The Conqueror
[i]
NOW the whole of Southern Italy lay undefended at the feet of the Thracian Gladiator.
[ii]
A self-deputed scout, Kleon the literatus pushed northwards with a hundred Gauls through the winter-touched land. If he engaged himself more in mapping than sacking, that was a small matter to the Gauls, who sacked and looted as the mood came on them.
Once, in forced marches from Papa camp, out on some mysterious mission to the north-east, Gershom ben Sanballat, the tribune of the Bithynians, overtook the Greek and his scouts. With the Jew was a full three thousand men, his original company of Bithynians now swollen with recruitments of Syrians, Egyptians, Negroes and Greeks. But they called it still the Bithynian legion. The Pharisee guerilla grinned sardonically as he pointed to a burning villa.
‘Is this the beginning of your New Republic?’
Kleon was coldly unmoved. ‘We must destroy before we build.’
‘As the divine Plato doubtlessly said,’ growled Gershom. And then: ‘Where are we to winter, Greek?’
‘In Kadesh, perhaps.’
The Jew cursed him and marched away his legion. By evening that day they were beyond the furthest trailings of Kleon’s scouts. Then the latter turned westward, combing the roads that ran parallel with the sea. It was the design of the slaves to intercept all travellers from the North.
These were few enough. Merchants had fled the roads, seeking Greece and Africa by sea. But that evening Kleon, sleeping in his camp, was awakened by the noise of much drunken mirth. Rousing, he rose and went into the flare of torches and found a half-score of his Gauls, much laden with wine-skins and incongruous finery, surrounding a band of travellers scooped from the northern road.
They huddled together, these travellers, or rather huddled about one figure. Coming forward, Kleon surveyed that figure with cold, amused eyes.
She was a woman of that beauty that was singularly Roman, however she had departed from the antique codes of the Masters. Tall and full-breasted, with level brow and widely spaced eyes, she stood calm in the tumult, with a calmness that angered her captors. Kleon thrust through them and took the woman by the jaw, turning her face into the full light. She did not struggle, only looked at him with eyes into which flashed a sudden disgust and fear. Kleon knew that look – the look of a woman for the Mutilated.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
‘Lavinia.’
She had been the mistress of Cossinus, brought down from Rome under the protection of that Kharmides who now lay out on the great North way with his throat cut from ear to ear by a Gaulish miner. Kleon stood and regarded her with cold, clear eyes. Should he hand the woman over to the Gauls? Or was there any other purpose she could serve?
As the mistress of Cossinus she must be aware of secret matters in Rome – how the Senate had taken the defeat of Varinus and planned the new campaign against the slaves. But he himself had no leisure to question her; and, even as women sickened in his presence, so he felt for them an unquenchable loathing. With all – as all with him. Excepting . . .
He turned from that thought in a strange pain. ‘I will send you to the Strategos,’ he said.
Her eyes widened with fear. ‘Spartacus, the Thracian?’
The Greek grinned coldly. ‘Even so. But he seldom eats women.’ His eyes were cruel. ‘As for anything else he may do – that will be nothing unusual in your experience, will it?’
Next morning he watched her go south under the guard of ten of the most trustworthy Gauls. And for some reason he remembered Elpinice again, whom he had hated; and stood and stared after that train that carried the Roman woman to Spartacus.
[iii]
Meanwhile, marching mostly by night on their mysterious venture, Gershom ben Sanballat and his legion faded into the east. The Pharisee, forced for long periods to eat of unclean meat, contented himself with little but fruit and looted corn. At night he slept on his shield. No watch-fires were lighted when the slave-legion made camp, for it might be that strong bodies of Romans were still abroad, remnants from the rout of Varinus. These the Jew had no desire to engage.
The city of Nuceria prepared for winter. It was defended by an ancient wall and ten centuries of soldiers under the command of a Greek named Glaucon. A good general and a stern disciplinarian, he had had the ancient walls strengthened as the country around began to seethe with the slave revolt. From those walls he would watch undisturbed the smoke of burning homesteads rise in the air. Nuceria they might not attempt.
Glaucon had half a dozen warnings nailed on its walls. These were the crucified bodies of slaves captured in their attempt to slip away and join the army of the Gladiators.
He had campaigned in many countries, Glaucon, and amongst his slaves had a Jewish woman, Judith. A child of the Egyptian Diaspora, she was a tall, dark woman of whom Glaucon had soon wearied as bed-woman; for even in his bed she shuddered as at an unclean touch. Amused, Glaucon had made her his cook, for she was deft in the preparation of the spiced dishes he had grown to love in the East. Also, placed on oath in the name of her God, he knew she was incapable of poisoning him.
With the passing of the years he allowed her considerable freedom and bore with her occasional Jewish insolence. Daily she went to a farm beyond the walls, bringing back fresh eggs and milk and herbs to savour her dishes.
On a day in early winter she found the farm very quiet. Coming to the rear door she entered. As she did so an arm encircled her throat and she found herself held by an armed man. He gagged her with care, and hesitated a moment in the darkness of the passage, hungering, half-minded to rape her. Then he chattered something in unintelligible Latin, and dragged her into the kitchen of the farm.
Several score of armed men – or so it seemed to her – lay on the floor, the tables, the shelves, lay everywhere, fast asleep. Only one man other than her captor did not sleep, and he looked a frowning question; a tall, black-haired man who combed at his curled beard.
‘Release her,’ he commanded.
Released, Judith stood and looked at him. And suddenly they both smiled; and the Bithynians woke to hear greetings exchanged in a strange tongue, and saw the woman kiss the hand of the leader of the Hasidim. She had heard of him often in Alexandria, in the days when he stayed the Hellenizing Jannaeus; who of the Diaspora had not heard of Gershom of Kadesh?
So it was that, their commander and his advance-guard secretly admitted to the city through the wall-gate of Glaucon himself, Nuceria next morning awoke to find itself in the hands of the Spartacists.
Assured of their northern frontier, the slaves prepared to evacuate the camp under Mount Papa.
[iv]
Preparing, the slaves were conscious of a change in the quality of their leadership.
No longer was each band left to its own devices, to squat by the fires and drowse on memories of the kennels and mines. Instead, centuries and exact legions were instituted, each legion composed of four thousand men, armed thus and so; and if possible composed of a definite tribe. Feuds were forbidden, or the robbery of the merchants who now swarmed round the camp to sell their wares in exchange for the loot of Metapontum and the treasure-train from Brindisium. Standards were given to each legion of slaves, insignia and tribunes bearing badges of rank. Daily the slaves were marched out to skirmish and drill, leaving their women in staring bands on the parapets of the Papa entrenchments. Those who were smiths or armourers erected crude smithies and set to the forging of iron weapons.
At this breath of Roman-like discipline, the slaves, in their hatred of the Masters, were delighted. Practising ecstatically, they imagined themselves both Masters and conquerors of the Masters. They obeyed their centurions without question, and, sweating, would leap and wrestle, naked, in the lines of long, open-air gymnasia. Even the Gauls and the Eastern men lost their shame in appearing unclad; and with bodies shining with oil would hurl the discus or practise as slingsmen.
Shouts of adulation would greet the Thracian Gladiator as he passed through the sweating companies. Crixus the Gaul alone appeared unchanged, and confessed a complete inability either to drill or manoeuvre his legion. ‘I am a Gladiator, no soldier. As once you yourself were,’ he said to the Strategos.
The heavy Thracian burr of the Latin did nothing to guise the passionless ferocity of the words. ‘Once I was also a child, Crixus. But I’ve stopped drinking milk. You’ll drill your legion, or I’ll appoint another to drill it for you.’
The Gaul stared. It was indeed a new Spartacus, this. Then Crixus went to drill his men.
That night a message was brought to the Strategos that a woman and three men captives, taken by Kleon on the northwards road, had arrived in the camp under a guard of Gauls. Ialo the Thracian brought him the message. He had now made himself the Gladiator’s intimate attendant, and stood in the dark of the hut looking questioningly at Spartacus seated on a little stool. So every evening he sat in darkness, unless a tribune came seeking his counsel, or Kleon the eunuch were in the camp. Then torches would be brought and the two sit poring at a table over the plans that the Greek would sketch on his tablets or sometimes with drops of spilt wine. The Gladiator looked up.
‘Bring in the four of them.’
So they were brought before him, and Lavinia, in the light of a single torch, looked at the conqueror of southern Italy, who had shaken the Republic as no other since the days of Hannibal. All Rome was a-rumour with his name and intentions, one rumour preponderating over all others. It was said that the Thracian savage was mad, mad not with the brutality that might have been expected, but insane, being clement, one who neither tortured his captives nor looted unnecessarily. And Rome had listened open-mouthed, and laughed, knowing that only the feeble-minded could antic in such a fashion; and stilled its fears, knowing the successes of the rebellion accidental after all, to be speedily nullified when the consuls took the field at the end of the winter.
So Lavinia remembered, standing dishevelled and dusty, but still with beauty upon her, in the presence of the slave who had shaken Rome. Behind him stood Ialo; the Gauls lounged at the door, slaves in authority. If the story of his reputed clemency were a lie, she shivered at the thought of what would next happen to her – had he no use for her himself. She herself had experimented with slaves in moments of idle curiosity as to how a mutilated man behaved and cried.
Then Spartacus raised his head and looked at her.
At first there was fear with her, then, as always when she met the gaze of his kind, a shuddering disgust of the slave who dared look at her with unshielded eyes, a feeling of a foul contamination. But she saw strange eyes, glowing yet dull, and minded that thing that he carried on his standards, the slave-army insignia of a Snake. Now she knew at last where they got that sign, and shivered while those dark eyes grew suddenly gold. Spartacus stood up.
In the tent were cloths Elpinice had used, a bronze mirror, for all she wore Gladiator’s armour, a spatula and a horn cup. In the dark of the evenings under Papa Ialo had been wont to find the slave-leader staring at these, strangely and terribly. Now he gestured towards them.
‘Take these away. What is your name, woman?’
‘I am Lavinia,’ she said, in a white whisper.
‘A Roman?’
She found his thick Latin barely intelligible. But she understood. She nodded.
And that night, when at length he slept and she drew shudderingly back from his arms, far off and ringingly she heard a wolf howl; and, harlot though she was, listened with quivering nostrils.
[v]
All the next day and all the next night the smithy fires flared in the guarded camp of the slaves under Papa. Twice forced to evacuate it in the campaign waged with Varinus, it had yet grown homely to many of them, they had garlanded its huts and shelters with boughs; and the women in autumn days had strewn flowers in its shelters, and daubed its posts with images of the gods, while the mountain soared guardian through the passing days. Now, in the flare of the watchfires, Mount Papa watched their last night.
There was a calling of orders, a crying of names, mustering of companies rising shrill above the noise of the beaten anvils. Slaves knelt by the fires and hammered their shield-rims or sharpened their swords; a wail of unsleeping children rose all around. The legion of Thracians, appointed to march under Spartacus himself, wrought through sweating hours to forge the javelins with which he desired them to arm. As with Gershom’s legion he planned to possess a body of soldiers neither legionaries nor hoplitai, but modelled on the peltasts of whom Kleon had told.
Greek literati sat everywhere, copying-slaves who had joined the revolt, making notes of provisions and armour, numbers and companies. Four men, three Gauls and a Greek, appointed spies by Kleon the eunuch, wandered from legion to legion, learning the secret opinions and complainings of the slaves. None knew what was towards in the northern march, but the wildest rumours were spread about – that Spartacus the unconquered would seize the land, and make himself king with them as his guard, and defy the power of the Masters for ever. And a growing murmur swelled to a shout, a shout that echoed through the listening hills:
‘AVE, SPARTACUS! AVE, REX SERVORUM!’
Crixus, alone undisturbed, slept in his tent, dreaming of that unhomely Gaul he had little desire to regain. Elpinice came once and troubled his dreams; but in a little while his God arose and drove her back into the land of shades.
And in the early dawn the Free Legions were on the march, northward, up through the tracks they had descended early that year. But now the ground was white with hoar-frost, and a chill wind blew from Lucania. Great baggage-waggons rumbled up the track, the oxen labouring deep-breathing, dragging northwards the spoil of South Italy. Above, Papa was wreathed in mist, but the slaves knew little of augurs, for their Gods were but ill remembered.
The Gauls had wreathed their hair with chaplets of brown leaves and marched out with their helmets slung on their backs, the great Gaul swords slung with them, their spears upended as staves. Once slaves of the mine, the portico, the plantation, they led the legions north, and, singing, vanished into the morning dimness.
The German bands of Gannicus tramped heavily after. Lastly, the Thracians, three thousand strong, with new-welded javelins in their belts and Spartacus riding his stallion in their midst, marched northwards just as the wintry sunshine lifted the cloudy streamers from Mount Papa’s crest.
Crixus, who commanded the rearguard, laden with baggage, knew nothing of this departure. He slept in the almost deserted camp till roused by a slave who desired to dismantle his hut. Thereat, yawning, he arose and went out to look at Papa for the last time. Then he looked from that to the track that led north.
‘Our Gods have a Fortune awaiting us there.’
Winter in Nola
[i]
NOLA was stormed by the Gaulish advance-guard of the Free Legions. Castus hurled wave after wave of attackers upon it, and took it after great slaughter. But with its seizure the southern half of the peninsula, which Kleon and the Thracian designed to make a great slave state, was now defended by two strong towns. Nuceria was strongly garrisoned, but the body of the slave-horde quartered in Nola.
It was a bitter winter. None but velites and such light troops might move while it lasted, and throughout the months of inaction the slaves might have sunk in a placid torpor, but for the ceaseless urging of Spartacus and the eunuch Greek. These knew that unless the horde was welded into an army, the consuls would destroy them in the spring. For now, and at last, the Republic was aroused. The Wolf had wakened on her hills, and was crying her packs to defence. It was even told that a great shipment of timber had been sent for to the Sardinian forests: to make crosses for the captured slaves.
So drilling and training in weapon-play went on unceasingly under the walls, despite the bitter winds from the north. The furnaces glowed unceasingly, while hastae and pila were hammered and sharpened in preparation for the spring. Kleon even conceived the idea of the construction of rams and catapults for the taking of the southern cities still unmolested by the slaves. That idea might never have passed to fulfilment, but that the slave-horde was joined in Nola by a Greek named Hiketas, neither slave nor freedman, but an Argive noble. He brought with him his sister, Eradne, with whom he lived in incest. Traversing the roads from Rome, he offered his services to the staring eunuch.
‘This is the slave-army,’ Kleon said, with a cold distrust. ‘You are of the Masters.’
The young Greek laughed; and yawned daintily, eating a comfit from a silver box. ‘I am tired of this life of Masters and slaves. Your slave-bands offer diversion. So I and Eradne would join them.’ He waved a negligent hand at the tall, slight figure clad as a man, who had ridden with him to the Nola guardhouse. Kleon said: ‘She is your woman?’
‘She is my sister, and we live in incest.’ The young Greek ate another comfit, and dusted his hands. ‘But we’ve no ambition to live in this guardhouse, unless your Strategos rejects our help. In that case we’ve another plan to follow.’
‘What is that?’ Kleon asked.
‘To charter a boat in Sicily and sail west through the Pillars to the Outer Seas. I’d put to the test this tale of old Plato’s that the Western Isle was really sunk.’
Kleon thought of Titul and smiled on him bleakly. And then thought: ‘You may join the Free Legions if you will. But I’ll set a guard to watch you and your woman.’
Hiketas raised plucked eyebrows in his painted face. ‘Set a legion, if you’ll sleep better of nights.’ And then, as he was led through Nola, broke from his half-captivity to gesture at the single ram in the market-place. ‘And you hope to assail the cities with that?’ He had lost his languor. ‘Give me men, materials, and time until spring . . .’
Kleon had given him all three. And now to the other sounds of preparation the forum of Nola rang with the sound of the mallets wielded under the orders of the renegade Master, upbuilding two great helepolites for the siege of such cities as might resist the slaves, giant towers of wood that were scaled with brass. In addition to these, the Argive noble set to the construction of five tormenta, great catapults for hurling rocks on the roofs and walls of cities they might assail. Kleon withdrew his guard upon Hiketas, in time the slaves ceased to stare as he passed, and he and the woman Eradne found quarters near the Nola Forum, close to their labours. When the springtime came. . . .
[ii]
Spartacus summoned Kleon to his quarters. It was late afternoon as the eunuch crossed the city, and the cold bit deep, for his blood was thin. Coming to the quarters of the Thracian, he passed the guard of Ialo. Spartacus sat, as of old, on a little stool, without his armour, his head in his hands.
‘When will the consular armies move?’
Kleon had already debated this with him, and looked at the brooding figure in surprise. ‘Not for a month yet, I think.’
‘Then we must move before them. If we wait till they are defeated, the south will stir against us. It is stirring already.’
Kleon said coldly, ‘With you to order the battle, no army of the Masters can stand against us.’ And thought: ‘Until they bring Pompeius from Iberia.’
The Thracian nodded. ‘Until they bring Pompeius. When that day comes, we can meet that day. Meanwhile, we do not risk what we’ve taken already. Southern Italy we can hold if we choose – yet only if we choose. I’ll send Castus into Apulia to put down the country and hold the great Stone Way.’
‘Castus?’ Kleon shook his head. ‘Now I would not send him.’
‘Why not?’
‘He’s a lover of yours, they say.’ The brooding figure did not move. ‘And at least too unready to hold a separate command for long, with you not by him. There’s only one tribune you can send.’
The Strategos knew it also; but he seemed to avoid the knowledge.
‘The Jew?’
Kleon smiled acidly and shook his head. ‘He would rend out his beard by the roots and suspect he was being sent out of the way while I prepared to anoint you king – that cry of REX SERVORUM has haunted him since Papa. Though he is faithful enough. Nor can you send Oenomaus, for the same reason that Castus cannot be sent. Nor Gannicus, for, with a separate command, he would loot and murder to his heart’s content. There’s only one fit commander.’
It was snowing, gustily, in a bitter wind. The two slave leaders sat at a window and looked out through the slats at the white, waving curtain, with beyond it the walls of Nola and the mountains into which they proposed to despatch an army. In the coming dark, despite the storm, the city shone lighted and secure, warming a little the Greek heart of Kleon, hating the wastes of the countryside. He sat in silence and watched the Thracian, marvelling a little that there should endure in him such love for a fellow-slave of the arena.
When even the memory of Elpinice was dead.
And thought of Elpinice came on Kleon again. She often disturbed his thoughts, reasonlessly, seeing she was dead, and if not nothingness only a pale shadow in a world of dreams – the Land of Mist, as the Thracians called it. She had stood between him and Spartacus, and though he had no fear that this other love of the Strategos would so stand, it was the one defect he saw in that passionless statesman he was moulding from the fluid clay of the Gladiator of Capua.
Then Spartacus stood up and called his attendant, the same Thracian Ialo as had ridden with him to the Roman house in the pit of the hills.
‘Bid Crixus come to me.’
Then he turned round and met the nod of the Greek. ‘I’ll send him into Apulia.’
[iii]
The quarters of Gershom ben Sanballat were above the wall-gate of Nola itself. From there the Pharisee hater of Gentiles saw to the guarding of the slave-host in Nola. Captain of the town’s defences, his was the appointing of guards and sentinels, the periodical inspection of all the wall’s circuit, the questioning of arrivals and departures of merchants. Accustomed to the bleak winds of the hills of Judaea, the winter weather had but little effect on him. Clad in a long mantle and a leather helmet, he would stride from guard-room to guard-room, followed by two Bithynians, shivering, and keeping a slight trot in order to maintain pace with their Jewish General.
Coming from his council with Spartacus, Kleon the Greek made his way to the house above the Northern Gate. Darkness had come, and all the house was in shadow but for the glow from the charcoal brazier in the room where Gershom sat. Gershom he found not seated alone. Beside him was a woman who, at the appearance of the Greek, rose to her feet and walked out of the room by another door. Kleon stopped and stared after her sardonically.
‘A priestess of Jehovah, doubtlessly?’
The ex-leader of the Hasidim combed his beard. ‘It is Judith, the woman who opened the gates of Nyceria for us. She is a very good cook.’
The Greek shrugged mockingly. ‘And no doubt a passable bed-woman. Hear the word of the Strategos, tribune: you’ll relieve all Germans from guard duties immediately, and send them armed to their own quarter.’
The Jew stood up and reached for his helmet. ‘What foolishness is now afoot? Where are the Germans going?’
‘Crixus is taking them into Apulia. The Strategos proposed you, but I told him you were over-busied.’ He glanced at the door through which Judith had gone. ‘As apparently you are.’
The Jew’s brows drew into a scowling line, for a moment again the noble addressing the eunuch slave. ‘Such business as I have is my own. Heed you to yours.’ And added irrelevantly: ‘Has not Spartacus his Lavinia?’
Kleon sat down. He nodded moodily. ‘Yes, that was my mistake. I should have cut her throat on the Northern Road or else handed her over to the Gauls.’
It was Gershom’s turn to sneer. ‘Has she no faith in the New Republic, then?’
But Kleon was not listening. For long after Gershom had gone, to the walls and relieving the Germans, he sat in that room by the Northern Gate and stared in the brazier’s glow. The Jew with his Judith, Spartacus with Lavinia – every slave who could find or steal or win a woman this night might sit by his fire in comfort and drowsing content. Or rouse into warmth and tenderness, the stinging bliss of lust. Except himself.
And that bitter hatred he had of the Masters pierced him like keen knives, till he laughed a little at himself, shakenly, and it passed. Then he went out, through the darkness and noise of Nola. The snow had cleared and far up, cold and clear, shone the stars.
He stood and looked at them for a little, and with a nameless comfort.
[iv]
Next morning half the German legion was detached from the command of Gannicus, and marched out by Crixus on the road to Apulia. And Crixus and the Strategos kissed; and the Snake standards shone above the marching slaves. And long from the walls of Nola, Spartacus watched that departure.
Crixus in Apulia
[i]
THAT year Gellius and Quintus Arrius were elected consuls at Rome, and waited for an unusually bitter winter to pass before setting out with the legions on the principal object of their election.
That object the Senate, at length aroused, had stressed as the suppression of the slave rebellion. Both consuls, having suffered in their southern properties from the ravagings of the Free Legions, were in complete agreement for once with the policy of the Senate.
All the forces available in Central Italy were to be taken against the Spartacists. They amounted to three legions, eighteen thousand foot and horse, besides auxiliaries brought from Cisalpine Gaul. The slave-horde under Spartacus was believed to number at least twenty thousand men. But it was composed of slaves, and the odds therefore negligible.
Yet both consuls were discreet and cautious, patricians, cold men, viewing the slave revolt with neither fear nor contempt. They did not underrate the Bandit or his power and generalship. This was a thing to be stamped upon, the slaves killed or recaptured, themselves to win credit and a triumph through Rome. So the winter passed but slowly for them.
Pass it did, however, and in the early days of Spring they took the army south, cautiously, towards Lucania. A host of spies in that country sent them constant word of the movements of the slaves. The Thracian still lingered at Nola with the majority of his following. But they learned it was his intention to attack Capua itself, with great machines built him by a renegade patrician, Hiketas. The consuls hastened their march, for spring was quick in the land.
They came through a country as yet undesolated by the slave armies: for desertions to the Gladiators had almost ceased. All believed that the Free Legions would be crushed before summer; and, watching the passing, horse and foot, of the army of the consuls, this opinion found additional weight among the slave populace. Men and women, they would speak in their sheds over-night of the scenes to follow the suppression of the Bandit. Thinking of that returning passage of the army of the Masters they had seen press south, they would lick dry lips, the slaves, full of a sickened curiosity, seeing their endless days of toil and the whipping-block as upholding lives pleasant and safe in comparison with those who had joined the Criminals of Capua.
But at Nola spring was also finding the Free Legions active. Bands of slaves scoured the surrounding country, for provisions and iron were running low in Nola. With knowledge of that fact Kleon the eunuch was determined to put into operation his plan of pacifying the Italiot cities and gaining them as willing allies. Gershom ben Sanballat, who had captured Nuceria, was accordingly sent to pacify that city, to relieve it from the rule of a brutal Syrian, who had been acting in a fashion semi-independent of the slaves in Nola. The Jew’s instructions were to call together the principal men, propose or force an alliance upon them; and demand a monthly tribute of corn and wine. Then he was to hold south into Lucania to every town and city on the way to Metapontum, and consolidate the country into a slave province, yielding provisions and tribute.
But his legion could not be spared to accompany him. Beard-combing and sardonic, the Jew set out, taking with him fifty Bithynians and his cook, the woman Judith. Kleon watched them go, and had a cold twinge of regret. For it was a mission altogether desperate, this of Gershom ben Sanballat’s. If the Syrian in Nuceria refused to be moved the Jew might well have to set to the re-conquest of Lucania and South Campania with no greater force than his fifty Bithynians. Doubtlessly his cook would prove of aid.
Meantime, to the east of the Matese mountains, the consuls learned from a captured and tortured slave-rebel that Spartacus at the head of a considerable force had broken out from Nola a month before and crossed into Apulia. Seeing no reason to doubt the news, Gellius and Arrius, having finished with the slave (who grinned and died, being a wild-humoured Thracian), turned east, left Capua to what fate might come on it, crossed the mountains, forded the Fortore into Apulia; and were presently apprised of irregularly armed bands of scouts falling back in front of their march.
[ii]
That hot spring day when the consuls forded Fortore, the tribune Crixus sat on a rock under the shadow of Mount Garganus and stared across that sea which was yet to become the Adriatic. Below his feet was the camp of his Germans; and looking down at that camp, he yawned.
‘This business of commanding Germans is like milking aurochsen,’ he said to the man by his side.
Brennus, lying flat on his belly, grinned. He was very content and filled with food, and blinked in the light, like a lizard. But the little tribune was wearied.
‘I wish Kleon would commence the march on Capua and send us word to join him. This business of chasing Apulian sheep for fresh mutton is as tame as a day in the old arena in company with a fat instructor.’
Brennus reflected. ‘When we capture Capua I’ll ask Kleon for his share of the women we take. For he’ll have no need of them.’
‘Nor Spartacus of you. He has little patience with bulls – even wild ones from the forests of Gaul.’
‘Gods!’ said Brennus, ‘to hear it again – a wild aurochs herd bellow on the evening’s edge!’
But Crixus had ceased to listen. He was shading his eyes in the sun. ‘A messenger.’
The man came scrambling up to their ledge, and halted, panting, and told his news. A minute thereafter and Crixus and Brennus had gained the camp, where already the Germans were arming in confusion. Pushing through them, Crixus reached his tent and commanded a bucina to blow and assemble the centurions. The wearied light had vanished from the eyes of the little tribune. He addressed the assembled Germans as a boy who planned to snare a fox.
‘Unless the Masters know these lands well, they’re already in our hands.’
‘How?’ asked a follower of Gannicus.
‘They can attack us only from the north, and think they have trapped us here. But we have the narrow pass into the mountains to the west. That they don’t know, and will pay little heed to their rear. Now, we’ll await them here, but send a messenger back through the pass, to ride to Nola and summon reinforcements. Then the Strategos will bring his legions and fall on the Masters from behind.’
In an hour a messenger was riding for Nola. All that evening he rode, making a wide detour to the south to avoid the Romans. He was a Gaul, one of Brennus’ scouts, and spared neither himself nor his long-tailed mount. By midnight they heard him shouting outside the walls of Nola, and the Northern Gate was opened for him by Gershom’s Bithynians.
One recognized him. ‘What news from Crixus?’
‘Good news,’ the Gaul called, and rode into the winding alleys of the town.
At the house where the Strategos lodged a sleepy Thracian would have barred the way for the Gaul. ‘Spartacus sleeps.’
The Gaul showed his teeth. ‘We don’t sleep in Apulia. Out of my way, horse-eater, or I’ll damage the wall by beating your head against it.’
‘Of that we’ll make test,’ said Ialo, helpfully, and now fully waked. But as they glared at each other an inner door opened.
‘What is it?’
It was a woman, wrapped in a dark night-mantle, her hair a great shining cloak. Lavinia, the woman of Spartacus. Ialo glowered.
‘This pestiferous Gaul wants to awaken the Strategos. He says he comes from Apulia.’
Lavinia considered the splashed messenger. Then, disregarding the Thracian’s grumbles, beckoned him into the inner room and closed the door. Unabashed, Ialo leant his head against a crack and listened. Beyond that inner room the Strategos slept in a closet.
Ialo heard the messenger speak the message of Crixus, hurriedly, for he thirsted for action, being young, and was in no mind to miss the coming battle below Garganus. He heard the woman promise to awaken Spartacus and deliver that message. He heard the hurried steps of the Gaul returning towards the door, and so hearing, himself hastily retreated to his seat and spear, and appeared to doze.
The Gaul was riding out of Nola just as the dawn came into the sky, bright, tremulous, tremendous, a shining dawn into which he rode. By early afternoon he had crossed the great Stone Way, and in a little was amongst the mountains. He might have reached Garganus by nightfull but for the fact that in a narrow defile he came suddenly on a band of Roman velites. At that sight he laughed, then unslung his axe and spurred forward his horse.
[iii]
An hour later Crixus heard of the nearing of the Roman scouts and that the main army of the consuls was rounding the far shoulder of Garganus. This he had anticipated, seeing its purpose to drive him back against the mountain-wall. To delay its advance, he sent two hundred slaves through the narrow corridor in the hills. These went under the command of Brennus and had orders to vex the Roman rear, but to make no disclosure of how they had gained an exit from the slaves’ apparent trap.
Gellius and Arrius, cautious commanders, camped for the night and were setting up the usual entrenchments when they heard the slave chant come out of the darkness to their rear. A moment later a shower of arrows skimmed over the half-erected palisades, and, with the blowing of horns and the waving of long swords, a band of barbarian slaves attempted to storm the southwards dyke.
The legionaries, hastily dropping their picks, repelled the attack with ease. The slaves faded off into the darkness, still chanting. But they did not go far. Every now and then an arrow would wing out of the darkness around the camp, quivering in the beams of the consuls’ tents, or striking down a legionary through some unguarded joint. This endured until Gellius, irritated, despatched a century of horse which routed the slaves from their position.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to pursue and exterminate them in the moonless night. The horsemen contented themselves with a wide patrol of the camp.
‘Where did this band come from?’ wondered Arrius.
‘No doubt from stray raiding or foraging,’ said Gellius. ‘We’ll have many such bands to deal with after the killing of the Thracian tomorrow.’
And on that, in full armour, they lay down to rest till an hour before sunrise.
[iv]
All that night the armed Germans slept on edge under the shelter of Garganus. But Crixus did not sleep. He walked to and fro, hour after hour, awaiting news from the detachment of Brennus beyond the corridor. For he had arranged that Brennus, after an abortive attack on the Roman camp, should set out westwards, meet the slave reinforcements under Spartacus, and then return to bring the Germans news of these reinforcements.
But no Brennus came, and Crixus, despite his light heart, began to know anxiety. Once he went and watched the sea, and another time himself walked far up the corridor into the hills. But it was unwise to leave his Germans for long, and he speedily returned.
To ease his mind of the constant conflict of hope and surmise, he sat down in the deeper darkness that heralded the morning and began to whet his sword and polish the Greek helmet he wore. And in that hour, a great loneliness coming upon him, he sat with his head in his hands, thinking of the morrow.
His Gods were dim and he had no faith, nor even now realized the need of either. Only a wondering came on him that the blood should be so warm in his body and his fingers so swift and sure as they plied the whetstone. And tomorrow . . .
And for some reason he thought of the woman Elpinice, and, though with dim Gods, shivered in the early mist that rose round the sleeping camp. For perhaps her spirit was still in this ill land of Italy, following in the wake of the Free Legions still. What though it did? It would never harm him, as he never it. And so strong upon him did this imagining grow that he turned his head with a jerk in order that he might look in her face. Then he laughed, and wiped his forehead, and stood up; and below him, in darkness, heard the far sighing of the sea.
An hour before sunrise, while the earth was yet grey, and the soaring heights of Mount Garganus grey turning to gold, and so slowly to the hue of blood, Brennus came back through the pass alone.
‘There is no sign of Spartacus or the other legions.’ And panted. ‘The Masters have broken camp. I ran all the way through the pass. They cannot be far off now.’
Then on Crixus there came a fine gaiety. And suddenly it seemed to him that the air was sweet and good; though he had never noticed such things before. And in that early-morning light there clung to his eyelids a fine web from the night-time mist; and the wonder of that on his eyelids was strange on his spirit for a moment. Then he called to the bucinator to sound.
The hoarse howl of the horn was answered by the shouts of the awakened Germans. From caverns and crannies, pits and lean-to’s, they swarmed out, the slaves from the North, yellow-haired, most of them, though some were barbarians from a further land, furth of the great East rivers, sallow of skin, dark-haired, dark-skinned. They marshalled in hasty ranks, and Crixus mounted his horse and rode to and fro, from group to group, jesting, as was his manner.
And the Germans, beating their shields, sang the great bass war-songs of their tribes.
Soon arrows began to fall in their midst, and many lay down, while those with bows or slings endeavoured to return that arrowhail. Then the Romans, advancing evenly across open ground, opened to allow their horse to charge.
Remembering the inadequacy of the German long sword to face charging cavalry, Crixus sent the order from rank to rank that they thrust not at the riders but at the legs and bellies of the horses. But at the first sight of the Roman charge the tribes had instinctively prepared for this. The front rank of the Germans knelt on one knee, swords swinging low, the second stood crouching, whirling their blades; and these gleamed in the early light like the wheels of chariots driven through a ford. Then, with wild yells, they received the Roman charge.
It broke and fell back and came on again. At first the slaves had taken it with the bitten lips and uncertain hearts of slaves who fronted the attack of the Masters. But now the slow German blood began to stir, and they fought with a wild ferocity. Unavailing, leaving a heap of writhing horses, the cavalry drew off and Gellius advanced his legions.
As he did so he turned to Arrius and commented with amazement on the small number of slaves opposing them. There could not be more than three thousand – a full half-legion – at the utmost. And he gave orders that Spartacus, when discovered, was to be taken alive.
Then he shaded his eyes under his helmet-rim. ‘Though I see none who looks like the Thracian himself. Who is the little slave on the long-tailed horse?’
Then news was brought to him that the little man who rode the horse and shouted taunts and jests to the labouring advance of the Roman foot was Crixus, another Gladiator, and one of Spartacus’s tribunes. Spartacus himself was said to be still in Nola.
At that both consuls knew they had been tricked by the Thracian slave they had put to torment; and the sweat pringled on the skin of Arrius at the thought of the machinations that might well take place in the Senate, to bring him to ruin because of this business: accusing him of leaving the road to Capua unguarded. And he gave orders for the immediate dispersal of the slaves in front of him.
But now they fought like wild beasts in a pit. So they were, and so they realized. Yet presently on them also, the slaves of stews and plantation and warehouse, there came something of nobility under the alien crags of Mount Garganus. Their ranks long since broken, they formed into the great fighting schiltrouns of the forests, the heroes’ rings the defeated formed in the German tribal wars: and inside and without these fell in scores, butchered by the arrows of the sagittarii or the thrusts of the reeking short swords. Crixus and Brennus rode from group to group, hewing paths through a living wall, steadying the reeling circles of slaves, Brennus with his left hand and shield shorn away, and the stump bound up in a hasty twist of cloth and a wooden splint. He rode swaying and bloodless, but Crixus beside him sang and fought on unwounded.
Then the Romans drew off and reformed. And Crixus caused those that survived of the slaves, six hundred in all, to retreat up a slope, with rocky ground that would hamper the legions. So might they stand with but a frontal enemy to fight. Bleeding, fatigued, they fell back and climbed this slope, with the roars of the Roman bucinae and the methodical shoutings of the Roman centurions in their ears.
Crixus himself rode last up the slope. Then he dismounted in front of the slaves, and drew his sword and pulled his horse’s mane, and laughed at the beast; and then stabbed it swiftly through the heart so that it gave a groan like a slain man, and fell at his feet. And the tribune turned to the wondering Germans.
‘Comrades, there’s no retreat. We die here or fight until Spartacus comes.’
And to Brennus, remonstrating and swaying in his saddle, he spoke strange words, albeit he laughed when he spoke them.
‘Retreat through the pass? A General the Free Legions need? I am no General. Only a slave. Yet soon I’ll be more than either slave or General – if the dark Gods leave me sleep sound. And I don’t think, dying here, we’ll do ill to that cause of Kleon’s.’
Then he mused for a little, and beckoned ten Germans and pointed to Brennus.
‘Take the centurion Brennus back through the pass, steal horses, and ride till you come up with Spartacus – or beyond that, till you come to Nola. For we cannot say if our messenger reached it. But tell them how we stood here and fought, and bid Spartacus ave from me!’
And when they had heard this message, the Germans seized the weeping and cursing Brennus, and bore him away from the tribune who cried his last ave. Then Crixus laid aside his armour till he stood in his tunic only, bareheaded, for so, he said, he would fight the lighter. And the Germans kissed in their ranks as the hail of the arrows began again.
Then the Romans stormed up the slopes; and Crixus saw that the light was dying, far away to the east, from the face of the sea.
Torment
[i]
IN the evening of the next day they saw from the walls of Nola the nearing of fatigued and mud-splashed horses. At that sight on the little-traversed tracks the walls became thronged with slaves peering into the east. Then the nearing band was descried as half a score of men, ill-mounted and beating their beasts; and presently a shout of wonder arose.
‘They are Germans!’
The slaves looked at one another in speechless surmise, then crowded down to the Eastern Gate. Midmost of the riders was a man who was bound in his saddle – a man who lacked a hand. Opening the great gate Gershom ben Sanballat ran and caught at the bridle of this man’s horse.
‘Brennus, what news from Apulia?’
The Gaul half started awake, and stared about him with bloodshot eyes.
‘The Masters caught us like beasts in a trap because the Strategos did not come. All the Germans are dead. Spartacus. I have a message for Spartacus.’
‘And Crixus?’
‘I saw him kill his horse.’
At that news a groan of horror and anger went up from the assembled slaves. Such townspeople as had pressed near in curiosity retreated hastily within their houses. But Brennus fell forward again in his saddle; and one of the Germans who rode with him cursed.
‘Spartacus – Crixus sent us with a message for Spartacus.’
So the way was cleared and they rode through the narrow streets till they came to the great Forum of Nola. There, in the bright evening weather, the air was alive with the beating of mallets and the smell of fresh-sawn wood, pungent and resinous; and the blue smoke of the smithies rose in long lines into the windless sky. For Kleon’s dream was being fulfilled with the aid of the renegade Master, Hiketas. With iron and timber commandeered at will, they were building the great helepolites and catapults with which to assault the walls of Capua. High into the air towered the great machines, ready for testing and then dismemberment, for loading in the great oxwagons of the Gauls when the Free Legions took the field again. Amidst the din of the smiths and the hammering of the joiners Kleon, Hiketas and Spartacus stood in a little group, the Thracian silent, the two Greeks in dispute over the weight of the tormenta. Then they heard a voice call.
‘Strategos!’
They turned and saw the company of Germans, with the rider who swayed and stared in their midst. Kleon’s lips grew white.
‘It is Brennus, one of Crixus’ men.’
[ii]
And when Spartacus heard that message he wept, to the wonder and terror of those who stood round. For a little there was none who might speak, and then the Thracian broke from their midst, leaving the questioning, whispering groups of slaves to debate the news from Apulia. The consuls were in the field, the Germans dead or scattered: in a little while the Masters themselves would be before Nola. And at that thought a shudder of dread ran through the slave-horde. For they had come to believe themselves invincible and that Crixus no more than Spartacus could ever be defeated.
But Spartacus gave little time for debate. In an hour’s time the citizens heard the horns blow up, and saw the slaves pouring to muster in the market-place. While yet they pondered the meaning of that muster, the first century of the Free Legions was marching furth of the gates; and after it, company on company, they saw the slaves depart. Over that road where Spartacus had watched the Germans disappear two months before wound the long lines of the slave army at a speed that presently left Nola far behind.
The women and baggage followed more slowly, with half a thousand cavalry to guard them. In the town itself there remained but Kleon and Hiketas and Gershom ben Sanballat freshly returned from the subjugation of Nuceria. With bitter faces Kleon and Hiketas, who had begged and expostulated a terrible hour with the Thracian Strategos, superintended the destruction of the great machines by Gershom’s Bithynians.
They were piled in a great heap in the Forum of Nola, saturated with oil, and fired, the great towers and catapults that Hiketas had dreamt would batter down the walls of Capua. Looking back, the slaves could see the pillar of their burning lighting all the western sky.
Then Gershom took his men and the two Greeks out of the city and followed the trail of Spartacus, marching hot-foot to meet the consuls.
[iii]
He met them in an unknown plain somewhere on the hither side of Garganus – the two armies sighting each other from afar, and pressing to join battle with an eagerness seldom known in history. Then Arrius and Gellius, cautious commanders, halted their troops in a place of vantage, and saw with misgivings the size of the Spartacist force.
Nor were these misgivings unwarranted, nor the fate of the battle for a moment in doubt. Attacking in his customary cuneus formation, an iron wedge at the Roman centre, Spartacus himself led the first charge, enormous, on horseback, at the head of his Thracians. They broke the lines of the legions, and once within those lines slaughtered almost at pleasure, while the Gauls fell on the Roman flank, and (with the impetus of a short slope) piled one wing in confusion upon the broken centre eddying round the carnage of the Thracians’ drive. Then Gannicus and Gershom ben Sanballat brought up the main slave army, and soon the Romans were streaming from the field in the wake of the consuls – the first of their rank to meet and suffer defeat in the field for over a hundred years.
The battle was bloody and swift, but the carnage stayed when the Romans, at length terrified in the belief that the Republic was now overthrown, flung down their arms and surrendered in scores. They were disarmed and stripped, bound in long gangs, and whipped through the passes of Apulia till they came to the camp which Spartacus had built for the funeral games of Crixus.
[iv]
His body, flayed and crucified, had been recovered from an Apulian village near the foot of Mount Garganus. Castus had made that recovery and, though he bore the dead Crixus no great love, had burned the village in a madness of wrath.
When Spartacus heard of this he smiled.
‘Did you burn the villagers also?’
‘They escaped into the mountains.’
‘Then you did ill to let them go.’ And the Thracian turned away, colder than ever towards the man who had hoped to take the place of the dead Crixus.
In that camp, with the spring very green on the Apulian hills, they prepared the funeral games. Crixus, as a Gaul, was to be burned; and now swathed in purple, his mutilated head crowned with bay, he lay in a tent, drenched with aromatic perfumes and guarded by Gauls and Germans. Outside, on a level stretch of sward, the funeral pyre was prepared.
The Roman prisoners, chained in a corner of the camp, ragged and filthy, talked among themselves and jeered at the leadership and discipline of the slaves. A centurion who lay by the side of a young third tribune laughed at the fears of the latter.
‘This Spartacus always spares his prisoners. He will march us around the pyre of Crixus, I suppose, and then dismiss us, disarmed. He’s only a slave, with the heart of a slave; and though he can lead his Free Legions in battle well enough, he knows nothing of campaigns or the planning of a war. Had he followed up our rout by a march on Rome he might have been feasting in the Capitol to-night.’
‘He is a Greek?’
‘A Thracian. It’s said that this Crixus was his best lieutenant, as a eunuch, Kleon, is the brain of the business. Certainly Crixus fought well.’
‘You were at Mount Garganus?’
‘Not I, but with Varinus in Lucania. We ran like hares. Crixus defeated us there: a little man on a little horse who sat eating a handful of plums and jesting while we charged.’
The young third tribune groaned in his bonds. Moreover, his back ached from the stripes the slaves had inflicted in the march. ‘When is the burning of this Gaulish slave to take place?’
‘At noon tomorrow, they say. Then we’ll be dismissed.’ The centurion looked round with a savage contempt. ‘Wait till Rome really moves in the field. Then she’ll burn them alive, these scum.’
[v]
Meantime the tribunes of the slaves had gathered in the tent of Spartacus. Spartacus himself awaited them. As they gave him greeting and squatted in a circle, it seemed to more than one of them that the Gladiator in his grief was near to insanity. His armour was still stained and bloody from the battle, and that cold control that had marked his bearing since the Pits of the South had vanished away. His head turning from side to side, he walked to and fro, his strange eyes bloodshot. This the Strategos!
And, appalled, they lowered their eyes.
Kleon was the last to enter the tent, though he was no tribune and his rank undefined. Then a Gladiator mounted guard at the door, and Spartacus turned and called:
‘Bring in the woman.’
A portion of the rear of the tent was pulled aside. Ialo and another, a Thracian, entered, dragging between them a woman who groaned at every step. She had been put to the torment for several hours, and through the rents of her himation, worn Greek fashion, shone the bloody scars and rowellings of the instruments. The slave tribunes regarded her in amazement, for it was the Roman Lavinia.
She stared around wildly, then fell, mouthing, at the feet of Spartacus. He drew away quickly, and turned to the others.
‘This is the woman who betrayed the Germans and Crixus. Speak, Ialo.’
Then the slave told of the coming of the messenger to Nola, and how he had listened to that message being delivered: how the woman Lavinia had promised to give it to the sleeping Strategos: how he himself had thought no more of the matter, believing a slave legion secretly despatched to the aid of Crixus. Only with the coming of the news of Crixus’ death had he thought it necessary to speak to the Strategos.
Now, tortured, the woman had confessed she had held back the message deliberately in order that the slaves under Crixus might be defeated and the consuls succeed in capturing Nola and putting down the Free Legions.
The slave-tribunes listened in silence. Then Castus said: ‘Seeing the woman has confessed, it is necessary only that she be put to death.’
Spartacus nodded. ‘And the manner of that death?’
Castus stared, his mild face troubled. ‘She might be dragged to pieces between oxen. So malefactors are executed in Gaul.’
Kleon the eunuch literatus spoke, coldly as ever. ‘Why waste time and oxen? She can die more quickly.’
‘How?’ asked the Thracian.
Kleon shrugged. ‘A sword-thrust. Garotte. What does it matter?’
Gershom ben Sanballat combed irritably at his beard. ‘Let her be stoned to death.’
Gannicus laughed his great bull-like laugh. ‘Crucify the bitch by the little Gaul’s pyre.’
Oenomaus moved from his customary silence. ‘Why not hand her over to the legion – to the Gauls or the Germans, and let them dispose of her.’
And to all this seemed a good plan, moved with a twisted lust as they looked on the woman. For her beauty still lingered. Even with her tortured body in evidence, some of them still desired her: for those wounds added a strange and loathsome fascination. Spartacus had sat on his little stool, listening. Now he raised his head.
‘Each a fine end, but I have a better.’ He looked across to Ialo. ‘Listen. Find a litter for this woman. Take her across the hills to the Appian Way. Take fifty of the Thracians as a guard, and leave her only when she is safe with some convoy for Rome.’
Then he looked at the grovelling woman for the last time. ‘You’ll carry my sign-manual to Rome, my message to it and to you: Ave atque vale.’
Kleon looked on him with a cold amazement. ‘You’ve tormented the woman, and now you spare her. Both courses are bad and unstatesmanlike.’
Then he saw that Spartacus was smiling, terribly.
‘I have ceased to be a statesman.’
[vi]
All that night the Roman prisoners heard a constant hammering and shouting outside the camp, by the stream that led past the pyre of Crixus. Lights shone there from great fires, but the Romans could make nothing of the commotion. Nor, but that it interfered with their sleep, did it greatly interest them.
Other things occupied their hours, for it was cold weather, and they were half naked, and mostly unfed since their capture. The centurion and the young third tribune, bound so that they might not lie at their ease, leaned against each other and dozed, glad to be freed from the daytime crowds of jeering and mocking slaves. Towards dawn the young third tribune became wide awake and watched morning coming over the Apulian mountains as Crixus had watched it come out of the sea. In the air was the smell of the morning’s green coming, and somehow, despite his bonds, he felt a strange gladness upon him.
The slave army began to awake around the enclosure. The yawning Romans set to chafing cold limbs and beating the blood back into chilled bodies. Presently there arose a clamour of horns and a band of Gaulish slaves entered the enclosure. They bore food – steaming corn in great pots, and dishes of stewed lentils. Amazed at this bounty, the Romans ate ravenously; and, staring at them while they fed, the slaves laughed.
Hardly had they gone, bearing the empty pots, when another band entered the enclosure. They filed in to the number of four hundred or so, and the heart of the centurion, despite his strong spirit, momentarily failed him. For this new band was the Gladiator bodyguard of Spartacus, well known to the Romans by their gilded armour and war-hardened bodies. They bore great whips in their hands, and the centurion groaned.
‘What will they do?’ whispered the young third tribune.
‘More flogging.’ The centurion had taken part in Rome in an Eastern triumph. He knew what portended. ‘They will march us round the pyre of Crixus, half-flayed.’
But it seemed that he was mistaken. The Gladiators proceeded to release the prisoners, till three hundred of them had been so set free. Then, motioning towards the gates of the enclosure, the slaves cracked their whips. The Romans surged forward through the gates.
The knee of the young third tribune pained him, and he limped in the rear, till it seemed as if a red hot iron had been applied to his back. Withdrawing his whip for another blow, the great Gladiator behind him laughed.
Beyond the camp, they stood and swayed to and fro for a little like a herd of doubtful cattle.
Beside the pyre, flanked on one side by a river, on the other by scaffoldings of timber, an arena had sprung up in the night. Around it was thronged the slave army. Leading towards it was a living corridor of slaves, and down this corridor the Romans were driven.
At the entrance to it, each of them was handed a Gaulish sword.
Inside the arena they were separated into two parties. It was clear, pale weather, and the centurion saw the white apple-blossom on the orchards beyond the encampment. Then the terms of the combat were made known to them. They were not to fight as individuals, but as two parties. The conquering party would be granted the mercy of joining the Free Legions.
At first the Romans hung back in horror, and the crack of the Gladiators’ whips rose in the air. Then they began to surge forward, wielding the clumsy and unaccustomed swords amidst the shouted laughter of the slaves. Presently the centurion engaged with a man he knew, and, as they hewed at each other, each warmed a little to the ring of the weapons.
In a moment, from the stamp and bloody struggle of the fight that wavered to and fro in the arena, bodies were falling with gaping wounds, sacrifices to the manes of dead Crixus. A warm, dreadful stench arose; and, drawn by the shoutings of the slaves, great flocks of carrion-birds came from the hills.
[vii]
Two hundred and eighty of the Romans perished at the funeral games of Crixus. Of the remaining score, half were so wounded that they were despatched by the whips of the Gladiators. Then, with the pyre a little hill of ash, the slaves broke camp, marching northwards with determination to break out of Italy and escape to their own lands.