Spartacus (2 page)

A few miles outside of Rome, the tokens of punishment began. There was a place where the road crossed a little wasteland of rock and sand, a few acres in extent, and the person in charge of the exhibit had, with an eye for effect, chosen this particular spot for the first crucifix. The cross had been cut out of fresh new wood, pitch-bleeding pine, and since the ground fell away behind it, it stood stark and bare and angular against the morning sky, so huge and impressive—over-large, since it was the first—that one hardly noticed the naked body of the man who hung upon it. It stood slightly askew, as is so often the case with the top-heavy crucifix, and this added to its bizarre, demi-human quality. Caius drew up his horse, and then walked the animal toward the crucifix; and with a little flick of her courtesy quirt, Helena ordered the litter-slaves to follow.

“May we rest, oh mistress, oh mistress?” whispered the pace setter of Helena’s litter, when they came to a halt before the crucifix. He was a Spaniard, and his Latin was broken and wary.

“Of course,” said Helena. She was only twenty-three, but already of strong opinion, as all the women of her family were, and she despised senseless cruelty toward animals, whether slave or beast. Then the litter-bearers gently lowered the carriages, squatting gratefully beside them.

A few yards in front of the crucifix, on a straw chair shaded by a small, patched awning, sat a fat, amiable man of distinction and poverty. His distinction was manifest in each of his several chins and in the dignity of his huge paunch, and his poverty, not unmixed with sloth, was plainly evident by his poor and dirty clothes, his grimy finger nails and his stubble of beard. His amiability was the easily worn mask of the professional politician; and one could see at a glance that for years he had scavenged the Forum and the Senate and the wards as well. Here he was now, the last step before he became a beggar with only a mat in some Roman lodging house; yet his voice rolled out with the robust quackery of a barker at a fair. These were the fortunes of war, as he made plain to them. Some choose the right party with uncanny facility. He had always chosen the wrong one, and it was no use saying that essentially they were both the same. This is where it brought him, but better men fared less well.

“You will forgive me for not rising, my gentle sir and my gentle ladies, but the heart—the heart.” He put his hand on the great paunch in the general area. “I see you are out early, and early you should be out, since that is the time for travel. Capua?”

“Capua,” said Caius.

“Capua indeed—a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city. To visit relatives, no doubt?”

“No doubt,” answered Caius. The girls were smiling. He was amiable; he was a great clown. His dignity slipped away. Better to be a clown for these young people. Caius realized that there was money involved somewhere in these proceedings, but he didn’t mind. For one thing, he had never been denied money sufficient for all his needs or whims, and for another, he desired to impress the girls with his worldliness, and how better than through this worldly fat clown of a man?

“You see me a guide, a story teller, a small purveyor of bits of punishment and justice. Yet does a judge do more? The station is different, yet better to accept a
denarius
and the shame that goes with it than to beg—”

The girls couldn’t keep their eyes from the dead man who hung from the crucifix. He was directly above them now, and they kept darting glances at his naked, sun-blackened, bird-torn body. The crows swooped around him tentatively. The flies crawled on his skin. As he hung, his body leaning out and away from the cross, he seemed always to be falling, always in motion, a grotesque motion of the dead. His head hung forward, and his long, sandy hair covered what horror might have been in his face.

Caius gave the fat man a coin; the thanks was no more than what was due. The bearers squatted silently, never glancing at the crucifix, eyes on the ground; roadbroken they were, and well trained.

“This one is symbolic, so as to speak,” said the fat man. “Mistress mine, do not regard it as human or horrible. Rome gives and Rome takes, and more or less, the punishment fits the crime. This one stands alone and calls your attention to what will follow. Between here and Capua, do you know how many?”

They knew, but they waited for him to say it. There was a precision about this fat, jovial man who introduced them to what was unspeakable. He was proof that it was not unspeakable but ordinary and natural. He would give them an exact figure. It might not be right, but it would be precise.

“Six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two,” he said.

A few of the litter-bearers stirred. They were not resting, they were rigid. If anyone had regarded them, they would have noticed that. But no one regarded them.

“Six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two,” the fat man repeated. Caius made the right remark. “That much timber,” Caius said. Helena knew it was a fraud, but the fat man nodded appreciatively. Now they were en rapport. The fat man extracted a cane from the folds of his gown and gestured at the crucifix.

“That one—merely a token. A token of a token, so as to speak.”

Claudia giggled nervously.

“Nevertheless of interest and of importance. Set apart with reason. Reason is Rome and Rome is reasonable.” He was fond of maxims.

“Is that Spartacus?” Claudia asked foolishly, but the fat man found patience for her. The way he licked his lips proved that his paternal attitude was not unmixed with emotion, and Caius thought,

“The lecherous old beast.”

“Hardly Spartacus, my dear.”

“His body was never found,” Caius said impatiently.

“Cut to pieces,” the fat man said pompously. “Cut to pieces, my dear child. Tender minds for such dreadful thoughts, but that’s the truth of it—”

Claudia shuddered, but deliciously, and Caius saw a light in her eyes he had never noticed before. “Beware of superficial judgments,” his father had once said to him, and while his father had weightier matters in mind than estimation of women, it held. Claudia had never looked at him as she looked at the fat man now; and he continued,

“—the simple truth of it. And now they say Spartacus never existed. Hah! Do I exist? Do you exist? Are there or are there not six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two corpses hanging from crucifixes between here and Capua along the Appian Way? Are there or are there not? There are indeed. And let-me ask you another question, my young folk—why so many? A token of punishment is a token of punishment. But why six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two?”

“The dogs deserved it,” Helena answered quietly.

“Did they?” The fat man raised a sophisticated brow. He was a man of the world, he made plain to them, and if they were higher in station, they were younger enough in years to be impressed. “Perhaps they did, but why butcher so much meat if one can’t eat it? I’ll tell you. Keeps the price up. Stabilizes things. And most of all, decides some very delicate questions of ownership. There you have the answer in a nutshell. Now this one here—” gesturing with his cane, “—have a good look at him. Fairtrax, the Gaul, most important, most important. A close man to Spartacus, yes, indeed, and I watched him die. Sitting right here, I watched him die. It took four days. Strong as an ox. My, oh my, you would never believe such strength. Never believe it at all. I have my chair here from Sextus, of the Third Ward. You know him? A gentleman—a very great gentleman, and well disposed toward me. You’d be surprised how many people came out to watch, and it was something well worth watching. Not that I could charge them a proper fee—but people give if you give them something in return. Fair measure for fair measure. I took the trouble to inform myself. You’d be surprised what profound ignorance there is here and there about, concerning the wars of Spartacus. Now see here, this young lady, she asks me, is that one Spartacus? A natural question, but wouldn’t it be exceedingly unnatural if it was so. You gentle ones live a sheltered life, very sheltered, otherwise the young lady would have known that Spartacus was cut up so that not hair nor hide of him was ever found. Quite different with this one—he was taken. Cut up a little, true—see here—”

With his cane, he traced a long scar on the side of the body above him.

“Number of scars—and most interesting. Side or front. None in the back. You don’t want to stress such details for the rabble, but I can tell you as a matter of fact—”

The litter-bearers were watching him now and listening, their eyes gleaming out of their long, matted hair.

“—that these were the best soldiers that ever walked on Italian soil. Bears thinking about, something like that. Come back to our friend up here. Took four days for him to die, and it would have taken a good deal longer if they hadn’t opened a vein and bled him a bit. Now you may not know that, but you got to do it when you put them on the cross. Either you bleed them or they swell up like a bloater. And if you bleed them properly, then they dry properly and they can hang up there for maybe a month with no more offense than a little bit of smell. Just like curing a piece of meat, and you want plenty of sunshine to help it along. Now this was a fierce one, all right, defiant, proud—but he lost it. First day, he hung up there and cursed out every decent citizen who came along to watch. Frightful, foul language; you wouldn’t want any ladies around to hear such language. Comes of no breeding, and a slave is a slave, but I bore him no ill will. Here I was and there he was, and now and then I’d say to him, Your misfortune is my fortune, and while yours may not be the most comfortable way to die, mine is by no means the most comfortable way to earn a living. And precious little I’ll earn, you keep up that kind of talk. Didn’t seem to move him much, one way or another, but toward evening of the second day, he closed up. Clammed up, tight as a trap. Do you know what was the last thing he said?”

“What?” whispered Claudia.

“
I will return and I will be millions.
Just that. Fanciful, isn’t it?”

“What did he mean?” Caius wondered. In spite of himself, the fat man had woven a spell over him.

“Now what did he mean, young sir? I have no more idea than you have, and he never spoke again either. I poked him up a little the next day, but he never said a word, just looked at me out of those bloodshot eyes of his, looked at me like he could kill me, but he wasn’t for killing anything else. So you see, my dear,” addressing Claudia again, “he wasn’t Spartacus, but was one of his lieutenants and a hard man. Close to Spartacus, but not so hard. That was a hard one, was Spartacus, hard indeed. You would not like to meet him along this highroad and never will neither, for he’s dead and rotting. Now what else would you like to know?”

“I think we’ve heard enough,” Caius said, regretting the
denarius
now. “We must be on our way.”

 

 

This highroad, upon which these three light-hearted young people were travelling south from Rome to Capua, was called the Appian Way. It was a well-built, broad road of alternate layers of volcanic ash and gravel, and surfaced with stone. It was made to last. When the Romans put down a road, they laid it not for this year or the next, but for centuries. That was how the Appian Way was laid down. It was a symbol of the progress of mankind, the productivity of Rome, and the enduring capacity of the Roman people for organization. It stated quite clearly that the Roman system was the best system mankind had ever devised, a system of order and justice and intelligence. The evidence of intelligence and order was everywhere, and the people who travelled the road took it so much for granted that it hardly registered upon their minds.

For example, distance was specified, not estimated. Every mile of the way was marked by a milestone. Each milestone gave the pertinent information a traveller needed to know. You knew at any point precisely how far you were from Rome, from Formiae, from Capua. Every five miles, there was a public house and stables, where one could find horses, refreshments, and, if necessary, shelter for the night. Many of the public houses were quite magnificent, with broad verandas where drinks and food were served. Some had baths, where weary travellers could refresh themselves, and others had good, comfortable sleeping quarters. The newer public houses were built in the style of Greek temples, and they added to the natural beauty of the scenery along the way.

Where the ground was flat, marsh or plain, the road was terraced, with the right of way rising ten or fifteen feet above the surrounding countryside. Where the ground was broken or hilly, the road either cut its way through or crossed gorges on stone arches.

The road proclaimed stability, and over the surface of the road flowed all the elements of Roman stability. Marching on the road, soldiers could do thirty miles in a single day and repeat that same thirty miles day after day. Baggage trains flowed along the roads, loaded with the goods of the republic, wheat and barley and pig iron and cut lumber and linen and wool and oil and fruit and cheese and smoked meat. On the road were citizens engaged in the legitimate business of citizens, genteel folk going to and from their country places, commercial travellers and pleasure travellers, slave caravans going to and from the market, people of every land and every nation, all of them tasting the firmness and the orderliness of Rome’s rule.