Spartacus

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  ‘Our Gods have a Fortune awaiting us there.’

  Winter in Nola

  [i]

  NOLA was stormed by the Gaulish advance-guard of the Free Legions. Castus hurled wave after wave of attackers upon it, and took it after great slaughter. But with its seizure the southern half of the peninsula, which Kleon and the Thracian designed to make a great slave state, was now defended by two strong towns. Nuceria was strongly garrisoned, but the body of the slave-horde quartered in Nola.

  It was a bitter winter. None but velites and such light troops might move while it lasted, and throughout the months of inaction the slaves might have sunk in a placid torpor, but for the ceaseless urging of Spartacus and the eunuch Greek. These knew that unless the horde was welded into an army, the consuls would destroy them in the spring. For now, and at last, the Republic was aroused. The Wolf had wakened on her hills, and was crying her packs to defence. It was even told that a great shipment of timber had been sent for to the Sardinian forests: to make crosses for the captured slaves.

  So drilling and training in weapon-play went on unceasingly under the walls, despite the bitter winds from the north. The furnaces glowed unceasingly, while hastae and pila were hammered and sharpened in preparation for the spring. Kleon even conceived the idea of the construction of rams and catapults for the taking of the southern cities still unmolested by the slaves. That idea might never have passed to fulfilment, but that the slave-horde was joined in Nola by a Greek named Hiketas, neither slave nor freedman, but an Argive noble. He brought with him his sister, Eradne, with whom he lived in incest. Traversing the roads from Rome, he offered his services to the staring eunuch.

  ‘This is the slave-army,’ Kleon said, with a cold distrust. ‘You are of the Masters.’

  The young Greek laughed; and yawned daintily, eating a comfit from a silver box. ‘I am tired of this life of Masters and slaves. Your slave-bands offer diversion. So I and Eradne would join them.’ He waved a negligent hand at the tall, slight figure clad as a man, who had ridden with him to the Nola guardhouse. Kleon said: ‘She is your woman?’

  ‘She is my sister, and we live in incest.’ The young Greek ate another comfit, and dusted his hands. ‘But we’ve no ambition to live in this guardhouse, unless your Strategos rejects our help. In that case we’ve another plan to follow.’

  ‘What is that?’ Kleon asked.

  ‘To charter a boat in Sicily and sail west through the Pillars to the Outer Seas. I’d put to the test this tale of old Plato’s that the Western Isle was really sunk.’

  Kleon thought of Titul and smiled on him bleakly. And then thought: ‘You may join the Free Legions if you will. But I’ll set a guard to watch you and your woman.’

  Hiketas raised plucked eyebrows in his painted face. ‘Set a legion, if you’ll sleep better of nights.’ And then, as he was led through Nola, broke from his half-captivity to gesture at the single ram in the market-place. ‘And you hope to assail the cities with that?’ He had lost his languor. ‘Give me men, materials, and time until spring . . .’

  Kleon had given him all three. And now to the other sounds of preparation the forum of Nola rang with the sound of the mallets wielded under the orders of the renegade Master, upbuilding two great helepolites for the siege of such cities as might resist the slaves, giant towers of wood that were scaled with brass. In addition to these, the Argive noble set to the construction of five tormenta, great catapults for hurling rocks on the roofs and walls of cities they might assail. Kleon withdrew his guard upon Hiketas, in time the slaves ceased to stare as he passed, and he and the woman Eradne found quarters near the Nola Forum, close to their labours. When the springtime came. . . .

  [ii]

  Spartacus summoned Kleon to his quarters. It was late afternoon as the eunuch crossed the city, and the cold bit deep, for his blood was thin. Coming to the quarters of the Thracian, he passed the guard of Ialo. Spartacus sat, as of old, on a little stool, without his armour, his head in his hands.

  ‘When will the consular armies move?’

  Kleon had already debated this with him, and looked at the brooding figure in surprise. ‘Not for a month yet, I think.’

  ‘Then we must move before them. If we wait till they are defeated, the south will stir against us. It is stirring already.’

  Kleon said coldly, ‘With you to order the battle, no army of the Masters can stand against us.’ And thought: ‘Until they bring Pompeius from Iberia.’

  The Thracian nodded. ‘Until they bring Pompeius. When that day comes, we can meet that day. Meanwhile, we do not risk what we’ve taken already. Southern Italy we can hold if we choose – yet only if we choose. I’ll send Castus into Apulia to put down the country and hold the great Stone Way.’

  ‘Castus?’ Kleon shook his head. ‘Now I would not send him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s a lover of yours, they say.’ The brooding figure did not move. ‘And at least too unready to hold a separate command for long, with you not by him. There’s only one tribune you can send.’

  The Strategos knew it also; but he seemed to avoid the knowledge.

  ‘The Jew?’

  Kleon smiled acidly and shook his head. ‘He would rend out his beard by the roots and suspect he was being sent out of the way while I prepared to anoint you king – that cry of REX SERVORUM has haunted him since Papa. Though he is faithful enough. Nor can you send Oenomaus, for the same reason that Castus cannot be sent. Nor Gannicus, for, with a separate command, he would loot and murder to his heart’s content. There’s only one fit commander.’

  It was snowing, gustily, in a bitter wind. The two slave leaders sat at a window and looked out through the slats at the white, waving curtain, with beyond it the walls of Nola and the mountains into which they proposed to despatch an army. In the coming dark, despite the storm, the city shone lighted and secure, warming a little the Greek heart of Kleon, hating the wastes of the countryside. He sat in silence and watched the Thracian, marvelling a little that there should endure in him such love for a fellow-slave of the arena.

  When even the memory of Elpinice was dead.

  And thought of Elpinice came on Kleon again. She often disturbed his thoughts, reasonlessly, seeing she was dead, and if not nothingness only a pale shadow in a world of dreams – the Land of Mist, as the Thracians called it. She had stood between him and Spartacus, and though he had no fear that this other love of the Strategos would so stand, it was the one defect he saw in that passionless statesman he was moulding from the fluid clay of the Gladiator of Capua.

  Then Spartacus stood up and called his attendant, the same Thracian Ialo as had ridden with him to the Roman house in the pit of the hills.

  ‘Bid Crixus come to me.’

  Then he turned round and met the nod of the Greek. ‘I’ll send him into Apulia.’

  [iii]

  The quarters of Gershom ben Sanballat were above the wall-gate of Nola itself. From there the Pharisee hater of Gentiles saw to the guarding of the slave-host in Nola. Captain of the town’s defences, his was the appointing of guards and sentinels, the periodical inspection of all the wall’s circuit, the questioning of arrivals and departures of merchants. Accustomed to the bleak winds of the hills of Judaea, the winter weather had but little effect on him. Clad in a long mantle and a leather helmet, he would stride from guard-room to guard-room, followed by two Bithynians, shivering, and keeping a slight trot in order to maintain pace with their Jewish General.

  Coming from his council with Spartacus, Kleon the Greek made his way to the house above the Northern Gate. Darkness had come, and all the house was in shadow but for the glow from the charcoal brazier in the room where Gershom sat. Gershom he found not seated alone. Beside him was a woman who, at the appearance of the Greek, rose to her feet and walked out of the room by another door. Kleon stopped and stared after her sardonically.

  ‘A priestess of Jehovah, doubtlessly?’

  The ex-leader of the Hasidim combed his bear
d. ‘It is Judith, the woman who opened the gates of Nyceria for us. She is a very good cook.’

  The Greek shrugged mockingly. ‘And no doubt a passable bed-woman. Hear the word of the Strategos, tribune: you’ll relieve all Germans from guard duties immediately, and send them armed to their own quarter.’

  The Jew stood up and reached for his helmet. ‘What foolishness is now afoot? Where are the Germans going?’

  ‘Crixus is taking them into Apulia. The Strategos proposed you, but I told him you were over-busied.’ He glanced at the door through which Judith had gone. ‘As apparently you are.’

  The Jew’s brows drew into a scowling line, for a moment again the noble addressing the eunuch slave. ‘Such business as I have is my own. Heed you to yours.’ And added irrelevantly: ‘Has not Spartacus his Lavinia?’

  Kleon sat down. He nodded moodily. ‘Yes, that was my mistake. I should have cut her throat on the Northern Road or else handed her over to the Gauls.’

  It was Gershom’s turn to sneer. ‘Has she no faith in the New Republic, then?’

  But Kleon was not listening. For long after Gershom had gone, to the walls and relieving the Germans, he sat in that room by the Northern Gate and stared in the brazier’s glow. The Jew with his Judith, Spartacus with Lavinia – every slave who could find or steal or win a woman this night might sit by his fire in comfort and drowsing content. Or rouse into warmth and tenderness, the stinging bliss of lust. Except himself.

  And that bitter hatred he had of the Masters pierced him like keen knives, till he laughed a little at himself, shakenly, and it passed. Then he went out, through the darkness and noise of Nola. The snow had cleared and far up, cold and clear, shone the stars.

  He stood and looked at them for a little, and with a nameless comfort.

  [iv]

  Next morning half the German legion was detached from the command of Gannicus, and marched out by Crixus on the road to Apulia. And Crixus and the Strategos kissed; and the Snake standards shone above the marching slaves. And long from the walls of Nola, Spartacus watched that departure.

  Crixus in Apulia

  [i]

  THAT year Gellius and Quintus Arrius were elected consuls at Rome, and waited for an unusually bitter winter to pass before setting out with the legions on the principal object of their election.

  That object the Senate, at length aroused, had stressed as the suppression of the slave rebellion. Both consuls, having suffered in their southern properties from the ravagings of the Free Legions, were in complete agreement for once with the policy of the Senate.

  All the forces available in Central Italy were to be taken against the Spartacists. They amounted to three legions, eighteen thousand foot and horse, besides auxiliaries brought from Cisalpine Gaul. The slave-horde under Spartacus was believed to number at least twenty thousand men. But it was composed of slaves, and the odds therefore negligible.

  Yet both consuls were discreet and cautious, patricians, cold men, viewing the slave revolt with neither fear nor contempt. They did not underrate the Bandit or his power and generalship. This was a thing to be stamped upon, the slaves killed or recaptured, themselves to win credit and a triumph through Rome. So the winter passed but slowly for them.

  Pass it did, however, and in the early days of Spring they took the army south, cautiously, towards Lucania. A host of spies in that country sent them constant word of the movements of the slaves. The Thracian still lingered at Nola with the majority of his following. But they learned it was his intention to attack Capua itself, with great machines built him by a renegade patrician, Hiketas. The consuls hastened their march, for spring was quick in the land.

  They came through a country as yet undesolated by the slave armies: for desertions to the Gladiators had almost ceased. All believed that the Free Legions would be crushed before summer; and, watching the passing, horse and foot, of the army of the consuls, this opinion found additional weight among the slave populace. Men and women, they would speak in their sheds over-night of the scenes to follow the suppression of the Bandit. Thinking of that returning passage of the army of the Masters they had seen press south, they would lick dry lips, the slaves, full of a sickened curiosity, seeing their endless days of toil and the whipping-block as upholding lives pleasant and safe in comparison with those who had joined the Criminals of Capua.

  But at Nola spring was also finding the Free Legions active. Bands of slaves scoured the surrounding country, for provisions and iron were running low in Nola. With knowledge of that fact Kleon the eunuch was determined to put into operation his plan of pacifying the Italiot cities and gaining them as willing allies. Gershom ben Sanballat, who had captured Nuceria, was accordingly sent to pacify that city, to relieve it from the rule of a brutal Syrian, who had been acting in a fashion semi-independent of the slaves in Nola. The Jew’s instructions were to call together the principal men, propose or force an alliance upon them; and demand a monthly tribute of corn and wine. Then he was to hold south into Lucania to every town and city on the way to Metapontum, and consolidate the country into a slave province, yielding provisions and tribute.

  But his legion could not be spared to accompany him. Beard-combing and sardonic, the Jew set out, taking with him fifty Bithynians and his cook, the woman Judith. Kleon watched them go, and had a cold twinge of regret. For it was a mission altogether desperate, this of Gershom ben Sanballat’s. If the Syrian in Nuceria refused to be moved the Jew might well have to set to the re-conquest of Lucania and South Campania with no greater force than his fifty Bithynians. Doubtlessly his cook would prove of aid.

  Meantime, to the east of the Matese mountains, the consuls learned from a captured and tortured slave-rebel that Spartacus at the head of a considerable force had broken out from Nola a month before and crossed into Apulia. Seeing no reason to doubt the news, Gellius and Arrius, having finished with the slave (who grinned and died, being a wild-humoured Thracian), turned east, left Capua to what fate might come on it, crossed the mountains, forded the Fortore into Apulia; and were presently apprised of irregularly armed bands of scouts falling back in front of their march.

  [ii]

  That hot spring day when the consuls forded Fortore, the tribune Crixus sat on a rock under the shadow of Mount Garganus and stared across that sea which was yet to become the Adriatic. Below his feet was the camp of his Germans; and looking down at that camp, he yawned.

  ‘This business of commanding Germans is like milking aurochsen,’ he said to the man by his side.

  Brennus, lying flat on his belly, grinned. He was very content and filled with food, and blinked in the light, like a lizard. But the little tribune was wearied.

  ‘I wish Kleon would commence the march on Capua and send us word to join him. This business of chasing Apulian sheep for fresh mutton is as tame as a day in the old arena in company with a fat instructor.’

  Brennus reflected. ‘When we capture Capua I’ll ask Kleon for his share of the women we take. For he’ll have no need of them.’

  ‘Nor Spartacus of you. He has little patience with bulls – even wild ones from the forests of Gaul.’

  ‘Gods!’ said Brennus, ‘to hear it again – a wild aurochs herd bellow on the evening’s edge!’

  But Crixus had ceased to listen. He was shading his eyes in the sun. ‘A messenger.’

  The man came scrambling up to their ledge, and halted, panting, and told his news. A minute thereafter and Crixus and Brennus had gained the camp, where already the Germans were arming in confusion. Pushing through them, Crixus reached his tent and commanded a bucina to blow and assemble the centurions. The wearied light had vanished from the eyes of the little tribune. He addressed the assembled Germans as a boy who planned to snare a fox.

  ‘Unless the Masters know these lands well, they’re already in our hands.’

  ‘How?’ asked a follower of Gannicus.

  ‘They can attack us only from the north, and think they have trapped us here. But we have the narrow pass in
to the mountains to the west. That they don’t know, and will pay little heed to their rear. Now, we’ll await them here, but send a messenger back through the pass, to ride to Nola and summon reinforcements. Then the Strategos will bring his legions and fall on the Masters from behind.’

  In an hour a messenger was riding for Nola. All that evening he rode, making a wide detour to the south to avoid the Romans. He was a Gaul, one of Brennus’ scouts, and spared neither himself nor his long-tailed mount. By midnight they heard him shouting outside the walls of Nola, and the Northern Gate was opened for him by Gershom’s Bithynians.

  One recognized him. ‘What news from Crixus?’

  ‘Good news,’ the Gaul called, and rode into the winding alleys of the town.

  At the house where the Strategos lodged a sleepy Thracian would have barred the way for the Gaul. ‘Spartacus sleeps.’

  The Gaul showed his teeth. ‘We don’t sleep in Apulia. Out of my way, horse-eater, or I’ll damage the wall by beating your head against it.’

  ‘Of that we’ll make test,’ said Ialo, helpfully, and now fully waked. But as they glared at each other an inner door opened.

  ‘What is it?’

  It was a woman, wrapped in a dark night-mantle, her hair a great shining cloak. Lavinia, the woman of Spartacus. Ialo glowered.

  ‘This pestiferous Gaul wants to awaken the Strategos. He says he comes from Apulia.’

  Lavinia considered the splashed messenger. Then, disregarding the Thracian’s grumbles, beckoned him into the inner room and closed the door. Unabashed, Ialo leant his head against a crack and listened. Beyond that inner room the Strategos slept in a closet.

  Ialo heard the messenger speak the message of Crixus, hurriedly, for he thirsted for action, being young, and was in no mind to miss the coming battle below Garganus. He heard the woman promise to awaken Spartacus and deliver that message. He heard the hurried steps of the Gaul returning towards the door, and so hearing, himself hastily retreated to his seat and spear, and appeared to doze.