Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  The dispersal of the lots began. There were seven hundred and fifty decuries, which meant that seven hundred and fifty men would die. A very long drawn—out procedure which Crassus and Mummius had speeded up with some excellent organization. In a huge basket lay seven hundred and fifty tablets—seventy—five of them were numbered I, seventy—five were numbered II, and so on, up to the number X. They had been thrown in at random, then shuffled well. The tribune of the soldiers Gaius Popillius had been deputed to count seventy—five of these jumbled little two—inch squares of thin wood into each of ten smaller baskets, one of which he gave to each of the ten remaining tribunes of the soldiers to disperse.

  That was why the guilty cohorts had been arranged in ten well-spaced rows, seventy—five well-spaced decuries to the row. A tribune of the soldiers simply walked from one end of his row to the other, stopping before each decury and pulling a tablet from his basket. He called out the number, the man allocated it stepped forward, and he then passed on to the next decury.

  Behind him the slaughter began. Even in this was order, meticulousness. Centurions from Crassus’s own six legions who did not know any of the men in the guilty cohorts had been ordered to supervise the actual executions. Few of the centurions who had belonged to the fifteen cohorts had lived, but those who did live had not been excused the punishment, so they took their chances with the rankers. Death was meted out to the man who had drawn the lot by the other nine men of his decury, who were required to beat him to death with their cudgels. In that way no one escaped suffering, be they the nine who lived or the one who died.

  The supervising centurions knew how it should be done, and said so. “You, kneel and don’t flinch,” to the condemned man. “You, strike his head to kill,” to the man farthest left. “You, strike to kill,” to the next man, and so along the nine, who were all forced to bring down their knob—headed sticks upon the back of the kneeling man’s defenseless cranium. That was as kind as the punishment could be, and at least stripped it of any element of the mindless mob beating wildly at all parts of the victim’s body. Because none of these men had the heart to kill, not every blow was a killing one, and some blows missed entirely. But the supervising centurions kept on barking, barking, barking to strike hard and strike accurately, and as the process proceeded down the line of decuries it became more workmanlike, quicker. Such is repetition combined with resignation to the inevitable.

  In thirteen hours the decimation was done, the last of it in darkness lit by torches. Crassus dismissed his footsore and bored army, obliged to stand until the last man was dead. The seven hundred and fifty corpses were distributed across thirty pyres and burned; instead of being sent home to the relatives, the ashes were tipped into the camp latrine trenches. Nor would their wills be honored. What money and property they left was forfeited to the Treasury, to help pay for all those abandoned weapons, helmets, shields, shirts of mail and legionary gear.

  Not one man who had witnessed the first decimation in long years was left untouched by it; on most its effect was profound. Now fourteen somewhat under—strength cohorts, the wretched men who had lived through it swallowed both fear and pride to work frantically at becoming the kind of legionaries Crassus demanded. Seven more cohorts of properly trained recruits came from Capua before the army moved on and were incorporated into the fourteen to make two full—strength legions. As Crassus still referred to them as the consuls’ legions, the twelve tribunes of the soldiers were appointed to command them, with Caesar, the senior, at the head of Legio I.

  *

  While Marcus Crassus decimated the ranks of those who could not screw up the courage to face the Spartacani, Spartacus himself was holding funeral games for Crixus outside the city of Venusia. It was not his custom to take prisoners, but he had plucked three hundred men of the consuls’ legions (and some others he intended to keep alive for the moment) from their camp at Firmum Picenum; all the way to Venusia he trained them as gladiators, half as Gauls, half as Thracians. Then dressing them in the finest equipment, he made them fight to the death in honor of Crixus. The ultimate victor he dispatched in an equally Roman way—he had the man first flogged and then beheaded. Having drunk the blood of three hundred enemy men, the shade of Crixus was eminently satisfied.

  The funeral games of Crixus had served another purpose; as his enormous host feasted and relaxed, Spartacus went among them in a more personal way than he had outside Mutina, and persuaded everyone that the answer to the vexed question of a permanent and fruitful home lay in Sicily. Though he had stripped every granary and silo bare along the route of his march, and laid in great stores of cheeses, pulses, root vegetables and durable fruits, and drove with him thousands of sheep, pigs, hens and ducks, keeping his people from starving haunted him far more than the specter of any Roman army. Winter was coming; they must, he resolved, be established in Sicily before the very cold weather descended.

  So in December he moved south again to the Gulf of Tarentum, where the hapless communities of that rich plain of many rivers suffered the loss of autumn harvest and early winter vegetables. At Thurii—a city he had already sacked on his first visit to the area—he turned his host inland, marched up the valley of the Crathis and emerged onto the Via Popillia. No Roman troops lay in wait; using the road to cross the Bruttian mountains comfortably, he came down to the small fishing port of Scyllaeum.

  And there across the narrow strait it loomed—Sicily! One tiny sea voyage and the long travels were over. But what a hideous voyage it was! Scylla and Charybdis inhabited those perilous waters. Just outside the Bay of Scyllaeum, Scylla lashed and gnashed her triple sets of teeth in each of her six heads, while the dogs’ heads girdling her loins slavered and howled. And if a ship was lucky enough to sneak by her as she slept, yet there remained Sicilian Charybdis, roaring round and round and round in a huge, sucking whirlpool of greed.

  Not, of course, that Spartacus himself believed in such tall tales; but without his realizing it he was losing whole layers of his Romanness, peeling them away like onion scales down to a kernel more primitive, more childlike. His life had not been lived in a truly Roman fashion since he had been expelled from the legions of Cosconius, and that was almost five years ago. The woman he had taken up with believed implicitly in Scylla and Charybdis, so did many of his followers, and sometimes—just sometimes—he saw the frightful creatures in his dreams.

  As well as harboring a big fishing fleet which pursued the migrating tunny twice a year, Scyllaeum accommodated pirates. The proximity of the Via Popillia and Roman legions passing to and from Sicily prohibited to any large pirate fleets a haven there, but the few small—scale freebooters who used Scyllaeum were in the act of beaching their trim, undecked little vessels for the winter when that huge tumult of people descended upon the place.

  Leaving his army to gorge itself on fish, Spartacus sought out the leader of the local pirates at once and asked him if he knew any pirate admirals who had command of big numbers of big ships. Why yes, several! was the answer.

  “Then bring them to see me,” said Spartacus. “I need an immediate passage to Sicily for some thousands of my best soldiers, and I’m willing to pay a thousand talents of silver to any men who guarantee to ship us over within the month.”

  Though Crixus and Oenomaus were dead, two replacements had risen to the surface of the polyglot collection of men Spartacus used as his legates and tribunes. Castus and Gannicus were both Samnites who had fought with Mutilus during the Italian War and Pontius Telesinus during the war against Sulla; they were martial by nature and had some experience of command. Time had taught Spartacus that his host refused to march as an army unless the enemy threatened—many men had women, quite a few children, some even parents in the train. It was therefore impossible for one man to control or direct such wayward masses; instead, Spartacus had split the host into three divisions with three separate baggage columns, commanding the largest and foremost himself, and giving the other two to Castus and Gannicus.

&nb
sp; When word came that two pirate admirals were coming to see him, Spartacus summoned Aluso, Castus and Gannicus.

  “It looks as if I’ll have ships enough to transport twenty thousand men across to Pelorus very soon,” he said, “but it’s the vast bulk of my people I’m going to have to leave behind who concern me. Some months might go by before I can bring them to Sicily. What do you think about leaving them here in Scyllaeum? Is there food enough? Or ought I to send everyone left behind back to Bradanus country? The local farmers and fishermen are saying it’s going to be a cold winter.”

  Castus, who was older and more seasoned than Gannicus, gave this some deliberate thought before answering.

  “Actually, Spartacus, it’s not bad pickings hereabouts. West of the harbor is a little sort of promontory, flat and fertile. I reckon the whole lot of us could last there without digging too deep into the supplies for—oh, a month, maybe two months. And if twenty thousand of the biggest eaters are in Sicily, three months.”

  Spartacus made up his mind. “Then everyone will stay here. Move the camps to the west of the town and start the women and children growing things. Even cabbages and turnips will help.”

  When the two Samnites had gone, Aluso turned her wild wolf’s eyes upon her husband and growled in the back of her throat. It always made his hackles rise, that eerie animalistic way she had whenever the prophetic spirit invaded her.

  “Beware, Spartacus!” she said.

  “What is there to beware of?” he asked, frowning.

  She shook her head and growled again. “I do not know. Something. Someone. It is coming through the snow.”

  “It won’t snow for at least a month, perhaps longer,” he said gently. “By then I’ll be in Sicily with the pick of my men, and I doubt the campaign in Sicily will extend us. Is it those who will wait here ought to beware?’’

  “No,” she said positively, “it is you.”

  “Sicily is soft and not well defended. I won’t stand in any danger from militiamen and grain barons.”

  She stiffened, then shivered. “You will never get there, Spartacus,” she said. “You will never get to Sicily.”

  But the morrow gave the lie to that, for two pirate admirals arrived in Scyllaeum, and both were so famous he even knew their names: Pharnaces and Megadates. They had commenced their pirate careers far to the east of Sicily, in the waters of the Euxine Sea. For the last ten years, however, they had controlled the seas between Sicily and Africa, raiding anything smaller than a well-guarded Roman grain fleet. When they felt like it they even sailed into the harbor of Syracuse—right under the nose of the governor!—to pick up provisions and vintage wine.

  Both of them, thought the astonished Spartacus, looked like sleekly successful merchants—pallid, plump, finicky.

  “You know who I am,” he said bluntly. “Will you do business with me despite the Romans?”

  They exchanged sly smiles.

  “We do business everywhere and with everyone despite the Romans,” said Pharnaces.

  “I need passage for twenty thousand of my soldiers between here and Pelorus.”

  “A very short journey, but one winter makes hazardous,” said Pharnaces, evidently the spokesman.

  “The local fishermen tell me it’s quite possible.”

  “Indeed, indeed.”

  “Then will you help me?”

  “Let me see…. Twenty thousand men at two hundred and fifty per ship—it’s only a matter of miles, they won’t care if they’re packed in like figs in a jar—is eighty ships.” Pharnaces grimaced slightly. “That many of large enough size we do not have, Spartacus. Twenty ships between us.”

  “Five thousand at a time,” said Spartacus, brow wrinkled. “Well, it will have to be four trips, that’s all! How much, and when can you start?”

  Like twin lizards, they blinked in perfect unison.

  “My dear fellow, don’t you haggle?” asked Megadates.

  “I don’t have time. How much, and when can you start?”

  Pharnaces took over again. “Fifty silver talents per ship^ ^per voyage—four thousand in all,” he said.

  It was Spartacus’s turn to blink. “Four thousand! That’s just about all the money I’ve got.”

  “Take it or leave it,” said the admirals in perfect unison.

  “If you guarantee to have your ships here within five days I’ll take it,” said Spartacus.

  “Give us the four thousand in advance and we guarantee it,” said Pharnaces.

  Spartacus looked cunning. “Oh no you don’t!” he exclaimed. “Half now, the other half when the job’s finished.”

  “Done!” said Pharnaces and Megadates in perfect unison.

  Aluso had not been allowed to attend the meeting. For reasons he wasn’t sure of, Spartacus found himself reluctant to tell her what had transpired; perhaps what she saw for him was a watery grave, if he was never to reach Sicily. But of course she got it out of him, and to his surprise nodded happily.

  “A good price,” she said. “You’ll recoup your money when you reach Sicily.”

  “I thought you said I wasn’t going to reach Sicily!”

  “That was yesterday, and the vision lied. Today I see with clarity, and all is well.”

  So two thousand talents of silver were dug out of the carts and loaded aboard the beautiful gilded quinquereme with the purple and gold sail that had brought Pharnaces and Megadates to Scyllaeum. Its mighty oars beating the water, it crawled out of the bay.

  “Like a centipede,” said Aluso.

  Spartacus laughed. “You’re right, a centipede! Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t fear Scylla.”

  “It’s too big for Scylla to chew.”

  “Scylla is a clump of wicked rocks,” said Spartacus.

  “Scylla,” said Aluso, “is an entity.”

  “In five days’ time I will know for sure.”

  Five days later the first five thousand men were assembled in Scyllaeum port itself, each man with his gear beside him, his armor on his back, his helmet on his head, his weapons at his side, and a ghastly fear in his chest. He was to sail between Scylla and Charybdis! Only the fact that most of the men had talked to the fishermen gave them the courage to go through with it; the fishermen swore Scylla and Charybdis existed, but knew the charms to soothe them to sleep and promised to use them.

  Though the weather had been good for all five days and the sea calm, the twenty pirate ships didn’t come. Brow knotted, Spartacus conferred with Castus and Gannicus and decided to keep his five thousand men where they were overnight. Six days, seven days, eight days. Still the pirate ships didn’t come. Ten days, fifteen days. The five thousand men had long since been sent back to their camps, but every day Spartacus was to be seen standing on the high point at the harbor entrance, hand shading his eyes, peering into the south. They would come! Must come!

  “You have been swindled,” said Aluso on the sixteenth day, when Spartacus showed no sign of going to his lookout.

  The tears welled up, he swallowed convulsively. “I have been swindled,” he said.

  “Oh, Spartacus, the world is full of cheats and liars!” she cried. “At least what we have done has been done in good faith, and you are a father to these poor people! I see a home for us there across the water, I see it so clearly I can almost touch it! And yet we will never reach it. The first time I read the bones I saw that, but later the bones too lied to me. Cheats and liars, cheats and liars!” Her eyes glowed, she growled. “But beware of him who comes out of the snow!”

  Spartacus didn’t hear. He was weeping too bitterly.

  “I am a laughingstock,” said Spartacus to Castus and Gannicus later in the day. “They sailed off with our money knowing they wouldn’t come back. Two thousand talents for a few moments’ work.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Gannicus, usually the silent one. “Even in business there’s supposed to be honor.”

  Castus shrugged. “They’re not businessmen, Gannicus. All they do is take. A pir
ate is an undisguised thief.”

  “Well,” said Spartacus, sighing, “it’s done. What matters now is our own future. We must continue to exist in Italy until the summer, when we will commandeer every fishing boat between Campania and Rhegium and take ourselves across to Sicily.”

  The existence of a new Roman army in the peninsula was known, of course, but Spartacus had wandered the land with virtual impunity for so long now that he took little notice of Roman military efforts. His scouts had grown lazy, and he himself not so much lazy as indifferent. Over the time that he had shepherded his vast flock, he had come to see his purpose in an unmartial light. He was the patriarch in search of a home for his children, neither king nor general. And now he would have to start them moving again. But where to? They ate so much!

  *

  When Crassus began his own march into the south, he went at the head of a military organization dedicated to one end—the extirpation of the Spartacani. Nor for the moment was he in any hurry. He knew exactly whereabouts his quarry was, and had guessed that its objective was Sicily. Which made no difference to Crassus. If he had to fight the Spartacani in Sicily, all the better. He had been in touch with the governor (still Gaius Verres) and been assured that the slaves of Sicily were in no condition to foment a third uprising against Rome even if the Spartacani came. Verres had put the militia on alert and stationed them around Pelorus, conserving his Roman troops for whatever shape a campaign might assume, and sure that Crassus would arrive hard on the heels of the Spartacani to take the brunt of the action.

  But nothing happened. The whole enormous mass of Spartacani continued to camp around Scyllaeum, it seemed because no shipping was available. Then Gaius Verres wrote.

  I have heard a curious tale, Marcus Crassus. It seems that Spartacus approached the pirate admirals Pharnaces and Megadates and asked them to ferry twenty thousand of his best troops from Scyllaeum to Pelorus. The pirates agreed to do this for a price of four thousand talents—two thousand to be paid as a deposit, the other two thousand upon completion of the job.