To become a pontifex was to enter the most exclusive enclave of political power in Rome; the augurship came a close second and there were some families whose augurships were as jealously guarded and prized as any family guarded and prized its pontificate, but always the pontificate came out that little bit ahead. So when Gaius Julius Caesar was inducted into the College of Pontifices he knew that he had moved more surely toward his ultimate goal, the consulship, and that this inauguration more than made up for his failure as the flamen Dialis. No one would ever be able to point the finger at him and imply that his status was in doubt, that perhaps he ought to be the flamen Dialis in fact; his position as a co-opted pontifex told everybody he was firmly ensconced at the very core of the Republic.
His mother, he learned, had befriended Mamercus and his wife Cornelia Sulla, and moved these days more freely among the high nobles her exile to an insula in the Subura had driven away; she was so enormously respected, so admired. The odium of her marriage to Gaius Marius had removed his Aunt Julia from the position she might otherwise have come to occupy with increasing age—that of the modern Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. And it now seemed as if his mother might inherit the title! These days she dined with women like Catulus’s wife, Hortensia, and Hortensius’s wife, Lutatia, with young matrons like Servilia—the widow of a Brutus and the wife of Decimus Junius Silanus (by whom she now had two little girls to add to Brutus’s son)—and with several Licinias, Marcias, Cornelia Scipiones and Junias.
“It’s wonderful, Mater, but why?” he asked, eyes twinkling.
Her beautiful eyes gleamed, the creases at the corners of her mouth compressed until little dimples popped up in her cheeks. “Why do you expect answers to rhetorical questions?” she asked. “You know as well as I do, Caesar. Your career is accelerating, and I am helping.” She gave a slight cough. “Besides, most of these women seem to me to be utterly lacking in common sense. So they tend to come to me with their problems.” She thought about that statement, amended it: “All, that is, except Servilia. Now she is a very structured woman! Knows exactly where she’s going. You ought to meet her, Caesar.”
He looked indescribably bored. “Thank you, Mater, but no. I am extremely grateful for every little bit of help you can give me, but that does not mean I’ll join the sweet—watered—wine—and—little—cakes circle. The only women aside from you and Cinnilla who interest me are the wives of men I intend to cuckold. As I have no quarrel with Decimus Junius Silanus, I fail to see why I should cultivate his wife. The patrician Servilii are insufferable!”
“This one isn’t insufferable,” said Aurelia, but not in the tone of voice which suggested she had an end to pursue. Instead she changed the subject. “I haven’t seen any evidence that you intend to settle back into city life.”
“That’s because I don’t. I have just enough time to join Marcus Fonteius in Gaul-across-the-Alps for a quick campaign, so that’s where I’m off to. I’ll be back by next June—I’m going to stand for election as one of the tribunes of the soldiers.”
“Sensible,” she approved. “I’m told that you’re a superlative soldier, so you’ll do well in an official capacity.”
He winced. “Unkind and unfair, Mater!”
*
Fonteius, who like most of the Transalpine governors had based himself in Massilia, was perfectly willing to keep Caesar busy for ten months. He had sustained a bad leg wound fighting the Vocontii, and chafed at the thought of watching all his work go for nothing because he could not ride. So when Caesar arrived Fonteius handed him the province’s two legions and told him to finish the campaign up the Druentia River; Fonteius would occupy himself dealing with the supply lines to Spain. After the news of the death of Sertorius came, the governor breathed a sigh of relief and embarked in tandem with Caesar upon a sweeping campaign up the Rhodanus valley into the lands of the Allobroges.
Born soldiers both, Fonteius and Caesar got on famously together, and admitted freely to each other at the end of the second campaign that there was no joy quite like working with a man of eminent military sense. So when Caesar returned to Rome in his habitual headlong fashion, he rode in the knowledge that his record now stood at seven campaigns—only three to go! He had loved his time in Gaul, never having ventured west of the Alps before, and found it considerably easier dealing with the Gauls themselves because (thanks to his old tutor, Marcus Antonius Gnipho, to Cardixa and to some of his mother’s tenants) he spoke several Gallic dialects fluently. Deeming no Roman conversant with their tongues, the Salluvian and Vocontian scouts tended to slip into Gallic whenever they wished to exchange information not for Roman ears; but Caesar understood very quickly, learned much he wasn’t supposed to—and never gave himself away.
It was a good time to be standing for election as a tribune of the soldiers. The presence of Spartacus meant that his duty in the consuls’ legions would be within Italy. But first he had to get himself elected—don the specially chalked, snow—white toga of the candidate and move among the electors in every marketplace and basilica in Rome, not to mention arcades and colonnades, guilds and colleges, the porticus and the portico. Since there were twenty-four tribunes of the soldiers elected annually by the Assembly of the People, it was not a particularly difficult feat to be voted in, but Caesar had set himself a much harder task than mere election: he was resolved to be the candidate who polled the highest number of votes in every election he would contest as he climbed the cursus honorum. Thus he put himself through much that the average candidate for that lowest of all magistracies deemed superfluous effort. Nor would he avail himself of the services of a privately employed nomenclator, that arch—recollector of people’s names; Caesar would be his own nomenclator, never forget a face or the name associated with it. A man flattered by instant placing of his name with his face after some years had elapsed since the last meeting was very prone to think highly of such a brilliant, courteous, capable fellow—and vote for him. Curiously most candidates forgot the Subura, just looked blank and dismissed it as a low—life infestation Rome would be better without; but Caesar, who had lived in the Subura all his life, knew that it abounded with men of the lowest end of the First Class and the upper end of the Second Class. Not one of whom was unknown to him. Not one of whom would refuse to vote for him.
He was returned at the head of the poll, and like the twenty quaestors elected at the same convocation of the Assembly of the People, he would commence his duties on the fifth day of December rather than on New Year’s Day. The lots which would give him his legion placement (with five others, he would be assigned to one of the consuls’ four legions) would not be drawn until he took office, nor could he make a nuisance of himself by visiting a consular legion ahead of his time; even Capua was off—limits. Distressing, considering the disastrous military events of that particular year!
By the end of Quinctilis it was glaringly obvious even to the most obtuse senator that the consuls Gellius and Clodianus were incapable of halting Spartacus. With Philippus leading the chorus (difficult for him, since Gellius and Clodianus belonged to Pompey as much as he did himself), the Senate tactfully told the consuls that they were being removed from command in the war against Spartacus; they were needed in Rome to govern, and it was now clear that the war should go to a man endowed with a full proconsular imperium—a man who had personal access to retired veterans and the clout to inspire them to return to the eagles. A man with a good war record, and preferably of Sullan convictions. A man who not only belonged to the Senate, but had been at the least a praetor.
Of course everyone inside the Senate and outside it knew that there was only one candidate for the job, only one candidate sitting idle in Rome without province abroad or war of some kind already on his hands, only one candidate with the necessary veteran resources and war record: Marcus Licinius Crassus. Urban praetor the year before, he had declined to take a governorship, pleading as his excuse the fact that Rome needed him more at home than in some foreign place. In anyone else such lethargy and lack of true political zeal would have been instantly condemned; but Marcus Crassus was allowed his foibles. Had to be allowed them! Most of the Senate was in debt to him for some trifling loan or another.
Not that he agitated for the job. That was not his style. Instead he sat back in his suite of offices behind the Macellum Cuppedenis and waited. A suite of offices sounded most imposing—until the curious man visited Crassus’s establishment. No expensive pictures hung on its walls, no comfortable couches were positioned around, no spacious halls permitted clients to cluster and chat, no servants hovered to offer Falernian wine or rare cheeses. Such was known to happen: Titus Pomponius Atticus, for instance—that ex-partner of Crassus’s who now so loathed him—conducted his multifarious businesses in exquisite premises. Crassus, however, did not even begin to understand the need a harried businessman’s animus might have to surround itself with beautiful comfortable things. To Crassus wasted space was wasted money, money spent on pretty offices was wasted money. When he was in his suite of rooms he occupied a desk in one corner of a crowded hall, shoved about or sidled around by all the toiling accountants, scribes and secretaries who shared the same area; it may have been just a trifle inconvenient, but it meant his staff was permanently under his eye—and his eye missed nothing.
No, he didn’t agitate for the job, and he had no need to buy himself a senatorial lobby. Let Pompeius Magnus waste his money on that sort of exercise! Not necessary when one was willing to lend a needy senator whatever amount of cash he wanted—and interest—free. Pompeius would never see his money back. Whereas Crassus could call in his loans at any time and not be out of purse.
In September the Senate finally acted. Marcus Licinius Crassus was asked if he would assume a full proconsular imperium, take unto himself eight legions, and command in the war against the Thracian gladiator Spartacus. It took him several days to reply, which he finally did in the House with all his customary brevity and deliberateness. To Caesar, watching appreciatively from his seat on the opposite side of the Curia Hostilia, it was a lesson in the power of presence and the powerful stench of money.
Crassus was quite tall but never looked it, so wide was he. Not that he was fat. Rather, he was built like an ox, with thick wrists and big hands, a mighty neck and shoulders. In a toga he was sheer bulk until one saw the muscles in the exposed right forearm, felt the solid oak of it in a handshake. His face was big and broad, expressionless but not unpleasantly so, and the light grey eyes had a habit of resting upon their objective with a mild kindness. Hair and brows were pale brown, not quite mouse—colored, and his skin went dark in the sun quickly.
He spoke now in his normal voice, which was surprisingly high (Apollonius of Molon would have said that was because his neck was short, reflected Caesar), and said, “Conscript Fathers, I am sensible of the honor you accord me in offering me this high command. I would like to accept, but… ”
He paused, gaze ambling affably from one face to another. “I am a humble man, and I am very aware that whatever influence I have is due to a thousand men of the knightly order who cannot make their presence directly felt inside this House. I could not accept this high command without being sure that they consented to it. Therefore I humbly ask this House to present a senatus consultum to the Assembly of the People. If that body votes me my command, I will be happy to accept.”
Clever Crassus! applauded Caesar.
If the Senate gave, the Senate could take away. As it had in the case of Gellius and Clodianus. But if the Assembly of the People was asked to ratify a decree handed down from the Senate—and did ratify it—then only the Assembly of the People could unmake it. Not impossible, by any means. But between the tribunes of the plebs drawn claw and fang by Sulla and the general apathy of the House in making decisions, a law passed in the Assembly of the People would put Crassus in a very strong position. Clever, clever Crassus!
No one was surprised when the House obediently handed down its senatus consultant, nor when the Assembly of the People voted overwhelmingly to ratify it. Marcus Licinius Crassus was more solidly commander in the war against Spartacus than Pompey in Nearer Spain; Pompey’s imperium was bestowed by Senate alone, it was not a law on Rome’s tablets.
With the same efficiency that had made a huge success out of an enterprise as dubious as training dirt—cheap slaves in expensive skills, Marcus Crassus went to work at once upon this new challenge.
The first thing he did was to announce the names of his legates: Lucius Quinctius, that fifty-two-year-old nuisance to consuls and law courts; Marcus Mummius, almost of praetor’s age; Quintus Marcius Rufus, somewhat younger but in the Senate; Gaius Pomptinus, a young Military Man; and Quintus Arrius, the only veteran of the war against Spartacus whom Crassus cared to keep.
He then declared that as the consuls’ legions were reduced from four to two by casualties and desertions, he would use only the top twelve of the twenty-four tribunes of the soldiers, but not the present year’s tribunes of the soldiers; their term was almost expired, and he thought nothing would be worse for these unsatisfactory legions than to change their immediate commanders scarcely a month into the campaign. Therefore he would call up next year’s tribunes of the soldiers early. He also asked for one of next year’s quaestors by name—Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, of an old praetorian family.
In the meantime he removed himself to Capua and sent out agents among his veteran soldiers from the days when he fought Carbo and the Samnites. He needed to enlist six legions very quickly. Some of his critics remembered that his soldiers hadn’t liked his reluctance to share the spoils of towns like Tuder, and predicted that he would get few volunteers. But whether it was memories or hearts the years had softened, his veterans flocked to Crassus’s eagles. By the beginning of November, when word had come that the Spartacani had turned around and were heading back down the Via Aemilia again, Crassus was almost ready to move.
First, however, it was time to deal with the remnants of the consuls’ legions, who had never been shifted from the camp at Firmum Picenum after the combined defeat of Gellius and Clodianus. They comprised twenty cohorts (which were the number of cohorts in two legions) but were the survivors of four legions, so few of them had fought together as a legionary unit. It had not been possible to transfer them to Capua until Crassus’s own six legions were formed and organized; so few legions had been raised during the past years that half of the camps around Capua had been closed and dismantled.
When Crassus sent Marcus Mummius and the twelve tribunes of the soldiers to pick up these twenty cohorts from Firmum Picenum, he was aware that Spartacus and his Spartacani were drawing close to Ariminum. Mummius was issued strict orders. He was to avoid any sort of contact with Spartacus, thought to be still well to the north of Firmum Picenum. Unfortunately for Mummius, Spartacus had moved his troops independently of his camp followers and his baggage train once he reached Ariminum, knowing that a threat to his rear was nonexistent. Thus it was that at about the same moment as Mummius arrived at the camp built by Gellius and Clodianus, so did the leading echelons of the Spartacani.
A clash was inevitable. Mummius did his best, but there was little either he or his tribunes of the soldiers (Caesar was among them) could do. None of them knew the troops, the troops had never been properly trained, and they feared Spartacus the way children feared nursery bogeys. To call what ensued a battle was impossible; the Spartacani just rolled through the camp as if it didn’t exist, while the panicked soldiers of the consuls’ legions scattered in all directions. They threw down their weapons and pulled off their shirts of mail and helmets, anything which would slow their flight; the tardy perished, the fleet of foot got away. Not bothering to pursue, the Spartacani streamed onward, merely pausing to pick up abandoned arms and armor and strip the corpses of those who had not escaped.
“There was nothing you could have done to avert this,” said Caesar to Mummius. “The fault lay in our intelligence.”
“Marcus Crassus will be furious!” cried Mummius, despairing.
“I’d call that an understatement,” said Caesar grimly. “But the Spartacani are an undisciplined lot, all the same.”
“Over a hundred thousand!”
They were camped atop a hill not far from the vast collection of people still rolling southward; Caesar, whose eyes saw into far distances, pointed.
“Of soldiers he has not more than eighty thousand, maybe less. What we’re looking at now are camp followers—women, children, even men who don’t seem to be bearing arms. And there are at least fifty thousand of them. Spartacus has a millstone around his neck. He has to drag the families and personal effects of his soldiers with him. You’re looking at a homeless people, not an army, Mummius.”
Mummius turned away. “Well, there’s no reason to linger here. Marcus Crassus has to be informed what happened. The sooner, the better.”
“The Spartacani will be gone in a day or two. Might I suggest that we remain here until they are gone, then gather up the men of the consuls’ legions? If they’re let, they’ll disappear forever. I think Marcus Crassus would be better pleased to see them, whatever their state of disarray,” said Caesar.
Arrested, Mummius looked at his senior tribune of the soldiers. “You’re a thinking sort of fellow, Caesar, aren’t you? You’re quite right. We should round the wretches up and bring them back with us. Otherwise our general’s fury will know no bounds.”
*
Five cohorts lay dead among the ruins of the camp, as did most of the centurions. Fifteen cohorts had survived. It took Mummius eleven days to track them down and muster them, not as difficult a task as Mummius for one had feared; their wits were more scattered than their persons.
Clad only in tunics and sandals, the fifteen cohorts were marched to Crassus, now in camp outside Bovianum. He had caught a detachment of Spartacani which had wandered off to the west of the main body and killed six thousand, but Spartacus himself was now well on his way toward Venusia, and Crassus had not deemed it clever to follow him into country unfavorable to a much smaller force. It was now the beginning of December, but as the calendar was forty days ahead of the seasons, winter was yet to come.
The general listened to Mummius in an ominous silence. Then: “I do not hold you to blame, Marcus Mummius,” he said, “but what am I to do with fifteen cohorts of men who cannot be trusted and have no stomach for a fight?”
No one answered. Crassus knew exactly what he was going to do, despite his question. Every man present understood that, but no man present other than Crassus knew what he was going to do.
Slowly the mild eyes traveled from one face to another, lingered upon Caesar’s, moved on.
“How many are they by head?” he asked.
“Seven thousand five hundred, Marcus Crassus. Five hundred soldiers to the cohort,” said Mummius.
“I will decimate them,” said Crassus.
A profound silence fell; no one moved a muscle.
“Parade the whole army tomorrow at sunrise and have everything ready. Caesar, you are a pontifex, you will officiate. Choose your victim for the sacrifice. Ought it to be to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or to some other god?”
“I think we should offer to Jupiter Stator, Marcus Crassus. He is the stayer of fleeing soldiers. And to Sol Indiges. And Bellona. The victim ought to be a black bull calf.”
“Mummius, your tribunes of the soldiers will see to the lots. Except for Caesar.”
After which the general dismissed his staff, who moved out of the command tent without finding a single word to say to each other. Decimation!
At sunrise Crassus’s six legions were assembled side by side in their ranks; facing them, paraded in ten rows each of seven hundred and fifty men, stood the soldiers who were to be decimated. Mummius had worked feverishly to devise the quickest and simplest method of procedure, as the most important numerical division for decimation was the decury often men; it went without saying that Crassus himself had been an enormous help with the logistics.
They stood as Mummius and his tribunes of the soldiers had rounded them up, clad only in tunics and sandals, but each man held a cudgel in his right hand and had been numbered off from one to ten for the lots. Branded cowards, they looked cowards, for not one among them could stand without visibly shaking, every face was a study in terror, and the sweat rolled off them despite the early morning chill.
“Poor things,” said Caesar to his fellow tribune of the soldiers, Gaius Popillius. “I don’t know which appalls them more—the thought of being the one to die, or the thought of being one of the nine who must kill him. They’re not warlike.”
“They’re too young,” said Popillius, a little sadly.
“That’s usually an advantage,” said Caesar, who wore his pontifical toga today, a rich and striking garment composed entirely of broad scarlet and purple stripes. “What does one know at seventeen or eighteen? There are no wives and children at home to worry about. Youth is turbulent, in need of an outlet for violent impulses. Better battle than wine and women and tavern brawls—in battle, the State at least gets something out of them that’s useful to the State.”
“You’re a hard man,” said Popillius.
“No. Just a practical one.”
Crassus was ready to begin. Caesar moved to where the ritual trappings were laid out, drawing a fold of toga over his head. Every legion carried its own priest and augur, and it was one of the military augurs who inspected the black bull calf’s liver. But because decimation was confined to the imperium of a proconsular general, it required a higher religious authority than legionary Religious, which was why Caesar had been deputed, and why Caesar had to verify the augur’s findings. Having announced in a loud voice that Jupiter Stator, Sol Indiges and Bellona were willing to accept the sacrifice, he then said the concluding prayers. And nodded to Crassus that he could begin.
Assured of divine approval, Crassus spoke. A tall tribunal had been erected to one side of the guilty cohorts, on which stood Crassus and his legates. The only tribune of the soldiers who was a part of this group was Caesar, the officiating priest; the rest of them were clustered around a table in the middle of the space between the veteran legions and the cohorts to be decimated, for it was their duty to apportion the lots.
“Legates, tribunes, cadets, centurions and men of the ranks,” cried Crassus in his high, carrying voice, “you are gathered here today to witness a punishment so rare and so severe that it is many generations since it was last exacted. Decimation is reserved for soldiers who have proven themselves unworthy to be members of Rome’s legions, who have deserted their eagles in the most craven and unpardonable fashion. I have ordered that the fifteen cohorts standing here in their tunics shall be decimated for very good reason: since they were inducted into military service at the beginning of this year they have consistently fled from the scene of every battle they were asked to fight. And now in their last debacle they have committed the ultimate soldier’s crime—they abandoned their weapons and armor on the field for the enemy to pick up and use. None of them deserves to live, but it is not within my power to execute every single man. That is the prerogative of the Senate, and the Senate alone. So I will exercise my right as the proconsular commander-in-chief to decimate their ranks, hoping that by doing so, I will inspire those men left alive to fight in future like Roman soldiers—and to show the rest of you, my loyal and constant followers, that I will not tolerate cowardice! And may all our gods bear witness that I will have avenged the good name and honor of every Roman soldier!”
As Crassus reached his peroration, Caesar tensed. If the men of the six legions assembled to watch cheered, then Crassus had the army’s consent; but if his speech was greeted by silence, he was going to be in for a mutinous campaign. No one ever liked decimation. That was why no general practiced it. Was Crassus, so shrewd in business and politics, as shrewd in his judgement of Rome’s veteran soldiers?
The six legions cheered wholeheartedly. Watching him closely, Caesar saw a tiny sagging of relief in Crassus; so even he had not been sure!
The dispersal of the lots began. There were seven hundred and fifty decuries, which meant that seven hundred and fifty men would die. A very long drawn—out procedure which Crassus and Mummius had speeded up with some excellent organization. In a huge basket lay seven hundred and fifty tablets—seventy—five of them were numbered I, seventy—five were numbered II, and so on, up to the number X. They had been thrown in at random, then shuffled well. The tribune of the soldiers Gaius Popillius had been deputed to count seventy—five of these jumbled little two—inch squares of thin wood into each of ten smaller baskets, one of which he gave to each of the ten remaining tribunes of the soldiers to disperse.
That was why the guilty cohorts had been arranged in ten well-spaced rows, seventy—five well-spaced decuries to the row. A tribune of the soldiers simply walked from one end of his row to the other, stopping before each decury and pulling a tablet from his basket. He called out the number, the man allocated it stepped forward, and he then passed on to the next decury.
Behind him the slaughter began. Even in this was order, meticulousness. Centurions from Crassus’s own six legions who did not know any of the men in the guilty cohorts had been ordered to supervise the actual executions. Few of the centurions who had belonged to the fifteen cohorts had lived, but those who did live had not been excused the punishment, so they took their chances with the rankers. Death was meted out to the man who had drawn the lot by the other nine men of his decury, who were required to beat him to death with their cudgels. In that way no one escaped suffering, be they the nine who lived or the one who died.
The supervising centurions knew how it should be done, and said so. “You, kneel and don’t flinch,” to the condemned man. “You, strike his head to kill,” to the man farthest left. “You, strike to kill,” to the next man, and so along the nine, who were all forced to bring down their knob—headed sticks upon the back of the kneeling man’s defenseless cranium. That was as kind as the punishment could be, and at least stripped it of any element of the mindless mob beating wildly at all parts of the victim’s body. Because none of these men had the heart to kill, not every blow was a killing one, and some blows missed entirely. But the supervising centurions kept on barking, barking, barking to strike hard and strike accurately, and as the process proceeded down the line of decuries it became more workmanlike, quicker. Such is repetition combined with resignation to the inevitable.
In thirteen hours the decimation was done, the last of it in darkness lit by torches. Crassus dismissed his footsore and bored army, obliged to stand until the last man was dead. The seven hundred and fifty corpses were distributed across thirty pyres and burned; instead of being sent home to the relatives, the ashes were tipped into the camp latrine trenches. Nor would their wills be honored. What money and property they left was forfeited to the Treasury, to help pay for all those abandoned weapons, helmets, shields, shirts of mail and legionary gear.
Not one man who had witnessed the first decimation in long years was left untouched by it; on most its effect was profound. Now fourteen somewhat under—strength cohorts, the wretched men who had lived through it swallowed both fear and pride to work frantically at becoming the kind of legionaries Crassus demanded. Seven more cohorts of properly trained recruits came from Capua before the army moved on and were incorporated into the fourteen to make two full—strength legions. As Crassus still referred to them as the consuls’ legions, the twelve tribunes of the soldiers were appointed to command them, with Caesar, the senior, at the head of Legio I.
*
While Marcus Crassus decimated the ranks of those who could not screw up the courage to face the Spartacani, Spartacus himself was holding funeral games for Crixus outside the city of Venusia. It was not his custom to take prisoners, but he had plucked three hundred men of the consuls’ legions (and some others he intended to keep alive for the moment) from their camp at Firmum Picenum; all the way to Venusia he trained them as gladiators, half as Gauls, half as Thracians. Then dressing them in the finest equipment, he made them fight to the death in honor of Crixus. The ultimate victor he dispatched in an equally Roman way—he had the man first flogged and then beheaded. Having drunk the blood of three hundred enemy men, the shade of Crixus was eminently satisfied.
The funeral games of Crixus had served another purpose; as his enormous host feasted and relaxed, Spartacus went among them in a more personal way than he had outside Mutina, and persuaded everyone that the answer to the vexed question of a permanent and fruitful home lay in Sicily. Though he had stripped every granary and silo bare along the route of his march, and laid in great stores of cheeses, pulses, root vegetables and durable fruits, and drove with him thousands of sheep, pigs, hens and ducks, keeping his people from starving haunted him far more than the specter of any Roman army. Winter was coming; they must, he resolved, be established in Sicily before the very cold weather descended.
So in December he moved south again to the Gulf of Tarentum, where the hapless communities of that rich plain of many rivers suffered the loss of autumn harvest and early winter vegetables. At Thurii—a city he had already sacked on his first visit to the area—he turned his host inland, marched up the valley of the Crathis and emerged onto the Via Popillia. No Roman troops lay in wait; using the road to cross the Bruttian mountains comfortably, he came down to the small fishing port of Scyllaeum.
And there across the narrow strait it loomed—Sicily! One tiny sea voyage and the long travels were over. But what a hideous voyage it was! Scylla and Charybdis inhabited those perilous waters. Just outside the Bay of Scyllaeum, Scylla lashed and gnashed her triple sets of teeth in each of her six heads, while the dogs’ heads girdling her loins slavered and howled. And if a ship was lucky enough to sneak by her as she slept, yet there remained Sicilian Charybdis, roaring round and round and round in a huge, sucking whirlpool of greed.
Not, of course, that Spartacus himself believed in such tall tales; but without his realizing it he was losing whole layers of his Romanness, peeling them away like onion scales down to a kernel more primitive, more childlike. His life had not been lived in a truly Roman fashion since he had been expelled from the legions of Cosconius, and that was almost five years ago. The woman he had taken up with believed implicitly in Scylla and Charybdis, so did many of his followers, and sometimes—just sometimes—he saw the frightful creatures in his dreams.
As well as harboring a big fishing fleet which pursued the migrating tunny twice a year, Scyllaeum accommodated pirates. The proximity of the Via Popillia and Roman legions passing to and from Sicily prohibited to any large pirate fleets a haven there, but the few small—scale freebooters who used Scyllaeum were in the act of beaching their trim, undecked little vessels for the winter when that huge tumult of people descended upon the place.
Leaving his army to gorge itself on fish, Spartacus sought out the leader of the local pirates at once and asked him if he knew any pirate admirals who had command of big numbers of big ships. Why yes, several! was the answer.
“Then bring them to see me,” said Spartacus. “I need an immediate passage to Sicily for some thousands of my best soldiers, and I’m willing to pay a thousand talents of silver to any men who guarantee to ship us over within the month.”
Though Crixus and Oenomaus were dead, two replacements had risen to the surface of the polyglot collection of men Spartacus used as his legates and tribunes. Castus and Gannicus were both Samnites who had fought with Mutilus during the Italian War and Pontius Telesinus during the war against Sulla; they were martial by nature and had some experience of command. Time had taught Spartacus that his host refused to march as an army unless the enemy threatened—many men had women, quite a few children, some even parents in the train. It was therefore impossible for one man to control or direct such wayward masses; instead, Spartacus had split the host into three divisions with three separate baggage columns, commanding the largest and foremost himself, and giving the other two to Castus and Gannicus.
When word came that two pirate admirals were coming to see him, Spartacus summoned Aluso, Castus and Gannicus.
“It looks as if I’ll have ships enough to transport twenty thousand men across to Pelorus very soon,” he said, “but it’s the vast bulk of my people I’m going to have to leave behind who concern me. Some months might go by before I can bring them to Sicily. What do you think about leaving them here in Scyllaeum? Is there food enough? Or ought I to send everyone left behind back to Bradanus country? The local farmers and fishermen are saying it’s going to be a cold winter.”
Castus, who was older and more seasoned than Gannicus, gave this some deliberate thought before answering.
“Actually, Spartacus, it’s not bad pickings hereabouts. West of the harbor is a little sort of promontory, flat and fertile. I reckon the whole lot of us could last there without digging too deep into the supplies for—oh, a month, maybe two months. And if twenty thousand of the biggest eaters are in Sicily, three months.”
Spartacus made up his mind. “Then everyone will stay here. Move the camps to the west of the town and start the women and children growing things. Even cabbages and turnips will help.”
When the two Samnites had gone, Aluso turned her wild wolf’s eyes upon her husband and growled in the back of her throat. It always made his hackles rise, that eerie animalistic way she had whenever the prophetic spirit invaded her.
“Beware, Spartacus!” she said.
“What is there to beware of?” he asked, frowning.
She shook her head and growled again. “I do not know. Something. Someone. It is coming through the snow.”
“It won’t snow for at least a month, perhaps longer,” he said gently. “By then I’ll be in Sicily with the pick of my men, and I doubt the campaign in Sicily will extend us. Is it those who will wait here ought to beware?’’
“No,” she said positively, “it is you.”
“Sicily is soft and not well defended. I won’t stand in any danger from militiamen and grain barons.”
She stiffened, then shivered. “You will never get there, Spartacus,” she said. “You will never get to Sicily.”
But the morrow gave the lie to that, for two pirate admirals arrived in Scyllaeum, and both were so famous he even knew their names: Pharnaces and Megadates. They had commenced their pirate careers far to the east of Sicily, in the waters of the Euxine Sea. For the last ten years, however, they had controlled the seas between Sicily and Africa, raiding anything smaller than a well-guarded Roman grain fleet. When they felt like it they even sailed into the harbor of Syracuse—right under the nose of the governor!—to pick up provisions and vintage wine.
Both of them, thought the astonished Spartacus, looked like sleekly successful merchants—pallid, plump, finicky.
“You know who I am,” he said bluntly. “Will you do business with me despite the Romans?”
They exchanged sly smiles.
“We do business everywhere and with everyone despite the Romans,” said Pharnaces.
“I need passage for twenty thousand of my soldiers between here and Pelorus.”
“A very short journey, but one winter makes hazardous,” said Pharnaces, evidently the spokesman.
“The local fishermen tell me it’s quite possible.”
“Indeed, indeed.”
“Then will you help me?”
“Let me see…. Twenty thousand men at two hundred and fifty per ship—it’s only a matter of miles, they won’t care if they’re packed in like figs in a jar—is eighty ships.” Pharnaces grimaced slightly. “That many of large enough size we do not have, Spartacus. Twenty ships between us.”
“Five thousand at a time,” said Spartacus, brow wrinkled. “Well, it will have to be four trips, that’s all! How much, and when can you start?”
Like twin lizards, they blinked in perfect unison.
“My dear fellow, don’t you haggle?” asked Megadates.
“I don’t have time. How much, and when can you start?”
Pharnaces took over again. “Fifty silver talents per ship^ ^per voyage—four thousand in all,” he said.
It was Spartacus’s turn to blink. “Four thousand! That’s just about all the money I’ve got.”
“Take it or leave it,” said the admirals in perfect unison.
“If you guarantee to have your ships here within five days I’ll take it,” said Spartacus.
“Give us the four thousand in advance and we guarantee it,” said Pharnaces.
Spartacus looked cunning. “Oh no you don’t!” he exclaimed. “Half now, the other half when the job’s finished.”
“Done!” said Pharnaces and Megadates in perfect unison.
Aluso had not been allowed to attend the meeting. For reasons he wasn’t sure of, Spartacus found himself reluctant to tell her what had transpired; perhaps what she saw for him was a watery grave, if he was never to reach Sicily. But of course she got it out of him, and to his surprise nodded happily.
“A good price,” she said. “You’ll recoup your money when you reach Sicily.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t going to reach Sicily!”
“That was yesterday, and the vision lied. Today I see with clarity, and all is well.”
So two thousand talents of silver were dug out of the carts and loaded aboard the beautiful gilded quinquereme with the purple and gold sail that had brought Pharnaces and Megadates to Scyllaeum. Its mighty oars beating the water, it crawled out of the bay.
“Like a centipede,” said Aluso.
Spartacus laughed. “You’re right, a centipede! Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t fear Scylla.”
“It’s too big for Scylla to chew.”
“Scylla is a clump of wicked rocks,” said Spartacus.
“Scylla,” said Aluso, “is an entity.”
“In five days’ time I will know for sure.”
Five days later the first five thousand men were assembled in Scyllaeum port itself, each man with his gear beside him, his armor on his back, his helmet on his head, his weapons at his side, and a ghastly fear in his chest. He was to sail between Scylla and Charybdis! Only the fact that most of the men had talked to the fishermen gave them the courage to go through with it; the fishermen swore Scylla and Charybdis existed, but knew the charms to soothe them to sleep and promised to use them.
Though the weather had been good for all five days and the sea calm, the twenty pirate ships didn’t come. Brow knotted, Spartacus conferred with Castus and Gannicus and decided to keep his five thousand men where they were overnight. Six days, seven days, eight days. Still the pirate ships didn’t come. Ten days, fifteen days. The five thousand men had long since been sent back to their camps, but every day Spartacus was to be seen standing on the high point at the harbor entrance, hand shading his eyes, peering into the south. They would come! Must come!
“You have been swindled,” said Aluso on the sixteenth day, when Spartacus showed no sign of going to his lookout.
The tears welled up, he swallowed convulsively. “I have been swindled,” he said.
“Oh, Spartacus, the world is full of cheats and liars!” she cried. “At least what we have done has been done in good faith, and you are a father to these poor people! I see a home for us there across the water, I see it so clearly I can almost touch it! And yet we will never reach it. The first time I read the bones I saw that, but later the bones too lied to me. Cheats and liars, cheats and liars!” Her eyes glowed, she growled. “But beware of him who comes out of the snow!”
Spartacus didn’t hear. He was weeping too bitterly.
“I am a laughingstock,” said Spartacus to Castus and Gannicus later in the day. “They sailed off with our money knowing they wouldn’t come back. Two thousand talents for a few moments’ work.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Gannicus, usually the silent one. “Even in business there’s supposed to be honor.”
Castus shrugged. “They’re not businessmen, Gannicus. All they do is take. A pirate is an undisguised thief.”
“Well,” said Spartacus, sighing, “it’s done. What matters now is our own future. We must continue to exist in Italy until the summer, when we will commandeer every fishing boat between Campania and Rhegium and take ourselves across to Sicily.”
The existence of a new Roman army in the peninsula was known, of course, but Spartacus had wandered the land with virtual impunity for so long now that he took little notice of Roman military efforts. His scouts had grown lazy, and he himself not so much lazy as indifferent. Over the time that he had shepherded his vast flock, he had come to see his purpose in an unmartial light. He was the patriarch in search of a home for his children, neither king nor general. And now he would have to start them moving again. But where to? They ate so much!
*
When Crassus began his own march into the south, he went at the head of a military organization dedicated to one end—the extirpation of the Spartacani. Nor for the moment was he in any hurry. He knew exactly whereabouts his quarry was, and had guessed that its objective was Sicily. Which made no difference to Crassus. If he had to fight the Spartacani in Sicily, all the better. He had been in touch with the governor (still Gaius Verres) and been assured that the slaves of Sicily were in no condition to foment a third uprising against Rome even if the Spartacani came. Verres had put the militia on alert and stationed them around Pelorus, conserving his Roman troops for whatever shape a campaign might assume, and sure that Crassus would arrive hard on the heels of the Spartacani to take the brunt of the action.
But nothing happened. The whole enormous mass of Spartacani continued to camp around Scyllaeum, it seemed because no shipping was available. Then Gaius Verres wrote.
I have heard a curious tale, Marcus Crassus. It seems that Spartacus approached the pirate admirals Pharnaces and Megadates and asked them to ferry twenty thousand of his best troops from Scyllaeum to Pelorus. The pirates agreed to do this for a price of four thousand talents—two thousand to be paid as a deposit, the other two thousand upon completion of the job.
Spartacus gave them two thousand talents and off they sailed. Laughing their heads off! For no more than a promise they had enriched themselves mightily. While some may say that they were fools for not proceeding with the scheme and thereby earning themselves another two thousand talents, it appears Pharnaces and Megadates preferred the fortune they had got for doing no work at all. They had formed a poor opinion of Spartacus himself, and foresaw a risk in trying to earn the other two thousand.
My own personal opinion is that Spartacus is a rank amateur, a hayseed. Pharnaces and Megadates gulled him as easily as a Roman trickster can gull an Apulian. Had there been a decent army in Italy last year it would have rolled him up, I am sure of it. All he has on his side are sheer numbers. But when he faces you, Marcus Crassus, he will not prosper. Spartacus has no luck, whereas you, dear Marcus Crassus, have proven yourself one of Fortune’s favorites.
When he read that final sentence, Caesar burst out laughing. “What does he want?” he asked, handing the note back to Crassus. “Is he in need of a loan? Ye gods, that man eats money!”
“I wouldn’t lend to him,” said Crassus. “Verres won’t last.”
“I hope you’re right! How does he know so much about what happened between the pirate strategoi and Spartacus?”
Crassus grinned; it worked a small miracle upon his big smooth face, which suddenly looked young and naughty. “Oh, I daresay they told him all about it when he applied for his cut of the two thousand talents.”
“Do you think they gave him a cut?”
“Undoubtedly. He lets them use Sicily as their base.”
They were sitting alone in the general’s command tent, in a stout camp pitched beside the Via Popillia outside Terina, a hundred miles from Scyllaeum. It was the beginning of February, and winter had begun; two braziers produced a glow of heat.
Just why Marcus Crassus had settled upon the twenty-eight-year-old Caesar as his particular friend was a source of great debate among his legates, who were more puzzled than jealous. Until Crassus had begun to share his leisure moments with Caesar he had owned no friends at all, therefore no legate felt himself passed over or supplanted. The conundrum arose out of the incongruity of the relationship, for there were sixteen years between them in age, their attitudes to money lay at opposite poles, they looked inappropriate when seen together, and no mutual literary or artistic leaning existed. Men like Lucius Quinctius had known Crassus for years, and had had close dealings with him both political and commercial without ever being able to claim a deep—seated friendship. Yet from the time Crassus had co-opted this year’s tribunes of the soldiers two months too early, he had sought Caesar out, made overtures and found them reciprocated.
The truth was actually very simple. Each man had recognized in the other someone who was going to matter in the future, and each man nursed much the same political ambitions. Had this recognition not taken place, the friendship could not have come about. But once it existed other factors came into play to bind them more tightly. The streak of hardness which was so evident in Crassus also lay in the smoother, utterly charming Caesar; neither man cherished illusions about his noble world; both had burrowed deeply into mines of common sense and neither cared very much about personal luxuries.
The differences between them were superficial, though they were blinding: Caesar the handsome rake developing a formidable reputation as a womanizer versus Crassus the absolutely faithful family man; Caesar the brilliant intellectual with style and flair versus Crassus the plodding pragmatist. An odd couple. That was the verdict among the fascinated observers, who all from that time on began to see Caesar as a force to be reckoned with; for if he was not, why would Marcus Crassus have bothered with him?
“It will snow tonight,” said Crassus. “In the morning we’ll march. I want to use the snow, not become hampered by it.”
“It would make so much sense,” said Caesar, “if our calendar and the seasons coincided! I can’t abide inaccuracy!”
Crassus stared. “What provoked that remark?”
“The fact that it’s February and we’re only beginning to feel winter.”
“You sound like a Greek. Provided one knows the date and waggles a hand outside the door to feel the temperature, what can it matter?’’
“It matters because it’s slipshod and untidy!” said Caesar.
“If the world was too tidy it would be hard to make money.”
“Harder to hide it, you mean,” said Caesar with a grin.
*
When Scyllaeum drew near the scouts reported that Spartacus still camped within the little promontory beyond the port, though there were signs that he might move fairly soon. His Spartacani had eaten the region out.
Crassus and Caesar rode ahead with the army’s engineers and an escort of troopers, aware that Spartacus owned no cavalry; he had tried to train some of his foot soldiers to ride, and for a while had attempted to tame the wild horses roaming the Lucanian forests and mountains, but had had no success with either men or mounts.
The snow was falling steadily in a windless afternoon when the two Roman noblemen and their company began to prowl the country just behind the triangular outthrust wherein lay the Spartacani; if any watch had been set it was a halfhearted one, for they encountered no other men. The snow of course was a help, it muffled noise and coated horses and riders in white.
“Better than I hoped,” said Crassus with much satisfaction as the party turned to ride back to camp. “If we build a ditch and a wall between those two ravines, we’ll shut Spartacus up in his present territory very nicely.”
“It won’t hold them for long,” said Caesar.
“Long enough for my purposes. I want them hungry, I want them cold, I want them desperate. And when they break out, I want them heading north into Lucania.”
“You’ll accomplish the last, at any rate. They’ll try at our weakest point, which won’t be to the south. No doubt you’ll want the consuls’ legions doing most of the digging.”
Crassus looked surprised. “They can dig, but alongside everybody else. Ditch and wall have to be finished within one market interval, and that means the hoariest old veterans will be plying spades too. Besides, the exercise will keep them warm.”
“I’ll engineer it for you,” Caesar offered, but without expectation of assent.
Sure enough, Crassus declined. “I would rather you did, but it isn’t possible. Lucius Quinctius is my senior legate. The job has to go to him.”
“A pity. He’s got too much office and oratory in him.”
Office and oratory or no, Lucius Quinctius tackled the job of walling the Spartacani in with huge enthusiasm. Luckily he had the good sense to lean on the expertise of his engineers; Caesar was right in thinking him no fortification architect.
Fifteen feet wide and fifteen feet deep, the ditch dived into the ravines at either end, and the earth removed from it was piled up into a log—reinforced wall topped with a palisade and watchtowers. From ravine to ravine, the ditch, wall, palisade and watchtowers extended for a distance of eight miles, and were completed in eight days despite constant snow. Eight camps—one for each legion—were spaced at regular intervals beneath the wall; the general would have ample soldiers to man his eight miles of fortifications.
Spartacus became aware that Crassus had arrived the moment activity began—if he had not been aware earlier—but seemed almost uninterested. All of a sudden he bent the energies of his men toward constructing a huge fleet of rafts which apparently he intended should be towed behind Scyllaeum’s fishing boats. To the watching Romans it appeared that he pinned his faith on an escape across the strait, and thought the scheme foolproof enough to ignore the fact that his landward escape route was rapidly being cut off. Came the day when this mass exodus by water began; those Romans not obliged by duty to be elsewhere climbed the flank of nearby Mount Sila for the best view of what happened in Scyllaeum harbor. A disaster. Those rafts which remained afloat long enough to load with people could not negotiate the entrance, let alone the open strait beyond; the fishing boats were not built to tow such heavy, unwieldy objects.
“At least it doesn’t seem as if many of them drowned,” said Caesar to Crassus as they watched from Mount Sila.
“That,” said Crassus, voice detached, “Spartacus probably thinks a pity. Fewer mouths to feed.”
“I think,” said Caesar, “that Spartacus loves them. The way a self-appointed king might love his people.”
“Self-appointed?”
“Kings who are born to rule care little for their people,” said Caesar, who had known a king born to rule. He pointed to where the shores of the bay were scenes of frenzied activity. “I tell you, Marcus Crassus, that man loves every last ungrateful individual in his vast horde! If he didn’t, he would have cut himself off from them a year ago. I wonder who he really is?”
“Starting with what Gaius Cassius had to say, I’m having that question investigated,” said Crassus, and prepared to descend. “Come on, Caesar, you’ve seen enough. Love! If he does, then he’s a fool.”
“Oh, he’s definitely that,” said Caesar, following. “What have you found out?”
“Almost everything except his real name. That may not come to light. Some fool of an archivist, thinking Sulla’s Tabularium would hold military records as well as everything else, didn’t bother to put them in a waterproof place. They’re indecipherable, and Cosconius doesn’t remember any names. At the moment I’m chasing his minor tribunes.”
“Good luck! They won’t remember any names either.”
Crassus gave a grunt which might have been a short laugh. “Did you know there’s a myth about him running around Rome—that he’s a Thracian?”
“Well, everybody knows he’s a Thracian. Thracian or Gaul—there are only the two kinds.” Caesar’s laugh rang out joyously. “However, I take it that this myth is being assiduously disseminated by the Senate’s agents.”
Crassus stopped, turned to gaze back and up at Caesar, a look of startled surprise on his face. “Oh, you are clever!”
“It’s true, I am clever.”
“Well, and doesn’t it make sense?”
“Certainly,” said Caesar. “We’ve had quite enough renegade Romans of late. We’d be fools to add one more to a list that includes such military luminaries as Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Sertorius, wouldn’t we? Better by far to have him a Thracian.”
“Huh!” Crassus emitted a genuine grunt.
“I’d dearly love to set eyes on him!”
“You may when we bring him to battle. He rides a very showy dappled grey horse tricked out with red leather tack and every kind of knightly knob and medallion. It used to belong to Varinius. Besides, Cassius and Manlius saw him at close quarters, so we have a good description. And he’s a distinctive kind of fellow—very big, tall, and fair.”
*
A grim duel began which went on for over a month, Spartacus trying to break through Crassus’s fortifications and Crassus throwing him back. The Roman high command knew that food must be running very short in the Spartacani camps when every soldier Spartacus possessed—Caesar had estimated the total at seventy thousand—attacked along the entire eight—mile front, trying to find the Roman weak point. It seemed to the Spartacani that they had found it toward the middle of the wall, where the ditch appeared to have crumbled under an onslaught of spring water; Spartacus poured men across and over the wall, only to run them into a trap. Twelve thousand Spartacani died, the rest receded.
After that the Thracian who was not a Thracian tortured some prisoners he had saved from the consuls’ legions, scattering his teams of men with red-hot pincers and pokers where he thought the maximum number of Roman soldiers would see the atrocity and hear the screams of their comrades. But after experiencing the horror of decimation Crassus’s legions feared him a great deal more than they pitied the poor fellows being ripped and burned, and coped with it by electing not to watch, stuffing their ears with wool. Desperate, Spartacus produced his most prestigious prisoner, the primus pilus centurion of Gellius’s old second legion, and nailed him to a cross through wrist and ankle joints without according him the mercy of broken limbs to help him die. Crassus’s answer was to set his best archers along the top of his wall; the centurion died in a blizzard of arrows.
As March came in Spartacus sent the woman Aluso to sue for terms of surrender. Crassus saw her in his command hut, in the presence of his legates and tribunes of the soldiers.
“Why hasn’t Spartacus come himself?” asked Crassus.
She gave him a compassionate smile. “Because without my husband the Spartacani would disintegrate,” she said, “and he does not trust you, Marcus Crassus, even under truce.”
“Then he’s cleverer these days than he was when he let the pirates swindle him out of two thousand talents.”
But Aluso was not the kind to rise to any bait, so she did not answer, even with a look. Her appearance was, Caesar thought, deliberately contrived to unsettle a civilized reception committee; she appeared the archetypal barbarian. Her flaxen hair streamed wild and stringy over back and shoulders, she wore some kind of blackish felt tunic with long sleeves, and beneath it tight—legged trousers. Over the clothing of arms and ankles she blazed with golden chains and bracelets, had loaded the long lobes of her ears with more gold, and her henna—stained fingers with rings. Around her neck she wore several loops of tiny bird skulls strung together, and from the solid gold belt at her trim waist there dangled grisly trophies—a severed hand still owning some nails and shreds of skin, a child’s skull, the backbone of a cat or dog complete with tail. The whole was finished with a magnificent wolf pelt, paws knotted on her chest, the head with bared teeth and jewels for eyes perched above her brow.
With all this, she was not unattractive to the silent men who watched her, though none would have called her beautiful; her kind of face with its light, mad-looking eyes was too alien.
On Crassus, however, she failed to make the impression she had striven for. Crassus was proof against any attraction save money. So he stared at her in exactly the same way as he stared at everyone, with what seemed a gentle calmness.
“Speak, woman,” he said.
“I am to ask you for terms of surrender, Marcus Crassus. We have no food left, and the women and children are starving in order that our soldiers may eat. My husband is not the kind of man who can bear to see the helpless suffer. He would rather give himself and his army up. Only tell me the terms and I will tell him. And then tomorrow I will come back with his answer.”
The general turned his back. Over his shoulder he said, his Greek far purer than hers, “You may tell your husband that there are no terms under which 1 would accept his surrender. I will not permit him to surrender. He started this. Now he can see it through to the bitter end.”
She gasped, prepared for every contingency but that one. “I cannot tell him that! You must let him surrender!”
“No,” said Crassus, back still turned. His right hand moved, its fingers snapped. “Take her away, Marcus Mummius, and see her through our lines.”
It was some time later before Caesar could catch Crassus on his own, though he burned to discuss the interview.
“You handled it brilliantly,” he said. “She was so sure she would unsettle you.”
“Silly woman! My reports say she’s a priestess of the Bessi, though I’d rather call her a witch. Most Romans are superstitious—I’ve noticed you are, Caesar!—but I am not. I believe in what I can see, and what I saw was a female of some slight intelligence who had got herself up as she imagined a gorgon might look.” He laughed spontaneously. “I remember being told that when he was a young man Sulla went to a party dressed as Medusa. On his head he wore a wig of living snakes, and he frightened the life out of everyone there. But you know, and I know, that it wasn’t the snakes frightened the life out of anyone. It was—simply Sulla. Now if she had that quality, I might have quaked in my boots.”
“I agree. But she does have the second sight.”
“Many people have the second sight! I’ve known dear old grannies as dithery and fluffy as lambs who had the second sight, and grand-looking advocates you wouldn’t think had a single corner of their minds that wasn’t solid law. Anyway, what makes you think she has the second sight?’’
“Because she came to the interview more frightened of you than you could ever have been of her.”
*
For a month the weather had been “set,” as the mother of Quintus Sertorius might have put it—nights well below freezing point, days not much warmer, blue skies, snow turned to ice underfoot. But after the Ides of March had gone there came a terrible storm which started as sleet and ended with snow piling up and up. Spartacus seized his chance.
Where the wall and ditch fused into the ravine closest to Scyllaeum—and the oldest of Crassus’s veteran legions had its camp—the whole one hundred thousand Spartacani left alive hurled themselves into a frantic struggle to bridge the ditch and climb over the wall. Logs, stones, the dead bodies of humans and animals, even large pieces of loot were flung into the trench, heaped up to surmount the palisade. Like the shades of the dead the enormous mass of people rolled in wave after wave across this makeshift passage and fled into the teeth of the storm. No one opposed them; Crassus had sent the legion a message not to take up arms, but to remain quietly inside its camp.
Disorganized and haphazard, the flight unraveled what little structure the Spartacani host had owned beyond hope of knitting it up again. While the fighting men—better led and disciplined—floundered north on the Via Popillia with Spartacus, Castus and Gannicus, the bulk of the women, children, aged and noncombatants became so lost they entered the forests of Mount Sila; amid the tangles of low branches, rocks, undergrowth, most of them lay down and died, too cold and too hungry to struggle on. Those who did survive to see better weather came eventually upon Bruttian settlements, were recognized for what they were, and killed at once.
Not that the fate of this segment of the Spartacani held any interest for Marcus Licinius Crassus. When the snow began to lessen he struck camp and moved his eight legions out onto the Via Popillia in the wake of the Spartacani soldiers.
His progress was as plodding as an ox, for he was always methodical, always in possession of his general’s wits. There was no use in chasing; cold, hunger and lack of real purpose would combine to slow the Spartacani down, as would the size of their army. Better to have the baggage train in the middle of the legionary column than run the risk of losing it. Sooner or later he would catch up.
His scouts, however, were very busy, very swift. As March ground to its end they reported to Crassus that the Spartacani, having reached the river Silarus, had divided into two forces. One, under Spartacus, had continued up the Via Popillia toward Campania, while the other, under Castus and Gannicus, had struck east up the valley of the middle Silarus.
“Good!” said Crassus. “We’ll leave Spartacus alone for the moment and concentrate on getting rid of the two Samnites.”
The scouts then reported that Castus and Gannicus had not gone very far; they had encountered the prosperous little town of Volcei and were eating well for the first time in two months. No need to hurry!
When the four legions preceding Crassus’s baggage train came up, Castus and Gannicus were too busy feasting to notice. The Spartacani had spread without making more than an apology for a camp on the foreshores of a little lake which at this time of the year contained sweet, potable water; by autumn the same locale would have held few charms. Behind the lake was a mountain. Crassus saw immediately what he had to do, and decided not to wait for the four legions which followed the baggage train.
“Pomptinus and Rufus, take twelve cohorts and sneak around the far side of the mountain. When you’re in position, charge downhill. That will take you right into the middle of their—camp? As soon as I see you I’ll attack from the front. We’ll squash them between us like a beetle.”
The plan should have worked. It would have worked, except for the vagaries of chance the best scouts could not divine. For when they saw how much food Volcei could provide, Castus and Gannicus sent word to Spartacus to retrace his footsteps, join the revelry. Spartacus duly retraced his footsteps and appeared on the far side of the lake just as Crassus launched his attack. The men belonging to Castus and Gannicus bolted into the midst of the newcomers, and all the Spartacani promptly vanished.
Some generals would have clawed the air, but not Crassus. “Unfortunate. But eventually we’ll succeed,” he said, unruffled.
A series of storms slowed everybody down. The armies of both sides lingered around the Silarus, though it appeared that it was now Spartacus’s turn to leave the Via Popillia, while Castus and Gannicus used the road to march into Campania. Crassus lurked well in the rear, a fat spider bent on getting fatter. He too had decided to split his forces now that his eight legions were reunited; the baggage train, he knew, was safe. Two legions of infantry and all the cavalry were put under the command of Lucius Quinctius and Tremellius Scrofa, and ordered to be ready to follow whichever segment of Spartacani left the Via Popillia, while Crassus himself would pursue the segment on the road.
Like a millstone he ground on; as his legion was attached to the general’s division, Caesar could only marvel at the absolute tenacity and method of this extraordinary man. At Eburum, not far north of the Silarus, he caught Castus and Gannicus at last, and annihilated their army. Thirty thousand died on the field, tricked and trapped; only a very few managed to slip through the Roman lines and flee inland to find Spartacus.
Greatest pleasure of all to every soldier in the victorious army was what Crassus discovered among the tumbled heaps of Spartacani baggage after the battle; the five eagles which had been taken when various Roman forces had been defeated, twenty-six cohort standards, and the fasces belonging to five praetors.
“Look at that!” cried Crassus, actually beaming. “Isn’t it a wonderful sight?”
The general now displayed the fact that when he needed to, he could move very fast indeed. Word came from Lucius Quinctius that he and Scrofa had been ambushed—though without grievous losses—and that Spartacus was still nearby.
Crassus marched.
*
The grand undertaking had foundered. Left in the possession of Spartacus was the part of the army marching with him up to the sources of the Tanagrus River; that, and Aluso, and his son.
When his defeat of Quinctius and Scrofa proved indecisive because their cavalry—fleeter by far than infantry—mustered and allowed the Roman foot to withdraw, Spartacus made no move to leave the area. Three little towns had provided his men with ample food for the moment, but what the next valley and the one after that held, he no longer had any idea. It was approaching spring; granaries were low, no vegetables had yet formed and plumped after the hard winter, the hens were scrawny, and the pigs (crafty creatures!) had gone into hiding in the woods. An obnoxious local from Potentia, the closest town, had taken great pleasure in journeying out to see Spartacus in order to tell him that Varro Lucullus was expected any day to land in Brundisium from Macedonia, and that the Senate had ordered him to reinforce Crassus immediately.
“Your days are numbered, gladiator!” said the local with glee. “Rome is invincible!”
“I should cut your throat,” said the gladiator wearily.
“Go ahead! I expect you to! And I don’t care!”
“Then I won’t give you the satisfaction of a noble death. Just go home!”
Aluso was listening. After the fellow had taken himself off (very disappointed that his lifeblood had not streamed out upon the ground) she moved close to Spartacus and put her hand gently upon his arm.
“It finishes here,” she said.
“I know, woman.”
“I see you fall in battle, but I cannot see a death.”
“When I fall in battle I’ll be dead.”
He was so very tired, and the catastrophe at Scyllaeum still haunted him. How could he look his men in the face knowing that it had been his own misguided carelessness which had ended in their being penned in by Crassus? The women and children were gone and he knew they would not reappear. They had all died from starvation somewhere in the wild Bruttian countryside.
With no idea whether what the man from Potentia had told him about Varro Lucullus was true or not, he knew that it cut him off from Brundisium nonetheless. Crassus controlled the Via Popillia; the news of Castus and Gannicus had reached him even before he ambushed Quinctius and Scrofa. Nowhere to go. Nowhere, that is, except one last battlefield. And he was glad, glad, glad…. Neither birth nor ability had tailored him for such an enormous responsibility, the lives and welfare of a whole people. He was just an ordinary Roman of Italian family who had been born on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, and ought to have spent his life there alongside his father and his brother. Who did he think he was, to attempt to give birth to a new nation? Not noble enough, not educated enough, not grand enough. But there was some honor in dying a free man on a battlefield; he would never go back to a prison. Never.
When word came that Crassus and his army were approaching, he took Aluso and his son and put them in a wagon harnessed to six mules far enough away from where he intended to make his last stand to ensure that they would elude pursuit. He would have preferred that they leave immediately, but Aluso refused, saying she must wait for the outcome of the conflict. In the covered rear of the vehicle lay gold, silver, treasures, coin; a guarantee that his wife and child would prosper. That they might be killed he understood. Yet their fates were on the laps of the gods, and the gods had been passing strange.
Some forty thousand Spartacani formed up to meet Crassus. Spartacus made no speech to them before the battle, but they cheered him deafeningly as he rode down their ranks on beautiful dappled grey Batiatus. He took his place beneath the standard of his people—the leaping enameled fish of a Gaul’s fighting helmet—turned in the saddle to raise both hands in the air, fists clenched, then slid out of the horse’s saddle. His sword was in his right hand, the curved saber of a Thracian gladiator; he closed his eyes, raised it, and brought it down into Batiatus’s neck. Blood sprayed and gushed, but the lovely creature made no protest. Like a sacrificial victim it went down on its knees, rolled over, died.
There. No need for a speech. To kill his beloved horse told his followers everything. Spartacus did not intend to leave the field alive; he had dispensed with his means of escape.
As battles went it was straight, uncomplicated, extremely bloody. Taking their example from Spartacus, most of his men fought until they dropped, some in death, some in utter exhaustion. Spartacus himself killed two centurions before an unknown in the struggling mass cut the hamstrings in one leg. Unable to stand, he fell to his knees, but fought on doggedly until a huge pile of bodies by his side tumbled over and buried him.
Fifteen thousand Spartacani survived to flee the field; six thousand went in the direction of Apulia, the rest south toward the Bruttian mountains.
*
“Over in just six months, and a winter campaign at that,” said Crassus to Caesar. “I’ve lost very few men all considered, and Spartacus is dead. Rome has her eagles and fasces back, and a lot of the plunder will prove impossible to return to its original owners: We’ll all do quite well out of it.”
“There is a difficulty, Marcus Crassus,” said Caesar, who had been delegated to inspect the field for men still alive.
“Oh?”
“Spartacus. He isn’t there.”
“Rubbish!” said Crassus, startled. “I saw him fall!”
“So did I. I even memorized exactly where the spot was. I can take you straight to it—in fact, come with me now and I will! But he isn’t there, Marcus Crassus. He isn’t there.”
“Odd!” The general huffed, pursed his lips, thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, what does it really matter? His army’s gone, that’s the main thing. I can’t celebrate a triumph over an enemy classified as slave. The Senate will give me an ovation, but it’s not the same. Not the same!” He sighed. “What about his woman, the Thracian witch?”
“We haven’t found her either, though we did round up quite a few camp followers who had huddled together out of the way. I questioned them about her—and found out that her name is Aluso—but they swore she had climbed into a red-hot, sizzling chariot drawn by fiery snakes and driven off into the sky.”
“Shades of Medea! I suppose that makes Spartacus Jason!” Crassus turned to walk with Caesar toward the heap of dead that had buried the fallen Spartacus. “I think somehow the pair of them got away. Don’t you?”
“I’m sure they did,” said Caesar.
“Well, we’ll have to scour the countryside for Spartacani anyway. They might come to light.”
Caesar made no reply. His own opinion was that they would never come to light. He was clever, the gladiator. Too clever to try to raise another army. Clever enough to become anonymous.
All through the month of May the Roman army tracked down Spartacani in the fastnesses of Lucania and Bruttium, ideal locations for brigandry which made it imperative that every surviving Spartacanus be captured. Caesar had estimated those who escaped southward at about nine or ten thousand, but all he and the other hunting details managed to find were some six thousand six hundred all told. The rest would probably become brigands, contribute to the perils of journeying down the Via Popillia to Rhegium without an armed escort.
“I can keep on going,” he said to Crassus on the Kalends of June, “though the catch will become progressively smaller and harder to snare.”
“No,” said Crassus with decision. “I want my army back in Capua by the next market day. Including the consuls’ legions. The curule elections are due next month and I intend to be back in Rome in plenty of time to stand for the consulship.”
That was no surprise; Caesar in fact did not consider it worthy of comment. Instead he continued on the subject of the fugitive Spartacani. “What about the six thousand or so who fled northeast into Apulia?”
“They got as far as the border of Italian Gaul, actually,” said Crassus. “Then they ran into Pompeius Magnus and his legions returning from Spain. You know Magnus! He killed the lot.”
“So that only leaves the prisoners here. What do you want to do with them?”
“They’ll go with us as far as Capua.” The face Crassus turned upon his senior tribune of the soldiers was its usual phlegmatic self, but the eyes held an obdurate coldness. “Rome doesn’t need these futile slave wars, Caesar. They’re just one more drain on the Treasury. Had we not been lucky, five eagles and five sets of fasces might have been lost forever, a stain on Rome’s honor I for one would have found unendurable. In time men like Spartacus might be blown up out of all proportion by some enemy of Rome’s. Other men might strive to emulate him, never knowing the grubby truth. You and I know that Spartacus was a product of the legions, far more a Quintus Sertorius than a maltreated slave. Had he not been a product of the legions he could never have gone as far as he did. I do not want him turning into some sort of slave hero. So I will use Spartacus to put a stop to the whole phenomenon of slave uprisings.”
“It was far more a Samnite than a slave uprising.”
“True. But the Samnites are a curse Rome will have to live with forever. Whereas slaves must learn their place. I have the means to teach them their place. And I will. After I finish with the remnants of the Spartacani, there will be no more slave uprisings in our Roman world.”
Used to thinking so quickly and summing men up so well that he had arrived at the answer long before anyone else, Caesar found himself absolutely unable to guess what Crassus was up to.
“How will you accomplish that?” he asked.
The accountant took over. “It was the fact that there are six thousand six hundred prisoners gave me the idea,” Crassus said. “The distance between Capua and Rome is one hundred and thirty-two miles, each of five thousand feet. That is a total of six hundred and sixty thousand feet. Divided by six thousand six hundred, a distance of one hundred feet. I intend to crucify one Spartacanus every hundred feet between Capua and Rome. And they will remain hanging from their crosses until they rot away to bare bones.”
Caesar drew a breath. “A terrible sight.”
“I have one question,” said Crassus, his smooth and un—lined brow creasing. “Do you think I ought to put all the crosses on one side of the road, or alternate between both sides?”
“One side of the road,” said Caesar instantly. “Definitely on one side of the road only. That is, provided by road you mean the Via Appia rather than the Via Latina.”
“Oh yes, it has to be the Via Appia. Straight as an arrow for miles and miles, and not as many hills.”
“Then one side of the road. The eye will take the sight in better that way.” Caesar smiled. “I have some experience when it comes to crucifixion.”
“I heard about that,” said Crassus seriously. “However, I can’t give you the job. It’s not a fitting one for a tribune of the soldiers. He’s an elected magistrate. By rights it belongs to the praefectus fabrum.’’
As the praefectus fabrum —the man who looked after all the technical and logistic factors involved in army supply—was one of Crassus’s own freedmen and brilliant at his work, neither Caesar nor Crassus doubted that it would be a smooth operation.
*
Thus it was that at the end of June when Crassus, his legates, his tribunes of the soldiers and his own appointed military tribunes rode up the Via Appia from Capua escorted by a single cohort of troops, the left—hand side of the ancient and splendid road was lined with crosses all the way. Every hundred feet another Spartacanus slumped from the ropes which cruelly bound arms at the elbow and legs below the knees. Nor had Crassus been kind. The six thousand six hundred Spartacani died slowly with unbroken limbs, a soughing of moans from Capua to the Capena Gate of Rome.
Some people came to sightsee. Some brought a recalcitrant slave to look upon Crassus’s handiwork and point out that this was the right of every master, to crucify. But many upon looking turned immediately to go home again, and those who were obliged to travel on the Via Appia anywhere between Capua and Rome were grateful that the crosses adorned only one side of the road. As the distance rendered the sight more bearable, the popular spot for those who lived in Rome to see was from the top of the Servian Walls on either side of the Capena Gate; the view extended for miles, but the faces were blurs.
They hung there for eighteen months enduring the slow cycle of decay that took them from living skin and muscle to clacking bones, for Crassus would not permit that they be taken down until the very last day of his consulship.
And, thought Caesar in some wonder, surely no other military campaign in the whole history of Rome had been so rounded, so neat, so finite: what had begun with a decimation had ended with a crucifixion.
