CHAPTER 9

After our meeting with Flavia, Seneca asked me to try my hand at drafting a letter for him to the emperor, and I attacked the job with great vigor. I knew that a man like Tiberius would not be repulsed by bloodshed. He had commanded legions in Germania, Pannonia, and Illyricum and had undoubtedly sentenced thousands of prisoners to the cross. On the battlefield, he had seen blood flow like the Tiber. He had tied deserters to horses facing opposite directions, whipped the horses, and watched the men get ripped in half. Surely the deaths of a few thousand gladiators and criminals wouldn’t bother him.

But I had an approach that just might work.

Tiberius was exceedingly paranoid. A fisherman had once climbed the rocks of Capri to present a gift of fresh fish to the emperor. Alarmed that the fisherman had made it past his guards, Tiberius ordered the man’s face scrubbed with the fish.

Later, the fisherman was purported to have said, “I’m glad I didn’t bring him crabs!”

When word got back to Tiberius, he had the man brought before him a second time.

“Scrub his face with crabs!” the emperor commanded.

Such was the character of the man who ruled Rome, the intended recipient of our letter. He wielded great power but secretly believed that half of Rome was conspiring to kill him. He suspected a dagger under every toga.

He was also a man obsessed with his legacy. Rulers were judged by what they built and whom they conquered. Both required a strong economy. So that was where I began.

I spent three days compiling data. I attended gladiator training camps and talked to the lanistae —the managers —letting them know I was working for Flavia, though I didn’t tell them the nature of my assignment. I checked death records. I pulled together programs of past fights. I talked to friends who were avid fans and closely followed the games. I was building my case, and I wanted to make Seneca proud. I had been his star pupil once. Now he was my benefactor, and we both had a lot on the line.

I started the letter with the customary language honoring Caesar and then turned my attention to Spartacus’s revolt. Gladiators had killed their own trainers and battled Rome’s legions for three years. Crassus had crucified six thousand of them.

By my calculations, there were at least sixteen thousand gladiators training in Rome as I drafted the letter. That nearly equaled the combined forces of three Roman legions and far outnumbered the imperial troops in Rome. Most of the gladiators were slaves or prisoners of war —enemies of Rome. If Spartacus could mount a rebellion with a few thousand, what could his counterpart do today? And Spartacus had been far outside Rome. Now the gladiators trained in the very shadow of the emperor’s palace.

But that wasn’t all. The average life span of a gladiator was twenty-two years. Three-quarters of them died before completing ten fights. One out of every six fights resulted in death. I estimated that about eight thousand gladiators died each year throughout the empire at a total cost of more than sixty million sestertii to purchase and train their replacements. The games, I argued, were robbing the empire of the capacity to expand and build.

And if eight thousand died this year, it would take ten thousand the next to satisfy the bloodlust of the spectators. It was an enormous expense and a lurking danger to Rome. Why not curtail the games? Why not emphasize the chariot races and other competitions that did not result in death?

For three days I slaved over the letter, writing and rewriting until my eyes grew bleary. During that time, I might have managed a total of ten hours of sleep. It would all be worth it if Seneca read the letter, nodded, and signed it proudly.

When I finally had the opportunity to present it to him, he perused it thoughtfully, and I held my breath. This was, after all, correspondence that would go directly to the emperor! Seneca finished, frowned, and didn’t say a word for an unbearable few seconds.

He finally looked up. “What did you learn in Greece about the most effective form of advocacy?” he asked.

We were friends now, but he was still the teacher. I responded confidently, though his frown had already dampened my spirit.

“Ethos, pathos, and logos,” I said. “Aristotle. The best advocate is one who combines his personal credibility, an emotional tug, and solid logic.”

As the words left my mouth, I knew what Seneca would say. My letter was long on logic and short on emotion. Yet it was intended to be. Classical forms of persuasion wouldn’t work on a man like Tiberius. He was unemotional, skeptical, suspicious. He would see through emotional ploys and react negatively. I had considered all of that as I had labored over every word.

Yet Seneca said nothing of the sort.

“You have always been good at the books, Theophilus. But in real life, people are persuaded by stories. Facts get stuck in the head, shielded by our biases and struck down by the swords of our preconceptions. Stories go straight to the heart. Tiberius has not been to the games for a very long time. We must remind him of what it feels like there —how it debases the human spirit and shrinks the soul.”

Seneca told me to meet him at the Fordicidia games. Like every other patrician trying to find his place in Roman society, I had already planned on attending. The games were Rome’s premier social event. There the elite families of the senators mingled with their friends, contracts and alliances were formed, promotions and positions were cemented. If the Forum was the nerve center of the Roman Empire, the games —at least for now, at least until Tiberius could be convinced to decree otherwise —were its blood-pumping heart.

Because I had left Rome before I was old enough to attend, I had never been to the games myself.

“You may want to eat something before you attend,” Seneca warned. “You’ll lose your appetite by lunch.”