Spartacus

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  Kleon had a metal-smith beat out insignia for the slave army, standards to be raised against the Wolf and the Eagle of the Republic.

  And the sign of the slaves was a Snake.

  II. LEGIO LIBERA

  War in the Mountains

  [i]

  HOT-FOOT on the track of Varinus, Cossinus was sent up from Rome with a further half-legion to reinforce the praetor. The latter he found encamped over against the mountain-range which hid the dark countryside dominated by the slaves. From out that tract amidst the mountains came rumours and refugees without end.

  Both bore tales of horror. In their camp the Gladiators had elected as their leader a savage Thracian, who tortured his captives and had virgins brought to his tent in order that he might violate them publicly. Also, he ate horses. Metapontum had been looted and fired at his orders; and he designed to increase the slave-hord until he might make his way to the coast, seize on a fleet of ships, and so cross into Greece and conquer it.

  Woven of such fabric grew the legend of Spartacus. Up and down the lands of the great Republic of the Masters the tale of the rebellion rode the winds. And to some it was a tale of horror and to some a tale of hope. From towns and farms, mines and plantations the slaves slipped away by twos and threes and made their way southwards to join the host of the horse-eating Thracian whose standards bore the insignia of a Snake.

  Burning homesteads and looted orchards marked the passage of such bands. Even the companies of brigands who preyed on the roads and had done so from time immemorial abandoned their routes and marched to join the slaves with the hope of greater plunder. Meantime the light troops of Varinus, scouting beyond the mountains, brought back strange and contradictory reports. One day it appeared that the camp under Mount Papa had grown into a great town, strongly entrenched and provisioned, where the slaves and their savage leader designed to await attack. Another, and it was certain that the entire slave army had marched away, to the east, designing to cross the great Way and lay waste the lands of Calabria.

  Soured, irritated, but determined, Varinus organized his forces. Meantime, he succeeded in intercepting and capturing stray bands of the slave reinforcements which straggled towards the camp of the Gladiators. He spared none. For this the Senate reprimanded him, pointing out that the supply of slaves was small and that the lash or torture, not death, was sufficient to break their spirit. Finally, because of the clamour of the town-dwelling property-owners, the full cost of a thousand vulgares was charged against his private estate.

  Hearing this, Varinus, with thought of his wife’s extravagances which had already impoverished him, cursed the Senate and crucified outside his tent a dozen of new-come captives. Then he took the legions under his personal command and marched into the mountains of Lucania, determined to come to battle with the Gladiators.

  Cossinus he left behind, to the satisfaction of both Cossinus and his troops. Their orders were to forestall any retreat of the slaves northwards into Campania again. Encamped at Salenae, with the sea-water near at hand, the men of Cossinus doffed their armour and swam, or lay on the sands and made obscene jests on the ventures of his wife while Varinus slave-hunted. Cossinus himself had a great pavilion erected, and sent for his bath-attendants at Rome. Then he prepared to rest and recuperate, thus combining his usual autumnal health treatment with the rigours of war.

  A man learned in the Greek tongue, he treated his slaves and soldiers with great kindness. His friend, Kharmides, was a freedman, and this friend he brought to Salenae. Together, sitting in the pavilion, they read Aeschylus and laughed over the freakish ancient world portrayed by Aristophanes; they read and debated in Hesiod and Ovid the Golden Age of Justice and Kindness that had once existed, a well-known fact, ere Jupiter in Egypt rose against the good King Saturn. Kharmides had recently met in Rome the Greek noble Hiketas, renowned alike for his wanderings in distant lands, his blasphemies against the Gods, and the fact that he lived in incest with his sister. This Hiketas was newly returned from a long year’s voyaging up a great river from the Euxine. Beyond the land of the Scythians, in a land of eternal forests, the Greek noble told that the Golden Age still reigned: he himself had lived with a forest people who knew nothing of war or government, cities or arms, masters or slaves. Many in Rome believed this tale a lie, and Cossinus himself was doubtful.

  ‘Even were it true it is a tale of barbaric folk, living far from the lands of the Republic. How can it help or hinder us in Rome?’

  Kharmides agreed that it helped nothing; then told (the jest of the Roman baths) the further tale that Hiketas had spread: that the Thracian savage who led the slaves was himself no Thracian, but a tribesman of remoter people, strayed southwards and captured from the Golden Age. This accounted for his strange conduct in the ludus of Batiates and the fashion in which he had spared the Roman wounded at the Battle of the Mountain.

  Cossinus laughed: ‘Then the Iron Age has engulfed him rapidly.’ And thought. ‘As in Hesiod it tells that that Age did to our own ancestors long ago, letting loose on the world a cruelty and rapine unknown to the Simple Men. If Hiketas tells true this Spartacus is all men in one, with the Golden Age lost.’

  Meantime his soldiers, grown lax, slept on their rounds at night and the winter drew on. Kharmides was sent back to Rome to bring warm robes and skins from the villa on the Palatine; also, Cossinus gave orders that if the roads were not impassable his mistress, Lavinia, should join him.

  The autumn seemed to pass reluctantly. Days of warm weather intervened and in these Cossinus, a strong swimmer, would hold far out into the bay and then return to lie on the sands and think of his mistress. And thinking of her, his desire would mount, bitter and sweet, and his hands grow unsteady. She had been his mistress a bare three months, having abandoned Fulvius when that merchant was broken by the failure of his wheat-ships to escape the galleys of Thoritos.

  ‘I shall send him a talent for that service,’ Cossinus thought. ‘Even though it seems my Lavinia brings death wherever she bides, like Helen of old. But that was no fault of hers – Fulvius and his gushing veins. Soon Kharmides will bring her, this slave-hunt end, and I’ll buy the Thracian Spartacus, make him my body-slave and debate the life of the Golden Age while he rubs me in my bath. And I’ll take him and Lavinia to Sicily, and leave Rome for ever and forget it. I’m weary of the false faces that sneer at one in the Forum, the base faces of the plebs, the thin-faced slaves, the cruel dull faces of my kin who rule. Out on them all! I’ll till the olives of Sicily and watch my slaves at the wine-press and swim in the blue Sicilian seas. And all will be well with me at last.’

  And he closed his eyes, dreaming of Lavinia. From that dream he awoke to the roar of the bucina, and his tribune, a veteran from Syria, shouting in his ears.

  ‘Cossinus! The camp is attacked!’

  [ii]

  But it was already too late. In the evening haze, over the palisades stormed the attacking bands of slaves, men miners or shepherds or porters a month before, now ragged, well fed, and a storming fury. The sunlight was ruddy upon them, and Cossinus, no man of action, stood staring aghast a long moment.

  Again the bucina roared under the standard and the soldiers, snatching armour and swords, ran for the palisades. Reformed within the palisades they had crossed, the slaves greeted the legionaries with a shower of javelins and stones: then charged. They were bands of Gauls, armed with great swords forged in the wilds of Lucania. Swinging these with both hands, their charge was irresistible.

  In their van raced a giant, dark-faced, dark-haired, swinging a giant axe, clad in the armour of a Roman tribune. He clove down the centurion who guarded the standard, hewed down the standard pole with one sweep, then smote in through the hesitant Roman ranks. Cossinus heard armour crackle under that axe: a slave-titan, that, and a general to boot.

  And, being a valorous man, for all that he knew nothing of war or leadership, he took his sword and helmet from the pavilion and ran swiftly towards the battle. But by then it was no battle.
Here and there, in groups, the legionaries still fought, but already the slaves swarmed over the camp, killing stragglers and the wounded. Beside Cossinus ran a centurion: towards them leapt two of the attackers. One of them was a tall man, with large feet and hands and braided red hair. A Gaul, he swung the sword of his tribes. The centurion thrust at him, missed, and rolled headless from the stroke of the sword. The other was a lesser man, and as he came at him Cossinus noted the peaked, chinless face and the stare of demoniac eyes. Twice Cossinus thrust at the man, and twice the man leapt back with reddened tunic.

  He was armed with great wooden club, set with gleaming blades of flint. Snarling, he halted and swung this club till the glassy blades shimmered and it gathered momentum. Then he hurled it at the Roman general. Right athwart the body of Cossinus it came: staggering in amaze, he looked down at the entrails spurting from his own body. Then a light flashed and flashed and he thought, ‘Sicily,’ and fell and was trampled as the last of the scattered fighting ebbed and rolled down to the beach.

  So died Cossinus at Salenae. Spartacus, bloody to the elbows, unwounded, unwearied, though his axe was twisted upon its haft, had his horn-bearer sound. Slowly the Gauls, burdened with spoil, collected from the four corners of the camp. So rapid had been the attack that few of the slaves had died at the palisades – even within their casualties had been few enough. Since morning they had lain hidden, at the orders of the Strategos, in the brush that overlooked the Roman camp, waiting for the Roman hour of siesta and slackening. Few had slept in that waiting time, excepting the Strategos himself, watched over by Castus. Now Castus, also unwounded but with a broken shield and reddened hands, came panting to Spartacus.

  ‘Shall we burn the camp?’

  The Thracian shook his head. ‘That would warn the scouts of Varinus, unless he still follows Crixus and our main army. Are there any prisoners?’

  There were three. They were brought in front of Spartacus. One was a centurion, the others Balearic legionaries. The centurion faced him fearlessly, for he was a Roman: but the legionaries stared at him with the fear of death and torture in their eyes.

  ‘Bring Cossinus’ head,’ said the Strategos.

  Titul the Iberian hewed it from the trunk which his club had mangled, and brought it dripping. Carrying it, he sang the sacrificial song to Kokolkh, being mad. Spartacus looked at it, the dropping eyelids and the bloody grin; and suddenly shivered and a moment hid his face in his hands. Then he remembered the words of Kleon and the taste of power already strong in his mouth.

  ‘The legionaries will carry this to Rome, a gift to the Senate from the Legio Libera.’

  The centurion and the two Balearic legionaries took the northwards road. In a package they carried the head of Cossinus. The raiding slaves vanished into the mountains, leaving Salenae despoiled.

  [iii]

  Unaware of the end of Cossinus, the praetor Varinus marched ever deeper into the wilds of Lucania. For three weeks he wandered there, and, despite his velites, found himself unable to come up with the Gladiators and their allies, or force them to battle. Under the brow of Mount Papa he found their camp deserted. Marching northwards again, in the trail of the elusive slave-bands, he forded the river at Paestum only in time to see the leaping flames from the houses. Pushing on quickly, he overtook at dusk a considerable body of men, and these turned to give him battle, holding his legion in a cleft of the hills till darkness fell. Then they melted away with singing and mocking laughter.

  Only then did he learn that Paestum had been occupied, looted, and fired by a small body of Eastern slaves, numbering less than three hundred: and that they had deliberately led him on for two long days, the while the main body of the insurgents still eluded him.

  He camped a night in Paestum, and from Lucerius Piso, an aged patrician almost blind – as he had been for many years – from a loathsome disease, he learned of the advent of the Eastern slaves. They had captured Paestum without a blow being struck. Their leader had been a tall, black-bearded slave, evidently of different race from his followers. These he had held well in hand, only one of the inhabitants of the town being killed: and he because he threatened the slaves from afar. Thereat the black-bearded slave leader had snatched a bow from his back with incredible swiftness, and, bending it, pierced the breast of the mocker with an iron arrow.

  Then, summoning the chief men, of whom Piso was one, he had demanded a small store of corn, all the money and jewels in Paestum, and the liberation of the slaves.

  All his demands except the liberation of the slaves had been agreed to when the troops of Varinus were seen approaching. Thereat the black-bearded slave had marched his company away, he himself riding in the rear. An arrow fired after him, though striking between his shoulders, had fallen blunted to the ground. He was evidently protected by some alien God.

  ‘Or by armour beneath his tunic,’ said Varinus, sourly. ‘Couldn’t you have closed the gates and held three hundred men?’

  Piso blinked with lashless eyelids, ‘No, for few of the plebs have arms.’

  ‘You are fools,’ said Varinus.

  ‘So the bearded slave said,’ remarked Piso reminiscently. ‘He was a short-tempered man, like yourself, Varinus, and swore by a God called Iave.’ He chuckled. ‘I’d no mind to risk a slit throat for the sake of the Senate or a few slaves. How fares your wife, Varinus?’

  But the praetor had turned on his heel and left him. Next morning, dour and unshaken, he turned southwards again. As he marched news was brought to him by a Gaul, a slave who had deserted the insurrection, that the Thracian Gladiator, whose name was Spartacus, had detached a party from the main slave horde and was marching swiftly towards the sea in order to engage Cossinus. Hearing this news Varinus altered his line of march, left the Gaul hanging crucified on a nearby tree, and pressed westwards towards the coast.

  But at midday, in a marshy plain amidst low foothills, he found a considerable body of men waiting to give him battle. For the first time in a month his face lighted up. He saw that the campaign would end here, now that the rebels had come into the open.

  His cavalry, a small body of four hundred horse, the Roman commander divided and placed on either wing of his main battle. They were heavily armed and armoured and well mounted. In the centre he marshalled the Tenth Legion, with gladii, breastplates, and bearing the short pilum: these men were the stay of the Republic, short in stature, brown-skinned, disciplined as no other troops in the lands that fringed the Middle Sea. They halted motionless, in taciturn silence, in contrast to the light-armed troops from Cisalpine Gaul, who clamoured with the usual din of velites. Beside these Gallic troops Varinus placed a body of slingers on the flanks. Then he took heed of the ordering of the slave-army that opposed him.

  A small man, evidently a Gaul, and mounted on a small and shaggy horse, marshalled the slaves. It was Crixus, helmeted and in Roman armour. In the centre, opposing the Tenth Legion, and grouped around the Snake standard of the slaves, he set the Gauls and Germans, the first under Oenomaus, the second under the scowling half-mutiny of Gannicus. For the German, believing that the command should have been deputed to himself by Spartacus, had marched sulkily since sunrise. His Germans also considered that their leader had been slighted and so drew away from the Gauls.

  Seeing that his centre was likely to split even before it was attacked, Crixus sent a Thracian, Ialo, to watch by the German leader, and, at the first sight of treachery or cowardice, to drive a knife in his throat. Suspecting the intent of Ialo, Gannicus, albeit still sulkily, held the Teutones in check. Further, he hated the Masters more than he hated either Crixus or Spartacus, and the blood of his unquestioned bravery began to beat across his forehead.

  In their ranks the marshalled slaves fidgeted, with twitching faces. For it was the first time, unshielded by ruse or hill or lake, they had faced that dread of the Middle Seas, the legionaries of the Masters. At first there was almost panic in the ranks, as those men from the vineyards and mines and warehouses gaped open-mou
thed at the enemy they fronted, and remembered the sting of the lash on their backs, and the averted head of a slave in the presence of a Master. And then, in a kind of glad despair, they realized they must stand and fight, there was no escape.

  With that realization there came on the slaves hate with remembrance – hate built on memories dreadful and unforgivable, memories of long treks in the slave-gangs from their native lands, memories of the naked sale, with painted feet, from the steps of windy ergastula, memories of cruelties cold-hearted and bloody, of women raped or fed to fish to amuse the Masters from their lethargy, of children sold as they came from the womb, of the breeding-kens of the north, where the slaves were mated like cattle, with the Masters standing by. And a low, fierce growl of hate rippled up from the marshalled slaves, the hiss and rattle of the Snake that faced the Wolf.

  For a little, out of sling and arrow-shot, the two armies halted motionless. Then said Crixus: ‘We’ve come to the feast, but the meat is still uncooked.’ Thereat he took a javelin in his hand, rode forward, stood high in his stirrups, and hurled the javelin whistling through the air. It buried itself in the breast of a front-rank legionary and slew him instantly. On an eminence to the rear of the Roman force, Varinus saw this play and smiled with a sour contempt. He had already gauged the quality of the slave leadership, and ordered his horse to feign a frontal attack.

  Out from either flank they swept and poured across the dusty turf upon the slave front. The sods dashed high from the racing hooves, and the soldiers rode with levelled hastae, low-bent in their saddles, silent. They brushed through a curtain of arrows, scraped the Gaulish front, and fell on the men of Gannicus. With a roar the Germans leapt forward to meet them.