Spartacus

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  Winter went by. The food grew worse. Now, roused, the Gladiators were like half-tamed beasts snarling at the sight of Batiates. But he kept them patiently, awaiting the sales of Spring. Elpinice fed the Gladiators with scraps from the kitchen; and stumbling through the sheds in the dark found herself by the chained Thracian.

  He spoke to her in halting Latin. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Elpinice. And yours is Spartacus.’

  She put a hand on his head. He put up a chained hand on her arm. She shivered in his sudden, wild grip.

  Lovers, she found in his bed delight, not agony. He found with her something that cleansed the dark gloom from his eyes. Lying together, they planned the revolt, with the restive mutter of the Gladiators around them.

  Elpinice brought the keys in the dead of one night, and unlocked the chains. Shouting, the Gladiators poured into the kitchens and fed their starving stomachs with meat and filled their hands with spits for weapons. Roused, Batiates called out the lanistae, and a desperate fight broke out in the half-dawn, the Thracian leading the Gladiators, Elpinice crouching in the sheds and watching. Presently the lanistae broke and fled and the Gladiators threw aside the spits and armed themselves with the abandoned weapons. Gannicus, a German retiarius with palms sent down to the ludus for re-training, would have made himself leader, but the Gladiators shouted for the Threce Spartacus, and placed themselves under his command.

  Ere Batiates could rouse Capua, the Gladiators marched from the city in a compact body, armed with the weapons of the lanistae, led by the Thracian bandit, the woman Elpinice in their midst.

  [ii]

  Waking the morning after the Battle of the Lake, she crouched by Spartacus and remembered these things. They seemed part of a far tale now. Between them and now lay the first wild days in the crater of Vesuvius, unsheltered, when a troop of velites was sent against them, and routed, and five centuries of legionaries routed as well: between them and now lay the days of starvation when Spartacus had fought, possessed by a God or a demon, to keep his fellows from surrender: between them and now lay the perilous descent of the lava crags, at night, by ropes, to a sleeping countryside and food for the seizing: between them and now lay the days when the slaves round Capua revolted and joined them, and decimated the half-legion that Clodius had led.

  The camp was silent in the hush of the dawn. Elpinice knelt and stared at the face of the Gladiator, he had turned uneasily in the night, throwing the cloths from his face. Now the great wound was no more than a faint, dark limning on the dark-bronzed skin, on head and chin and breast the hair curled blue-black and metallic, the face had a terrifying simplicity in sleep, so that Elpinice remembered the great stone faces she had seen in her childhood in Athens. She shivered and drew the cloths about her, and watched through the tent-opening the coming of the dawn.

  It had been Clodius’ tent, captured with much other gear in the Battle of the Lake. All night it had sheltered a Threce Gladiator and an Attic slave-woman, the leaders of the servile host. For the rest, the slaves had flung up shelters of earth and grass, and slept in these, or rolled themselves in the garments stripped from the Roman dead, and lain in the lee of the waving clumps of rushes. But Gannicus, the German retiarius with palms, elected strategos under Spartacus, had erected a skin tent in imitation of the Thracian. The third strategos, Castus the Gaul, had patrolled the camp.

  Hating the Roman titles and ranks, the Gladiators had named their leaders strategoi, as in the armies of Greece, and elected each from day to day. The girl, looking into the morning and the future, saw trouble awaiting that order of things: till the Masters marched down their legions and crowned the revolt with the cross.

  For that was the certain end. No armies yet had withstood the legions, despite the chance defeat of Clodius. He or another would return, and unless the servile host dispersed, seeking the mountains or the sea –

  Elpinice turned. Suddenly, through the stir of the slave-camp outside, a bucina roared. Then the pad of hurrying feet came near.

  ‘Strategos!’

  [iii]

  Spartacus, buckling on his Threce armour, gained the middle of the camp within a minute of the bucina sounding. Running to him came Castus and Gannicus. The German grinned like a wolf.

  ‘Nearly two thousand of them, so a shepherd says. There – you can see the gleam of the standards. The ravine still hides the main body.’

  The Thracian bandit looked and saw the morning dazzle on weapons. It was an ill place to be taken in battle, with the marsh behind them. Then he smiled. There would be no battle. He turned his dark, staring eyes on Gannicus.

  ‘We’ll not fight.’

  The retiarius, a Teutone, with grey eyes and red hair, heavy of jaw and bearded again since his escape from Batiates, swore, the blood running red across his forehead.

  ‘By the fat-bellied Gods of the Baltic, are you afraid? You’ll surrender?’

  ‘Not even by those Gods. Look, it’s a party of slaves, with stolen armour.’

  All looked again. So it was. The party marched undisciplined, shield-flourishing. The red did not recede from the brow of the Teutone. But Castus laughed.

  ‘We still dream we’re in the arena. All but the Strategos.’

  Gannicus’ temper went again. ‘“The Strategos?” Aren’t we also strategoi?’

  Castus was cool. ‘We are. Also, we’re fools. Had you or I acted as Strategos, Gannicus, we’d by this time have fallen on those two thousand slaves – who seem to number about three hundred.’

  ‘More Eastern rats,’ growled Gannicus, standing arms akimbo and surveying them contemptuously. For he had little faith in Eastern men.

  The company of Gershom ben Sanballat entered the camp and looked around. For a little there was silence, the Gladiators and their allies leaning on their weapons, the Bithynians doubtful, half eager, half hesitant. One man of the company rode on horseback. It was Titul, the Iberian. He pointed towards the three strategoi.

  ‘The middle man with the gladius. He is the Captain. Mighty –’

  ‘Were the Captains of hosts in the vanished Western Isle”,’ said Kleon, hastily. ‘Even so. But they neglected to sacrifice to Jehovah. Or was it Kokolkh?’ To Gershom: ‘I think these Gladiators are more likely to welcome us as slaves than as allies.’

  Grinning, the Gladiators and those who had recruited their revolt before the Battle of the Lake, surrounded the Bithynians. Said one, a Gaul, ‘These are small men, but valorous. This one was a cook. He’ll slay the Masters and pot them.’ A Thracian, with the hair on his chest matted in filth, glared and spat, for he had been a retiarius in the arena, and had conquered many with this glare. ‘Monkeys from the Circus. Hell! Are the apes also in revolt?’

  A grinning Gaul wandered round the band, surveying it jeeringly. But suddenly he cried out in Gaulish, forgetting his Latin, and seized on one of the strangers, a tall man with large feet and a flaming head of hair, clad in a stained woman’s robe. At this onslaught on Brennus Titul snarled and leapt from his horse with drawn knife. Then he stood aside, and a mutter of astonishment rose.

  For Brennus and the Gaul were embracing, breast to breast, and weeping and laughing. Brothers and twins, they had slept in the same stockade of northern Gaul, had been captured and enslaved in the same raid, had together heard the aurochsen low that last time they were marched south on the road to Rome.

  At sight of the brothers’ meeting, the enmity of the Gladiators vanished. With laughter and horseplay, they embraced the Bithynians, rolling them on the ground, or weeping large, mock tears of rejoicing. The Bithynians grinned and submitted, chattering unintelligibly. Titul replaced his knife. Gershom ben Sanballat, tugging at his beard, pushed his way through the tumult, and stood at the foot of the central mound and looked up in the faces of the three Gentile strategoi.

  He looked on the face of Castus, the Gaul, an ordinarius of the arena, the reputed lover of Spartacus – a young face, uncruel and uncertain. And the Jew thought, ‘No leader.’ Then he
looked at Gannicus: ‘A bull, and brave as one. Pity he isn’t in Jerusalem. Salome dotes on bulls.’ And he scowled, for he did not share the doting.

  The two strategoi of the Gladiators returned his gaze watchfully, as men prepared for treachery. Only the third stared over his head, with dark, blank eyes – dreaming, drunk, or was the slave mad? A queer conviction came on the Jew guerilla that he had seen that face before, and with the conviction a faint hope kindled as well. Disregarding the other two, he saluted the Strategos in the middle.

  ‘I am Gershom ben Sanballat, a Jew. I was a slave of Crassus the Lean. I’ve brought these slaves to join you, if you’ll have them.’ He scowled irritably. ‘Which Jehovah knows will be a favour, for without you the first band of horse will cut us to pieces.’

  ‘You are welcome, Gershom. I’m Spartacus, a bandit. These are Generals of the Gladiators, Castus and Gannicus.’

  Gershom combed his curled beard with thin brown fingers. ‘They may be Generals of the army of hell, if it please them. I surrender my leadership of these Bithynians to you, not to those: who are doubtlessly very worthy men.’

  Anger flamed afresh across the face of Gannicus. But Castus laughed. ‘Thereby you show your sense. We two mistook your band for the soldiers of the Masters, and would have fallen on it, but that Spartacus held us back. You already owe him your life, Bithynian.’

  ‘I am no Bithynian,’ said Gershom ben Sanballat, ‘but a Jew.’

  Castus was indifferent. ‘A Greek folk?’

  The face of the Jew aristocrat flushed with the old Hasidim rage. ‘My fathers were worshipping the One True God ere the Greeks came wallowing from the slime of their origin.’

  The giant Thracian stared the simplicity of a half-awakened child, Castus shrugged, Gannicus sneered clumsily. ‘I’ve heard of your folk in Rome. They worship trade and usury, and an ass’s head for a God.’

  The Thracian began to speak:

  ‘We have little food, and by this marsh we’re likely to be trapped. Elpinice thinks that another praetor may be marching against us. Camp your Bithynians, Gershom, but be ready to move.’

  ‘First I’ll deal with this Gentile swine—’

  Spartacus stared at him with blank, dark eyes. ‘Camp your Bithynians.’

  For a moment the Jew returned that gaze. Then he saluted again, and turned to obey.

  [iv]

  Gannicus, the Strategos for the day, set sentries on the neighbouring hills. Then the bucina blew again, summoning the slaves to a council. Meantime they had eaten, and new bands of slaves, herdsmen and hunters, had entered the camp. The most of them were Germans or Gauls, and drifted into the sub-camps of Castus and Gannicus. Looking on this gathering the eunuch Kleon spoke to Gershom.

  ‘Most of these are northern barbarians, with little desire to return to their own lands. They’ll mingle ill with your Bithynians.’

  ‘Or with your Greeks,’ said the Pharisee Jew. ‘But that’s a small matter. This army is a gathering of fools, as I’ll say aloud in this council. Now the Masters have twice suffered defeat they’ll move more slowly. In that space this army should split into fragments, and each band escape to the sea. There’s no hope else.’

  Kleon smiled coldly, indifferently. ‘There’s little hope even so. To kill as many of the Masters as we may, and ourselves in the end be killed . . . What of the leaders of the Gladiators?’

  ‘Two are wise fools: and the third – I don’t know.’

  ‘That third – the dark barbarian? Who is he?’

  ‘Spartacus, a Thracian.’

  Kleon, being Greek, looked contemptuously on Thracians. ‘They are savages, eating horses and worshipping their dead.’

  ‘They may eat their dead and worship horses, if it please them,’ said Gershom. ‘If this leader Spartacus will show good sense in his leading. I: I am for the sea.’

  ‘And I: I am for nothing.’

  In great circles, squatting on the grass, the slaves gathered to listen. Some gaped astonishment at the number of their fellows; some sat and rubbed at their eyes and broke into strange peals of laughter; some sat scowling, gripping their weapons, with twitching faces and eyes on the hills; some lolled half asleep in the sunlight, their scarred limbs showing through the rags of their clothing, resting and resting in blessed ease from toil and the whine of the lash. Half at least were slaves born in slavery, men of the fields and plantations and households, with uncertain Gods and rules and beliefs, fear for an urge by day, exhaustion their urge by night, uncertain their fathers, but glimpsing their mothers, mating a matter of stealth and chance unless they came from the great stud-farms, where children were bred with the care of cattle and sheep. Yet even so, alien to their own lost lands, they remembered dimly their rules and creeds, in which women were lesser beings than men, without reason, and voiceless in public places. So now they stared their astonishment at the centre of the circles where, on a pile of Roman loot, the Strategos Spartacus sat.

  For a woman, a girl in a Gladiator’s tunic, had come threading the lines of squatting slaves, and now sat by the side of Spartacus. A murmur arose from the Gauls and the Eastern men, and all, save the Gladiators, looked on her in surprise and anger, or greedily and with desire.

  The woman paid them no heed. She sat in the sunlight, by the side of the Thracian, her small face cool and composed under the dark line of brows. Presently the slaves saw a Gaul rise up. It was Brennus.

  ‘A woman for the brothel or a woman for the hut – yes. But a woman sitting in a council of war – no.’

  With this, winking his sleepy eyes, he sat down. Growls of approval arose from the shepherds, mingled with the thin, tenor laughter of the Bithynians. Then a Gladiator spoke:

  ‘I’m of the men who came from Capua,’ he said. ‘We defeated two armies and camped by a marsh. And in the aftermath certain herds of asses wandered into our camp, braying “We have come with our valorous aid. But of this one and that of your band we do not approve.” Now of asses I know little, except that their smell is bad. But of Elpinice I and the other Gladiators know much.’ He looked towards the motionless figure by the side of the Thracian. ‘Who unlocked our chains in the ludus of Batiates? Who twisted the vine-ropes for our descent of the crater? I do not mind it was this Gaul. No doubt he was overbusied in hut or brothel.’

  At this the jeers and bull-laughter of the Gladiators broke out, and the others were silent. Still neither the Thracian nor the woman spoke, though Gannicus laughed aloud and looked on Elpinice sneeringly. Castus the Gaul, who cared nothing for women, sat with his arm flung round the shoulders of Spartacus and his head bared in the sunlight. For a little, in the silence that was on the slave gathering, they could hear across the marsh the bleating of strayed and untended herds. Then Gershom ben Sanballat stood up, irritably tugging at his beard. For a moment his anger was quelled in scorn, looking at the slack slave mouths and leering eyes. What could these scum ever achieve? Then his anger was finding his lips.

  ‘By my God, are we here to quarrel over women and asses? There are too many of both in the world. Strategos’ – he addressed the Thracian Gladiator directly. ‘What is your plan? Where will you lead us?’

  Elpinice bent towards Spartacus and whispered. He nodded. ‘That is for this gathering to decide,’ he answered the Jew in that remote, brooding voice that came so strangely from the lips of the bloody leader who had held the passes of Vesuvius single-handed while his followers retreated, who had commanded the Gladiators with courage and skill at the Battle of the Lake. Gannicus spoke next.

  ‘The Masters won’t leave us unmolested long. Let’s march to the nearest town and take it by stealth or assault. There are women and plunder in plenty in this land you’ve helped to till.’

  Murmurs of approbation rose from the squatting, scratching, ill-weaponed slaves. For all desired women and plunder, save the eunuch Kleon, who had use for neither, and the Gaul Castus, who loved Spartacus, and Gershom ben Sanballat, who loathed the thought of a Gentile woman as he loathed
the thought of a Gentile Master. Then Titul spoke.

  ‘We’ll keep the women, but the men we can sacrifice to our Gods, and so ensure victory in the future. Gladdened is the heart of Kokolkh by a sacrifice of blood.’

  And to many who listened this seemed a good plan, remembering dimly their ancient Gods and the cold still faces in the peristyles of the enemy Gods that the Masters followed. Now out of nights and days made free of toil, strange, lost Gods arose to memory again, giving new fears to the dark of the slave shelters, new fierceness with the mutter of half-remembered chants. Then they turned their eyes as the Jew rose again, and a murmur of his name spread round the circles, the Eastern slaves had heard of the Jews with a name through Asia for pride and ferocity, cunning and greed.

  ‘Let us split into many small bands and escape to the sea. There we may seize ships and so escape Italy.’

  But at this the Gauls and Germans cried that they were being deserted, and broke into an angry clamour which Gannicus made no attempt to still. The Gladiator who had spoken in defence of Elpinice pulled at the Gladiator’s tunic she wore.

  ‘Shall we Games-men quieten these shearers of sheep?’

  Spartacus was standing up. Silence fell at his first word, for most had already seen him and all knew of him.

  ‘I remember hunting wolves,’ he put up his hand to his head, ‘long ago. When the packs were about us in the winter-time I and the others kept in a band and reached home in safety. We neither stayed among the wolves nor scattered and ran—’