Spartacus, page 15
Batiatus took his place before the long line of gladiators and the soldiers gathered behind him. “I feed you,” said the lanista. “I feed you the best, roasts and chickens and fresh fish. I feed you until your bellies swell out. I bathe you and I massage you. I took the lot of you from the mines and the gallows, and here you live like kings in idleness on the fat of the land. There was nothing lower than what you were before you came here, but now you live in comfort and you eat the best.”
“Are you my friend?” whispered Spartacus, and the Gaul answered, barely moving his lips, “Gladiator, make no friends of gladiators.”
“I call you friend,” said Spartacus.
Batiatus now said, “In the black heart of that black dog, there was neither gratitude nor understanding. How many of you are like him?”
The gladiators stood in silence.
“Pick me a black man!” said Batiatus to the trainers, and they went to where the Africans stood and dragged one out to the center of the enclosure. It had been arranged in advance. The drums began to roll, and two soldiers separated themselves from the others and lifted their heavy wooden spears. Still the drums rolled. The Negro struggled convulsively and the soldiers drove their spears one after another through his breast. He lay on his back in the sand, the two spears angled curiously. Batiatus turned to the officer who stood beside him, and said,
“Now there will be no more trouble. The dogs will not even growl.”
“I call you friend,” said Gannicus to Spartacus, and the Gaul who stood on the other side of him said nothing, only breathing heavily and hoarsely.
Then the morning drill began.
V
Afterward, at a Senatorial Board of Inquiry, Batiatus claimed, quite truthfully, that not only did he not know that a plot had been hatched, but that he did not believe it possible for one to be hatched. In support of this, he pointed out that there were always at least two among the gladiators who were in his pay with his promise of manumission. At intervals, these two would be paired out to fight for hire. One would be freed, the other would be returned with some slight signs of combat, and then a new informer would be recruited for the pair. Batiatus insisted that a plot could not have been hatched without his knowledge.
Thus it was always, and no matter how often revolt broke out among the slaves, there was no locating it, no pinning it down, no finding the continuous root of it, which unquestionably, like the roots of strawberries, was continuous and invisible, whereas only the flowering plant could be seen. Whether it was revolt in Sicily on a grand scale or an abortive attempt on a plantation, which ended in the crucifixion of a few hundred miserable wretches, the attempt of the Senate to dig up the roots failed. Yet the roots had to be dug up. Here men had created a splendor of life and luxury and abundance never known in the world before; the warring of nations had ended in the Roman Peace; the separation of nations had ended with the Roman roads; and in the mighty urban center of the world, no man wanted for food or pleasure. This was as it should be, as all and each and every one of the gods had planned it to be, yet with the flowering of the body had come this disease which could not be rooted out.
Whereby the Senate asked Batiatus, “Were there no signs of conspiracy, discontent, plotting?”
“There were none,” he insisted.
“And when you executed the African—mind you, we consider your action quite proper—was there no protest?”
“None.”
“We are particularly interested in whether any sort of outside help, foreign provocation of any sort could have entered into this matter?”
“It is impossible,” said Batiatus.
“And there was no outside help or funds provided for the triumvirate of Spartacus, Gannicus and Crixus?”
“I can swear by all the gods there were not,” said Batiatus.
VI
Yet this was not wholly true, and no man is alone. It was the incredible strength of Spartacus that he never saw himself alone and he never retreated into himself. Not too long before the abortive fighting of the two pairs, which the wealthy young Roman, Marius Bracus, had contracted for, there was a rising of slaves on three great plantations in Sicily. Nine hundred slaves were involved and all except a handful were put to death, and it was only at the tail end of blood-letting that the owners realized how much cold cash was going down the drain. Thereby, almost a hundred survivors were sold into the galleys for a mere pittance, and it was in a galley that one of Batiatus’s agents saw the huge, broad-shouldered, red-headed Gaul whose name was Crixus. Since galley slaves were considered incorrigibles, the price was cheap and even the bribes which promoted the transaction were small, and since the slave dealers who controlled the naval docks at Ostia did not look for trouble, they said nothing of the origin of Crixus.
Whereby Spartacus was neither alone nor disconnected with many threads which wove a particular fabric. Crixus was in the cell next to his. On many an evening, stretched full length on the floor of his cell, his head near the door, Spartacus heard the story from Crixus of the endless warfare of the Sicilian slaves, which had begun more than half a century before. He, Spartacus, was a slave and born out of slaves, but here among his own kind were legendary heroes as splendid as Achilles and Hector and Odysseus the wise, as splendid and even prouder, though no songs were sung of them and they were not turned into gods which men worshipped. Which was well enough, for the gods were like the rich Romans and as little concerned with the lives of slaves. These were men and less than men, slaves, naked slaves who were cheaper on the market than donkeys, and who put their shoulders into harness and dragged ploughs across the fields of the latifundia. But what giants they were! Eunus, who freed every slave on the island and smashed three Roman armies before they dragged him down, Athenion the Greek, Salvius the Thracian, the German Undart, and the strange Jew, Ben Joash, who had escaped in a boat from Carthage and joined Athenion with his entire crew.
Listening, Spartacus would feel his heart swell in pride and joy, and a great and cleansing sense of brotherhood and communion toward these dead heroes would come over him. His heart went out to these comrades of his; he knew them well; he knew what they felt and what they dreamed and what they longed for. Race, city or state had no meaning. Their bondage was universal. Yet for all the pitiful splendor of their revolts, they always failed; always it was the Romans who nailed them to the cross, the new tree and the new fruit, so that all might see the rewards for a slave who would not be a slave.
“In the end it was always the same,” Crixus said . . .
So the longer he was a gladiator, the less Crixus spoke of what had been. Neither the past nor the future can help the gladiator. For him, there is only now. Crixus built a wall of cynicism around himself, and only Spartacus dared to probe at the bitter shell of the giant Gaul. And once Crixus had said to him,
“You make too many friends, Spartacus. It’s hard to kill a friend. Leave me alone.”
On this morning, after the drill, they were grouped together for a while in the enclosure before going to the morning meal. Hot and sweating, the gladiators stood or squatted in little groups, their talk muffled by the presence of the two Africans who now hung crucified on the fence. There was a fresh pool of blood under the one who had been selected as a token of punishment for the other, and the blood birds pecked and gobbled the sweet stain. The gladiators were sullen and subdued. It was only the beginning, they felt. Batiatus would now contract and fight them as quickly as he could. It was a bad time.
The soldiers had gone off to eat in a little grove of trees, across the brook that ran by the school, and Spartacus, from within the enclosure, could see them there, sprawled on the ground, their helmets off, their heavy weapons stacked. He never took his eyes off them.
“What do you see?” asked Gannicus. They had been slaves a long time together, together in the mines, together as children.
“I don’t know.”
Crixus was sullen; violence had been too long capped inside of him. “What do you see, Spartacus?” he also asked.
“I don’t know.”
“But you know all, don’t you, and for that the Thracians call you father.”
“Who do you hate, Crixus?”
“Did the black man also call you father, Spartacus? Why didn’t you fight him? Will you fight me when our turn comes, Spartacus?”
“I will fight no more gladiators,” said Spartacus quietly. “That I know. I didn’t know it a little while ago, but I know it now.”
A half dozen of them had heard his words. They gathered close to him now. He no longer looked at the soldiers; he looked at the gladiators instead. He looked from face to face. The half dozen became eight and ten and twelve, and still he said nothing; but their sullenness went away, and there was a demanding excitement in their eyes. He looked into their eyes.
“What will we do, father?” asked Gannicus.
“We will know what to do when the time comes to do it. Now break this up.”
Then time telescoped, and a thousand years were upon the Thracian slave. All that had not happened in a thousand years would happen in the next few hours. Now again, for the moment, they were slaves—the dregs of slavery, the butchers of slavery. They moved toward the gates of the enclosure and then they marched to the mess hall for the morning meal.
At this point, they passed Batiatus in his litter. He sat in his great eight-slave litter with his slim, cultured bookkeeper, both of them on their way to the market in Capua to purchase provisions. As they passed the ranks of gladiators, Batiatus noticed how evenly and with what discipline they marched, and he considered that even if the sacrifice of an African had been an unwonted expense, it was entirely justified.
Thereby, Batiatus lived, and his bookkeeper lived to slit his master’s throat in time to come.
VII
What happened in the dining room—or mess hall, it would be better called—where the gladiators gathered to eat, would never properly be known or told; for there were no historians to record the adventures of slaves, nor were their lives considered worthy of record; and when what a slave did had to become a part of history, the history was set down by one who owned slaves and feared slaves and hated slaves.
But Varinia, working in the kitchen, saw it with her own eyes, and long afterwards she told the tale to another—as you will see—and even if the mighty sound of such a thing dies away to a whisper, it is never wholly lost. The kitchen was at one end of the mess hall. The doors which led to it were at the other.
The mess hall itself was an improvisation of Batiatus. Many Roman buildings were built in a traditional form, but the training and hiring of gladiators on a mass scale was a product of this generation, as was the craze for the fighting of pairs, and the question of schooling and controlling so many gladiators was a new question. Batiatus took an old stone wall and added three sides to it. The quadrangle thus formed was roofed in the old fashioned manner, a wooden shed projecting inward on all sides for a width of about eight feet. The central part was left open to the sky, and the inside was paved to a central drain, where rain water could run off. This method of construction was more common a century before, but in the mild climate of Capua it was sufficient, although in the winter the place was cold and often damp. The gladiators ate cross-legged on the floor under the shed. The trainers paced the open court in the center, where they could watch all most easily. The kitchen, which consisted of a long brick and tile oven and a long work table, was at one end of the quadrangle, open to the rest of it; a pair of heavy wooden doors were at the other end, and once the gladiators were inside, these doors were bolted.
So it happened this day, in the routine fashion, and the gladiators took their places and were served by the kitchen slaves, almost all of them women. Four trainers paced in the center court. The trainers carried knives and short whips of plaited leather. The doors were duly bolted from the outside by two soldiers who were detached from the platoon for this duty. The rest of the soldiers were eating their morning meal in a pleasant grove of trees about a hundred yards away.
All this Spartacus saw and noted. He ate little. His mouth was dry and his heart hammered at his breast. No great thing was being made, as he saw it, and there was no more of the future open to him than to any other man. But some men come to a point where they say to themselves, “If I do not do such and such a thing, then there is no need or reason for me to live any more.” And when many men come to such a point, then the earth shakes.
It was to shake a little before the day was over, before this morning gave way to noon and nightfall; but Spartacus did not know this. He only knew the next step, and that was to talk to the gladiators. As he told that to Crixus, the Gaul, he saw his wife, Varinia, watching him as she stood before the stove. Other gladiators watched him too. The Jew, David, read the motion of his lips. Gannicus leaned his ear near to him. An African called Phraxus leaned closer to hear.
“I want to stand up and speak,” said Spartacus. “I want to open my heart. But when I speak, there is no going back, and the trainers will try to stop me.”
“They won’t stop you,” said Crixus, the giant red headed Gaul.
Even across the quadrangle, the currents were felt. Two trainers turned toward Spartacus and the crouching men around him. They snapped their whips and drew their knives.
“Speak now!” cried Gannicus.
“Are we dogs that you snap whips at us?” said the African.
Spartacus rose to his feet, and dozens of gladiators rose with him. The trainers lashed out with their whips and knives, but the gladiators swarmed over them and killed them quickly. The women killed the cook. In all this, there was little noise, only a low growl from the milling gladiators. Then Spartacus gave his first command, gently, softly, unhurriedly, telling Crixus and Gannicus and David and Phraxus,
“Go to the door and keep it secure, so that I may speak.”
It was in the balance for just an instant, but then they obeyed him, and when he led them afterwards, for the most part they heeded what he said. They loved him. Crixus knew that they would die, but it didn’t matter, and the Jew, David, who had felt nothing for so long, felt a rush of warmth and love for this strange, gentle, ugly Thracian with the broken nose and the sheep-like face.
VIII
“Gather around me,” he said.
It had been done so quickly, and there was still no sound from the soldiers stationed outside. The gladiators and the slaves from the kitchen—thirty women and two men—pressed around him, and Varinia stared at him with fear and hope and awe and pressed toward him. They made a passage for her; she went over to him, and he put an arm around her and held her tight against his side, thinking to himself,
“And I am free. Never a moment of freedom for my father or grandfather, but right now I stand here a free man.” It was something to make him drunk, and he felt it rush through him like wine. But along with it, there was the fear. It is no light thing to be free; it is no small thing to be free when you have been a slave for a very long time, for all the time that you have known and all the time your father has known. There was also, in Spartacus, the subdued and willful terror of a man who has made an unalterable decision and who knows that every step along the path he takes, death waits. And lastly, a great questioning of himself, for these men whose trade was killing had killed their masters, and they were full of the awful doubt which comes over a slave who has struck at his master. Their eyes were upon him. He was the gentle Thracian miner who knew what was in their hearts and came close to them, and because they were full of superstition and ignorance, as most folk of that time were, they felt that some god—a strange god with a little pity in his heart—had touched him. Therefore, he must contrive with the future and read it as a man reads a book, and lead them into it; and if there were no roads for them to travel, he must make roads. All this, their eyes told him; all this, he read in their eyes.
“Are you my people?” he asked them, when they were pressed close around him. “I will never be a gladiator again. I will die first. Are you my people?”
The eyes of some of them filled with tears, and they pressed even closer to him. Some were more afraid, and some were less afraid, but he touched them with a little bit of glory—which was a wonderful thing he was able to do.
“Now we must be comrades,” he said, “and all together like one person; and in the old times, among my people—as I heard it told—when they went out to fight, they went with their own good will, not like the Romans go, but with their own good will, and if someone did not want to fight, he went away, and no one looked after him.”
“What will we do?” someone cried.
“We will go out and fight, and we will make a good fight, for we are the best fighting men in the whole world.” Suddenly, his voice rang out, and the contrast to his gentle manner of before transfixed and held them; his voice was wild and loud, and surely the soldiers outside heard him cry,
“We will make a fighting of pairs so that in all the time of Rome, they will never forget the gladiators of Capua!”
There comes a time when men must do what they must, and Varinia knew this, and she was proud with a kind of happiness she had never known before; proud and full of singular joy, for she had a man who was like no other in all the world. She knew about Spartacus; in time, all the world would know about him, but not precisely as she knew about him. She knew, somehow, that this was the beginning of something mighty and endless, and her man was gentle and pure and there was no other like him.
IX
“First the soldiers,” said Spartacus.
“We are five to one, and maybe they will run away.”
“They will not run away,” he answered angrily. “You must know that about the soldiers, that they will not run away. Either they will kill us or we will kill them, and if we kill them, there will be others. There is no end to the Roman soldiers!”
