Spartacus (12 page)

“Yes,” answered Crassus.

“And who trained Spartacus? I did. He never fought in Rome, but the best fighting is not at Rome. A butcher shop is what Rome appreciates, but the truly great fighting is at Capua and in Sicily. I tell you, no legionary knows how to fight, all covered up with
galea, pectoralis,
and
humeralia,
like a child in the womb, poking with that stick of yours. Go naked into the arena, with a sword in hand and nothing else. Blood on the sand, and you smell it as you walk in. The trumpets are playing and the drums are beating and the sun is shining down and the ladies are waving their lace handkerchiefs and can’t keep their eyes off your parts, hanging all naked in front of you, and they will all have thrills enough before the afternoon is done, but your own orgasm comes when your belly is sliced, and you stand there crying while your guts pour out on the sand. That is fighting, my commander—and to do that well, ordinary men are no good. You need another breed, and where do you find them? I am willing to spend money to make money, and I send my agents out to buy what I need. I send them to places where weak men die quickly and where cowards kill themselves. Twice a year, I send to the Nubian mines. Once, I was there myself—yes, and that once was sufficient. To keep a mine operating, you must use up slaves. Most are good for two years, no more; many are good for only six months. But the only profitable way to work a mine is to use up slaves quickly and always buy more. And since the slaves know this, there is always the danger of desperation. That is the great enemy in the mines, desperation. A catching disease. So when you have a desperate man, a strong man who is not afraid of the whip and to whom other men listen, why the best thing to do is to kill him quickly and spike him out in the sunshine, so that the flies can feed on his flesh and everyone can see the fruit of desperation. But that kind of killing is waste and adds to no one’s purse, so I have an arrangement with the o verseers and they keep such men for me and sell them at a fair price. The money goes into their pockets, and no one is the loser. Such men make good gladiators.”

“And that is how you bought Spartacus?”

“Precisely. I bought Spartacus and another Thracian called Gannicus. You know that at the time there was a great vogue for Thracians, because they are good with the dagger. One year it’s the dagger, the next year the sword, the next year the
fuscina
. As a matter of fact, many Thracians have never touched the dagger, but legend has it, and the ladies don’t want to see a dagger in the hands of anyone else.”

“You bought him yourself?”

“Through my agents. They shipped the two of them in chains from Alexandria, and I keep a port agent at Naples and ship inland by litter.”

“Yours is not a small business,” admitted Crassus, who was always alert for a place to invest a little money profitably.

“So you appreciate that,” nodded Batiatus, the wine runing from the corners of his mouth as he stretched his ponderous jowls. “So few people do. What do you think is my investment in Capua?”

Crassus shook his head. “It never occurred to me. One sees gladiators, and one doesn’t stop to think of what was the investment before they walk into the arena. But that’s common. One sees a legion, and one says, there have always been legions and therefore there always will be legions.”

It was superb flattery. Batiatus put down his glass and stared at the commander, and then he rubbed a finger up and down his bulbous nose.

“Guess.”

“A million?”

“Five million
denarii
,” Batiatus said, slowly and emphatically. “Five million
denarii
. Only consider. I deal with agents in five countries. I keep a port agent in Naples. I feed only the best, whole wheat, barley, beef and goat cheese. I have my own arena for small shows and pairs, but the amphitheatre has a stone grandstand and it cost a cool million. I quarter and feed a maniple out of the local garrison. Not to mention the bribes in the same direction—begging your pardon. Not all military men are like yourself. And if you fight your lads in Rome, it’s fifty thousand
denarii
a year for the tribunes and the ward bosses. Not to mention the women.”

“Women?” asked Crassus.

“A gladiator is not a plough-hand on the
latifundia
. If you want him to have tone, you must provide something for him to sleep with. Then he eats better and he fights better. I have a house for my women and I buy only the best, no sluts or withered old bags, but every one is strong and healthy and virgin when she comes into my hands. I know; I try them.” He drained his glass, licked his lips, and looked plaintive and lonely. “I need women,” he complained, pouring the wine slowly. “Some men don’t—I do.”

“And this woman they call the wife of Spartacus?”

“Varinia,” said Batiatus. He had turned in upon himself, and in his eyes there was a world of hatred, anger and wanting. “Varinia,” he repeated.

“Tell me about her.”

A measure of silence told Crassus more than the words which followed. “She was nineteen when I bought her. A German bitch, but good to look at if you like the yellow hair and the blue eyes. A dirty little animal and I should have killed her, so help me God! I gave her to Spartacus instead. It was a joke. He didn’t want a woman and she didn’t want a man. It was a joke.”

“Tell me about her.”

“I told you about her!” snarled Batiatus. He got up and stumbled through the flaps of the tent, and Crassus heard him urinating outside. It was a virtue of the commander that he pursued his goals single-mindedly. Batiatus stumbling back to the table did not disturb him. It was not his goal or need to make a gentleman out of the
lanista
.

“Tell me about her,” he insisted.

Batiatus shook his head ponderously. “Do you mind if I get drunk?” he asked with aggrieved dignity.

“I have no feelings upon the matter. You may drink what you please,” answered Crassus. “But you were telling me that you had Spartacus and Gannicus brought inland by litter. In chains, I suppose?”

Batiatus nodded.

“You had not seen him before, then?”

“No. What I saw, you would have thought little of, but I judge men differently. The two of them were bearded, filthy, covered all over with ulcers and sores and marked from head to foot with the whip. The stink of them was so bad it turned your stomach to go near them. Their own dry excrement was all over them. They were pared down to the limit and only their eyes demonstrated the
desperantes
. You would not have taken them to clean your latrines, but I looked at them and I saw something, because that is my own art. I put them in the baths, had them shaved and had their hair cut, had them rubbed with oil and fed well—”

“Will you tell me of Varinia now?”

“Damn you!”

The
lanista
reached for his goblet of wine, but clumsily, overturning it. He lay forward on the table, staring at the red stain. What he saw therein, no one can say. Perhaps he saw the past, and perhaps he saw something of the future too. For the art of the augur is not wholly a fraud, and only men, not animals, have the power to judge the consequences of their acts. This was the man who trained Spartacus; he had threaded himself into a future that has no ending—even as all men do—but for ages unknown and unborn, he would be remembered. The trainer of men who had trained Spartacus sat facing the leader of men who would destroy Spartacus; but they shared in augury the vague and puzzled understanding that no one could destroy Spartacus. And because they shared even a glimmer of this, they were both of them similarly damned.

 

 

(Caius Crassus brooded on the crosses that lined the road from Rome to Capua, for he was hardly entirely asleep. It did not trouble him that he shared a bed with the great general. His generation no longer felt a need to assuage guilt by rationalizing homosexuality. It was normal for him. The
passion
of six thousand slaves who hung from the crosses by the roadside was normal for him. He was much happier than Crassus, the great general. Crassus, the great general, was a man beset by devils; but Crassus, the young man of noble birth—distantly related, perhaps, for the family called Crassus was one of the largest in Rome at the time—struggled against no devils.

(It is true that the dead Spartacus affronted him. He hated a dead slave; but when he opened his eyes and looked into the shadowed face of Crassus, he was at a loss to explain his hatred.

(You are not sleeping, said Crassus, no you are not sleeping after all, and there’s the story, for what it is—if you heard any of it—and why do you hate Spartacus, who is now dead and gone forever?

(But Caius Crassus was lost in his own memories. It was four years before, and his friend had been Bracus. And with Bracus, he had journeyed down the Appian Way to Capua, and Bracus had wanted to please him. To please him gallantly and richly and abundantly, for what can be better than to sit next to a man you want in the cushions of the arena and to see men fight to the death? At that time, four years before now, four years before this strange evening at the
Villa Salaria
, he had shared a litter with Bracus, and Bracus had flattered him, and promised him that he would see the best of fighting, which was at Capua—and that the cost would be no barrier. There would be blood on the sand, and they would drink wine as they watched it.

(And then he had gone with Bracus to see Lentulus Batiatus, who kept the best school and trained the finest gladiators in all of Italy.

(And all of it, Caius reflected, was four years before—before there had been any Servile War, before anyone had heard the name of Spartacus. And now, Bracus was dead and Spartacus was also dead, and he, Caius, lay in bed with the greatest general of Rome.)

 

 

Both the office and accountant—a well-educated Ionian slave—were indications of wealth and prosperity on the part of Batiatus. His apprenticeship in ward politics and organized street fighting, his shrewd ladder of attachment to one important family after another, and the organizational ability which had permitted him to create one of the largest and most efficient street gangs in the city, had paid off well—and the investment of his carefully hoarded earnings in a small school for gladiators at Capua had been a wise one. As he often liked to put it, he rode on the wave of the future. A gangster could go so far and no further, and no gangster is shrewd enough always to select the winning side. More powerful gangs than his had been wiped off the Roman scene by the unexpected victory of an opponent and the savage fury of a new Consul.

On the other hand, the fighting of pairs—as it was commonly called—was a new field for investment and profit; it was legitimate; it was a recognized business; and anyone who read the signs of the times properly knew that it was only in its infancy. A casual entertainment would soon become the overwhelming craze of a whole social system. Politicians were beginning to realize that if one cannot have the glory of successful war on foreign soil, one can do almost as well by creating a minor replica at home, and the fighting of a hundred pairs, stretching through days and weeks, was already not uncommon. The demand for trained gladiators could never be filled, and prices were going higher and higher. Stone arenas were being built in city after city, and finally, when one of the most beautiful and imposing arenas in all Italy was built at Capua, Lentulus Batiatus decided to go there and start a school.

He had started in a very small way, with just a little shack and a crude fighting pen, training one pair at a time; but his business had grown rapidly, and now, five years later, he had a great establishment where he trained and stocked better than one hundred pairs. He had his own stone cellblock, his own gymnasium and bath house, his own training course, and his own arena for private shows—nothing like the public amphitheatres, of course, but capable of seating parties of fifty or sixty and large enough to fight three pairs at the same time. In addition, he had established sufficient local connections with the military—with appropriate bribes—to have a sufficient force of regular troops available at all times, and therefore spare himself the expense of creating his own private police force. His kitchen served a small army, for with the gladiators, their women, the trainers, house slaves and litter slaves, his household consisted of more than four hundred people. He had reason to be satisfied with himself.

The office in which he sat on this sunny spring morning was his latest acquisition. At the beginning of his career, he had resisted any and all window dressing. He was not patrician, and he made no pretense toward being one. But as his profits mounted, he found that it behooved him to live accordingly. He began to buy Greek slaves, and both an architect and an accountant were included in the purchases. The architect had persuaded him to build an office in the Greek style, flat-roofed and columned, with only three walls, the fourth side being open to the pleasantest prospect his situation afforded. With the drapes drawn back, a whole side of the room was open to fresh air and sunshine. The marble floor and the lovely white table upon which he conducted his affairs were in excellent taste. The open side was at his back, and he faced the doorway. Beyond that, he had a room for his clerks and a waiting room. It was a far cry, indeed, from gang warfare in the alleys of Rome.