Colosseum (38 page)

Not today.

And then, the stadium erupts with approval like a volcano. All Rome acclaims Titus the Magnificent, the Merciful, the Just.

Verus and Priscus cannot believe their eyes; they blink stupidly, struck dumb. But the expression on the referee's face, as he raises their arms in unison and allows the crowd to worship them like gods, leaves no room for doubt.

Verus and Priscus cling to one another, stunned, on their shoulders the weight of the pain they have caused, of the life torn away.

They stagger, but manage to keep one another standing. Hand-picked protagonists for an event without precedents.

Alive, damn it.

Alive.

Emperor Titus seems to read their minds: with the same hands that have just transformed their lives into legend, he signals to the referee to continue.

The surprises are not over.

At a whistle from the man in white, four servants enter the arena. Two of them carry a sacred branch, the palm of victory. The others hold in their hands a gnarled stick, and with it the scent of the future.

“The staff of freedom!” Martial shrieks from the terraces, tears in his eyes, wild with joy. The poet has followed every instant of the epic confrontation and has every intention of immortalizing it with an epigram.

Verus and Priscus receive their gifts, and in that moment their destinies change forever. Not only have they won, but they have become free men.

The staff of freedom liberates them of all obligations to their masters, transforming them into Roman citizens. Victors and citizens, free to live their lives as they see fit, without having to answer to anyone.

Verus is overcome with emotion and hugs the man of ice to him with all the strength left in his body.

And the ice-man melts, instantly.

Free, at last.

Free.

Today is a unique day; its memory will live on, branded into the history of the Eternal City.

Never before has anything like this happened.

Never before has an Emperor shown such honor or such mercy.

This is the apogee of the Augustus's reign, the crowning moment of an entire life, the realization of a mad dream, conceived by his father Vespasian. Today, at the center of the Amphitheater, at the end of the first of the hundred days that the inaugural games will last, Titus is the fulcrum around which the entire universe revolves.

Even Domitian's plots and Julia's cruel ingenuity, stains of egoism and pettiness on the spotless imperial cloak, fade away before the rays of glory that shine from the heart of the Emperor.

The people of the Eagle, moved to tears of joy, launch into songs of jubilation for their magnificent master. Sanctifying the lives of the two warriors of iron, for all eternity.

After today, Rome will not be the same.

Power, in its laurel crown, will still conserve its darker side, while the lowly, just like the well-to-do, will still pass from cradle to grave subject to all the uncertainties of life. But in a thousand years and a thousand more, people will still speak of this incredible feat, which grew brick-by-brick into a dream made flesh and blood. The legend of undying victory.

Julia's tears of gratitude, Domitian's bitter smile, the light immersing Titus's features.

The heads and tails of the She-wolf's coin: indelible portraits of the perfect day, soiled, just like the others, by the blood of the just.

All eyes are on the Gaul and the Briton, now.
They
are the most famous men in Rome.

Hailing from distant lands and survivors of a pitiless destiny, they have become gods, sweating real life into the yellow sands. Rome worships them, chanting their names as though they were immortal divinities.

But by tomorrow, when the wounds have been sewn and the blood washed away, the two companions will already be on their way to disappearing. They will both agree not to drink from the chalice of eternal glory, deciding instead to taste of the delicious fruit that Caesar Augustus has been good enough to offer them: freedom.

Not even Martial will manage to track them down, once back in the city. He will hunt high and low for them, but without success. In the end he will write unique verses in their memory, which will echo down the centuries.

Nobody will ever know what became of Verus and Priscus after they left the Amphitheater, their final bow. There are those who say they left together on a journey north, others who say they went their separate ways after a long embrace.

What is certain is that, wherever the gods of the arena went, their names lived on in Rome. Ingrained forever in letters of ice and fire on the heart of the Eternal City.

THE ATTENTIVE READER—in fact I am sure even the distracted reader—will have noted that, in a novel entitled
Colosseum
, the term “Colosseum” does not appear once. And, quite reasonably, they will have wondered why. The answer lies somewhere between historical fact on the one hand and the story I wanted to tell on the other. Sticking to the facts, as an author of historical fiction is expected to do, in the days of Verus, Priscus, Titus, Julia, and Domitian, the greatest arena in the world was simply called the “Amphitheater”, or, if the speaker wanted to sound particularly formal, “Flavian Amphitheater.” It was only in medieval times that people began to call it “Colosseum,” due to its vicinity to a colossal statue of Sol, the sun god, or rather a colossal statue of Nero converted by Vespasian into one of Sol after the
damnatio memoriae
of the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, designed to erase even memories of his reign. The statue disappeared as the centuries passed, but the name stuck. And even today, all over the world, the word “Colosseum” is enough to conjure up an image of the symbol of Rome.

But titling a novel “Flavian Amphitheater” would not be quite so evocative. Nobody would have thought of blood, sand or gladiators, but rather of a stupendous example of imperial architecture.

And that is not quite what I had in mind.

This is without a doubt one of the most ambitious novels I have written, in terms of historical documentation: in order to enter into the maze of the Flavian Amphitheater and dissect its secrets, I needed the help of many guides. I wanted to place my trust in the oldest ones, going to consult sources that date back to the reigns of Titus and Vespasian, but at the same time I preferred not to neglect the work of more modern historiographers who, in the course of their investigations, have analyzed the most disparate aspects of the Colosseum's history.

At times, during the journey, it was necessary to consult technical texts intended for those working in the sector, while on other occasions works aimed at a wider audience came to my rescue, explaining in plain language the realities of everyday Roman life during the first century AD.

In the bibliography that follows, you will find both types. A special thanks goes to the authors of the texts listed, for having breathed a little historical nourishment into an imagination otherwise so blatantly dependent on Hollywood.

 

Various authors,
Sangue e Arena
(exhibition catalogue), Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Archaeological Department of Rome, editorial production by Electa, 2001.

Various authors,
Rota Colisei:
La valle del Colosseo attraverso i secoli
(exhibition catalogue), by Rossella Rea, Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Archaeological Department of Rome, editorial production by Electa, 2002.

Alberto Angela,
Una giornata nell'antica Roma
.
Vita quotidiana, segreti e curiosità,
RAI Mondadori, Rome-Milan 2007.

Ross Cowan, Angus McBride (illustrated by),
Roman Legionary (58
BC
–
AD
69)
, Osprey Publishing Ltd., Oxford 2003.

Federica Guidi,
Morte nell'arena. Storia e leggenda dei gladiatori
, Mondadori, Milan 2006.

Keith Hopkins, Mary Beard,
Il Colosseo: La storia e il mito
, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2008.

Martial,
Epigrammi
, introductive essay and introduction by M. Citroni, translation into Italian by M. Scandola, notes by E. Merli, Bur, Milan 1996.

Fik Meijer,
Un giorno al Colosseo: Il mondo dei gladiatori
, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2006.

Konstantin Nossov,
Gladiatori: Sangue e spettacolo nell'antica Roma
, published by Goriziana, Gorizia 2010.

Fabrizio Paolucci,
Gladiatori: I dannati dello spettacolo
, Giunti, Florence-Milan 2003.

Rossella Rea, Heinz-Jürgen Beste, Lynne C. Lancaster,
Il cantiere del Colosseo
, in “Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung”, 109, 2002.

Graham Sumner,
Roman Military Clothing Vol. 1 (100
BC
–
AD
200)
, Osprey Publishing Ltd., Oxford 2002.

Peter Wilcox, Angus McBride (illustrated by),
Rome's Enemies 2. Gallic and British Celts
, Reed International BooksLtd., London 1985.

WRITING COLOSSEUM HAS been a great adventure. An adventure that began a long while back, its roots planted firmly in my obsession with history and the faith placed by the publisher and the entire editing team in the modest abilities of a narrator of dark tales. Ever since I began to take an interest in ancient history I have wanted to write about gladiators; hell, anyone who thinks of Imperial Rome cannot help but imagine the gods of the arena going at it like Mars commanded. There was no way someone like yours truly, accustomed to telling stories of bloody conflict, could pass up the opportunity to describe that sort of battle to the death. However, I wanted something a bit special, one of those stories that leaves its mark. Luckily, almost two thousand years ago, that bad boy Martial jotted one down that fit the bill exactly. Thanks to him, but above all thanks to Verus, Priscus and the miracle they managed to pull off on that August afternoon, my dream has come true. I have put a big chunk of my heart into the pages of this novel, and lavished all the energy on it that I could. But none of it would have been worth it without the invaluable help of those who were along for the ride with me. I am in debt to all of them, so allow me to thank them properly.
Thank you Gianni Biondillo and Lorenza Ghinelli, the very first fans of Colosseum.

Thanks to Michele Rossi, who switched on the time machine.

Thanks to Viola Vastola, attentive expert of ancient and classical history and an indispensable help during the long months spent drafting the novel.

Thanks to Caterina Campanini for her invaluable editing work.

Thanks to my agent Piergiorgio Nicolazzini for his impeccable professionalism and constant diligence.

My final thanks, as always the most important of all, go to those of you who have bought or borrowed this book. I thank you sincerely, because without you I could not be here doing what I do.