Spartacus (29 page)

“That was something I had to find out by myself. I was ashamed of Rome when I found what a state of panic and illusion these slaves had created. I wanted the truth. I wanted to know precisely what I was fighting, what kind of a man, what kind of an army. I wanted to know why the best troops in the world, who had fought and smashed everything from Germans to Spaniards to Jews, should throw down their shields and run away at the sight of these slaves. I had made my camp in Cisalpine Gaul then, a camp Spartacus would think twice of before attacking, and I went into the matter. I have few virtues, but one of them is thoroughness, and I must have interviewed a hundred people and read a thousand documents. Among them was Batiatus, the
lanista
. Among them was a stream of soldiers and officers who had fought against Spartacus. And this tale was told to me by one of them. And I believe it.”

“If the story is as long as the introduction,” Antonius Caius remarked, “we’ll have our lunch here.” The slaves were already bringing Egyptian melon and grapes and a light morning wine. It was cool and delightful on the terrace, and even those who planned to continue their journey this day were in no hurry to move.

“Longer. But a rich man is listened to—”

“Go on,” said Gracchus gruffly.

“I intend to. This tale is for Julia. With your permission, Julia.”

She nodded, and Gracchus thought, “You would not suspect him of insight. What the devil is he driving at?”

“This was on the occasion of the second destruction of a Roman army by Spartacus. The first occasion, the case of the City Cohorts, I imagine my friend Gracchus recalls only too well—as we all do, of course,” Crassus said, a malicious note in his voice. “After that, the Senate sent Publius against him. A full legion and a very good one, I think. It was the Third, wasn’t it, Gracchus?”

“Thoroughness is your virtue, not mine.”

“I think I’m right. And if I’m not mistaken, some city cavalry went with the legion—about seven thousand men in all. Julia,” he said, “please believe that there is nothing particularly mysterious about warfare. It requires more brains to make money or to weave a piece of linen than it does to be a good general. Most people whose business is war are not very clever—for obvious reasons. Spartacus was quite clever. He understood a few simple rules of warfare, and he understood the strength and weaknesses of Roman arms. Few others ever had. Hannibal did, but few others. Our esteemed contemporary, Pompey, does not, I’m afraid.”

“And are we to hear these sublime secrets?” Cicero asked.

“They are neither sublime nor particularly secret. I repeat them for Julia. They seem to be something impossible for a man to learn. The first rule is never to split your forces unless it is necessary to survival. The second rule is to attack if you are going to fight, and if you are not going to attack, avoid battle. The third rule is to choose the time and place of battle and never leave that choice to the enemy. The fourth rule is to avoid encirclement at all cost. And the final rule is to attack and destroy the enemy where he is weakest.”

“That sort of ABC,” commented Cicero, “can be found in any manual of arms, Crassus. It lacks profundity, if I may say so. It is all too simple.”

“Perhaps. But nothing so simple lacks profundity—I assure you.”

“And just to complete it,” said Gracchus, “what are these strengths and weaknesses of Roman arms?”

“Something equally simple, and Cicero, I’m sure, will disagree with me again.”

“I’m a willing student at the feet of a great general,” Cicero said lightly.

Crassus shook his head. “No, indeed. Two things all men are convinced they have talent for, with neither preparation nor study involved. Writing a book and leading an army. And with good reason, since such an amazing number of idiots get to do both. I refer to myself, of course,” he added disarmingly.

“That’s very clever,” said Helena.

Crassus nodded at her. He was concerned with women, but not really interested in them; in any case, that was Helena’s opinion. “As to our own army,” Crassus went on, “its weakness and its strength can be summed up in one word, discipline. We have the most disciplined army in the world—perhaps the only disciplined army. A good legion drills its troops five hours a day, seven days a week. The drill provides for a series of contingencies of battle, but it cannot provide for all. The discipline is to an extent mechanical, and when the new contingency arrives, the discipline meets its test. Also, we have an excellent attack army; its whole advantage is attack and its weapons are weapons of attack. That is why the legion builds a fortified camp whenever it halts for the night. The Achilles heel of the legion is night attack. The first tactic of Roman arms is our own choice of ground for battle. But that is a luxury Spartacus rarely permitted us. And Publius, when he took the Third Legion down south, violated all of these exceedingly simple propositions. Understandably so. He had nothing but contempt for Spartacus.”

The two daughters of Antonius Caius joined the party on the terrace now. They came running, flushed with laughter and play and excitement, and found refuge in Julia’s arms only in time to hear the last words of Crassus.

“Did you know Spartacus?” the older one asked. “Did you see him?”

“I never saw him,” smiled Crassus. “But I respected him, my dear.”

Gracchus peeled an apple gravely and observed Crassus through narrowed eyes. He did not like Crassus, and he reflected that he had never met a military man whom he felt any warmth or affection for. He held up the skin of the apple in one long piece, and the little girls clapped their hands in delight. They reached for it, but he insisted that they make a wish first. “Then fold the skin around your wish. The apple contains all knowledge.”

“And an occasional worm,” Julia remarked. “This was a story about Varinia, Crassus.”

“We meet her presently. I simply propose the background. Spartacus was still in the region of Vesuvius at this time. And Publius, like the fool he was, divided his troops into three parts, each containing somewhat more than two thousand men, and began to beat up that difficult country—looking for Spartacus. In three separate engagements, Spartacus wiped his army off the face of the earth. He did the same thing each time, caught them in a narrow defile where the maniples could not deploy, and destroyed them. However, in one of the instances, a full cohort of cavalry and the best part of a cohort of infantry managed to break loose and beat their way out, the infantry hanging on to the horses’ tails, and the horses going hell for leather. If you understand how the slaves fought, you know that they don’t allow something like that to divert them. They concentrate on what is at hand. Which is what they did, and the eight or nine hundred infantry and cavalry retreated through the woods, got lost, and turned up at the camp of the slaves where the women and children were. I say camp—but it was more of a small village. It had a ditch around it, a dirt wall, and a palisade on top of that. There must have been a good many legion deserters with Spartacus, for this was built the way we lay out a camp, and the huts inside were laid out on regular streets. Well, the gates were open and there were a number of children playing outside and some women watching them. You must understand that when soldiers have been beaten and have run away, most of their controls are gone. Nor do I sit in judgment on those who kill slaves, whether child or woman or man. We have reason enough to hate the filth, and those soldiers were full of hate. They swarmed down on the place, and the cavalrymen speared the children the way you spear rabbits. They killed some of the women too in the first rush, but others of the women fought back, and then the women in the village poured out of the gate, armed with knives and swords and spears. I don’t know what the soldiers had in mind—if anything more than hate and revenge. They would have killed some of the women, I suppose, and raped the others. You recall that a very bad feeling was all over the country about slaves then. Before Spartacus, if a man killed one of his own women slaves, he could not go out in the street and hold up his head. It was regarded as more or less of a degrading act, and if it could be proved that he acted without reason, he could be heavily fined. That law was changed three years ago, wasn’t it, Gracchus?”

“It was,” said Gracchus without pleasure. “But go on with your story. It was about Varinia.”

“Yes?” Crassus seemed to have forgotten for a moment. Julia was looking past him onto the lawns. “Run off now,” she said to her children. “Run off and play.”

“You mean the women fought the soldiers?” Claudia wanted to know.

“That was the point,” Crassus nodded. “There was a terrible battle there at the gate. Yes, the women fought the soldiers. And the soldiers went mad and forgot that they were fighting women. The battle went on for almost an hour, I guess. As it was told, the women were led by this wild berserk with blond hair, who was supposed to have been Varinia. She was everywhere. Her clothes were torn off, and she fought naked with a spear. She was like a fury—”

“I don’t believe any of it,” Gracchus interrupted.

“No need to believe it if you don’t want to,” Crassus nodded, ealizing that his story had failed miserably. “I only told it or Julia.”

“Why for me?” Julia demanded.

Staring at him intently, Helena said, “Please finish the story. Whether it’s true or not. It has an end, hasn’t it?”

“A common end. All battles have essentially the same end. You win them or you lose them. We lost this. Some slaves returned, and between them and the women, only a handful of cavalry escaped. They made the report.”

“But Varinia was not killed?”

“If that was Varinia, she was certainly not killed. She turns up again and again.”

“And is she alive now?” Claudia asked.

“Is she alive now?” Crassus repeated. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

Now Gracchus rose, threw his toga back in characteristic gesture, and stalked off. There was a little bit of silence, and then Cicero asked,

“What’s eating the old man?”

“God only knows.”

“Why do you say it doesn’t matter whether Varinia is alive now?” Helena wanted to know.

“The business is over, isn’t it?” Crassus said flatly. “Spartacus is dead. Varinia is a slave woman. The market in Rome is glutted with them. Varinia and ten thousand others.” His voice was suddenly full of anger . . .

Antonius Caius excused himself and went after Gracchus. It disturbed him that two such men as Gracchus and Crassus, bound together as they were politically, should have a falling out about nothing at all. He had never known Gracchus to behave like this before. Could it be over Julia, he wondered? No—not with old Gracchus, not with fat, womanless old Gracchus. Gracchus was many things, but Antonius Caius could never regard him as other than a capon in matters of sex. And why should Crassus, who could have any woman in Rome, free or slave, concern himself over poor, pathetic Julia? God knows, if either of them wanted Julia, they were welcome to her, and his bed and board along with her! Nothing would make him happier.

He found Gracchus sitting moodily in the conservatory. He walked up to his old friend and nudged him gently. “All right, old man—all right?”

“Some day,” said Gracchus, “the world will prove too small for Crassus and myself.”

 

 

They left the plantation soon after sunrise. The four litters, the various attendants and baggage bearers made quite a procession on the road, and when they reached the Appian Way, Crassus picked up an honor guard of ten legionaries. Crassus had been invited to Capua for ceremonies celebrating the final crushing of the servile revolt—in the place where the revolt itself had arisen. One hundred gladiators had been selected from among the prisoners taken after the defeat and death of Spartacus, and for weeks now the games had been celebrated. These games were
munera sine missione,
the process of elimination from which there could be only a single survivor. As each pair fought, the survivor was paired with another. The dance of death was almost endless.

“I should think you would have wanted to see it.” Caius said.

The four litters travelled side by side, so that they could talk as they went along the road. Traffic coming from the other direction was shunted to the edge of the road by the legionaries, and people who saw the size and wealth of the procession accepted its privilege of the right of way.

Caius and Crassus were side by side, Claudia next to Crassus, and Helena next to her brother. Because of his age and because of certain feelings he had toward them, Crassus had taken on the role of host. He had well-trained slaves, and even as the litters moved down the magnificent road, he anticipated the needs and desires of his companions, whether it was a fragrant and iced new wine from Judea, or succulent Egyptian grapes, or a spray of scent to clear the air for them. Like many very rich men, he was most thoughtful in a material way toward those of his own social class; he acted now as host, companion and guide. In answer to Caius’s question, he said,

“No. It might surprise you, Caius, but I have almost no taste for games now. Yes, once in a while, if the pair is very good and very special. But I’m afraid this would only bore me. But if I had known that you would like to see it—”