Spartacus (7 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
“Not one quarter as much,” Antonius Caius agreed.
It had all become exceedingly dull and boring to Caius. He was riding on his inner images, and his face felt hot and flushed. Excitement coursed through him, and he imagined that a soldier felt like this when going into battle. He hardly heard Cicero any more. He kept glancing at Crassus, asking himself why Cicero persisted in this tedious subject.
“And why—why?” Cicero was demanding. “Why can’t your slaves produce? The answer is very simple.”
“They don’t want to,” Antonius said flatly.
“Precisely—they don’t want to. Why should they want to? When you work for a master, your only achievement is to spoil your work. It’s no use sharpening their plows, because they’d blunt them immediately. They break sickles, crack flails, and waste becomes a principle with them. This is the monster we have created for ourselves. Here on ten thousand acres, there once lived fifteen thousand people; and now there are a thousand slaves and the family of Antonius Caius, and the peasants rot in the slums and alleys of Rome. We must understand this. It was a simple matter when the peasant came back from war and his land was overgrown with weeds and his wife had gone to bed with someone else and his children didn’t know him, to give him a handful of silver for his land and let him go into Rome and live on the streets. But the result is that now we live in a land of slaves, and this is the basis of our lives and the meaning of our lives—and the whole question of our freedom, of human freedom, of the Republic and the future of civilization will be determined by our attitude toward them. They are not human; this we must understand and get rid of the sentimental nonsense the Greeks talk of the equality of all that walks and talks. The slave is the
instrumentum vocale
. Six thousand of these tools line the road; this isn’t wasteful, this is necessary! I am sick to death of the talk of Spartacus, of his courage—yes, of his nobility. There is no courage and there is no nobility in a cur that snaps at his master’s heels!”
instrumentum vocale
. Six thousand of these tools line the road; this isn’t wasteful, this is necessary! I am sick to death of the talk of Spartacus, of his courage—yes, of his nobility. There is no courage and there is no nobility in a cur that snaps at his master’s heels!”
The coldness of Cicero had not dissipated; it had instead become transported into a livid anger, just as cold—but an anger which transfixed his listeners and made him their master, so that they stared at him, half-enchanted, half afraid.
Only in the slaves who moved around the table, serving fruits and nuts and sweetmeats, replenishing the wine, was there no reaction. Caius noticed this, for now he was sensitized all over and the world was different for him and he was a creature of excitement and reaction. He saw how unchanged the faces of the slaves remained, how wooden their expression, how lethargic their movements. It was true then, what Cicero said—they were not made human by virtue of the fact that they walked and talked. He did not know why this should have comforted him, but it did.
Caius excused himself while they were still drinking and talking. His stomach was constricting now, and he felt that he would go insane if he had to sit there and listen to any more of this. He excused himself on the grounds of weariness from his journey; but when he had left the dining room, he felt that he needed a breath of fresh air desperately, and he went through the back entrance of the house to the terrace, which extended from the rear of the house, white marble except in the center, where there was a pool of water. In the center of this pool, a nymph rose out of a cluster of sea serpents. A stream of water poured out of the conch shell she held, dancing and sparkling in the moonlight. Benches of alabaster and green volcanic stone were placed here and there on the terrace, and they were artfully given a degree of privacy by cypress trees, set in great jugs carved out of black lava. The terrace, which ran the whole width of the huge house and extended some fifty feet out from the house, was enclosed by a marble railing, except in the center, where a flight of broad white steps led down to the less formal gardens below. It was like Antonius Caius to hide this extravagant display of wealth behind his house, and so used was Caius to expenditure in stone and stonework that he hardly gave the details of the place a second glance. Perhaps Cicero would have observed the genius of a people displayed in the use of stone and the smugness that laid out incidental decoration in terms of eternity; but the thought never occurred to Caius.
Even in the normal course of things, few thoughts occurred to him which were not introduced by another; and generally they concerned food or sex. It was not that Caius lacked imagination or was stupid; it was simply that his role in life had never called for either imagination or original thought, and the only problem he faced at the moment was to understand completely the glance Crassus had given him before he left the dining room. He was thinking of that, staring out over the moonlit slopes of the plantation, when a voice interrupted him.
“Caius?”
The last person he wanted to be alone with on that terrace was Julia.
“I’m glad I came out here, Caius.”
He shrugged his shoulders without answering, and she walked up to him, laid a hand on either arm, and looked up at his face.
“Be decent to me, Caius,” she said.
“Why doesn’t she stop slobbering and whining,” he thought.
“What you give is so little—it costs you so little, Caius. And it costs me so much to ask for it. Don’t you understand that?”
He said, “I’m very tired, Julia, and I want to go to bed.”
“I suppose I deserve it,” she whispered.
“Please don’t take it that way, Julia.”
“How shall I take it?”
“I’m just tired—that’s all.”
“That isn’t all, Caius. I look at you, and wonder what you are, and hate myself. You’re so handsome—and so rotten—”
He didn’t interrupt her. Let her say it all; he would be rid of her so much more quickly.
She went on, “No—no more rotten than anyone else, I suppose. Only with you, I bring it out. But we’re all rotten, we’re all sick, diseased, full of death, bags of death—we’re in love with death. Aren’t you, Caius, and that’s why you came down the road where you could look at the tokens of punishment? Punishment! We do it because we love it—the way you do the things you do, because you love them. Do you know how beautiful you are out here in the moonlight? The young Roman, the cream of the whole world in the full flush of beauty and youth—and you have no time for an old woman. I’m as rotten as you are, Caius, but I hate you as much as I love you. I wish you were dead. I wish someone would kill you and cut your miserable little heart out!”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Caius asked calmly, “Is that all, Julia?”
“No—no, not all. I wish I were dead too.”
“Both of these are desires which can be satisfied,” said Caius.
“You contemptible—”
“Good night, Julia,” Caius said sharply, and then left the terrace. His determination not to be annoyed had been broken, and he was provoked at the senseless outburst of his aunt. If she had any sense of proportion, she would have seen how ridiculous she was making herself with her cheap sentimental whining. But Julia never had that kind of sense, and it was no wonder that Antonius found her trying.
Caius went straight to his room. A lamp was burning and there were two slaves in attendance, young Egyptians whom Antonius favored as house servants. Caius dismissed them. Then he stripped off his clothes, flushed and trembling. He rubbed himself all over with a mild perfume, powdered parts of his body, slipped on a linen robe, blew out the lamp and lay down on his bed. When his eyes got used to the dark, he was able to see fairly well, for a broad shaft of moonlight came in through the open window. The room was pleasantly cool, full of the fragrance of perfume and the spring shrubs in the garden.
It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes that Caius lay there waiting, but it seemed like hours to him. Then there was a very light knock on the door.
“Come in,” Caius said.
Crassus entered, closing the door behind him. The great general had never looked more manly than now, as he stood there smiling at the young man who awaited him.
The beam of moonlight had changed its position, and Caius was tired and satiated and sensual as a stretching cat—which was the image he evoked of himself for himself as he said, apropos of nothing at all,
“I hate Cicero.”
Crassus was fatherly and pleased with himself and mellow, and he asked, “Why do you hate Cicero—the just Cicero? Cicero the just. Yes? Why do you hate him?”
“I don’t know why I hate him. Must I know why I hate people? Some, I love and some, I hate.”
“Did you know that it was Cicero’s notion—not his alone, but a good deal his—to make the tokens of punishment, the six thousand crucifixes along the Appian Way? Is that why you hate him?”
“No.”
“How did you feel when you saw the crucifixes?” asked the general.
“Sometimes it excited me but mostly it didn’t. It excited the girls more.”
“Yes?”
“But tomorrow I’ll feel different,” Caius smiled.
“Why?”
“Because you put them there.”
“Not really—Cicero, others. I didn’t care, one way or another.”
“But you destroyed Spartacus.”
“Does, that matter?”
“I love you for it—I hate him.”
“Spartacus?” asked Crassus.
“Yes, Spartacus.”
“But you never knew him.”
“It doesn’t matter. I hate him—more than Cicero. I don’t care about Cicero. But him, that slave, him I hate. If I could have killed him myself! If you could have brought him to me and said, here, Caius, cut his heart out! If you could have—”
“Now you’re talking like a child,” the general said indulgently.
“Am I? Why not?” Caius said, a whining note in his voice. “Why shouldn’t I be a child? Is it so rewarding to be grown?”
“But why did you hate Spartacus so when you never saw him?”
“Maybe I did see him. You know, I went to Capua four years ago. I was only twenty-one then, I was very young.”
“You are still very young,” the general said.
“No—I don’t feel so young. But then I was. A party of five or six of us went. Marius Bracus took me with him, he was very fond of me.” Caius said that deliberately for the effect it would have; Marius Bracus had died in the Servile War, so there would be no question of current involvement, but let Crassus know that he was not the only one and not the first one. The general stiffened but did not speak, and Caius went on,
“Yes, there was Marius Bracus and myself and a man and a woman, friends of his, and two others, I think, whose names I have forgotten, and Marius Bracus was acting in the grand manner—yes, very much in the grand manner.”
“Did you care for him greatly?”
“I was sorry he died,” Caius shrugged, and the general thought,
“What a little animal you are! What a filthy little animal!”
“Anyway, we went to Capua and Bracus promised us a special circus, which was more expensive then than now. You had to be a rich man to do it in Capua.”
“Lentulus Batiatus had the school there then, didn’t he?” asked Crassus.
“He did, and it was supposed to be the best school anywhere in Italy. The best and the most expensive, and you could buy an elephant for what it cost to fight a pair of his boys. They say that he made a million out of this, but he was a pig in any case. Did you know him?”
Crassus shook his head. “Tell me about him, I’m very interested. It was before Spartacus broke loose, wasn’t it?”
“Eight days before, I think. Yes, Batiatus made a name for himself because he kept a regular harem of slave women and people don’t like that sort of thing. Not out in the open. It’s all right if you do it in a room with the doors closed, but it’s rather tasteless to do it on a public highway. That’s practically what he did. Also, he used his boys for stud and the women for breeding, which is all right, I suppose, but he didn’t know how to do anything delicately. He was a big, fat ox of a man, black hair, black beard, and I remember how dirty his clothes were, food stains all over them. An egg stain when he talked with us, a fresh egg stain right on the front of his tunic.”
“The things you remember!” the general smiled.
“I remember that. I went to see him with Bracus, and Bracus wanted two turns to the death; but Batiatus was reluctant to do it. Batiatus said that there was no point trying to develop anything in the way of style or technique or precision play when every rich and bored gentleman in Rome came down for his own particular circus. But Bracus had a purse, and money talks.”
“It talks with that kind,” said the general. “All
lanistae
are contemptible, but this Batiatus was a pig. You know, he owns three of the biggest tenements in Rome, and a fourth that fell in last year, and half his tenants were killed in the rubbish. He’ll do anything for money.”
lanistae
are contemptible, but this Batiatus was a pig. You know, he owns three of the biggest tenements in Rome, and a fourth that fell in last year, and half his tenants were killed in the rubbish. He’ll do anything for money.”
“I didn’t know you knew him.”
“I spoke with him. He was a mine of information on Spartacus—the only one, I suppose, who really knew about Spartacus.”
“Tell me,” sighed Caius.
“You were telling me—that perhaps you saw Spartacus.”
“Tell me,” said Caius petulantly.
“You are remarkably like a girl sometimes,” the general smiled.
“Don’t say that! I don’t want you ever to say that!” Like a cat, Caius tensed and bristled.
“Now what have I said to anger you so?” the general soothed him. “You want me to tell you about Batiatus? It’s of no great interest, but I will if you want me to. It was over a year ago, I think, and we were being clawed badly by the slaves. That was why I wanted to find out about this Spartacus. You know a man, and it’s easier to beat him . . .”
Caius smiled as he listened. He didn’t wholly know why he hated Spartacus so much; but sometimes he found a deeper satisfaction in hatred than in love.
PART TWO.Being the story which Crassus, the great general, told to Caius Crassus, concerning a visit to his encampment by Lentulus Batiatus, who kept a school for gladiators in Capua.
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