Spartacus (31 page)

“The nights are very long,” the captain admitted. “A half hour from now, this place will be very different. The vegetable dealers will be coming in and the milkmen with their cows and the freighters and the fishermen and so forth and so on. This is a busy gate. And this morning, the gladiator goes up there.” He nodded at the cross, which now was vague and gray and half visible in the morning darkness.

“Will there be much of a crowd?” asked Crassus.

“Well, sir—not so much at the beginning, but there will be as the day goes on. I must admit that there’s a peculiar fascination in watching a man crucified. By noontime today, the gate and the walls around here will be packed. You would think that having seen it once, it would be enough, but that’s not the way it works out.”

“Who is the man?”

“That I can’t say. Just a gladiator, as far as I know. A very good one, I suppose, and I could almost feel sorry for the poor devil.”

“Save your sympathy, captain,” Crassus told him.

“I didn’t mean it that way, sir. I only meant that one always feels something for the last of a
munera
.”

“If you enjoy mathematical probabilities. Their
munera
began a long time ago. There had to be a last man.”

“I suppose so.”

The last hour was over. With daylight, the first hour began. The moon had faded and the sky was like dirty milk. The morning mist lay fallow everywhere, except where the dark line of the great road stretched endlessly toward the north. Stark and gaunt stood the cross against the lightening sky, and over to the east, a pale pink radiance was a harbinger of the rising sun. Crassus was glad he had decided to remain awake. His own mood welcomed the tantalizing bitter sweet of the first dawning. Dawn is always a mixture of sorrow and glory.

Now a little boy of about eleven years came walking up, carrying a jug in his hand. The captain of the gate greeted him and took the jug from him.

“My son,” he explained to Crassus. “He brings me hot wine each morning. Would you greet him, sir? It will mean a great deal to him. Afterwards he will remember it. His gentile name is Lichtus and his own name is Marius. I know it is presumptuous of me to ask it, sir, but it would mean a great deal to him and to me.”

“Hail Marius Lichtus,” Crassus said.

“I know you,” the little boy told him. “You’re the general. I saw you yesterday. Where is your golden breastplate?”

“It was brass, not gold, and I took it off because it was very uncomfortable.”

“When I have one, I will never take it off.”

“So Rome lives, and the glory and traditions of Rome will live forever,” Crassus thought. He was very touched—in a certain way—by the scene. The captain offered him the jug.

“Will you have a drink, sir?”

Crassus shook his head. Now, in the distance, there sounded a drumbeat, and the captain gave the jug to the boy to hold and shouted orders at the gate detail. The soldiers lined up along either leaf of the open gates, their shields grounded alongside of them, their heavy spears presented and upended in the air. It was a difficult position to hold and it annoyed Crassus, for he suspected that if he had not been there, the fancy play of arms would not have been indulged in. The beat of the drums increased, and presently the first ranks of the military band came in sight on the broad avenue which ran from the gate to the forum. Now the rising sun touched the tops of the taller buildings, and almost at the same time a trickle of people appeared in the streets. They moved toward the gate and the sound of the military music.

There were six drums and four fifes; then six soldiers; then the gladiator, naked and with his arms bound tightly behind his back; then a dozen more soldiers. It was a considerable detail for a single man, and this man did not look very dangerous or very strong. Then, as he came closer, Crassus revised his opinion; dangerous, certainly—such men are dangerous. You saw it in his face. In his face was none of the open warmth or frankness that one sees in the face of a Roman. He had a face like a hawk, a jutting nose, the skin stretched tightly over high cheekbones, thin lips, and eyes that were green and hateful as a cat’s. His face was full of hate, but the hate was unexpressive, like the hate of an animal, and the face was a mask. In form he was not large, but his muscles were like leather and whipcord. He had only two fresh cuts upon his body, one across the top of the chest and one on the flank, but neither was very deep and the blood had clotted hard on them. Yet under the cuts and all over him was a veritable tapestry of scar tissue. A finger was missing from one hand and one ear had been sliced off close to the skull.

When the officer who was leading the detachment saw Crassus, he held up his arm for his men to halt and then strode over and saluted the general. He was obviously full of the meaning of the moment.

“I never dreamed it would be my honor and privilege to see you here, sir,” he said.

“It’s a fortunate accident,” Crassus nodded. He too could not escape the fitting juxtaposition of himself and this last of the servile army. “Are you going to place him on the cross now?”

“Those were my instructions.”

“Who is he? The gladiator, I mean. It’s quite obvious that he’s an old hand in the arena. The mark of the sword is all over him. But do you know who he is?”

“We know a little. He was an officer, and he commanded a cohort or perhaps even more than that. Also, he seems to be a Jew. Batiatus had a number of Jews, who are sometimes better than Thracians with the
sica
. As a matter of fact, Batiatus made a deposition concerning a Jew called David, who was, along with Spartacus, one of the original leaders of the insurrection. This may be him or it may not be. He never spoke after he was brought here to participate in the
munera
. He fought very well—my god, I’ve never seen such work with the knife. He fought in five pairs and here he is with only two cuts on his body. I saw three of the pairs myself, and I never saw anything better with the knife. He knew in the end he would go on the cross, yet he fought as if his victory would be signed with freedom. I can’t understand that.”

“No—well, life is a strange business, young man.”

“Yes, sir. I can agree with that.”

“If he is the Jew, David,” said Crassus thoughtfully, “then there’s ironic justice after all. May I speak with him?”

“Of course—of course. I don’t think, though, that you will get any satisfaction out of him. He’s a sullen, silent brute.”

“Suppose I try.”

They went over to where the gladiator stood, surrounded now by a growing crowd of people whom the soldiers had to press back. Rather pompously, the officer announced,

“Gladiator, you are singularly honored. This is the Praetor, Marcus Licinius Crassus, and he condescends to talk with you.”

When the name was announced, the crowd broke into cheers, but the slave might have been deaf for all the reaction it brought from him. Unmoving, he stared straight ahead of him. His eyes gleamed like bits of green stone, but no other sign or motion appeared on his face.

“You know me, gladiator,” said Crassus. “Look at me!”

Still the naked gladiator did not move, and now the officer in command of the detachment strode up and struck him across the face with his open hand.

“Who is addressing you, pig?” he cried.

He struck him again. The gladiator made no attempt to avoid the blow, and Crassus realized that if this continued, he would derive precious little from it.

“That’s enough, officer,” Crassus said. “Leave him alone and get on with what you have to do.”

“I’m terribly sorry. But he hasn’t spoken. Maybe he can’t speak. He was never seen to speak even to his own companions.”

“It’s of no consequence,” said Crassus.

He watched them as they marched on through the gate to the crucifix. A steady stream of people now were pouring through the gate, spreading out along the road where they had a high, uninterrupted view of the proceedings. Crassus walked through the crowd to the base of the cross, curious in spite of himself as to how the slave would react The man’s stony reticence had become a sort of challenge, and Crassus, who had never known a man—no matter how hard he was—to go onto the cross in silence, began to speculate on what sort of reaction this would provoke.

The soldiers were old hands at a standing crucifixion, and they went about their work quickly and expertly. A rope was passed under the arms of the slave who was still trussed and bound. The rope was drawn through until the two lengths were equal. The ladder, which the slaves had left there the night before, was placed against the back of the cross. The two lengths of rope were tossed over the arms of the cross, and a pair of soldiers seized hold of each end. Then, with quick dexterity, the gladiator was drawn up almost to the crossbar. Now another soldier mounted the ladder and eased the gladiator up while those below drew on the ropes. Now he hung with his shoulders just below the point where the two wooden beams met. The soldier on the ladder leaped up onto the crossbar, and another, carrying a hammer and several long iron spikes, went up the ladder and straddled the other arm of the crossbar.

Meanwhile, Crassus observed the gladiator with interest. Though his naked body twisted when it was drawn up against the rough wood of the cross, his face remained impassive, even as it remained impassive under the painful bite of the rope. He hung motionless and inert while the first soldier took a turn of rope around his chest and under his arms, knotting the rope above the crossbar. Then the first rope was pulled through and back to the ground. Then the cord that bound his hands together was cut and each soldier drew up one of his arms and tied it with a twist of rope around the wrist to the crossbar. Not until the second soldier forced open his palm, laid the spike on it, and drove the spike into the wood with a single hard blow, did the gladiator actually react in pain. Even then, he did not speak or cry out, but his face contorted and his body twisted spasmodically. Three more blows buried the spike five inches into the wood, and a final blow bent the the head, so that the hand could not slip off. Then the same process was repeated with the other hand, and once again the gladiator twisted in agony, and once again his face contorted as the spike bit through the muscles and tendons of his hand. But still he did not cry out, even though tears ran from his eyes and saliva dripped from his open mouth.

Now the rope around his chest was cut, so that he hung entirely by his hands, with only the support of the cord around each wrist to lessen the weight on the spikes. The soldiers came down the ladder, which was then taken away, and the crowd—which numbered hundreds of people by now—applauded the skill that had crucified a man in just a few minutes . . .

Then the gladiator fainted.

“They always do,” the officer explained to Crassus. “The shock of the spikes does it. But they always regain consciousness, and sometimes it’s twenty or thirty hours before they faint again. We had a Gaul who remained conscious for four days. He lost his voice. He couldn’t scream anymore, but he remained conscious. There was never anything like that one, but even he sounded off when they put the spikes into his hands. God, I’m thirsty!” He opened a flask, drank deeply, and offered it to Crassus. “Rose water?”

“Thank you,” said Crassus. He was suddenly dry and tired. He drank all that was left in the flask. The crowd was still increasing; and nodding at them, Crassus asked, “Will they remain all day?”

“Most of them only until he recovers consciousness. They want to see what he’ll do then. They do funny things. Many of them cry for their mothers. You never think of slaves in that way, do you?” Crassus shrugged. “I’ll have to clear that road,” the officer went on. “They block up traffic. You’d think they’d have enough sense to keep part of the road open—but no, never. They’re all the same. A crowd doesn’t have any sense at all.” He detailed two of the soldiers to clear enough of the road to let traffic pass.

“I wonder—” he said to Crassus. “I wonder whether I could trouble you about something, sir. It may be none of my business, but I’m terribly curious to know why you said before that if this is the Jew, David, there was ironic justice concerned. Or something like that—”

“Did I say that?” Crassus asked. “I don’t know what I meant or could have intended.” It was done, and much of the past had to lie quietly, and there was little glory in servile war. The triumphs and mighty devotions were for others; for himself, there were petty slaughterhouse satisfactions of the crucifix. How tired he was of killing and death and torture! Yet where did one go to escape it? More and more, they were creating a society where life rested on death. Never before in the whole history of the world had slaughter been elevated to such a plane of precision and quantity—and where did it end and when would it end? He remembered now an incident that happened shortly after he had taken command of the defeated and demoralized forces of Rome. He had given three legions to his friend and childhood companion, Pilico Mummius, a man who had already participated in two important campaigns, and he had instructed Mummius to harass Spartacus and see whether he couldn’t cut off a part of his forces. Instead, Mummius blundered into a trap, and his three legions, confronted suddenly by the slaves, fled in one of the blindest and most shameful panics ever to overtake a Roman army. He remembered how he had given Mummius an indescribable tongue-lashing; he remembered the names he had called him, the charges of cowardice he had hurled against him. But one went no further with a man like Mummius. With the legions, it was something else. Five thousand men of the Seventh Legion were lined up, and every tenth man was taken out of the ranks and put to death for cowardice. “You should have killed me,” Mummius said to him later

Now he thought of that so clearly and so well—for it was Mummius and the former consul, Marcus Servius, who symbolized for him his deepest hatred against the slaves. The story came back to him, but like all stories from the camp of slaves, one could not separate truth from falsehood. Marcus Servius was to some extent responsible for the death of the beloved companion of Spartacus, a Gaul named Crixus, who was cut off, surrounded, and who perished with his army. So when, much later, Servius and Mummius were captured by Spartacus and tried by the slave tribunal, it was said that a Jew called David had argued for the manner of their death. Or perhaps the Jew called David had argued against the manner of their death. Crassus was not certain. They had died as a gladiatorial pair. They were stripped naked, these two middle aged leaders of Roman armies, and they were each given a knife and put into a makeshift arena to fight each other to the death. That was the only time Spartacus had done such a thing, but Crassus never forgot and never forgave.