Tribune of the People

by Dan Wallace

  Young hotheads wanted to go right away, and though thought of as a hothead himself, Lysis’s father argued against the war. So did the other older men who knew of the Romans’s brute strength, their willingness to use it, and the fact that they never gave up. Other men, younger men, wanted to fight. They had never seen a Roman legionary and couldn’t fear what they hadn’t seen. They argued that if they agreed to help, the Kleonites might reduce the tribute Pios needed to send every harvest, if in turn Korinth forgave Kleoni’s tribute. Lysis’ father added, “If we win, which we won’t.”

  The others countered with the fact that Korinth was already at war, soon to be joined by the men from Kleoni and other outlying towns. If they won, they wouldn’t forget that Pios had not joined them. But if they lost, and the Romans were as ruthless as the old men had described them, the consequences would be that much worse. Better to join the Korinthians to give them the best chance to win. The men of Pios voted to join the uprising.

  As Orestes closed the meeting with a blessing, Lysis grabbed Kleitos by the arm and tried to run quickly and silently ahead of his father and brothers back up the mountain path. But Kleitos kept tripping and crying, and in trying to shush him to be quiet, Lysis made more noise than he liked. Abruptly, Amphios and Olus jumped out from the side of the path, having looped ahead to catch them. They held the howling boys up by their armpits, but their father did not whip them with his stick.

  “Put them down,” he said. “It’s late. We all should go to bed in peace.”

  Fifty men from Pios left the next morning, including Lysis’s father and his older brothers Amphios and Olus. Hiking his sword behind his back, Lysis’s father hugged and kissed all of his children one by one, giving Lysis an extra squeeze as his best-loved son. His father stood, stared at Mother, and walked out the front door without a backward look. Amphios and Olus trailed him, carrying thick staffs sharpened at one end, and knives in their belts.

  While his father was gone, Lysis ran the goats up the mountain with Kleitos. While they foraged, the boys played soldiers. Lysis insisted on being the Pios warrior, though Kleitos cried at always having to be the Roman. They played and fought and died and jumped back up to fight and die again until they were tired. Kleitos refused to be a Roman, so Lysis said he could be Athenian, and fought him again as the brave Pios citizen-soldiers did centuries ago.

  They played this way for weeks, breaking off now and then to look to the goats, then re-engaging their armies. Frequently, their battles and rests took them far from the herd.

  As usual after a morning meal, Lysis mounted a brisk attack on his little brother, pushing him back with left and right blows of his staff. Kleitos grew angry and suddenly charged like a mad stag, surprising Lysis so that he stumbled and fell backwards. Kleitos stood over him, brandishing his staff as if ready to crown his bully brother once and for all. He froze at the top of his arc, and both heard the crying of the goats in the distance. Panic filled them as they imagined what the cries must mean.

  The boys ran as fast as they could down one bluff and to the top of another, looking down on the herd in horror. Three dead goats, their bodies ripped open, lay in a line leading to the rest of the herd, at bay under an outcropping of rock, cowering in front of a female wolf that growled at them, canines gnashing revealed by the severe curl of her lips.

  Horrified, Lysis ran down the slope, shaking his staff above his head as he shouted as loudly as he could. The wolf turned her head, then shifted toward him, revealing teats full of milk for a brood of pups hidden somewhere in the mountains. As soon as she turned away, the goats bolted from the rocks down the slope. The wolf gathered itself to leap, and Lysis lowered his staff, pointing it in desperate hope of holding the beast off. In a blur of motion, the wolf reached her head around to clench her jaws on the end of the staff. With a snap of her head, she wrested the staff from Lysis’s hands and tossed it behind her. Kleitos cried out.

  The wolf lowered its body, almost rubbing its belly on the stony surface, and began to slink toward the terrified boys. Step by step, Lysis moved back, grabbing blindly behind for Kleitos’s staff. He felt it and yanked, pulling Kleitos off his feet to pile into him. The wolf gathered itself to spring, and Lysis held his forearm up above Kleitos, trying to get up as he did.

  The wolf stopped. Her ears pricked up, and after a second’s pause, straightened and whirled to lope to the top of the ridge.

  Stunned, Lysis and Kleitos watched her disappear over the ridge even as they began to hear noise behind them. The noise turned into muffled yells, shouting, thumping, panting. They looked behind them, and saw a man emerge running from behind the crest where the boys had been fighting and resting before. Then another man came over the top, and another, two more, then an entire group, running as fast as they could, carrying nothing, pounding down toward them. The first man flew past the two boys, and as the others reached them, Lysis shouted at them.

  “The Romans!” cried one man over his shoulder, a man Lysis recognized from the village. Others darted by, some familiar, some strangers. Lysis nudged Kleitos, and they both started running. They headed off in a different direction from the fleeing men, down a goat path that led to a vantage point above Pios.

  Once there, they crouched behind a small growth of bushes and watched. Men in strange clothes walked through the village, poking swords into doorways and windows. Behind the soldiers, the boys could see smoke billowing out of the old Temple, and occasionally a lick of fire. Perched on the edge of the mountain, all of the dwellings of the small village of Pios faced one way, out to the valley where Kleoni lay beneath a dark cloud of smoke.

  Lysis grabbed Kleitos’ arm and began working the two of them across the ridge toward their house. He told his little brother to hide between two rocks, then started down the slope to the back wall of their hut. Inside, he found Mother dead by her own hand, and in their cubbies, Zoe, Niobe, and Penelope, also dead, laid out with care by Mother afterwards. Crying silently, Lysis slipped out the back and stealthily worked his way up to the rocks where Kleitos waited, unaware that Mother and their sisters had left forever, and that they would never see Father, Amphios, and Olus again forever.

  Just as he reached Kleitos, who looked up at him, puzzled by his expression, Romans on horses rolled over the hilltops and down the side, their mounts daintily picking their way. Lysis screamed for his little brother to run. But Kleitos turned to look at them slack-jawed, making it easy for one of the hairy riders to scoop him up by the waist.

  Lysis ran and ran. He darted down the slopes and through narrow crevices to leave the horsemen’s shouts ever more distant as they searched for ways to reach him. He ran for the better part of an hour, crying as he scurried between sharp blades of stone cutting the earth to the sky. The sun began to fall, and he looked for a place to sleep. He hid beneath a rock ledge.

  He was hungry and alone, shattered and lonely. His family was gone, and he knew now that he would never see them again. Even Kleitos had been taken from him. He cried.

  A hard grip around his leg awoke him. He was yanked out from under the rock, scraping his back as he tried to hold on. The man grabbing his leg cracked Lysis on the side of his head and yelled at him to stop struggling.

  The man, a few inches taller than Lysis, wore a leather chest guard and chaps, but no other armor. He pulled Lysis roughly to his feet and brandished his fist when the youth tried to pull away again. Lysis stopped, but the man hit him anyway. Knocked down and senseless, Lysis vaguely noticed the man tying a leather rope around his neck. He jerked it, and Lysis rose as fast as he could to prevent from being strangled. The gruff man walked him down the hillside to a path where other men waited, some on horseback, others on foot, marshaling a long line of bound people. Men, women, and children all stood, waiting, their heads hanging in despair.

  Lysis was walked to the end of the line to be tied in, and there he found Kleitos, also bound by his neck. The two boys fell together in a long, sorrowful embrace until the guard pulle
d them roughly apart. They stood a body’s length away from each other, crying and crying, while the others in line stood waiting for the last captives to be tied in.

  After an hour on their feet, swaying with exhaustion, they turned their eyes to a bustle at the far end of the line. A troop of horsemen pranced up the narrow road, the leader wearing ornate golden armor and a matching helmet with stiff, red horsehair on top. Lysis instantly realized that this was a Roman general. Next to him, Lysis saw an officer from his land, wearing a leather breastplate and a huge plume of feathers sweeping back from the crest of his helmet. The sides of his helmet covered his nose and cheeks to the tip of his chin. The Roman talked to the other officer briefly, who nodded. He turned and barked an order to the men guarding the line of captives. Immediately, they began flicking their prisoners with short whips, wheeling them around to begin the descent down the mountain. Lysis craned his neck back to stare at the Roman general, a dark-haired god with a stern countenance who, with one quiet order, could change the world for all of the people in the village of Pios.

  Two weeks later, they arrived above Korinth, a strange, massive place to the boys, full of man-built stone mountains that were now burning. As they walked down to the city, they almost forgot their own misery when gazing at the corpses in the street and the burnt-out shops and houses. Kleitos began to whimper, and Lysis shushed him to keep the guards from using their whips. The eerie nature of the vast tumbles of stone and smoldering wood frightened them, destruction caused by the terrifying monsters called Romans. The smell of charred wood mixed with that of decaying flesh brought them close to retching. They held their hands over their mouths and noses to hold it back, though some were unable to, adding to the stench.

  Eventually, the string of prisoners made its way through the destroyed capital down to the harbor. There, they found the warehouses and piers intact, saved by a general command so that the plunder from Korinth could be shipped to Rome. The captives from Pios were marched to a stone pier where a large ship was tied up and were told to sit. As they lowered themselves, they looked at the ship, then hid their eyes to cry. Lysis weeped silently, knowing that they might never see their mountainside home again. Kleitos was too young to understand, but he cried out loud for Mother, and that he wanted to go home. Lysis hugged him and rocked him, humming while he secretly wiped his own tears on his brother’s tunic.

  In the morning, the guards prodded them with the handles of their whips until everyone was awake and standing. The guards ordered them to face forward, which they did, waiting. In the distance, they saw the Roman commander emerge from a giant house with two enormous doors swung wide open to reveal a tall, black mouth of darkness. The Roman, again flanked by various soldiers and officers, mounted his horse and cantered toward them. But first, he stopped to lean down and talk to the foreman of a gang of dock workers. He gestured at a large stock of amphorae and other goods, the foreman nodded and turned to shout at his crew. They jumped into action, and the Roman commander continued riding toward the prisoners, the Greek officer taking long steps to stay next to him.

  When they reached the string of prisoners, they stopped and began talking to each other. The two men seemed to reach a decision and turned to face the long line. The Greek, a Macedonian, murmured the grown-ups in line, began tapping captives on their shoulders with the haft of a short spear. The guards then cut those tapped free from the main tether, looped individual ropes around their necks, and led them off. Occasionally, the Roman officer would utter something. The Macedonian would reply and proceed on, though sometimes he would stop the guards from cutting out some of those being inspected.

  Many of the prisoners started to cry out as family members were cut out and led away. The further the two officers progressed down the line, the louder the hue grew, until the Macedonian officer snapped a sharp order. As one, the guards fell on those crying, shutting them up with a series of thudding blows with their whip handles.

  The Macedonian worked his way down the line until he reached Lysis. He looked back at the Roman and said something that Lysis couldn’t understand. At the same time, he clasped Lysis by the sides of his arms and rubbed them gently, then turned him around to rub his back, bringing his hands down to the sides of his hips.

  The Roman called out, and the Macedonian dropped his hands, but replied in a sharp voice. The two of them argued for a while, until finally, the Roman commander pointed down with his ivory and gold baton. The Macedonian followed with his eyes back in the boy’s direction. After a moment’s thought, he shrugged his shoulders, and cut Kleitos out of the line.

  A guard put a tether around the little boy’s neck and started to pull him away. But the officer stopped him and took the tether himself.

  Kleitos shrieked, pulling against the looped rope, which strangled his scream as he reached open-armed back to his brother. Lysis jumped at him and was immediately laid out by a guard’s whip handle. Lysis heard the Roman shout loudly at the guard and vaguely felt him flinch and shrink away. He could barely raise his head to watch his brother crying inconsolably as the Macedonian steadily dragged him back toward the big dark house. As Kleitos’s cries diminished, the Roman spoke again, and the remaining prisoners were marched toward a gang plank. Lysis was lifted up by those closest to him and helped over the wooden plank as he gazed behind him to where Kleitos had disappeared.

  Occasionally, if the wind was favorable, the captain would order the sail to be set as a boost to his rowers. The little shade it provided was welcomed by the captives, who were chained to rings on the top deck. Otherwise, Helios punished them mercilessly as the ship mirrored the coastline on the long, tedious voyage from one tiny port to the next. The guards fed them regularly to have as many reach the market alive as possible. They received enough water to survive, but never enough to quench their thirst, constant on the glassy summer sea known as the Roman Lake.

  Even so, Lysis found it difficult to eat or drink. The loss of Kleitos had sapped him of interest. Instead, memories drifted through his mind, of Father and Mother, his brothers and sisters, now happy, joking while they worked, then slain in their house, or marching with the Kleonis to vanish forever.

  An old man nudged Lysis by his elbow. Lysis, curled up on his side next to the bulwark where he was chained, gazed up, blocking the white sunlight with his hand. The man looked familiar, drawn, but still someone Lysis had known. He tried to turn his head back to the deck, but the old man pushed him again, harder. Lysis turned to face him. It was Orestes, the village headman. He had agreed to send the men of Pios to war but was too old to go himself. Now, he lived to look forward to the rest of life as a slave who had led his loved ones and his village to destruction.

  Lysis rolled back away from him, but Orestes wouldn’t leave him alone. Instead, he forced him to eat and drink. Then, he began to teach him common Greek, the dialect spoken in Korinth and everywhere else after Alexander’s rule. He also started to teach him Latin.

  In every port, the captain of the guards cut loose some of the captives and dragged them down the gangplank. They never returned, though sometimes strangers were brought onto the ship, though always fewer than the number taken off. Many times, the officer came back alone. Orestes explained it as part and parcel to the slaving business, selling as you go, but always trading up, too, in hopes of bringing a better quality of goods to the premier market, Rome, where the prices would be highest and profits the best.

  But some died on the way. Exposure carried some away, among the older and younger captives. Others seemed to die of despair, ignoring food and water until their shrunken bodies were tossed over the side. Orestes had saved Lysis from that fate, and he tried to rally other survivors from Pios, though he failed to save everyone. Slowly, though, Lysis gained strength. Gradually, he began to understand what some of the Roman guards were saying to each other in their own tongue.

  On the last leg, the vessel slowed against opposing currents. Food ran out, and they were beginning to starve. Even the sailo
rs and the oarsmen complained, and the ship’s captain began to look very nervous. Orestes told Lysis that if the water ran out, there would be trouble, an uprising. The captain would be killed and thrown overboard, followed by the slaves to whom he had given the last of the food in an effort to preserve his investment.

  Lysis could care less, as sick and miserable as he was. But Orestes refused to allow him to drift off into oblivion. Instead, he cajoled him and gave him most of his own food until there was none to give. Still, Lysis languished, and the beautiful dark-haired boy grew gaunt and jaundiced lying in the foul waste of the dead and dying captives.

  The ship docked at last in Ostia. The officer of the guards yelled for them to stand in a line. Orestes lifted Lysis to his feet and held him up. The guards released them from the deck manacles and tethered them again by their necks to lead them off the ship. The men, women, and children left alive lurched and staggered across the deck and down a broad gangplank. If one fell, several would be pulled down as well, halting the line until the guards came to untangle them and jerk them back to their feet. Eventually, they all made it off the ship and onto the broad pier and continued to shuffle up a wide avenue.

  The size of the port dwarfed Korinth’s and the others they had seen. Orestes explained to Lysis that Ostia served all of Rome, its warehouses were vast and endless. The bustle and noise of the crowded wharfs beat upon Lysis’ ears almost painfully. The captain of the guards paced back and forth the length of the line, clearly bearing a concerned expression as he surveyed the sad condition of the property in his charge. Looking at the broad man’s familiar, sun-darkened face, furrowed by long wrinkles from his temples to his chin, Lysis felt that he knew him now after traveling with him so long. He imagined seeing him sitting with Orestes and the other elders at the fire-lit meeting, deciding whether or not to go to war. In his weary mind, Lysis mused that he would remember the captain’s face for the rest of his life.