The masseurs finished. The four slaves slid off the tables and wrapped around them the long woolen cloaks, shrouds as they were called, and walked across the yard into the mess hall. Already the gladiators were at their morning meal, each man sitting cross-legged on the floor and eating from a little table in front of him. Each man had a cup of sour goatmilk and a bowl of wheat porridge cooked with bits of fat pork. The
lanista
fed well, and many a man who came to his school ate his fill for the first time, even as the condemned man does before he is nailed to the crucifix. But for the four who were to perform in the arena, there was only a little wine and a few strips of cold sliced chicken. One does not fight well on a heavy stomach.
In any case, Spartacus was not hungry. They sat apart from the others, the four of them, and they shared a distaste for food. They sipped at the wine. They took a bite or two of the meat, and sometimes they looked at each other. But no one spoke, and theirs was a little island of silence in the rumble of speech which filled the hall. Nor did the other gladiators look at them or pay them overmuch attention. This was the courtesy of the last breakfast.
It was common knowledge now how they were paired. Everyone knew that Spartacus would fight the black man, and that it would be dagger against net and fork. Everyone knew that the Thracian and the Jew were paired. Spartacus would die and the young Thracian would die. It was the fault of Spartacus. Not only did he lie with the German girl and speak of her always as his wife and in no other way than as his wife—but he made the men love him. No one of the gladiators seated there in the hall could have expressed that explicitly. They didn’t know why it had happened or precisely how it had happened. A man has a manner; a man has a thousand little gestures and actions. The gentle manner of the Thracian, the sheep-like face with the full lips and the broken nose—all of that belied a quality which would make men accept his judgment, come to him with fears and quarrels, come to him for comfort and decision. Yet when he decided, they did as he said. When he spoke to them in his soft, curiously-accented Latin, they accepted his words. He spoke to them and they were comforted. He seemed to be a happy man. He held his head upright, which was a strange thing in a slave; he never bowed his head; he never raised his voice, nor was he angry. His contentment singled him out, and he walked that way in this unholy company of trained killers and lost men.
“Gladiators are animals,” Batiatus often said. “If one thinks of them as people, one loses all perspective.”
The simple fact was that Spartacus refused to be an animal, and for that reason he was dangerous, and for all his skill with the dagger and for all his value for hire, Batiatus preferred him profitably dead.
The breakfast was over. The four men who were
privilegio,
as it was put in the irony of their own slang, walked by themselves. They were forbidden this morning. They were not to be spoken to or touched. But Gannicus went over to Spartacus and embraced him and kissed his lips; it was a strange thing to do, and the price was high, thirty lashes, but there were few among the gladiators who did not have a sense of why he had done it.
V
Many times in the years that followed, Lentulus Batiatus recalled that morning, and many times he subjected it to his scrutiny and attempted to understand whether the earthshaking events which followed could be ascribed to it. Yet he was not certain that they could, and it was not possible for him to accept the fact that what happened afterwards happened because two Roman fops desired to see a private combat to the death. Never a week went by but that there was a private showing of one or two or three pairs in his own arena, and he could not see that this was too different. It made him think of the fate of certain tenement houses he owned in the city of Rome. These tenement houses, or
insulae,
as they were called, were commonly recognized as one of the best investments a business man could make. They were subject to none of the vicissitudes of merchant enterprise; they paid a steady and for the most part a rising rate of income, and this income could be increased. But a certain danger was contained within this increase of income. In the beginning, Batiatus bought two houses, one four stories and one five stories high. Each had twelve apartments to a floor, and each apartment cost its tenant about nine hundred
sesterces
a year.
It did not take Batiatus long to realize that a man interested in profit kept adding stories. Unenterprising scavengers owned low houses; rich men owned skyscrapers. Promptly the
lanista
ran the five story house up to seven stories, but the first addition to the four story house brought it crashing down in ruins, saddling him not only with a huge loss, but with the death of over twenty of his tenants—which meant the additional spending of a fortune in bribes. Something of the same addition of quantity and resulting change in quality existed here, in terms of his gladiators, yet Batiatus knew that he was no worse in his practice than most
lanistae,
and, indeed, better than many.
It was true that this was a bad morning. Firstly, there was the lashing of Gannicus. It was not good to lash gladiators, but at the same time, the discipline of a school had to be the most stringent discipline in the world. The breaking of any small feature of discipline by a gladiator had to be punished—and punished quickly and mercilessly. Secondly, there was the resentment among the gladiators that a dagger man was to be pitted against net and fork. Thirdly, there was the fighting itself.
Batiatus was waiting at the arena for the guests to arrive. Regardless of what Batiatus thought of these Romans in a personal sense, there was an honor due to money which he was keenly aware of. Whenever he encountered a millionaire—not merely a man who had millions but one who could spend millions—he was overwhelmed by his own sense of being so small a frog in so small a puddle. When he was a gang leader on the streets of the
urbs,
his own dream was to accumulate the 400,000
sesterces
which would entitle him to admittance into the order of knighthood. When he became a knight, however, he first began to realize what wealth meant, and for all he had climbed—by his own shrewdness too—there was an endless vista of ladder ahead of him.
Honor where honor is due. That is why he waited here for Caius and Bracus and the others; and thereby did not know that Gannicus had earned thirty lashes. Instead, he escorted the honored guests to the box which had been prepared for them, a box built just high enough to view every corner of the little arena without craning or stretching. He himself adjusted the pillows of their couches, so that they might recline in the greatest ease and comfort as they watched the fighting. Cool wine was brought to them and little pots of sweetmeats and honied squab, so that thirst and appetite might always be satisfied. A striped awning protected them from the morning sun, and two household slaves stood by with feather fans, in case the coolness of the morning should give way to a sultry forenoon. As he superintended the arrangement of the scene, Batiatus’s heart swelled with pride—for certainly, here was all that anyone, no matter how delicate his tastes, could ask. And to fill in the boredom between now and the moment when the game began, there were two musicians and a dancing girl on the floor of the arena.
Not that they paid much attention to either the music or the dancing; they were keyed higher than that, and the married friend of Bracus—Cornelius Lucius was his name—prattled nervously of what one needed to live decently in Rome these days. Batiatus lingered and listened; he was eager to know what one needed to live decently in Rome these days, and the conversation caught him when he learned that Lucius had paid 5,000
denarii
for a new
libarius,
a fortune for a man to bake pastry.
“But one can’t live like a pig—or can one?” asked Lucius. “Or even the way my father lived. If one wants to eat decently, one needs at least four, the pastry cook, the
cocus
, the
pistores
and certainly a
dulciarius,
or else one sends to the market for cooked sweets and one could just as well do without that.”
“I don’t see how one could do without that,” his wife said. “Every month a new
tonsores;
no one but a god could shave you properly, but if I claim an extra hairdresser or masseur—”
“It is not requiring a hundred slaves,” Bracus told her gently, “but training them—and even when you have trained them, I sometimes think that it’s hardly worth the effort. I have a
privata
for my clothes, a Greek from Cyprus who can quote you Homer by the hour. Mind you, he neither cleans nor washes. All I ask of him is that he keep some order among my clothes. I have a closet for cloaks. All I desire is that when I am through with a particular cloak, it should be placed in that closet. A tunic in the closet where my tunics are kept. One could train a dog to do that, no? So if I say, Raxides, give me my yellow tunic, he can do it. But he can’t do it. And it would take more time to teach him to do it properly than to do it myself.”
“You can’t do that yourself,” Caius protested.
“No—of course not. Child, see what kind of wine the
lanista
serves.”
Batiatus was quicker. “Cisalpine,” he boasted, holding the jug before them.
Bracus spat delicately, a finger alongside his nose. “How did you think of cushions, if I didn’t say to you, we want cushions? Do you have Judean wine,
lanista?
”
“Of course—the very best. A light rose—the lightest rose.” He screamed at one of the slaves to bring Judean wine immediately.
“Tell him,” said Lucius to his wife, who was whispering to him.
“No—”
Bracus stretched himself toward her, took her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Darling, is there anything you can’t tell me?”
“I’ll whisper it.”
She whispered it, and Bracus answered, “Of course, of course.” And then told Batiatus, “Bring the Jew here before he fights.”
The thread which ran through the actions of well bred people always eluded Batiatus. He knew there was such a thread, but for the life of him, he could not define it with any consistency, and he could not locate a rhyme or reason of pattern which would enable him to conceal his origin in a scheme of behavior. Each party which hired his arena for a private showing behaved differently; how do you know?
Batiatus sent for the Jew.
He came between two trainers and he walked to the box and stood there waiting. He was still wrapped in his long, rough woolen cloak, and his pale green eyes were like cold stones. He saw nothing out of those eyes. He just stood there.
The woman simpered. Caius was frightened. This was the first time a gladiator had ever stood within arm’s reach of him, with neither wall nor bars between them, and the two trainers were not sufficient to reassure him. This was nothing human, this Jew with the green eyes and the thin mouth, the fierce hooked nose and the close-cropped skull.
“Tell him to shed his cloak,
lanista,
” said Bracus.
“Unclothe,” Batiatus whispered.
The Jew stood there for a little while; then, suddenly, he dropped his cloak and stood naked before them, his lean, muscular body as motionless as if it were carved from bronze. Caius stared fascinated. Lucius pretended to be bored, but his wife stared with her mouth slightly open, her breath coming hard and fast.
“Animal bipes implume,”
Bracus said tiredly.
The Jew bent, retrieved his cloak, and turned away. The two trainers followed him.
“Let him fight first,” Bracus said.
VI
At this time, it was not yet required by law that when Thracian or Jew fought in the arena with the traditional dagger, or perhaps better, the slightly-curved knife which was known as the
sica
, he should be given a wooden buckler for his defense, and even when that law was passed, it was frequently violated. The buckler, like the traditional brass greaves and helmet, defeated the essential drama of the knife—which was the incredible play of motion and agility called forth from the gladiators. Until about forty years before this time—and until then the combat of pairs was fairly infrequent—the usual bout in the arena was called
Samnites,
and the pairs fought in heavy armor, carrying the great oblong shield of the legion, the
scutum
, and the Spanish sword, the
spatha
. This was neither very exciting nor very bloody, and the crash of shield against shield and sword against sword could go on for hours, without either of the pair being damaged particularly. At that time, too, the
lanista
was as despised as a procurer—usually a petty gang leader who bought a few used-up slaves and let them hack at each other until they fell dead of loss of blood or sheer exhaustion. Very often, the
lanista
was a procurer, dealing in gladiators with one hand and in prostitutes with the other.
Two innovations revolutionized the fighting of pairs—and turned a dull spectacle into the craze of Rome and brought many a
lanista
to a seat in the Senata, a country villa and a fortune of millions. The first was a result of Roman military and commercial penetration of Africa. The black man, fairly rare in the past, made his appearance in the slave market, the Negro in all his great height and strength. A
lanista
conceived the notion of giving him a fish net and fish fork, a triple-pointed fish spear, and putting him into the arena against sword and shield. Immediately, this caught the fancy of the Romans; the games were no longer casual. The process was completed by the second innovation—which was the result of the penetration of Thrace and Judea and the discovery of two hardy, independent races of mountain peasants whose main weapon in war was a short, razor-sharp curved knife. Even more than the
retiarii,
the net-men, this transformed gladiatorial combat. Very rarely was buckler or body armor used. The lumbering crash of the
Samnites
was transformed into the lightning-like play of the dagger duels, long, ghastly wounds, blood and disembowelment, skill and pain and flashing motion.