyze and interpret this new manifestation of servile revolt would be in a position of unique power. Cicero had only contempt for those who hated without understanding the subjective needs of the objects of their hatred.
These were qualities in Cicero that some saw and others did not see. When Claudia arrived at the
Villa Salaria
that evening, she did not observe these qualities. The least complex type of strength was most understandable to Claudia. Helena, on the other hand, recognized and paid tribute. “I am like you,” her eyes said to Cicero. “Shall we pursue this?” And when her brother lay in bed, awaiting the coming of a great general, she betook herself to Cicero’s chamber. She was full of the contrived dignity of a person who despises herself and takes comfort from the act, but why she should have felt inferior to this man who came from a money-grubbing upper middle class family, she could not have said. She could not have admitted, even to herself, that before the evening was done, she would do a number of things for which she would subsequently hate herself.
Villa Salaria
that evening, she did not observe these qualities. The least complex type of strength was most understandable to Claudia. Helena, on the other hand, recognized and paid tribute. “I am like you,” her eyes said to Cicero. “Shall we pursue this?” And when her brother lay in bed, awaiting the coming of a great general, she betook herself to Cicero’s chamber. She was full of the contrived dignity of a person who despises herself and takes comfort from the act, but why she should have felt inferior to this man who came from a money-grubbing upper middle class family, she could not have said. She could not have admitted, even to herself, that before the evening was done, she would do a number of things for which she would subsequently hate herself.
To Cicero, however, she was a very desirable type of woman. Her tall, strong carriage, her fine, straight features and her intense dark eyes exemplified for him all the storied qualities of patrician blood. It was the particular goal toward which his own people had climbed for generations, yet found always unobtainable. And to find within such an exterior the qualities which brought a woman to a man’s chamber so late at night for only one obvious reason was singularly satisfying.
At that time, it was a rare Roman who pursued his work into the night. The strangely unequal development of that society found one of its weakest spots in artificial lighting, and Roman lamps were poor, spluttering things which strained the eyes and gave at best a pale yellow glow. To work at night, therefore, especially at night after too much wine and food, was a specific sign of admirable or suspicious eccentricity—depending upon the person who did the work. With Cicero, it was rather admirable, for this was the amazing young man; and when Helena entered his chamber, the amazing young man sat cross-legged on his bed, a scroll loosely open in his lap, noting and correcting. Perhaps the situation would have been too admittedly posed in terms of an older woman; Helena was only twenty-three, and she was properly impressed. A leader in peace and a leader in war was still a constant of the old legends, and there were those Romans who were said to sleep only two or three hours a night, giving all the rest of their time to the nation. They were consecrated. She liked the idea that a
consecrated
man should have looked at her as Cicero had.
consecrated
man should have looked at her as Cicero had.
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